August 29, 2022 Show with Garrett Walden on “The John Gill Project”

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Carlisle, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,

Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs 27, verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet

Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron, wishing you all a happy Monday on this 29th day of August 2022.

Many of you may have either read in social media or heard me make an announcement on this program that a very dear friend of mine, going back to the 1980s,

Reverend Peter L. Padro, went home to be with Christ for eternity several months ago, and I was very blessed very recently to hear from his widow that she was giving to me a portion, a small portion, of her late husband's, my dear friend's, vast library.

And you should have seen the expression on my face, like a little kid on Christmas morning, when

I opened up that box and I discovered the complete commentary set on the

Bible by Dr. John Gill. And very providentially, at nearly the very same time,

I discovered something that is called the John Gill Project, and that is going to be our discussion for the day.

Our guest today to discuss this is Garrett Walden, who is pastor at Grace Heritage Church in Auburn, Alabama, and he is a

PhD student studying Baptist history and theology under my longtime friend, Dr.

Michael Haken, at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. And Garrett is also senior editor for the

London Lyceum and an editor for the John Gill Project. And today, as I mentioned, we are going to be discussing the

John Gill Project, and it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Trumpets Iron Radio, Garrett Walden.

It's great to be with you, Chris. Thanks for having me. The pleasure is mine, brother. And first of all, let our listeners know something about Grace Heritage Church in Auburn, Alabama.

Certainly. Grace Heritage Church is right here in the heart of Auburn, Alabama, and if you're familiar at all with Auburn, you probably know that it's home to a great university.

That's my alma mater. So Auburn University, I would guess, has maybe 30 ,000 students.

It is a huge university. So our church is situated just about two miles from the heart of the campus, and we're a kind of medium -sized

Southern Baptist church, and our church affirms the Second London Confession.

And so as we talk about John Gill, I find myself personally and then also just ecclesially in the same stream as John Gill on so many important theological matters.

So for me, my interest in Gill and Baptist history and theology finds a lot of direct application in my church context.

So I'm one of three elders here, and we've got a handful of wonderful deacons that serve our church so faithfully.

And so it's been a wonderful place for my family to plant some roots. Amen. Well, if anybody either lives in or near Auburn, Alabama, or you have friends, family, and loved ones who live there, or you're visiting there for one reason or another, traveling through there, the website to find out more information about this fine church is graceheritage .org,

graceheritage .org. Before we get into the main theme today, the

John Gill Project, we have a custom here, a tradition, which many people in my listening audience appear to love, where whenever we have a first -time guest on the show, that guest gives a summary of their salvation testimony that would include the kind of religious atmosphere, if any, they were raised in, and what kind of providential circumstances our

Sovereign Lord raised up in their lives that drew them to himself and eventually led to their salvation.

So I'd love to hear your story. Certainly, yeah, I'd be happy to share that.

So I was born and raised in a very small town about an hour north of Birmingham, Alabama.

The little town is called Oneona, and it was a wonderful place to grow up.

I was born to a Christian family, and so my mom and dad took my brother and sister and I to church consistently all through our childhood.

We were there every time the doors were open, and for that I'm so grateful. So much of my

Christian experience is indebted to my parents. And growing up, we attended a

Pentecostal church, and so we would actually drive a solid half hour on a

Sunday morning and Sunday evening and Wednesday nights and at other times through the week to be part of the church community in this

Pentecostal church down the road. And, you know, there are some ways where my current belief and practice is different from the way

I was raised, but nevertheless, I heard the gospel from a young age, and I was genuinely converted when

I was a child. I think when I was 12 years old, I had a sound understanding of the gospel and was able to articulate that to the pastor of the church and to my parents and was baptized there as a believer by immersion.

And so much of my Christian experience is rooted in just a wonderful Christian home, and I know that that's not always people's experience.

Sometimes people have experiences in a Christian home that drives them away from Christ, and many don't have a

Christian home to be raised in at all. And so I'm just so grateful for God's sovereignty in putting me in my family and for the spiritual convictions that my mom and dad had in raising my brother and sister and I.

And so really when I got to high school, I began to have a deepened friendship with a fellow at school, and he and I would have conversations together at the lunchroom table about theology and doctrine.

And this guy, he was about my age, and he would ask questions and make suggestions.

Some of them were stronger than suggestions, I suppose, but we would get into these theological debates at the lunchroom table, and that would kind of spill over after school.

We would meet up and talk some more, and we would always have our Bibles with us, and we're examining the

Scriptures to consider a lot of really heavy and substantial theological issues, especially for teenage guys to be talking about.

So it was really that friendship that stimulated a lot of my own spiritual inquiry, and to that point,

I don't think I really had much of a love for literature. But through speaking with that friend and really encountering some theological challenges to my faith and some of the assumptions that I had about what

Scripture and theology said or implied, I began to read books, and I became just a voracious reader when

I was in high school and in college, and that really kind of started me down this road to spiritual maturation and discipleship.

It was largely through great Christian literature and through this friendship. You know, just in God's kindness, that friend introduced me to the woman who's now my wife, and then also that friend married my wife's sister, and so now

I guess he's my brother -in -law, and so we still have a close connection to this day. And so really, he really is a huge part of my growth and my understanding of doctrine, and a lot of that, too, he was challenging me spiritually to share my faith and to engage in evangelism and to exercise what the

Lord was blessing with gifts of teaching, and so he and I would lead some Bible studies together, and we would go to different places around town and share the gospel with people, and we would just walk through Walmart or go to a restaurant and just speak to people who were sitting down and eating, and so we had just a wonderful spiritual friendship that continues to this day.

And so that's really kind of how I came into the faith and began to grow, and then when I went off to college, that I think is when the

Lord started really helping me to find some solid answers to some of the theological and doctrinal questions that my friend had been challenging me with.

And so when I came to Auburn University, I had grown up in this

Pentecostal church and loved it, wonderful people there that loved me and my family. However, there were a lot of questions that I still had that I wasn't finding answers to within that tradition, and so when

I came to college, I made a list of about a dozen different churches and different traditions.

I had really primarily been exposed to just kind of one theological stream, and so I wanted to try the

Church of Christ. I wanted to try the Roman Catholic Church, the Baptist Church, the Methodist Church, the

Presbyterian Church, the Lutheran Church. I had no idea what was really out there, and my first Sunday as a freshman in college,

I visited Lakeview Baptist Church in Auburn, and I heard God's Word preached faithfully, and they were preaching expositionally through a passage of Scripture, really a whole book of Scripture over the course of quite some time, and they had a very transparent passion for international missions, and they genuinely loved each other, and I could see it from just being a first -time visitor.

And I never visited any other churches. I stayed there. I went back the next week and the next week and the next week, and I later joined the church, and I was at the church almost every time the doors were opened there at Lakeview Baptist, and it was there that some of my theological roots began to deepen, and the

Lord led me to grow and to continue to study, and I was discipled and mentored by some godly men of the church.

Names like Nathan Douthit and Cameron Pugh and Curtis Black and Al Jackson may not mean much to your hearers, but those were the men that shaped me in some really significant ways in college, and it was during that freshman year of college that the

Lord began to put a burden on my heart for pastoral ministry, and I thought at one point that might take me overseas, but just in God's kindness, it led me to seminary at Southern Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, and that ultimately culminated in coming to the church here at Gray Heritage back in Auburn.

So anyway, that's kind of a—I don't know if that's long or short, but feel free to ask me any questions about that that may be of interest to your listeners.

Well, I think that we've heard quite a good amount of your testimony, and since we are going to be discussing another issue, perhaps another time will be to delve into any more detail that may come up in a future interview.

But first of all, before we actually get into the

John Gill project, obviously the logical thing to do would be to let our listeners know about who

John Gill was and when you first became acquainted with his writings and when you began to develop a deep appreciation for his writings, his legacy, his teachings, and I am just thrilled that this

John Gill project is now in formulation because I think that he is tragically a great figure from history that far too few people have either even heard of or that they have an exaggerated negative kind of expression that has been made about him by even knowledgeable historians and theologians who

I think far too often and in far too an exaggerated way discount him as being a hyper -Calvinist and so on.

But tell us about John Gill, how you discovered him, and what are the circumstances behind your developing this appreciation for him?

Certainly, certainly. So John Gill is one of the great Baptist heroes that, like you mentioned, often doesn't get the respect and attention that he deserves.

He was born in 1697 and he dies in 1771.

So those of you who are historically minded, there's a lot of things happening there. So he's born just a decade past the writing and affirmation of the

Second London Baptist Confession, and he dies just prior to the

American Revolution. And so there's a lot of things happening in England during that time.

He's born in Kettering, and he eventually becomes a pastor in London.

So he's most often associated with the British Baptist scene in and around London.

And so he's one of the towering intellectual figures in Baptist history. He wrote so much that his nickname was

Dr. Voluminous. Just the volume of his writing is just so expansive.

And he surveyed so much material. Just a few things, maybe just to draw you in.

He's the first Baptist theologian or pastor, or the first Baptist, period, to write what we would consider a systematic theology in his body of doctrinal and practical divinity.

He's also the first Baptist person to write a commentary on the entire Bible. So he wrote this exposition of the

Old and New Testaments well into his ministry. And so he wrote just a massive amount of material.

On top of that, he had a written kind of back -and -forth debate with John Wesley, the founder of kind of the

Methodist movement, or at least one of the founders and organizers of it. And so they debated back and forth in kind of a pamphlet war about the doctrine of predestination.

He wrote a lengthy defense of the doctrines of grace in a book that came out in multiple volumes called

The Cause of God and Truth. He wrote a massive and just wonderful defense of the doctrine of the

Trinity. He was just so wonderful. So many things that Baptists value today, they can find

John Gill as a great hero in those ways. There are certainly some areas in which we would disagree with John Gill, and perhaps we'll talk about those a little later on, but for the most part, he's just one of those wonderful Baptist forefathers that is certainly worth investigating and exploring.

And so maybe just another thing that would be interesting to our hearers, his church that he was a pastor at, he pastored the

Goat Yard Chapel in Horsley Down in kind of the southern part of London.

And so it's later named Carter Lane Baptist Church. And so he was a pastor there for 51 years.

So he was there from 1720 to 1771. Imagine, 51 years as pastor of one congregation.

This wasn't just an ordinary congregation. This was the church that was pastored by Benjamin Keech. And so if you're familiar with Baptist history,

Benjamin Keech was one of the great heroes and forefathers of those early

Baptists in the 17th century. Yeah, in fact, many Reformed Baptists still use his catechism today.

And in fact, I heard that the 19th century

Prince of Preachers, Charles Haddon Spurgeon, had entombed in the,

I believe, the cornerstone of Metropolitan Tabernacle, among other things, the 1689

London Baptist Confession of Faith and Keech's catechism. Wow. I hadn't heard that about that being embedded in the cornerstone, but it would not surprise me at all.

So Benjamin Keech is pastor of this church. And then his son -in -law, Benjamin Stenton, takes over for a while.

And then John Gill comes along as pastor of the church. And then after Gill is another really influential

Baptist minister, John Ripon. John Ripon is there for 63 years. And it's there that the church moves from Carter Lane to New Park Street.

So hopefully it's starting to sound familiar now, because after a couple of other pastors, New Park Street calls this young, up -and -coming 20 -year -old

Charles Haddon Spurgeon to be the pastor. And it's from New Park Street.

Eventually, they move to the Metropolitan Tabernacle. So Spurge is there for 38 years until his death in 1892.

And so this same church, this same... Well, of course, the congregation ages, and people are brought in, and people are removed for various reasons.

But this same church had Benjamin Keech, John Gill, John Ripon, Charles Spurgeon, all in the same church over the course of a little over 200 years.

Just an amazing testimony of just God's provision for this church. Now, what is it about John Gill, in your opinion, that he is hardly known except for those in the holes of academia today?

You could hardly find any Christian that has not heard of Charles Haddon Spurgeon crossing denominational lines.

I mean, you could even speak to a Seventh -day Adventist, and they may likely have heard of him and may likely even have a very high opinion of him.

I have met, unfortunately, a handful of people over the years who had no clue who

Spurgeon was, even though they claimed to be Christian. In fact, that included...

Back in the 90s, I remember while working for WMCA Radio, which is an affiliate of one of the...

In fact, the largest Christian radio network in the world, Salem Communications. While working there, at the time this station was located in Hasbrook Heights, New Jersey, we had a visit from the very first general manager of the very first Christian radio station in London, England, because, believe it or not, prior to the 1990s, it was illegal to have religious radio in the

UK. And this was a new thing that began, and the general manager of this very first station in London came to visit us so he could learn more about how to operate a

Christian radio station. And during our meeting with him in the conference room,

I said to him, I've always wanted to visit London, and especially to visit the

Metropolitan Tabernacle. And he said, pardon? I said, the

Metropolitan Tabernacle? Sorry, not following you. You know, on Elephant and Castle in London, the church where Charles Haddon Spurgeon, the

Prince of Preachers, was the pastor in the 19th century, writer of numerous books, quoted heavily by churches of all denominations to this day.

Sorry, never heard of them. This was the general manager of a Christian radio station in London.

But although that, in my experience, was rare, or is rare, to come across such a person who never heard of Spurgeon, it is just as uncommon to hear from people who know and appreciate who

John Gill was. Do you have any explanation as to why? Well, I think there are a couple of reasons.

First, it should be noted that it was not always so. During John Gill's own day, one of his early publications was an exposition of the

Song of Solomon. And one of his kind of wonderful aspects of that exposition is, rather than viewing it merely as concerning the relationship between the husband and wife, he interprets it as kind of a picture of God and his people, and ultimately of Christ and the church.

And so that was a wildly successful publication for Gill.

So during his own day, he was really well known and recognized. Of course, he produces the commentary on the whole

Bible that is widely accepted and used, and then his body of doctrinal and practical divinity comes out, and it's widely used.

And so during his day, and maybe the generations following up until the middle of the 19th century, if you were a

Baptist pastor in England and in some places in the United States, the average pastor might have 30 to 50 books on his shelf, and that's it.

And among those 30 to 50 books that a pastor might have during most of the 18th and 19th century, there would have been the nine volumes of Gill's commentary and probably two or three volumes of his doctrinal and practical divinity.

And so if you're a pastor in this time, you've got 50 books, and a dozen of them are from John Gill.

And so that's a huge influence when you think about it. All over the

UK, Gill's books were being read and appreciated by Baptists. And really, once you get to the rise of higher criticism in the mid to late 19th century, he begins to be,

I guess, less used. The tide of the,

I guess, the cultural winds of the critical study of the Bible shifts in a huge way, and so he kind of falls out of favor in some ways.

So I would say nowadays, people who are familiar with Gill, they probably hear about Gill when they're studying the doctrines related to Calvinism.

And often, Gill is portrayed as one of the bad guys. And so that, I think, puts a bad taste in people's mouths concerning John Gill.

So if you're studying the doctrines of grace, often you're going to come up against a distinction between evangelical

Calvinism and high or hyper -Calvinism. Most academic people would prefer the term high

Calvinism. Hyper -Calvinism has kind of a negative connotation. A very negative connotation.

So very often, you know, hyper -Calvinism is, no one ever would claim that term.

For themselves, you mean? Certainly, yes, certainly. No one would claim that term for themselves. So I prefer not to use the term hyper -Calvinism if I can help it.

But high Calvinism, so a lot of times high Calvinism is associated with John Gill for some reasons that we can discuss.

Yeah, even Spurgeon referred to him using that term. Correct. So there are some interesting features of what that conversation really entails.

So high Calvinism is kind of a variety of Calvinism that accents a few particular points that leads to what we would say is a major deviation from biblical teaching.

So often a high Calvinist would deny that non -elect people have a duty to exercise faith.

So because they're unable to, because of the doctrine of election, they have no responsibility to.

And so that denial of duty faith leads to a denial of the offer of the gospel.

So the language of offer for the gospel becomes hugely controversial during Gill's time and in the generations after.

So most famously, Andrew Fuller writes his 1785 treatise,

The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation, in order to combat this notion of duty faith and the offer of the gospel.

He's trying to push back on this high Calvinism and express a richly theological and orthodox evangelical

Calvinism. So often Gill is pitted against Fuller, and certainly

Fuller is engaging with Gill, so it's not totally unmerited, but often Gill is viewed as the bad guy, and Fuller's the good guy.

And Gill is a bit more complicated than that. And so there arise terms and labels like the

Gillites versus the Fullerites, and that sort of thing. And so often, you know, to be associated with Gill is to be embracing of high

Calvinism, which is basically to oppose international missions, to oppose evangelism.

It can express itself in those ways. And sometimes high Calvinists, if, you know, gods elect are going to be brought in no matter what, there's no real place for the means of the gospel's proclamation.

A lot of times that would lead people to a kind of doctrinal or practical antinomianism, where they would deny the use of the moral law as meaningful in any way for a

Christian. So Gill was not an antinomian by any means. So that whole discussion is sometimes called the modern question, which is related to, do non -elect people have a responsibility to exercise faith in Christ?

Wasn't that one of the primary disputes that a century after Gill, Charles Haddon Spurgeon had with the strict

Baptists? On the one hand, he was battling those involved in the downgrade controversy, and on the other side of the spectrum, he was battling with those who were claiming to be

Calvinists, but were strict in the denomination known as the strict Calvinists, who were denying that very thing of the duty faith that Spurgeon defended.

Am I right on that? I believe so. And so a lot of times the strict

Baptists would have been associated with high Calvinism. A lot of times that would have also come with some other practices, like I guess you would call it restricted or strict communion, and restricted or strict church membership, where some

Baptist churches were accepting to the Lord's table those who have not been baptized by immersion upon profession of faith, and there were other

Baptist churches who would accept them to the Lord's Supper, and others who would accept non -Credo -baptized

Christians into membership. Really? So there were several layers of conversation concerning strictness and openness, or maybe you could think of it as restrictive and mixed

Baptists during the 18th century and the 19th century as well. So all those things have kind of all been circulating together, and it really is so interesting once you get into the history of that, to see kind of where the lines were drawn.

A lot of times these controversies were hammered out in pamphlets, almost like little essays that were published by the hundreds and just handed out, and they were at times quite charged in their rhetoric.

In fact, if you could pick up right where you left off there, because we have to go to our first break, and when we return, we'll have you pick up on the pamphlets that were used to make debates public over theological issues.

And if anybody would like to ask a question of our guest today, send in an email to chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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Welcome back. This is Chris Arnzen. If you just tuned in today, my guest today has been and will continue to be for the entire two -hour program,

Garrett Walden, who is discussing the John Gill Project. If you have questions of your own, our email address is chrisarnzen at gmail .com.

Give us your first name at least, city and state, and country of residence. Before the break, you were just about to get into the fact that during the 18th century and perhaps even the 19th century as well, it was very common for pamphlets or booklets or tracts or something to that extent to be distributed among the population that involved heated theological debates of the day.

And if you could pick up where you left off. Certainly, certainly. So this is kind of in the context of why is

Gill less known today? And I was saying that during his day, he was really well known because of his publication.

So people had his commentaries, people had his body of divinity, and also there was just a social context where pamphlets and tracts and small booklets could be easily printed and circulated.

And that was a pretty common mode of conversation and debate. So I'm looking here just on my computer here at kind of a table of contents of a collection of his sermons and tracts.

And so they would be something like, you know, an answer to the Birmingham Dialogue writer, part one and two.

And so he was responding to something that he read, and it looks like it's two roughly 30 -page responses.

So think like a pretty substantive book chapter or something like that. Here's one called Truth Defended, an answer to a pamphlet on the superlapsarian scheme.

And so he's responding to something that he read there. Here's one, The Moral Nature and Fitness of Things.

Here's another called The Necessity of Good Works Under Salvation Considered. And then he's got possibly ten, at least, tracts and pamphlets on the issue of baptism, so really examining the historical and theological claims of infant baptism.

And of course, he's seeking to refute those historical and theological claims, and seeking to establish a historical and theological affirmation of believers' baptism by immersion.

And so that would have been a really common practice in his time to have those pamphlets circulating.

And so it wasn't just that Gill was read and used by pastors or academic people.

It would have been a little bit more popular level than that. And, you know, nowadays maybe a modern comparison would be something like a blog.

Sometimes blogs can become so casual, and people can say all sorts of things that are sometimes not the most gracious in blogs and that sort of thing.

But that is often a way of back and forth. And of course, social media adds a whole other complexity to it.

But over the course of time, the rise of higher criticism in Europe and kind of a shifting social context of dialogue,

Gill kind of fades from people's interest and accessibility. And so a big part of people being unfamiliar with Gill now has to do with accessibility.

So there's not a lot of great publications of Gill's writings. So quite some time ago there was the

Baptist Standard Bearer published Gill's body of doctrinal and practical divinity, and also his complete set of Old Testament and New Testament commentaries.

Yeah, and they're actually operated by the Strict Baptist today, aren't they? I believe so. I think maybe their denomination or group is called the

Gospel Standard Baptist. And so they produced the works of Gill, and his

Cause of God and Truth, and a number of other of Gill's writings. But the font and the formatting, it's not the easiest to read.

I've got a copy of that edition of the body of doctrinal and practical divinity, and it's really quite tedious to read the style and formatting.

Yeah, I looked at the commentaries that my beloved friend Pete Padreau, or should

I say his late wife, gave to me, and I opened up the commentaries. And sure enough, exactly what you're describing,

I'm going to need both reading glasses and a magnifying glass, I think, to read.

It's probably double column, and the way to navigate to a particular chapter and verse of a book is not always very easy to find.

And so, you know, a big part of the challenge of deepening our love of Baptist theology and learning

Baptist history is to take some of these resources that were so influential in their day and bring them into the 21st century, while preserving them, but also just representing them in a way that is more agreeable to modern expectations of typesetting and formatting and printing and binding and those sorts of things.

And so that's a big impetus for the John Gill project, is to bring these works of Gill into the modern day.

And I can immediately think of one reason why Gill may not be as prevalent a name that is lauded today.

Usually, for the most part, not always, but usually Reformed Baptists and our conservative

Bible -believing Presbyterian brothers enjoy a lot of warm camaraderie and fellowship and pulpit exchange and so on.

And from what I have read, Gill was far more caustic in his references to infant baptism than Charles Spurgeon was.

I'm not saying that Pastor Spurgeon did not get heated in his criticisms of those with whom he disagreed at all.

In fact, he had some very harsh comments for those who have an Arminian concept of salvation and equated their understanding of the accomplishment of Christ on Calvary's cross as monstrous and fitting of a god of the pagans and thugs, because he said that the

Arminians believe in a god who punishes people for their sins in hell after he allegedly already paid for them on the cross.

But Gill, as far as infant baptism was concerned, called it a remnant of potpourri.

In fact, I know he had a booklet specifically on that issue that used some harsh rhetoric.

Yes, yes. So, you know, there's a big movement right now that is encouraging in so many ways related to Baptist Catholicity.

So let me kind of explain that and how Gill might fit into that, or maybe doesn't fit into that.

I think he probably does. So when we think of the word Catholic, there's Catholic with an uppercase

C, so you would think of Roman Catholicism. Do I have to?

I'm a former Roman Catholic, so... Right. So any Baptist or Protestant, for that matter, would have a negative conception of that use of the word

Catholic. But if you think back to the Nicene Creed, there's a use of the word

Catholic with a lowercase c. So the creed says that there's one holy Catholic and apostolic church.

And so that notion of Catholic with a small c is this idea of this universal church of all of the people of God from all time and across all space.

Yeah, even the Presbyterians sometimes, those that are more liturgical, and even some Reformed Baptists will recite the

Apostles' Creed, which has the reference to the Catholic church, small c. Certainly, certainly.

I think I'm having in mind that the Apostles' Creed as well. So yeah, so there's a movement now trying to situate

Baptists in that small c Catholic dialogue. How is it that Baptists can relate to other denominations and other church traditions and the broader

Christian tradition? And so the work of the Center for Baptist Renewal, for instance, is doing some wonderful work there, and some of my friends are part of that.

And so, you know, John Gill is kind of an interesting piece of that. You know, had some dear friends who were not

Baptists. So he was a friend of Augustus Toplady, for instance.

Rock of Ages, hymn writer. Rock of Ages, Clefermie, right. And so Augustus Toplady was a major figure during the middle decades of the 18th century.

I think he died in 1778. In fact, did you pick up when we returned from our midway break on Augustus Toplady? Certainly, certainly.

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Send me that email to chrisarnsen at gmail .com and put I need a church in the subject line. That's also the email address where you could send in a question to Garrett Walden and we are discussing the

John Gill project that's chrisarnsen at gmail .com give his first name at least city and state and country of residence.

Garrett we were just getting involved in a discussion before the break where we were continuing to talk about theological divisions that created debates amongst brothers in Christ.

Sometimes those debates appeared to be quite heated but did not reflect a reality that often was existing behind that heat.

Sometimes there were cherished friendships and beloved brotherhoods that existed even though the rhetoric of debate was sharp such as the one of the most notable examples of that was the the heated debates it was usually more heated on John Wesley's side but the heated debates that existed between George Whitfield and John Wesley and they loved one another so much that that Whitfield requested that Wesley preach at his funeral when he died and and Wesley did exactly that but if you want to pick up where you left off there certainly certainly so I think there is a lot that can be learned both positive and negative from from Gill on this particular topic so so Gill really is not kind of a grumpy uh hyper calvinist that sometimes people make him out to be uh he did have friendships with people that were quite different from him so for instance you know

Augustus Toplady I mentioned uh before the break just he's a he's a great hymn writer he's a really a wonderful uh theologian during his day and he was uh different he wasn't a baptist and also there are others in this kind of sphere so um the the other great hymn writer uh

William Williams Pantichellon he wrote the the hymn Guide Me O Thou Great Jehovah and he was part of the uh kind of the

Welsh Calvinistic Methodist movement and so he was just this wonderful um wonderful Christian man he lists

Gill among some of the most influential figures uh in his spiritual formation alongside

Thomas Goodwin and John Owen and uh Walter Marshall and and he lists Gill on that list and so it really is quite you know encouraging to see uh

Gill having these friendships often it would have been through letter correspondents another was um the

Anglican um minister James Harvey um so there was friendship that extended across these kinds of doctrinal lines yes even uh

Samuel Stennett who was a Seventh -day Baptist he worshiped on Saturday and he and Gill cherished a friendship between the two of them and did pulpit exchanges and Stennett as as Whitfield requested of Wesley uh

Stennett preached at Gill's funeral and in fact Chapel Library has a printed copy in booklet form of that sermon by the

Seventh -day Baptist Samuel Stennett at Gill's funeral and uh let's keep in mind folks

I want to make it clear it was a Seventh -day Baptist not a Seventh -day Adventist the Seventh -day Adventist didn't even exist at the time but that's just another example certainly certainly and so I do think there there is a lot of a lot of evidence of of kind of cross -denominational friendship and collaboration on certain kinds of things but I don't want to minimize the differences that they had and so it was not uncommon at all for particular

Baptists of this time which would be the Calvinistic Baptists of this time to not invite those who are different from them into their pulpits it's one thing to maintain a friendship with someone it's another thing to invite them into a particular platform within the church polity and so sometimes that would be a limitation on pulpit exchange depending on the nature of the difference in doctrinal view sometimes that would be not welcoming those who are not credo -baptized to the

Lord's Supper as I mentioned earlier but there's a diversity of view on this among Baptists and even among particular

Baptists during the 18th century and prior in the 17th century as well so that there was a you know in the

Second London Confession Front it is silent on the matter of who may or may not preach in a pulpit in terms of doctrinal differences from the position of the church it essentially allows for ministers and gifted brothers and others who the church may grant approval and that's usually usually a gifted brother but it could include visitors in some ways it's also silent in the confession about who specifically may participate in the

Lord's Supper that's because there's a debate that goes all the way back to the 1670s between William Kiffin and John Bunyan on this question and it's revived again in this time period as well in the 1770s there's a kind of another round of that debate and so Jonathan Edwards was involved in one wasn't he in one of those debates you know

I'm actually I'm not familiar with that side of it I know on the British side there were a number of people that drew some pretty strong lines about who is welcome and who is not welcome in the

Lord's Supper and so they would have these friendships that would abide but they still felt a responsibility to maintain their

Baptist distinctives and their church polity and so one of the interesting questions you know you mentioned

Gil's pamphlets against Roman Catholicism and so in that day it wasn't uncommon to refer to it as as popery or Catholics as papists kind of an interesting term but so Gil is quite intense to say the least about his opposition to popery and to papists and so he would view infant baptism as one of the one of the kind of what's the word for it

I guess he calls it a part and pillar of popery yes that's right you just jogged my memory that I can vividly remember owning that in booklet form yes yes so he would say that you know

I think he would be along the same lines as some of the 17th century Baptists who would say that Presbyterians and Congregationalists and other

Reformed and Protestant groups who retain infant baptism they basically did not reform all the way they didn't complete the

Reformation so the Baptists come along and and complete the Reformation in terms of its recovery of biblical church polity including the baptism including the ordinance of baptism and so so he does draw lines he also had a really interesting eschatology his view of the end times in which the the the

Roman Catholic Church really is the Antichrist and and it is the two -headed beast that's the two heads there's or the two beasts excuse me it's the the

Pope and his civil power and the other beast is the Pope and his ecclesial power and so or his spiritual power and so he has nothing but critical words to say about Roman Catholicism and so I guess that we would say that you know coming back to that term

Catholic there is an element of Catholicity small c in Gill because he does have friendships and Christian relationships with other ministers and other figures from other denominations and a recognition of church tradition but he is not large c

Catholic far from it in fact and so he's quite critical of the Roman Catholic Church and so one of the other kind of evidences of that is is

Gill's just wonderful scholarship in the early church he was he was a very accomplished patristics scholar so he quotes from Augustine he quotes from Gregory of Nazianzus Basil of Caesarea so many of the great church fathers and he's reading them in the original

Latin and Greek and and so he's just a really incredible patristic scholar and so he doesn't he's not averse to tradition he's not averse to Christians who think differently but he's he is very committed to his

Baptist distinctives and that's one of the things that I really have valued about Gill earlier you asked me when did

I first encounter Gill and it was in studying the doctrines of grace and sometimes

I think we can get into a mentality that to be there's a famous quote

I think it's by Cardinal Newman where he says to be deep in history is to cease to be

Protestant and in other words what he's saying is to to study history profoundly and to go back into the tradition is to recognize that the only proper form of Christianity is

Roman Catholicism and that's really kind of what what sucked me into studying history is to see that's just simply not true and I think

Gill is a good representative of that he he is very deep in history he goes all the way back to the early church and he's deriving biblical and spiritual and theological truths from from history and tradition and so all of those things make me just really excited to study

Gill and to to see his works reprinted for a new generation and he he really is just a wonderful example in so many ways of of Baptist history and theology while we can still be critical of him in some other ways there are some elements of his theology that are that are problematic for instance his doctrine of eternal justification where he basically says that when

God elects people in eternity past he also he also justifies them and adopts them in eternity past and so in in time there is no well in time when they're converted it's not that they receive justification for the for the first time so to speak they they've been eternally adopted as an imminent act of God and so that ultimately leads to a lot of major problems and leads to some of the major uh

I guess deviations into high Calvinism yeah I believe that I believe many if not most of the primitive

Baptists have that concept I believe so and that largely comes from John Gill and from his friend and close disciple

John Brine and that was a major major influence and in the 18th century as well

Gill and Brine and some of the ways that their followers took those doctrines and made them greater than they should be or even just made the error of affirming them in general led to almost the complete dissolution of the

Baptist denomination in in England so in England during the time there's general Baptists who are mostly

Arminian and there are particular Baptists who are mostly Calvinistic the general Baptist pretty pretty thoroughly denied the doctrine of the

Trinity and the general Baptist ran into a lot of problems in the 18th century because they largely become

Unitarian but the particular Baptist they preserved the doctrine of the

Trinity largely through the influence of John Gill but they fell into some other errors also influenced by John Gill on matters of Calvinism and and distortions of the doctrines of grace that led them to to grow cold in their evangelistic efforts and the denomination really began to to fizzle out until a great work of revival began with men like Andrew Fuller and William Carey and John Ryland and John Ryland Jr.

and Samuel Pierce and and some others in that generation toward the last quarter century of the 18th century so it really is just an amazing thing to see so many things wonderfully exemplified in Gill but also some things to be critical of and so it's not a we're not trying to repristinate

Gill as an infallible source but as a helpful way just like you know your program

Iron Sharpening Iron there there's a there's a a contrast there's a conflict there's a hammering out that we have to work on with Gill we need to read charitably and we need to read critically and we need to read with a

I guess a brotherly warmth he's a he's a senior scholar he's an older brother who we can bring into the dialogue for our good and I'm assuming you and your colleagues at the

London Lyceum and more specifically at the John Gill Project find more that is favorable and valuable about Gill than anything that anything over which you disagree with him and so tell us about why the

John Gill Project was started how it started and exactly what it what what is it certainly certainly so the

John Gill Project is a collaborative effort to bring the works of John Gill into the 21st century and so we're transcribing the works of Gill we're putting him into modern typeset we're going to have some wonderful designers help us to make it a really attractive and appealing book and something that people could actually read without like you said the the double reading glasses and a magnifying glass and such and so we're trying to bring him to a more accessible format for for people and I mentioned that it's a collaborative effort it's between the

Andrew Fuller Center that is run by Dr. Michael Haken and Dr.

Jonathan Swan is one of his colleagues there so the Andrew Fuller Center focuses on 18th century

Baptist history and theology primarily and so they're doing wonderful work and so they're partnering with us giving some some content and academic oversight to the project because we want it to be quality and not shabby we're also partnering with H &E

Publishing HESED and MS Publishing and so H &E

Publishing is led by a man Chance Faulkner and his colleague Chris Osterbrook and they're a

Canadian publishing house that specifically is seeking to promote Baptist history and heritage and it's just a wonderful wonderful group of people there at H &E

Publishing and then for the London Lyceum, Jordan Stefaniak and I along with some other brothers who work with us are grateful to be a part of this as well so we're doing a lot of the a good bit of the on the ground work to raise some support for the project and to do some fundraising we're putting our hand to the plow to do some of the transcription and footnoting and formatting and stuff like that so the

London Lyceum is a kind of a center for Baptist theology and history for analytic philosophy and so it's just a really wonderful community of people we have a podcast and a website and it's on our website that you can find some information about the

London Lyceum so specifically what's going on with the London Lyceum and the

John Gill project is we're going to be reproducing Gill's works in about 20 volumes over the course of the next several years so we have the first volume coming out we're trying to have it out by Christmas this year and it's essentially

Gill's introduction and it's going to be called What is Theology? and it's his kind of prolegomena it's his introduction to the theological task and work of the theologian and it's going to have a new introduction from Jonathan Swan who is a wonderful Gill scholar and so that first volume is coming out it's well underway and then shortly thereafter we're going to have a few other projects coming out we've got

Gill on the doctrine of the trinity that's on its way we've got a volume on Gill on the divine attributes coming out hopefully next year

I'm working on a section on the blessings of grace this is a section in Gill's Body of Divinity where he talks about the nature of redemption in Christ he talks about words like propitiation, atonement, reconciliation, pardon from sin, justification, adoption, regeneration, effectual calling, sanctification, perseverance of the saints so I've got that volume that I'm working on as well and there are like I said about 20 volumes projected over the next several years a big part of that is we're going to put out an abridged edition of his

Body of Doctrinal and Practical Divinity where we've taken some of the some just really influential and meaningful selections we've kind of brought it into modern

English and we're abridging it to where it's a good volume for church members and church leaders to use the full volume will come out as well but first we're going to give out an abridged volume to hopefully get people's interest get their get their feet wet in reading

Gill and help them to understand the value of something like the John Gill project so that's really kind of where we are we do believe that there's so much to appreciate from Gill there are what important areas where you need to read critically but there's so much more richness to be gained than there are dangers to be avoided in Gill and so we want to make him more accessible and readable for this for this generation so like I said there's some coming out by the end of the year and then over the course of the next several years they're going to be produced by H &E

Publishing so that that's kind of the the heart of the project and there's there's more that can be said but I may stop there and see if you have any questions about it well we have a couple of listener questions already we have

Arnie in Perry County Pennsylvania and Arnie says

I have heard Chris Arn's an interview on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio men who strongly and adamantly defend

John Gill as not being a hyper -Calvinist that would include Dr.

Tom Nettles who was formerly in the faculty at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and also more recently

Reverend Roger Salter the rector of St. Matthew's Anglican Church in Birmingham Alabama who conducted an interview with Chris on the theme

John Gill and Augustus Toplady two compatible Calvinists both of these men

Salter and Nettles love Gill and defend him as I said as being a historically orthodox

Calvinist but there are those that Chris has interviewed on his show that have stated that they believe

Gill was a hyper -Calvinist what is your opinion on this and the majority of the opinions of those on the staff at the

Lyceum and the John Gill project that's that is such a wonderful question so thank you for sending that in so it is true that the question of hyper -Calvinism and John Gill is very debated and contested in Baptist scholarship so I think the best presentation of Gill not being a hyper -Calvinist is from Dr.

Tom Nettles and he's got a book called by his grace and for his glory amen I've been giving that book out to Armenians who say that they love every hero chronicled in that book and yet they remain anti -Calvinists and I use that book to have them discover how thoroughly

Calvinistic many of these men that they claim as their heroes were certainly certainly and Dr.

Nettles does such a wonderful job in that book it's a wonderful accomplishment of scholarship that's done in a way that is edifying to the church and so I recommend that book to people all the time he has he does hold the position that Gill is not a hyper -Calvinist and so at you know there are different lines of argumentation for this so you can examine someone's stated theology and make a determination or you could examine someone's practice and make a determination so for instance

Gill does not affirm that preachers should offer the gospel he expressly denies that the language of offer is appropriate so you know from based on what he says in this question we would say he is a high

Calvinist because he denies the free offer of the gospel on the other hand if you read his sermons it sure does sound like an evangelical kind of evangelistic message and the way he concludes some of his sermons it sure does sound like he's not using the word offer but he can use some of the concepts like inviting and urging sinners to respond to the gospel and so sometimes you can look at someone's practice and it's not always doesn't always match up with their stated theology and there there is uh

I don't know how much you know about the protestant reform denomination I have had members of that denomination on this program and they believe that there is a distinction between a denial of the well -meant offer of the gospel and the indiscriminate evangelizing of the gospel which they would both of those things would identify the protestant reformed church they do deny the well -meant offer but they do believe that indiscriminate evangelism that we are supposed to declare the gospel to every living creature so how would you see those things would you see them as synonymous or do you see a distinction right

I think I think that's really kind of gets at the essence of the modern question or the question about high calvinism so so I think the questions are related and the issues are related and so I think that's kind of the tension that gill found himself in is the gospel is um the good news of christ uh of what god has done in christ to um redeem all of his elect and so one of the the ways that god does that is through the means of preaching and proclamation and so gill was a wonderful preacher and had a huge impact in his own time and so he there are sinners being converted under his ministry and so uh there is an important um you know question to ask you know does the doctrine of election inhibit our evangelistic responsibility

I think gill would say no it doesn't inhibit our evangelistic responsibility however some of the ways that he works out his theology can sure seem to lead to that conclusion so for instance

I mentioned the the doctrine of eternal justification if you were to take that conviction to its logical conclusion only those who are justified eternally in the mind of god are ever to be saved and they certainly will be saved

I mean in fact the the concept of justification and adoption are already established in the mind of god and so if that's the case then there really is no need for evangelization if if justification is already established in the mind of god concerning that person so you've got certain theology theological positions that lead to a certain logical conclusion but when you get into the examination of gill's ministry he doesn't really preach that way it's not that he's just completely contradictory to himself but there are times where um he he does contradict himself and in fact one of Andrew Fuller's kind of lines of argument in the gospel worthy of all acceptation in 1785 he's got another edition that came out a second edition he quotes john gill against john gill and says over here gill says this but over here he says this other thing and so he basically shows that that gill is is inconsistent on this and you know

I think that there's it's one of those kind of delightful inconsistencies where you know if he were to be consistent with some of the principles that he expresses

I think it would be more problematic so so my position on this to answer Arnie's question

I do think that gill is a high calvinist on on some of these really important doctrines so it has to do with how you define high calvinism so high calvinism is the denial of duty faith and the denial of the free offer of the gospel and it's also kind of buttressed by some other theological convictions like eternal justification

I believe that gill does tick all those boxes and so would qualify as a high calvinist however

I think the reason it's so debated is because there are certain parts of gill's writings where he seems to deny things that he affirms elsewhere and there are certain aspects of gill's practice where he doesn't necessarily practice in perfect conformity to what he's explained in his in his systematic theology and I think that's why it's so contentious and that's why

I think that gill should not be written off if you brand him as a high calvinist and then you know you just put him away because you know we don't want to get our theology from that kind of source it's a huge mistake it's way more complex than that and so Dr.

Nettles I think is the best expression of the negative he's not a high calvinist another scholar

David Rathel has a wonderful article on gill and the question of hyper calvinism where Dr.

Rathel I think pretty pretty well shows that the evidence for affirming that gill is a hyper calvinist and so so those would be two places to go

Nettles chapter in by his grace and for his glory and then if you just search for David Rathel he's got an essay that's in the southern baptist journal of theology

I think it's free and open access online you can find David Rathel's essay it's his last name is r -a -t -h -e -l and so I think

I do side more with Rathel on this but I certainly recognize the merits of Dr.

Nettles argument I think my position is the same as Dr. Higgins and I think

Timothy George holds a view quite similar to Dr. Nettles so you can imagine just how complicated the the literature on gill becomes and even the the disagreement over whether high calvinism is equivalent to hyper oh okay yeah so when

I'm using them in this way yeah I'm using the terms mostly synonymously hyper calvinism is certainly a more common term in this discussion than high calvinism but I obviously don't mean hyper calvinism is in such negative way so I would say

Gill is a high calvinist but I would be hesitant to call him a hyper calvinist because of the negative connotation okay and we have to go to our final break right now it's shorter than the last break if you have any intention to join us on the air with a question of your own

I strongly urge you to send in a question immediately because we are rapidly running out of time our email address again is chrisarnson at gmail .com

give us your first name at least your city and state and your country of residence don't go away we'll be right back after these messages

James White of Alpha Omega Ministries here excited to announce that my longtime friend Chris Arnson of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and I are heading to Washington DC for the

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or call them at 908 -996 -7654 that's 908 -996 -7654 tell pastor dunn that you heard about grace covenant baptist church on iron sharpens iron radio hi this is john sampson pastor of king's church in peoria arizona taking a moment of your day to talk about chris arnson and the iron sharpens iron podcast i consider chris a true friend and a man of high integrity he's a skilled interviewer who's not afraid to ask the big penetrating questions while always defending the key doctrines of the christian faith i've always been happy to point people to this podcast knowing it's one of the very few safe places on the internet where folk won't be led astray i believe this podcast needs to be heard far and wide this is a day of great spiritual compromise and yet god has raised chris up for just such a time and knowing this it's up to us as members of the body of christ to stand with such a ministry in prayer and in finances i'm pleased to do so and would like to ask you to prayerfully consider joining me in supporting iron sharpens iron financially would you consider sending either a one -time gift or even becoming a regular monthly partner with this ministry i know it would be a huge encouragement to chris if you would all the details can be found at iron sharpens iron radio .com

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hello my name is anthony venio and i'm one of the pastors at hope reform baptist church in new york and also the host of the reformrookie .com

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royal diadem .com mention iron sharpens iron radio for the first month of advertising all of the profits go to iron sharpens iron radio all righty now we are back with our guest garrett walden and when you when you were saying that uh andrew fuller was writing about john gill against john gill using excerpts of gill's teachings to refute other excerpts of gill's teachings it immediately reminded me of martin luther because it is baffling to me how a man could believe in sola gratia and sola fide and still believe in baptismal regeneration makes no sense but doesn't mean we're going to throw out martin luther as a great hero either certainly certainly and when you think about how much martin luther wrote and you think about the expanse of time that luther wrote he's going to be developing in his theology along the way and so early luther is different in some ways than later luther the same thing happens with john gill he wrote so much material over a really broad span of time over 50 years and so he's developing himself as he learns and grows and he's changing and he's we'd like to think that it's not just he forgot but he's developing and deepening his theological perspectives on various issues as they come up you know a similar thing happens with saint augustine in the early church he he writes uh so much material and toward the end of his life he publishes a separate book called retractions where he essentially goes back through some of his prior publications and says these are the things that i i thought i was i thought i made sense when i wrote it but i've since i've since changed my mind and you just wonder you know if gill had the opportunity to go back through all of his writings and compare kind of his earlier writings with his later writings would he have caught some of those areas of inconsistency that fuller caught and that's one of the one of the challenges of being dr voluminous is voluminous you you're just bound to you're bound to kind of cross hairs at various places and i do consider it kind of a delightful inconsistency in some way because i do think his his practice and his heart was far more evangelical than some of his followers uh kind of turned the steering wheel in a certain direction and i think when you read gill especially his sermons and his um his statements in his body of divinity he really is just a top tier baptist scholar and and theologian and pastor and so he he's so valuable amen and we have grady from ashborough north carolina who says greetings brothers we know spurgeon went pretty much straight into preaching after his conversion how about john gill did he have any formal training and if not was this typical for most baptist preachers of that era that's a wonderful question i kind of glossed over that when i was explaining a little bit about who john gill was john gill was uh he was born to baptist parents and was uh was uh raised in a baptist church and was converted as a teenager and it was a little bit later on that he becomes a pastor he becomes a pastor around 1720 so he would have been uh 23 and he was in his early 20s when he begins to be the pastor of of codyard chapel uh there at horseley down and so he's um just a wonderful example of someone who starts young in ministry and is truly faithful uh all the days of his of his life to his ministry into um the work that the lord called him to in terms of his training it was really fascinating when he becomes 12 years old he is kind of this child prodigy of intellectual achievement i knew he had something else in common he is uh he is this amazing intellect and people were recognizing his ability uh he was really proficient in in greek and latin and hebrew um and was just a really wonderful student and so his family was uh was basically given kind of an ultimatum if gill was to if john gill is to continue his education uh there were sponsorships available from um the only two universities in the uk at the time that were really doing this sort of thing were oxford and cambridge but to be admitted you had to be part of the church of england right and even even in spurgeon's day that's why he was not seminary educated correct correct and so john gill's parents had this you know we could we could uh submit to the the rights of baptism and membership into the anglican communion in their parish or or not and they chose to stay true to their baptist convictions and so john gill received an education up until the age of 12 and then the rest of the time he is what's called an autodidact he's a self -teacher so he teaches himself uh through reading a lot of literature and um just through serious hard work and so it's one of the just the amazing uh just testimonies to his character and to his work ethic is that he becomes so influential largely driven by his own his own work ethic now during his day there were um some baptist academies for instance uh the baptist academy at bristol um that that comes along after after gill's pastor begins and so there weren't a ton of opportunities with gill but for some of his successors for the rest of the 18th century there were some other uh baptist academies that would be kind of like our equivalent of seminary or bible college and we are and we're out of time brother i'm sorry uh also it gives me further reason why we have to have you come back on the show uh but uh for those of you who are listening don't forget about grace heritage church in auburn alabama the website is graceheritage .org

graceheritage .org and don't forget about the john gill project go to thelondonlyceum .com