Jun
16
2010
Baptists and the Cross: An Interview with Michael Haykin
In August, the Andrew Fuller Center at Southern Seminary will hold a conference called “Baptists and the Cross: Contemporary and Historical Perspectives.” Featured speakers will include: Tom Schreiner, Stephen Wellum, David Bebbington, and Danny Akin.
Dr. Michael Haykin, director for the Andrew Fuller Center has agreed to stop by and answer a few questions about the theme and the conference.
Trevin Wax: Why did you choose the theme “Baptists and the Cross”?
Michael Haykin: The choice of theme this year for our annual conference has to primarily do with responding to the way that there has been major slippage among evangelicals on this topic in the past twenty years or so.
Up until then it was assumed that Evangelicals were committed to the biblical model of the cross as a divinely-appointed place of penal substitution. Evangelical scholars such as Leon Morris and preachers like Martyn Lloyd-Jones and John Stott had argued this forcefully throughout the middle half of the twentieth century and the view had been generally accepted by those calling themselves Evangelical.
But in the last generation, this view of the cross has come under attack. For some, penal substitution is only one model among others; for others, they go so far as to call it “cosmic child abuse” and want to dissociate the cross from any idea of God being violent.
Trevin Wax: Why is it important to have both contemporary and historical perspectives?
Michael Haykin: Well, the way our forebears thought on this subject and others cannot be simply written off as useless lumber from the past that we need to discard. There have been theological minds in the past, men like Athanasius, Anselm, John Owen, Andrew Fuller (I’m biased here!), C.H. Spurgeon, and B.B. Warfield, who were geniuses and we need to listen to their views and learn from their wisdom.
It is the height of arrogance to think that we moderns have nothing to learn from those who have gone before. Hence, we hope to have some papers at the conference that will deal with this issue from an historical vantage-point.
Trevin Wax: Why have you chosen these particular speakers?
Michael Haykin: Well, the conference begins with some solid biblical and theological moorings given to us by Drs. Tom Schreiner—who will speak on the cross in the so-called General Epistles—and Steve Wellum—who will address the way in which believer’s baptism is rooted in the cross. In other words, what are some of the biblical roots of Baptist perspectives on the cross, and how is a key Baptist distinctive rooted in crucicentrism? Both of these men are leading scholars in their respective fields.
Then, we shift to an historical perspective with Dr. David Bebbington’s “English Baptist crucicentrism from the 18th century onwards.” This is David’s area of expertise—he is one of the leading historians of Evangelicalism in the world today.
The final session on the first day of the conference is a preaching event where we will listen to Dr. Glendon Thompson deliver a sermon on “Preaching the cross.” Glendon, the Pastor of the historic Jarvis Street Baptist Church in Toronto, is a superb preacher.
On the second day of the conference, we will again have two sessions on history. Dr Maurice Dowling of Irish Baptist College will speak first on “Spurgeon and the cross.” Maurice has done a fair amount of work in Baptist life and thought in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and this should be an excellent overview of this biblical theme in the thought and sermons of that most remarkable preacher Spurgeon.
The third historical session, delivered by an expert in nineteenth-century American Baptist history, Dr. James Fuller, looks at the cross in Southern Baptist life in the nineteenth century. This topic was chosen due to the fact that the Andrew Fuller Center is located on the campus of a Southern Baptist school and many of our grads will serve in that context.
The conference will close with a session by Dr Danny Akin, the President of Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary that looks at pastoral ministry and cross-centerdness. Again, there is the desire to make the conference a rich learning experience in both academic reflection and practical ministry. And Danny is the perfect speaker to do the latter and provide a fitting conclusion to the conference.
Trevin Wax: What purpose do the parallel sessions have?
Michael Haykin: The parallel sessions, usually about twenty-five minutes in length, enable participants to get a glimpse of some of the details of the subject that we cannot cover in the plenary sessions. They are also an excellent way to help upcoming scholars to get their feet wet, so to speak, in the world of lecturing and conference delivery. This year the parallel sessions cover a wide range of subjects from historical figures like John Gill and Alexander Carson and their thoughts on the cross to Baptist thinking about the iconography of the cross.
Trevin Wax: This is the fourth annual conference of the Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies at Southern Seminary. Can you describe the work of the Andrew Fuller Center?
Michael Haykin: The Andrew Fuller Center for Baptist Studies is located at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. It seeks to promote the study of Baptist history as well as theological reflection on the contemporary significance of that history.
The center is named in honor of Andrew Fuller (1754-1815), the late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century English Baptist pastor and theologian, who played a key role in opposing aberrant thought in his day as well as being instrumental in the founding and early years of the Baptist Missionary Society. Fuller was a close friend and theological mentor of William Carey, one of the pioneers of that society.
The Andrew Fuller Center holds an annual two-day conference in August/September that examines various aspects of Baptist history and thought. It also holds a half-day conference in the spring. It supports the publication of the critical edition of the Works of Andrew Fuller, and from time to time, other works in Baptist history.
In time, it is hoped that the Center will be able to play a role in the mentoring of junior scholars interested in studying Baptist history. Twice each year, in the spring and the fall, the Andrew Fuller Center publishes Eusebeia, a journal that carries articles and books reviews related to Baptist history and thought.
Trevin Wax: What other conferences has the Center hosted?
Michael Haykin: Our first major conference was in 2007, when we looked at the theological influences on Andrew Fuller. The conference proceedings of that year were published in an issue of Eusebeia.
The next year was a conference on seventeenth-century English Baptist life and thought, the proceedings of which it is hoped will be published this summer by Borderstone Press. We are hopeful that this new publishing house will handle the publication of all of our future conference proceedings. Last year, the conference was on Baptist spirituality.
Trevin Wax: What are some ideas for future conferences?
Michael Haykin: In 2011, Lord willing, we intend to hold a conference on Baptists and war, a very important issue in our world today. 2012 will then look at Andrew Fuller again with a conference on Fuller and his friends, men like William Carey and Samuel Pearce.
To register for the Baptists and the Cross conference, click here.
by Timothy S. Lane & Paul David Tripp. (See my full review 