Remembering Donald B. Fullerton
John M. Frame
I became a Christian around the age
of 13, through the youth and music ministries of the Beverly Heights Church of
Mt. Lebanon, Pa., a suburb of Pittsburgh. Beverly Heights was a strongly evangelical
church, part of a small Presbyterian denomination called the United
Presbyterian Church of North America. In 1958, the UPCNA merged with the larger
liberal denomination, the PCUSA.
Almost immediately after
conversion, I developed a strong interest in the Bible and theology. But in my
senior year of high school, I veered toward what I would later regard as a
liberal theological position. Problems in the Bible troubled me, and I thought
they could be avoided if we regarded the Bible as a package of flexible symbols
rather than of revealed historical narratives and theological truths. Beverly Heights did not warn me of any danger in
this development. Still, I always had a strong sense of the importance of the
Lordship of Christ, and I trusted him as Lord and Savior.
In 1957, after my high school
graduation, I visited national parks with some classmates, and we went to
church only about twice that summer. I missed worship and the word, but I never
challenged, or even took very seriously, the unbelief of my friends.
In the fall of 1957, I arrived as a
freshman on the Princeton campus. I think some
Princeton Evangelical Fellowship students visited my dorm; visiting freshman
dorms in the fall was a regular PEF practice. But many other groups visited
freshman as well, and my usual policy was to brush them off politely.
But I did want to get back to
church and to study the Bible. I visited a number of churches and campus
groups, but I could never find one that had the vitality, the passionate
commitment to Christ, that I saw at Beverly
Heights. Eventually I
would see that this lack of commitment was the fruit of liberal theology, the
same liberal theology that I had toyed with. From time to time I would see
announcements of Bible studies and special conferences of the PEF, but it was
maybe November or so before I attended my first meeting.
PEF was a Bible teaching ministry,
led by Donald B. Fullerton, who graduated from Princeton
in the class of 1913. He had some Episcopal background (always revered the work
of Bishops J. C. Ryle and Handley Moule), and he spent some time worshiping
with the Plymouth Brethren. He went on the mission field for a few years,
particularly the part of India
now known as Pakistan, along
the Afghanistan
border, now notorious as the assumed hideaway of Osama Bin Laden. Fullerton’s health,
however, deteriorated, and he returned home. He taught Bible at J. Oliver
Buswell’s National Bible Institute (later Shelton
College) in New York for a time. But a friend of his
called to say that his son was having a hard time spiritually at Princeton. He asked Fullerton
to go and talk to him. Fullerton
did, and he began to teach the Bible there. Eventually these classes became
known as PEF. Fullerton
never married, and he evidently had independent financial means. So eventually
he moved to Princeton and gave the rest of his
life to the PEF campus ministry.
At the time (early 1930s), there
was no other evangelical Christian group on the campus. A few years later,
Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship would begin to establish chapters on
American campuses. IVCF had a different approach to campus ministry from PEF:
not formal Bible teaching, nor a single leader per campus, but rather
student-led inductive studies and guest speakers. But Fullerton
said that C. Stacey Woods, the first president of IVCF in the USA, agreed that he would not start an IVCF
chapter at Princeton as long as PEF was there.
By nature, I probably would have
preferred an IVCF type of ministry. I preferred more interactive Bible study,
rather than just being lectured to. But I became aware of PEF before I learned
of any alternative, and when I did learn of an alternative (see below), by that
time I was sold on PEF. The Lord knew best, as always: PEF was exactly what I
needed. Contrary to my inflated opinion of myself, I needed solid teaching. Fullerton supplied that
need. Besides, the peer pressure within PEF encouraged the students to go
deeper and deeper into Scripture, prayer, and evangelism. To discuss
theological issues with PEF’ers, you had to know your Bible! Else, you would
not be taken seriously. So PEF took me far deeper into Scripture than I had
ever gone before, and, I think, much deeper than any IVCF group could have
brought me. I memorized a large number of Bible passages during my years at Princeton, and when I am teaching and writing theology
even today, those are the passages that spring most readily to mind.
When I arrived in 1957, PEF had two
Bible studies a week in Murray-Dodge Hall on campus. One was on Sunday
afternoon, the other on either Wednesday or Thursday night, depending on
everybody’s schedules. Dr. Fullerton taught both classes. He was around 65,
thin, but somehow imposing, with snow-white hair. He usually spoke very softly,
but he could rise to a roar when making a major point. He had a puckish,
sometimes sarcastic, sense of humor. I remember him being doubled up in
laughter when describing pranks played by various undergrads. But when he spoke
about God and the Bible he was deadly serious. He commented unfavorably about
one talk we heard by Ralph Keiper, Barnhouse’s assistant (on John 17 of all
passages), who told too many jokes for Fullerton’s
comfort. (I, however, thought that Keiper’s humor actually enhanced the quality
of his teaching.)
Fullerton almost never missed a Bible class,
though he had a number of ailments. He also attended, with the students, a
daily afternoon prayer meeting held in a student dorm room. At those meetings,
the group read Scripture, discussed the passage briefly, then knelt and prayed
for one another, for students they were seeking to evangelize, and for alumni,
especially those laboring in mission fields. A number of PEF men visited a
nearby institution, what we used to call “reform school,” for wayward boys, to
teach Sunday School. I was a substitute teacher there on a couple occasions.
Those boys were another topic of prayer, and God answered, bringing some
conversions through this ministry.
Dr. Fullerton was constantly about
his Father’s business. When he met a new student, it usually did not take more
than thirty seconds for him to get on the subject of Jesus and the gospel. Then Fullerton would
talk with the student as long as possible and necessary, to discern his
spiritual condition, to present the gospel, to answer questions, to urge a
decision. When we students sought to lead others to Christ, our main strategy
was usually to maneuver them into a situation where they could have a good talk
with Dr. Fullerton. Not every student who talked with him was converted, but many
were. It seemed to us that, humanly speaking, if anyone could get the gospel
through to a Princeton student, it was Dr.
Fullerton.
I can’t recall my own first
conversation with him. Most likely, I told him that I was already saved and
trying to serve the Lord on the campus. He probably accepted that
self-representation, but no doubt he looked at me as very immature spiritually.
He made judgments of that sort often, and he was usually right, though
occasionally too quick and too condemnatory. He often spoke of students past
and present who suffered spiritual shipwreck because of this weakness and that.
One didn’t pray enough. Another didn’t attend Bible studies regularly. Another
got into a worldly group of friends. Still another started his decline by
questioning the Scriptures, and often that questioning began when the student
took a religion course. Another student thought he knew a lot, though in fact
he knew very little. Often those that suffered shipwreck were Presbyterians of
one sort or another.
The net conclusion of this emphasis,
and the consensus among PEF members, was that a student could not hope to
maintain his spiritual bearings at Princeton without regular attendance at PEF Bible studies and prayer meetings and
devotion to campus evangelism. Most of the PEF students, as I myself, also
accepted Dr. F’s offer of a personal weekly Bible study at Dr. F’s house on Alexander Street. (During
my time at Princeton, he moved from an
apartment on University Place,
across from the U-Store, to a house on Alexander Street.) I would arrive at his
house. He would offer me a banana, or coffee, or a cookie. We’d sit opposite
one another at his kitchen table. With me, he started at Genesis and worked
through it verse by verse. He was concerned to emphasize the literal truth of
the events described there. He had firm views on the controversies over
evolution and the age of the earth and could argue them both exegetically and
scientifically (according to the creation-science model). He wanted to ensure
that I held orthodox positions in these areas.
Fullerton strongly emphasized the inerrancy
of Scripture, the deity of Christ, the certainty of the Resurrection, and in
general the miraculous character of the Christian worldview. He hated
liberalism and neo-orthodoxy. He recommended Van Til’s writings on Barth. Like
Van Til, he considered Barth and his followers to be liberals who conceal their
liberalism under orthodox terminology. He admired J. Gresham Machen for his
stand against the liberal heresy in the Presbyterian Church. I found Fullerton’s critique of liberalism
absolutely cogent. Though I had flirted with liberalism in my senior year of
high school, I never went back to it, thanks largely to Fullerton’s powerful argument. He simply
showed us what Christ himself said about the Scriptures and the testimonies of
other prophets and apostles, in other words, the Bible’s witness to itself.
He also showed us—and I had never
heard this before—that the Bible contains a very strong polemic against false
teachers. Christians are to shun these: “from such turn away” (2 Tim. 3:5).
Fullerton’s theology was also
dispensationalist. At first, this teaching appealed to me somewhat. I had
listened often on the radio to Donald Grey Barnhouse, who held basically the
same position. Like Barnhouse (DGB), Fullerton (DBF) knew dispensational
theology thoroughly and had a great gift for expounding it and illustrating it.
But when I returned home, my most theologically knowledgeable friends, having
imbibed the teaching of John Gerstner, told me that dispensationalism was a
heresy. I never actually bought the dispensational system, but I could never
bring myself to believe either that it was as serious an error as the Gerstner
disciples made it out to be.
On the issues of Calvinism and
Arminianism, Fullerton
straddled the fence. He loved the old Scottish covenanters. For a time during
his youth, he studied the theology of Abraham Kuyper with someone. His mother,
however, whom he greatly revered, told him that the Kuyper lessons had dampened
his missionary zeal. He recognized that was true, so he left Kuyper behind. Fullerton admired a
number of American Presbyterians, like Warfield, Machen and Van Til. He had
friends in the movement that had left Princeton Seminary to found Westminster, especially in the premillennial group that later
left Westminster
to found Faith. But I think he came to believe that Presbyterian theology, even
at its most orthodox, was vulnerable to liberalism. Presbyterians (except for
the Faith Seminary group) were a- or post-millennialists, and Fullerton saw those views as “spiritualizing” the Bible rather than taking it literally. Spiritualizing the Bible, in his
mind, was the first step toward abandoning biblical authority altogether.
A couple years before I arrived at Princeton, there was a division in PEF when someone began
a “Baptist Student Fellowship” on campus. When I arrived, the Baptist group was
not actually Baptist. It consisted of students who were mostly from the PCUSA,
who wanted to have an Inter-Varsity type group led by Princeton Seminary
students. I attended a few meetings of the group and had some casual friends
among them. As I mentioned earlier, their approach to Bible study had some
appeal to me in my first days at Princeton. But by that time I was aware of the Baptist
group I had determined that I could get better teaching and nurture through
PEF.
The Baptist group took a number of
students who otherwise would have been in PEF, so that when I arrived, PEF was
very small: Sutherland MacLean and Jim Nesbitt were seniors, Mike Rusten and
Garry Ellis juniors, Jim Renick, Bob
Shade, George Hutchinson, and Ron Fisher sophomores. Jerry Butler, Steve
Johnson, and Bruce Higgins attended irregularly. Don Youngren and I were the
only freshmen at first, though eventually others came on board, including Dave
Burnham, Len Riches, Ray Chiao. The older students were big brother figures to
me. I greatly admired their character and witness. Because of the Baptist
competition, PEF was small quantitatively, but the character of the guys was
qualitatively impressive to this freshman.
Still the Baptist group was a thorn
in Dr. Fullerton’s side, and it doubtless made him even more suspicious of
people from Presbyterian churches, even conservative ones, and people who
leaned toward Reformed theology. He was a separatist: people in liberal
denominations, in his view, should leave them immediately (“from such turn
away”). Christians studying at Princeton Seminary (or other Presbyterian
seminaries) should leave immediately. Fullerton told one Princeton Seminarian that he wanted to see nothing more of him but “a
cloud of dust,” as the student left the Seminary at full speed. Anyone who
belonged to the PCUSA (even dispensational conservatives like Barnhouse and
Keiper) were deeply suspect.
And, in Fullerton’s judgment, people
in conservative Presbyterian denominations like the Orthodox Presbyterian and
Bible Presbyterian churches could not hope to achieve the spiritual depth of
those in Baptist, Plymouth Brethren, or Independent Fundamental (we always
called ourselves fundamental, never fundamentalist) churches. He thought that
Calvinists in general were like he was when he was studying Kuyper:
unevangelistic, without passion for the Lord. The Orthodox Presbyterians, he
said once, were “straight as an icicle, and just as cold.”
When Fullerton addressed questions of the
sovereignty of God and the free will of man, he typically told us to accept
these as simply paradoxical. He was fond of illustrations of two parallel lines
that never meet where we can see them, but which meet above the clouds, in
Heaven. (Interestingly, Van Til used the same illustration, but for him the two
lines were not divine sovereignty and human free will, but divine sovereignty
and human responsibility. “Free will” in the Arminian sense received nothing
but anathema from Van Til.) Fullerton also used the illustration of a sinner reading a sign that says “Whosoever
will, let him come” and following its direction. After coming to Jesus, he
looks back at the other side of the sign, which reads, “Chosen in Christ,
before the foundation of the world.” So Fullerton
may not have been a Calvinist, but he certainly was not Arminian either. He
believed that he had discovered a biblical balance that transcended those
historic positions. So he had no particular allegiance to any historic
tradition, though he was strongly opposed to the Roman Catholic and liberal
Protestant movements. Although dispensationalism itself was a tradition going
back to the early 19th century, Fullerton considered himself simply a student
of the Bible, and he had a very low view of people who stressed Reformed,
Lutheran, Anglican, or some other theological or ecclesiastical tradition.
He did have a strong (I am tempted
to say Calvinistic) emphasis on the Lordship of Christ, and that had a profound
impact on this student who later authored The
Theology of Lordship. Though some dispensational fundamentalists argued
that you can trust Christ as savior without trusting him as Lord, Fullerton would have none
of it. He insisted that if Jesus is not Lord he cannot be savior, and he often
quoted Rom. 10:9-10—the confession of Jesus as Lord--- as the mark of the
Christian.
He held the usual dispensational
view of the OT law, that as law it no longer binds the NT believer. He was not
Sabbatarian, but he thought it important to attend church and Bible studies on
Sunday. But Fullerton
had no prejudice against law as such. Commands given by Christ and the apostles
are to be obeyed, Fullerton
taught, and such obedience is the basic substance of the Christian life.
Some speakers at PEF conferences
advocated the “Victorious Life” emphasis of the Keswick movement. PEF had its
annual fall retreat at the America’s
Keswick conference ground. In this teaching the believer should cultivate
passivity: let go and let God, quit striving for holiness. Pastor Howard
Burtner gave especially memorable expositions of this view at one PEF
conference at Keswick. Fullerton never criticized this approach explicitly, and I think he admired Burtner and
others who seemed to have achieved that “Victorious Life.” But I never felt
that Fullerton
heartily embraced for himself this approach to sanctification. He had a view of
spiritual warfare that was actually more typical of Reformed teaching: say no
to sin and fight temptation by the grace of God and the power of the Holy
Spirit. For Fullerton
and for PEF, this entailed separation from worldly practices like smoking and
drinking. But these prohibitions were not at all central to the PEF ethic. The
center, rather, was the Lordship of Jesus. On sanctification, then, Fullerton was not
entirely consistent. But the net impact of his teaching, on me at least, was
Reformed.
Fullerton and the PEF’ers were somewhat
suspicious of me. In several ways I didn’t fit into the group very well. I
belonged to a Presbyterian church, was more Calvinistic than dispensational in
my theology. I majored in philosophy and took religion courses, strictly
against PEF policy. When I was around Fullerton,
I felt various barbs—stories about spiritual disasters among people who favored
Presbyterianism, had ties to the PCUSA, took religion courses, and majored in
philosophy.
But I attended most every PEF
meeting and drank in the teaching with enthusiasm, as much of it as I agreed
with, and I agreed with far more than I disagreed with. I loved the prayer
meetings and tried on a number of occasions to bring non-Christians to the
Bible studies (succeeding once or twice, as I recall). Like the other PEF’ers,
I attended Westerly Road,
an independent fundamental church (with, to be sure, a pastor and some other
leaders who were former Presbyterians).
PEF Bible studies began with the
singing of a hymn or two, accompanied on the piano by Dr. F. When he found that
I played the piano, he asked me to do it, and I became the regular pianist, and
later the organist for Westerly
Road Church.
So to some extent I became accepted in the group. I was even elected Treasurer
for my last two years.
PEF’ers called to seminary study
were generally expected to go to Dallas or Grace Seminaries. Fullerton preferred Grace, which had
conferred his honorary doctorate. He had a very high regard for Alva McLain,
President of Grace, and for his theological work, The Greatness of the Kingdom. That book, he said, was the most balanced formulation of biblical
theology that he knew. He thought Dallas had become somewhat too intellectualist and proud, but he accepted it as an adequate
alternative. Both Dallas and Grace professors spoke at PEF conferences, such as
John Whitcomb from Grace (a former PEF’er), S. Lewis Johnson and Charles C.
Ryrie from Dallas.
John Rea was another PEF alumnus who taught at Grace for some years, though
later he “defected” to the charismatic movement. At an earlier time, I gather, Fullerton had encouraged some students to go to Faith
Seminary, but during my Princeton years he did
not. I think he didn’t appreciate the authoritarianism and political theology
of Carl McIntire, who dominated the teaching at Faith for many years.
Well, I came in time to believe
that God was calling me to Westminster Seminary. Fullerton,
as mentioned, admired Westminster
professors Machen and Van Til. And E. J. Young, father of PEF student Davis
Young, spoke at PEF to a packed house on the subject of biblical authority. So
it was through PEF that I learned of Westminster.
Westminster offered me Presbyterian theology in its orthodox form, a challenge to my
philosophical interests (Van Til), and excellence in scholarship—something not
too common among evangelical seminaries in those days. But Fullerton
thought Westminster
was, on the whole, too philosophical, too intellectualist, too caught up in
Reformed tradition instead of Scripture, and simply wrong in its covenant
theology and eschatology. Nevertheless, in the fall of 1961, after my
graduation, I went to the PEF fall conference, and then Fullerton
and Ed Morgan, pastor of Westerly Road Church,
drove me down to Westminster
for my first classes there. Despite their reservations about Westminster, these men were encouraging and
gracious to me.
I don’t believe I ever visited a
PEF meeting again. I was never invited to speak there, even after I became a
teacher of theology. I did contribute money at the beginning, but discontinued
that after a few years, because I came to disagree with some PEF spending policies
and because I developed different ministry interests. I was always happy,
however, to receive news and prayer requests from PEF.
I owe much to PEF. When I went to Westminster, I confess I
was somewhat apprehensive. Dr. Fullerton and other PEFers had warned me that
Reformed theology would destroy my zeal for evangelism, and they told me that
Reformed theology was preoccupied with its own tradition rather than Scripture.
I was sensitive to those issues as I entered Westminster. If Westminster’s teaching had been focused on
confessions or tradition or history of doctrine, I could well have rejected
Reformed theology. But John Murray and others derived the Reformed doctrines
directly from biblical exegesis and made a powerful and persuasive case. In my
own teaching, I have sought to do the same. I am immensely grateful to Dr.
Fullerton and the PEF for making me a biblicist in this sense.
[1]
My Reformed friends often disparage
and ridicule the “broad evangelical,” “fundamentalist,” and “dispensationalist”
traditions. It is typical for these friends to say something like this: “When I
was in a fundamentalist church, they taught the Bible superficially, assumed
Arminianism, disparaged the Lordship of Christ, saw the Christian life as a
series of legalistic prohibitions on trivial issues. But when I heard Reformed
teaching, it was the first time for me that the Bible made sense. It was the
first time that the Lordship of Christ and the Sovereignty of God made a real
impression on me.” I heard testimonies like this over and over again among Westminster students and
others in the Reformed movement. Such people often concluded by saying that
Reformed people should radically reject anything connected with American evangelicalism
and live by the Reformed traditions alone.
Because of PEF, my evaluation of “broad evangelicalism” was very different. I did not think Fullerton’s teaching was superficial at all.
There was a great depth to it, underscored by the powerful, godly example of
his life. His teaching on the sovereignty of God and the Lordship of Christ
were powerful and deeply biblical. He showed a passion for holiness that I
rarely saw in Reformed circles, including a passion for prayer and evangelism.
Reformed people talked about evangelism and missions, but frankly they did not
do it nearly to the extent I had seen in the PEF. Fullerton and PEF cared deeply about people,
spending hours in mutual prayer, exhortation, counseling, gospel witness. I
never experienced that depth of fellowship in any Reformed church or
institution. In fact, the Reformed consensus often seemed to be that such
mutual commitment, such perseverance in prayer, such passion for the Lord,
should be deprecated as “Pietism.” (Reformed people have a knack for condemning
others with the use of historical labels.) I thought Westminster had the doctrines right, and they
formulated those doctrines with more rigor than PEF. But the difference in
rigor was no more than would be expected: seminaries, after all, are supposed
to be more intellectually rigorous than campus ministries.
So I am not much impressed by
people who want to set up an adversary relation between “Reformed” and
“evangelical.” Today, Reformed writers often disparage evangelical ministries as
circuses, as clubs that will do anything at all to gain members, who pander to
the basest lusts of modern culture. That was not true of PEF, or of Westerly
Road Church. And in my later experience I saw additional reasons for denying
this generalization. In many small evangelical churches, and even in the
much-disparaged mega-churches (e.g. Chelten Baptist of Philadelphia, Emmanuel
Faith Community Church of Escondido, CA, Northland: a Church Distributed, in Longwood, FL)
I have seen a great love for God and his word and great power of the Spirit. Evangelicalism
has many different forms; Reformed churches also have many different forms. I
prefer some types of Reformed churches to some types of Evangelical ones. And I
also prefer some types of Evangelical churches to some types of Reformed ones.
PEF would never have imagined the effect their ministry had on me: they turned
me into a Reformed ecumenist!
And they made me a much better
follower of Jesus. I will never regret being part of this semi-Arminian,
dispensationalist, separatist, tee-totaling, semi-victorious life, pietistic, biblicistic
group called PEF. And the greatest part of that experience was the godly
example of Donald B. Fullerton. He was not a perfect man, but I am yet today an
imitator of his, since he imitated Jesus.