Baptist historian
by Doug Kutilek
Though almost none of us includes them in our list of “favorite Baptists,” the Baptist historians collectively and individually have us greatly in their debt. This small army of dedicated men has done great service over the centuries in collecting, conserving, and recording our history. Without their labor — and make no mistake, history writing and the necessary prior research and study do require much labor — we would be irrecoverably ignorant of our past, our predecessors, our controversies, our achievements, our failures, and our foibles. Some notables among Baptist historians of former days are Thomas Crosby, Joseph Ivimey, David Benedict, Thomas Armitage, Henry C. Vedder, John T. Christian, and Albert Henry Newman. It is to the last of these that I wish to draw your attention.
I first became acquainted with the writings of A. H. Newman (1852-1933) over 40 years ago during my student days at Baptist Bible College, when his two-volume Manual of Church History was a required textbook. I read through both volumes then and found them worthwhile and informative reading, though I am sure I did not, at that neophyte stage in my education, appreciate them as much as I should have. I have since referred to them often, always with profit, even greatly so.
A knowledge of a writer’s background, education, academic qualifications, and personal character are valuable in evaluating the merit of his literary productions. So we ask: who was A. H. Newman? A native of South Carolina and converted there to faith in Christ at age 14, he was tutored in Latin and Greek by his pastor, then went to Mercer College, where he was granted advanced standing as a junior (though only 17 years old), and graduated at the head of his class of 15 in 1871. There he added the knowledge of German to his linguistic apparatus. He taught school for a year then went north to Rochester Theological Seminary in New York, where A. H. Strong was president and professor of theology. There Newman studied under Horatio B. Hackett, perhaps the leading New Testament scholar among Baptists of the North in those days. For a time he focused on theology and New Testament exegesis, but switched to Old Testmanet and Hebrew. In these latter studies, he was instructed in part by Bernard Pick, an expert in rabbinic literature.
He next invested a year at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Greenville, SC, studying Greek with John Broadus and Semitic languages with Crawford Toy, before heading back to Rochester to teach church history, where he remained four years.
For 20 years (1881-1901), Newman was professor of church history at McMaster University in Toronto, Canada. It was during this period that he was most productive in writing. Here he wrote his two-volume Manual, his notable A History of the Baptist Churches in the United States (1894; 513 pp.), and his monumental, The History of Antipaedobaptism (1896; 414 pp.), which demonstrated that apostolic and early Christian baptism was solely of believers and by immersion, that baptismal regeneration and infant baptism were subsequent human inventions, and that there have been groups throughout church history opposing these innovations. It was also during this time that Newman was chosen to be editor of articles relating to church history in the 13-volume The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge (1907), edited by Samuel M. Jackson, a still valuable reference work. Though he continued to write articles for various publications after leaving Canada, he authored no more books.
Newman then taught successively at Baylor University (1901-1907), Southwestern Baptist Seminary (1907-1913), Baylor again (1913-1921), Mercer (1921-1927) and again McMaster (1927-1929). In all, he taught church history continuously for over 50 years, and gained a reputation as the preeminent church historian in North America.
While Newman’s lectures seem to have been characteristically drab (he rarely looked directly at the students as he taught, and had no perceptible sense of humor), his writings are characterized by thoroughness of research and precision and accuracy in statement. He was, in short, a most judicious, industrious, and careful scholar. His knowledge of languages and literature, both in and outside his field of expertise, was encyclopedic and detailed, as any student who asked him a question or sought information about a subject soon discovered.