Dr. Stan Fowler (1946-2025) may not be a household name among evangelicals, but he was a faithful voice of biblical wisdom in the Canadian evangelical church (and beyond) for decades. Those of us who were blessed to have him as a professor remember his irenic and learned lectures. Beyond his agreeable and steady demeanour, however, Fowler exhibited a boldness that was borne of his convictions. He is perhaps best known for embracing a sacramental view of baptism that was outside the comfort zone of many of his fellow North American evangelical Baptists. Yet his careful and even-handed style gained the trust of his students, readers, and even his opponents—or at least those who argued in good faith.
I was very pleased then to hear a couple of years ago that a book project was in the works to collect Dr. Fowler’s various shorter writings and make them available to new generations of readers in one place. That project turned into two reasonably-sized volumes, organized by topic and published by Heritage Seminary Press (an imprint of Hesed & Emet).
As the books cycle through different topics, one comes across a mix of chapters: academic journal articles debating the minutiae of Greek semantics, unpublished essays dealing with various theological topics, and popular treatments of similar issues applied to church life for magazines like The Evangelical Baptist (now Thrive) and Faith Today. This amphibious ability to write for scholars, leaders, and regular Christians alike gave his teaching a broad reach. Although Fowler wrote two books on baptism, More Than a Symbol (Paternoster, 2002) and Rethinking Baptism (Wipf and Stock, 2015), the bulk of his writing was in the form of articles and essays. These two volumes have made Fowler’s thought readily available for new generations.
The Collected Writings of Stanley K. Fowler (Volume 1): Soteriology, Moral Theology & Contemporary Issues
Stanley K. Fowler
The Collected Writings of Stanley K. Fowler (Volume 1): Soteriology, Moral Theology & Contemporary Issues
Stanley K. Fowler
Many of the pieces that are decades old have an uncanny relevance today. The lack of historical roots in evangelical churches? Check. The resulting wave of interest in more historical, liturgical, and sacramental forms of worship? Check. Baptists debating ecclesiology and membership? Check. Baptists converting to Anglicanism? Check. Evangelicals converting to Eastern Orthodoxy? Check. Debates about miraculous gifts and cessationism? Check. And all of it happened fully a generation ago in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s. Fowler was on the vanguard of formulating cogent answers to these challenges, answers which remain relevant and helpful to this day.
One such answer relates to whether baptism (and by extension, the Lord’s Supper) has any special spiritual efficacy (sacramentalism) or whether these ordinances are merely symbolic actions. The prevailing view in Fowler’s day among North American Baptists was decidedly anti-sacramental. Fowler pushed Baptists and evangelicals to reconsider their mere memorialist view of baptism in his irenic and thoughtful style. A more boisterous approach might have yielded more traction, but I think it would also have catalyzed a negative reaction. In a similar way, another Canadian pillar of evangelical and Baptist scholarship, Dr. Michael A. G. Haykin (who co-edited these books along with Dr. Jonathan N. Cleland), has made a book-length argument for recovering the historically sacramental view of the Lord’s Supper in Amidst Us Our Beloved Stands. Taken together, we have here a substantial movement for a recovery of measured sacramentalism from the heights of evangelical Baptist thought-leaders.
My own slow process of thinking through these issues intersects with both of these men’s work, but the decisive factor for my shift towards sacramentalism was a twofold realization. First, the materialist metaphysics of modernity seeped into much of the 20th-century theology that I absorbed in my formative years, including its default anti-sacramentalism. And second, that premodern views of the ordinances, not to mention almost everything else, were shot through with the supernatural.
Taking stock of my own metaphysical and theological assumptions led me to rethink a few things, including the nature of God’s presence in the ordinances. It was after this that I realized Fowler and Haykin had already paved the way for just such a recovery of what was standard in particular Baptist thought in the 17th century. Without these trusted voices modelling this kind of ressourcement, the draw to a more liturgical and historical denomination like Anglicanism would have been much greater. And since there are many young people in our churches rethinking these same questions, it is all the more important for Fowler’s and Haykin’s work to be more widely known.
This dynamic of evangelicals ruing their shortcomings and looking longingly over the denominational fence is nothing new, it turns out. Here I thought my generation was almost the first to be troubled by such things, and Dr. Fowler comes along to set me straight. In his 1987 essay evaluating the ‘Evangelical Orthodox Church,’ he lists what he perceives as the standard “defects in American evangelicalism,” including
a lack of appreciation for the church as an institution, leading to a proliferation of parachurch organizations with little or no accountability to ecclesiastical structures; a dehistoricized mentality that fails to value the Fathers of the church and leads to idiosyncratic doctrinal views that may even be elevated as tests of fellowship; a theology of the Word that divorces Word from sacrament and reduces the sacraments to inconsequential (mere) symbols; an impoverished experience of corporate worship that places virtually all emphasis on the sermon and relegates the congregation to the role of spectators and listeners; and an excessive emphasis on autonomy that fails to demonstrate in tangible ways the unity of the universal church. (Vol. 2, p. 160)
But rather than allowing these problems drive evangelicals to Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy, Fowler argues that “these matters can be (and in fact are being) addressed within the structures of Protestant evangelicalism” (Vol. 2, p. 160). That is my conviction as well. A clear-eyed analysis of all major denominations reveals significant problems in all camps, but the only ones with reformation and revival as part of their DNA are found within Protestantism, and this seems to offer the most promise for healthy change, not to mention the best basis for true catholicity.
Fowler, at times, demonstrates remarkable creativity in his argumentation. In a chapter engaging with annihilationism, Fowler engages the two strongest arguments for that view, which were popularized within evangelicalism largely through the influence of John Stott. After granting their relative merits, he offers a defence of the traditional view. In a creative attempt to reconcile the teaching that hell involves destruction as well as being eternal, Fowler made use of some mathematical equations to demonstrate that a value can be reduced eternally without ever being brought down to zero. But far from an unfeeling treatment of what is probably the most sobering reality in all of Christian theology, the article struck a balance between being charitable, pastoral, and biblical.
Those looking for a historically-informed and theologically rich treatment of these issues and more will find much to glean in these pages.
At times, Fowler’s sharp wit comes through the page in a flash of his wry humour, such as in the midst of his response to those who argue that all the language referring to the spiritual efficacy of baptism refers to the baptism of the Spirit. Fowler wrote, “But the other texts are not so easily explained away. In 1 Peter 3, it is, after all, the great Flood that is said to typologically point to baptism, and it is hard to see how the antitype could be dry” (Vol. 2, pp. 106-107). Dr. Fowler clearly liked his baptisms wet and his jokes dry.
I mentioned above that these decades-old essays and articles continue to feel very relevant, and it’s worth exploring why. Throughout these two volumes, I looked in vain for a single uncharitable word or cheap shot. Rather, Fowler excelled at representing the opposing view as strongly as possible. He wanted to argue against the best version of the argument, not a strawman caricature. More than that, he consistently broke through the froth of rhetoric to the biblical principles at play and to the key passages in question. This approach means that long after the big personalities involved in the debate have shuffled off the scene and the viral books are out of print, Dr. Fowler’s reasoned analysis and biblical arguments are still relevant because they deal with the core of the issue at stake. In contrast to much Christian writing in the internet age, which too often devolves into low-resolution memes and mocking, Fowler shows a better way.
I am not alone in feeling that Dr. Fowler’s debilitating stroke in July 2021 was a great injustice, robbing the church of his cherished voice just as he was entering a season of being an elder statesman. But Stan would be the first to remind us who are tempted to think this way that God is faithful and wise and good, worthy of our trust even when we cannot understand his ways. Despite academic excellence, Stan never lost his concern for personal spiritual application.
During his years of active teaching ministry, Dr. Fowler was a blessing to his students and the wider church; through these books, that blessing can now spread even further. I think especially of younger, thoughtful evangelical Baptists trying to navigate the claims of various denominations and looking for living historical roots. The next time I come across that young man or woman, I might find myself saying, “Have you read any Stan Fowler?”
