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Keswick’s Incoherent Surrender Doctrine: in Keswick’s Errors–an Analysis and Critique of So Great Salvation by Stephen Barabas, part 14 of 17
doctrine, adopted from the preaching of Hannah W. Smith at Broadlands,[1]
that “the divine Potter . . . cannot shape the human vessel unless it is
committed into His hands and remains unresistingly and quietly there”[2] is a
Higher Life error associated with its crisis, gift, and process model of
sanctification. It is also connected
with other serious errors about the means of holiness.[3] Such a view does not properly deal with the
fact that God works in the believer both to will and to do (Philippians 2:13). Biblically, sanctification is intimately connected
to God’s work upon the human will; but Keswick, following the ideas Hannah and
Robert P. Smith obtained from medieval Quietism, downgrades the power of God
for the sovereignty, libertarian freedom, and autonomy of the human will.[4] Following Broadlands, Keswick undermines the
power of God when it affirms that He “cannot” do a variety of things, including
sanctifying His creatures, without their sovereign, uninfluenced and autonomous
wills allowing Him to do so.[5] According to the Keswick theology of Hannah
W. Smith and the Broadlands Conference,[6]
sanctification, and all the other blessings promised by God in the gospel, are
totally inactive until they are switched on by the decision to enter the Higher
Life, somewhat as electricity from a power plant is totally inactive in
lighting up a room until one flips on the light switch. Keswick, adopting the Broadlands’ doctrine of
“full surrender,”[7]
affirms that the believer is in bondage to sin until he makes a “complete
personal consecration” to God, “also referred to as dedication and full
surrender,”[8] so
that he “commit[s] [himself] to Christ and . . . pledge[s] to be eternally
loyal to Him as Lord and Master . . . den[ies] self . . . [and] definitely and
for ever choos[es] the will of the Lord Jesus Christ as [his] Guide and
Director through life, in place of [his] own will.”[9] But how, if the believer is in bondage to sin
until he makes this decision, can such a surrender ever take place? Are not the Christian’s pledge of eternal
loyalty to Christ as Lord, his denial of self, and his choosing the Son of God
as Guide and Director of his life, actually a result of his freedom from the
bondage of sin and not a prerequisite to obtain it? Does a will in bondage to sin actually free
itself by its own power before God steps in to do anything? Or, rather, is it not God who first frees the
will before it is able to be consecrated to Him? Ironically, while Keswick theology criticizes
the idea that “sanctification is . . . to be gained through our own personal
efforts,”[10]
it requires incredible personal effort—indeed, personal effort that is utterly
impossible for a will in bondage to sin (as Keswick claims the believer’s will
is until he enters the Higher Life)—to make the surrender Keswick claims is the
prerequisite to God beginning any good work within the saint at all.
the Keswick doctrine of full surrender as a prerequisite to sanctification is
connected to the fact that Keswick’s argument against literal perfectionism is
untenable and contradictory given its own theological premises. Keswick affirms that one must absolutely
surrender before sanctification can truly begin; that through an act of total
surrender and of faith in Christ for deliverance, one enters into a state wherein
he is free from all known sin; and that a Christian’s ability to obey (by
grace) and his obligation are coextensive.
However, the majority of Keswick’s advocates deny literal sinless
perfection because, although “from the side of God’s grace and gift, all is
perfect, [yet] from the human side, because of the effects of the Fall, there
will be imperfect receptivity, and therefore imperfect holiness, to the end of
life.”[11] The exact nature of this “imperfect
receptivity” is not defined, but since the Keswick theology defines man’s role
in sanctification as surrender and faith, the imperfect receptivity must
signify either imperfect surrender or imperfect faith. If absolute surrender truly is required
before God’s grace even begins to effectively work in sanctifying the believer,
then a Keswick recognition that man’s Fall in Adam precludes his will from
making a truly absolute, prefect, sinless surrender would mean that
sanctification can never really begin at all.
If an imperfect faith and surrender allows the believer to move through
progressive degrees of battle with sin to progressive degrees of spiritual
victory, so that the more perfect the believer’s surrender is, the more victory
over sin and spiritual strength the believer possesses, then the Keswick
doctrine that believers instantly flip-flop from a state of spiritual defeat,
carnality, and domination by sin to one of total victory by means of the
sanctification crisis is replaced with something closer to the classic doctrine
of sanctification, for victory over sin and surrender to the Lord become
progressive.[12] Furthermore, if the believer’s ability is
truly equal to his obligation, then God’s “perfect . . . grace and gift” would
give him truly perfect ability, and there would be no reason why literal
sinless perfection would be impossible for the Christian. After all, “God’s requirements cannot be
greater than his enablements”[13]—so
since God gives perfect grace, and the gift of “holiness [that He] requires of
His creatures . . . He first provides,”[14]
does not the literal perfection of God’s grace necessarily require that the Christian
can be literally sinless? While one can
be happy that most advocates of the Keswick theology do not believe in the
literal perfectionism inherent in their theological position, nonetheless
Keswick opposition to absolute perfectionism is contradictory and incoherent.[15]
g., Mrs. Smith preached at the 1874 Broadlands Conference that through a “step
of faith,” where the believer
“surrender[s] himself and trust[s] . . . we put ourselves into the hands of the
Divine Potter . . . [we] can do nothing [else]” (pgs. 124-125, The Life that is Life Indeed: Reminiscences of the Broadlands Conferences,
Edna V. Jackson. London: James Nisbet & Co, 1910). Broadlands taught that the “potential force
of the Holy Spirit” by such means becomes “the actual, when we are willingly receptive of His inflowing
powers. We must be willing . . . [t]here
must be complete acquiescence” (pgs.
190-191, The Life that is Life
Indeed: Reminiscences of the Broadlands
Conferences, Edna V. Jackson.
London: James Nisbet & Co,
1910. Italics reproduced from the
original.). For Mrs. Smith, the
Broadlands Conference, and the Keswick Convention, the Holy Spirit falls
helpless before the sovereign human will, while Scripture teaches that the Holy
Spirit is the sovereign God who works to incline and renew the will through His
Almighty works of regeneration and progressive sanctification, leading men to
fall in worship before the Triune Jehovah, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
Great Salvation, Barabas.
for example, if unbelievers in rebellion against God, such as Esau and the Pharoah
of the Exodus, were unresisting and quiet in the divine Potter’s hands before
He hardened them (Romans 9:18) and they were fitted for destruction (Romans
9:14-24). While Keswick affirms the
Divine Potter “cannot” work until the clay acts a certain way, Scripture says
the Divine potter makes the clay what He wills by His own power: “Hath not the potter power over the clay, of
the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?”
(Romans 9:21).
proclaimed: “President Edwards’ teaching
of the affections governing the will [in, e. g., his The Religious Affections] I believe to be untrue. I believe in the yet older saying [of the
Quietists Madame Guyon and Archbishop Fénelon], that ‘True religion resides in
the will alone’” (pg. 134, Account
of the Union Meeting for the Promotion of Scriptural Holiness, Held at Oxford,
August 29 to September 7, 1874. Chicago: Revell, 1874; also pgs. 279, 331). Nothing positive is said about the views of
Jonathan Edwards at the Oxford Convention, and nothing negative is said about
Madame Guyon, Archbishop Fénelon, or the Catholic Quietism of the Dark Ages.
example, Broadlands affirmed that men need to feel sorry for the questionably
sovereign God as He helplessly looks on and suffers when men rebel against
Him: “Looking at the sins and sufferings
of men, we must remember God is suffering too, and we must have sympathy not
with men only, but with God” (pg. 175, The
Life that is Life Indeed: Reminiscences
of the Broadlands Conferences, Edna V. Jackson. London:
James Nisbet & Co, 1910). Men
are not only to fulfill their duties to God, but also God supposedly has duties
to creatures that He must fulfill; indeed, “Jesus is the revelation of God
fulfilling His duty to His creatures” (pg. 213, Ibid). Indeed, the Triune
God is not, it seems, self-sufficient, but creatures are necessary to Jesus
Christ: “The Church, the body, is
necessary to Christ the Head” (pg. 210, Ibid). The Keswick doctrine of Divine inability and
human ability was developed by Jessie Penn-Lewis and Evan Roberts into the
doctrine of the inability of God to Rapture the saints who have not entered
into the Highest Life, and by the Word of Faith movement into the doctrine of men
as gods.
Mrs. Smith’s exposition of the impotence and total inactivity of spiritual
blesings until individually activated by faith on pgs. 128-129, The Life that is Life Indeed: Reminiscences of the Broadlands Conferences,
Edna V. Jackson. London: James Nisbet & Co, 1910.
g., pg. 120, The Life that is Life
Indeed: Reminiscences of the Broadlands
Conferences, Edna V. Jackson.
London: James Nisbet & Co,
1910; pg. 26ff., Forward Movements,
Pierson.
Great Salvation, Barabas.
Great Salvation, Barabas.
Great Salvation, Barabas.
Salvation, Barabas.
out since the time of its invention. For
example, in 1876 Thomas Smith pointed out this flaw in the Keswick doctrine as
explained by its founder, Hannah W. Smith:
Smith’s requirement of “entire consecration” as preliminary to sanctification .
. . [is] utterly subversive of the very doctrine that it is designed to
establish, subversive not only of the doctrine of holiness by faith, as that
doctrine is held by Mrs. Smith and her friends, but subversive of the doctrine
of holiness by faith, as held by the universal [body of believers belonging to]
Christ. Be it distinctly noted that this
entire consecration is uniformly represented as preliminary to the obtaining of
holiness by faith, and as a necessary and indispensable condition thereto. . .
. Mrs. Smith . . . places this consecration absolutely before the exercise of
faith in Christ for sanctification, making no allusion to any aid to be
received from Christ, or any working or co-working of the Holy Spirit, in order
to the making of this consecration. But
what in reality is consecration but sanctification? What is entire consecration but perfect
holiness? Either they are identical, or
consecration is the result of sanctification.
In no possible sense can it be said truly that consecration goes before
and sanctification follows. . . . Mrs. Smith’s system is simply this—Make
yourself perfectly holy first, then go to Christ, believe that he will make you
perfectly holy, and he will do it. Of
course she does not know that this is the meaning of her system; but all the
more is she blameworthy for putting herself forward as the teacher of a system
whose meaning she is incapable of comprehending. . . . [In the Keswick theology
people] are saved [only] by illogicality and inconsistency from the legitimate
fatal result of their erroneous beliefs.
respect, all the [Keswick] writers . . . err, not by excess, but by defect, in
stating the doctrine of sanctification by Christ. . . . [I]n no one of the
[testimonies mentioned by them] was there any approach to [gradual and
progressive sanctification from the time of conversion.] One was five years, another ten, another
twenty years living in undoubting assurance of pardon before adopting the
method of sanctification which they now advocate so strenuously. But during these several intervals they had
each made some progress in holiness, a very unsatisfactory progress indeed, but
still some real progress. But that
progress, such as it was, was effected, according to their present shewing, not
by that faith which they now inculcate, but by that striving which they now
condemn as legal and carnal. According
to their view, then, there must be two distinct ways of sanctification—one far
better, indeed, than the other, by taking Christ by faith [alone] for sanctification;
the other inferior, indeed, but still real, by dispensing with Christ, and
simply striving. Now this is a far less
evangelical and a far more legal doctrine than the orthodox, which maintains
that there is but one way of holiness, as there is but one way of righteousness;
and that Christ’s being made of God sanctification to his people, is as
exclusive of sanctification in any other way as his being made to them
righteousness is exclusive of justification in any other way. In answer to this they would probably say
that, in the interval betwixt their first and second conversion, they did not
altogether reject Christ as their sanctification, but trusted partly to him and
partly to their own endeavours, and that so much of sanctification as they then
achieved was in virtue of the measure of faith which even then they
exercised. If they say this, then it is
an important modification of their present system, quite different from what
they have said hitherto. But more than
this, it will be fatal to their system, for it would utterly destroy the
analogy between justification and sanctification, for which they so strongly
contend. For they will admit that he who
trusts partly to Christ and partly to himself for righteousness, does not,
while he so trusts, attain to righteousness at all; and by parity of reason, it
ought to follow that he who trusts partly to Christ and partly to himself for
holiness, must equally fail to attain any holiness at all. . . . It is enough
to point out that t[heir] system, as it now stands, utterly fails to account
for the admitted fact that some measure of holiness is attained by many
otherwise than as th[e] [Keswick] system prescribes, and that some measure was
attained by the present advocates of the system before they adopted it. (pgs.
263-264, “Means and Measure of Holiness,” Thomas Smith. The
British and Foreign Evangelical Review [April 1876] 251-280)
severe problems in the Keswick doctrine were pointed out from the time of its
inception, Keswick writers and agitators tend to be either unwittingly or
intentionally ignorant of critiques of their system of sanctification and
consequently continue to testify to and promulgate it, fatal errors and all.
Salvation, Barabas.
Salvation, Barabas.
Pearsall Smith’s . . . confused and confusing theology” (pg. 87, “The Brighton
Convention and Its Opponents.” London
Quarterly Review, October 1875).
The Modern Fear or At Least Repulsion of Applying Scripture
Jesus and the Apostles, the New Testament authors, treat the Old Testament with authority and as having one meaning. They do not treat scripture with any degree of interpretative latitude. They also make certain application, applying the Bible with complete certitude. God means one thing. Then He doesn’t deny Himself.
The interpretation and application of scripture fits the reality of the world. There is only one version of what has occurred from the beginning of creation until now, not two. You don’t get to have reality be whatever you want it. It really is what it is. Only what it is.
People can have their own reality, their own interpretation, and their own application. It’s all very flexible. What’s certain is that people don’t want to be certain. Uncertainty is the enemy of authority. “I’m not sure” is a convenient excuse.
From the date of the founding of the Jamestown colony until now, there was a point in at least United States history where philosophy or belief and practice took a turn toward diminished confidence in applying the Bible to life and culture. I’m not saying that nothing was unsettled in people’s minds. That characterizes a sin-cursed world. There will be doubt in a sin-cursed world.
Premodern thinking, however, saw truth, goodness, and beauty as certain. The standard was an unwavering, single-minded, solid, stable vision. God created a world, breathed a Word for that world, and fashioned a man to live in it. Man could understand the world through the Word which He inspired for faith and practice. It could be understood, known, believed, applied, lived, and practiced by faith.
Fear and repulsion of applying scripture always existed, but greatly multiplied with modernism. The world opposes God’s Word. With application comes scorn and persecution. The nature of the flesh is to do what it wants to do.
We arrive today at music, dress, entertainment, and recreation, and believers can’t or better won’t apply the Bible like days past. They don’t have the confidence, which starts with their uneasiness with scripture itself. Rock music, as an example, could never have been contemplated for worship. Now the Bible can’t be applied there. If you do, you’re now considered adding to scripture or reading into it something it doesn’t say. You can’t apply the Bible to music. You can’t give any objective standard for dress.
God is not being honored because scripture is not being applied. It isn’t being lived. When it isn’t applied, it is being disobeyed. God isn’t being loved.
Keswick’s Crisis, Process, Gift Confusion: in Keswick’s Errors–an Analysis and Critique of So Great Salvation by Stephen Barabas, part 13 of 17
his exceedingly problematic attempt to refute alternative positions on
sanctification, Barabas proceeds to positively set forth the Keswick method of
holiness. Keswick considers
“sanctification as a process, as a crisis, and as a gift.”[1] The order places “process” first, because it
“is the best understood, and not because it is the first in the order of time,”[2]
for in the Keswick theology any process in sanctification takes place only in a
significant way[3]
after the experience of crisis and the receipt of the gift. Over the course of a twenty page chapter[4]
on the crisis of consecration, Barabas states that it is “very characteristic
of Keswick” and “some of its basic teachin[g]” to affirm that “sanctification
is a process beginning with a crisis.”[5] Once again, in this matter Keswick follows
Hannah and Robert P. Smith and the Broadlands, Oxford, and Brighton Conventions.[6] The “crisis must take place before we really
know the process. . . . The process succeeds the crisis.”[7] The crisis takes place when one makes a
“complete personal consecration” to God, “also referred to as dedication and
full surrender.”[8] The crisis has a “positive side . . .
surrender or the committal of oneself to Christ and the pledge to be eternally
loyal to Him as Lord and Master . . . [and] a negative side[,] . . . [t]o deny
self . . . [to] definitely and for ever cho[ose] the will of the Lord Jesus
Christ as [one’s] Guide and Director through life, in place of [one’s] own
will.”[9] In fact, “God’s blessing of deliverance from
the power of sin is not to be had” until a Christian makes this full surrender,[10]
for “the divine Potter . . . cannot shape the human vessel unless it is
committed into His hands and remains unresistingly and quietly there.”[11] In the Keswick theology, “Consecration is . .
. the starting point of the sanctification process,” which is only continued as
“the response made to God at consecration is continued.”[12] The crisis “decision is the inescapable
condition of progressive sanctification.”[13] Progressive sanctification cannoc commence
before the crisis of consecration.
terms of sanctification as a gift, explicated by Barabas for twenty-one pages,[14]
Keswick teaches that we are “asked . . . to accept holiness by faith in the
same way that we accept justification by faith.”[15] According to “Keswick, we are not sanctified
by self-effort or by works, but by faith in what Christ has done for us at
Calvary. Sanctification, like
justification, is by grace alone.”[16] Keswick affirms that “if we wish to make any
progress in holiness, we have to give up belief in the value of self-effort in
holiness. . . . sanctification . . . is not something for which we have to
struggle or strive[.] . . . Sanctification is primarily and fundamentally
‘neither an achievement nor a process, but a gift, a divine bestowal of a
position in Christ.’”[17] It is “the heart and essence . . . of Keswick
teaching . . . [that] [f]reedom from the dominion of sin is a blessing that we
may claim by faith, just as we accept pardon.”[18] Since believers are “identified with Christ
in His death to sin . . . [they] need no longer serve sin,”[19]
although it is supposedly possible for “all Christians . . . [to] be in
terrible bondage . . . under the power of sin.”[20] They “have a legal right to be free,”
however, and obtain “[d]eliverance . . . not . . . by struggle and painful
effort, by earnest resolutions and self-denial, but . . . by simple faith.”[21] The “special message . . at Keswick . . . [is
that it] is possible to serve sin again, but not necessary, for Christ has
freed us.”[22] This “freedom is only potential . . . [and]
Keswick leaders often say that God’s method of sanctification is not suppression or eradication, but counteraction.”[23] Keswick reproduced the teaching of
Broadlands, Oxford, and Brighton[24]
to affirm that the sinfulness within the believer “is something fixed and
permanent, and will remain in us as long as we live. . . . The principle of
counteraction is . . . basic to Keswick teaching.”[25] The “locus
classicus on” the Keswick doctrine of sanctification as gift is “Romans
vi.”[26] As the Holy Spirit counteracts indwelling sin
in the Christian, the believer “ceases from his own struggles to live a holy
life, and enters the ‘rest of faith’ . . . the secret of perfect and constant
victory over temptation.”[27] Thus, “the heart and core of Keswick teaching
is its doctrine of sanctification by faith. . . . The Keswick position,”[28]
which is derived from Hannah W. Smith,[29]
“is that in Scripture sanctification comes by faith, and not in any other way.”[30] According to Keswick, for a believer to be
sanctified he must: 1.) recognize the
truth of the Keswick doctrine, “the scriptural method of progressive
sanctification,”; 2.) have “proper faith,” which involves “the believer’s
consent to die to every fleshly desire in him,” and 3.) “hand over the fleshly
deeds of the body to the Spirit for mortification . . . Romans 8:13 . . . [and]
stand in faith in the knowledge that he died to sin in Christ at Calvary. It is the Holy Spirit’s responsibility to do
the rest. Sanctification is thus the result, not of attempts at suppression of
the flesh, but of faith in the finished work of Calvary.”[31] Such is Keswick’s method for receiving
sanctification as a gift.
aspect of sanctification, which is dependent in the Keswick theology upon
experiencing the sanctification crisis and receiving of sanctification as a gift,
is discussed by Barabas on half a page.[32] Barabas discusses sanctification as a crisis
for over twenty pages, and sanctification as gift for over twenty pages. Why only a tiny discussion of sanctification
as a process on one-half of one page?
This huge contrast exists because, for Keswick, “Sanctification is
primarily and fundamentally ‘neither an achievement nor a process, but a gift[.’]”[33] Little emphasis is placed upon sanctification
as a process because Keswick believes that through the course of the Christian
life the “indwelling tendency to sin . . . is as fixed and constant as any of
the laws of nature,”[34]
so that “purity can become a maintained condition, but never a state,”[35]
the “tendency to evil” being merely “counteracted”[36]
but left entirely unchanged, and “the tendency to sin [being] . . . simply
counteracted.”[37] Victory over sin, Keswick affirms, “is not a
question of progressive attainment.”[38] Little emphasis is placed upon sanctification
as a process because there is little or nothing that actually changes within
the believer. Keswick believes that it
“is astonishing that theologians have not seen this”[39]
theology of counteraction and rejection of actual inward renewal in the Bible.
Keswick is correct and commendable in calling believers to surrender themselves
completely to God, in its emphasis upon the believer’s union with Christ, and
in its affirmation that strength to grow spiritually is derived from the Lord
Jesus through the Holy Spirit, there are serious problems with the Keswick
doctrine of sanctification as crisis, gift, and process. First, it is certainly true that when a
believer is deliberately allowing, tolerating, and positively regarding sin in
his life his growth in holiness will be greatly hindered or even reversed. However, it is not true that real steps in
sanctification cannot take place before a post-conversion crisis, nor that
“God’s blessing of deliverance from the power of sin is not to be had” until
such a crisis takes place.[40] On the contrary, all Christians are delivered
from the power of sin. It is not true,
as Keswick affirms, that “all Christians . . . [can] be in terrible bondage . .
. under the power of sin”[41] or
that, as Hannah W. Smith taught[42]
and Keswick proclaims, Christian “freedom [from sin] is only potential.”[43] To state that, for Christians, “our
individual self is entirely and completely under the power of sin”[44]
is flatly false. Since believers are
“not under the law, but under grace,” God promises that “sin shall not have
dominion” over them (Romans 6:14). Such
freedom is not merely potential, but actual.
Romans six does not establish the mere possibility of freedom from sin
for the Christian, but establishes that all Christians are indeed free from the
bondage of sin, and as a result, they will—not merely may—grow in
holiness. The commands to the believer
in Romans six to reckon and yield are not based upon a mere possibility of change,
but upon a certain promise—grace guarantees that sin “shall not” dominate them. Keswick, adopting the emphasis and Broadlands
teaching of Hannah W. Smith,[45]
affirms that death to sin and spiritual life are not in any sense a practical
reality until, by an act of reckoning, the Higher Life is entered into. Scripture, on the contrary, commands a
believer to reckon himself dead to sin and alive to God because he already is
so and is already freed from the dominion of sin and under the reign of grace
(Romans 6:11, 14). The power and
promises God made in the New Covenant ratified in Christ’s blood secure the
certainty of the believer’s sanctification.
The Keswick doctrine of a merely potential deliverance from sin for the
saint is far too weak.
Great Salvation, Barabas. Barabas
states on the same page that Keswick accepts the classical doctrine that
“experimental sanctification is the day-by-day transformation of the believer
into the image of Christ, and is progressive in nature. Beginning at regeneration, it continues all
through life, but is never complete.”
However, the description of sanctification as process, crisis, and gift
is “more characteristic of Keswick” and is “more often” employed than the
classical doctrine.
Law of Liberty in the Spiritual Life, by Evan Hopkins. Barabas indicates his dependence upon
Hopkins’s exposition (pg. 85, So Great
Salvation). Hopkins’s “discussion of
‘God’s Gift of Holiness’” at Keswick in 1899 was also “quoted at length by
Steven Barabas, in So Great Salvation”
(pgs. 404-405, Keswick’s Authentic Voice,
ed. Stevenson; the actual address by Hopkins follows on pgs. 436-442).
“Much is made by Keswick of sanctification as a crisis. It is true, Keswick says, that sanctification
invariably begins at regeneration. There
can be no question about this. On the
other hand, many Christians do not make the progress in sanctification that
they should. . . . For this reason real progress is often not made until they
come to a spiritual crisis” (pg. 86, So
Great Salvation).
Great Salvation, Barabas.
Salvation, Barabas. Keswick writers
do indeed regularly affirm such a crisis/process model; for example, Watchman
Nee wrote that sanctification “usually takes the two-fold form of a crisis
leading to a continuous process” (“A Gate and a Path,” The Normal Christian Life, Watchman Nee).
W. Smith’s preaching of Keswick’s crisis-process model on pgs. 125ff., The Life that is Life Indeed: Reminiscences of the Broadlands Conferences,
Edna V. Jackson. London: James Nisbet & Co, 1910. Robert proclaimed at Oxford:
together[.] . . . We preach this, not as a finality, but as the only true commencement of a life of progress[.] .
. . [T]he Rest of Faith . . . is not a finality but the true and only
commencement of a life of progressive sanctification. . . . It was constantly
pointed out that, so far from [the Higher Life] being the finality of Christian
experience, it was but the commencement
of a course of “progressive sanctification[.]” (pgs. 42, 51, 278-279, 332, Account of the Union Meeting for the Promotion
of Scriptural Holiness, Held at Oxford, August 29 to September 7, 1874.
Chicago: Revell, 1874. Italics in original.)
Great Salvation, Barabas. Compare
the belief of Evan Hopkins in “the crisis that prefaced the process . . . the
crisis must take place before the process has its beginning” (pgs. 56, 94-95, Evan Harry Hopkins: A Memoir, Alexander Smellie).
Great Salvation, Barabas.
Great Salvation, Barabas.
Great Salvation, Barabas.
Great Salvation, Barabas.
Great Salvation, Barabas.
Great Salvation, Barabas.
Interestingly, Barabas wrote concerning this crisis decision: “For many people the crisis is
prolonged—perhaps even over years—and the decision is made piecemeal; for some
there are stages in the crisis and in the decision[.] . . . The decision is the
inescapable condition of progressive sanctification” (pgs. 124-125). One wonders what state the person is in who
makes the decision piecemeal and in stages; is he still a carnal Christian, has
he ascended to the Higher Life of the spiritual Christian, or is he a third
type, the carnal/spiritual Christian, a sort of half-and-half that has both not
yet met the condition that begins progressive sanctification and yet has also
met it, so that progressive sanctification can begin and yet has not
begun? Note that this carnal/spiritual
Christian has, because he has surrended much, but not yet all, of his life to
God, made progress in sanctification, as he is certainly further along than the
alleged category of Christian that is still totally in charge of his own
life. However, although he is further
along, since he has not yet fully surrendered, he still cannot even begin the process
of progressive sanctification, according to Barabas. Barabas’s contradictory arguments are just
another example of the fact that “Keswick furnishes us with no carefully
prepared, weighty discourses of a theological nature” (pg. 51). His contradictions, unintelligibility, and
incoherence are good Keswick teaching.
Great Salvation, Barabas.
Great Salvation, Barabas.
Great Salvation, Barabas.
Great Salvation, Barabas. Barabas
quotes Ruth Paxson, Life on the Highest
Plane, Vol. II, pg. 107.
Salvation, Barabas.
Great Salvation, Barabas.
Great Salvation, Barabas.
Great Salvation, Barabas.
Great Salvation, Barabas.
Great Salvation, Barabas.
doctrine of counteraction:
natural tendency of Peter was to sink [when walking on the water]. Jesus counteracted this, and Peter walked on
the water until he took his eye off from Jesus and looked at the waves. Our tendency by nature is to sin, but faith
in Jesus meets this tendency to evil [and] . . . brings into operation the law
of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, which sets us free from the law of sin
and death. (pg. 53, Account
of the Union Meeting for the Promotion of Scriptural Holiness, Held at Oxford,
August 29 to September 7, 1874. Chicago: Revell, 1874)
for Keswick, as at Oxford, there is no actual growth in the believer’s inward
holiness—indwelling sin is not eradicated, but only counteracted, so that the
Higher Life keeps one above water but devoid of any actual progress.
Great Salvation, Barabas. Compare
the teaching at the Oxford Convention:
we shall never find anything good in ourselves of any kind whatsoever. Christians are apt to think they can have
stocks of virtues laid up in themselves [that is, that God actually makes them
holy in progressive sanctification, but this is false.] . . . God’s way is . .
. just like drawing on a bank. Our money
is in the bank, not in our pockets. God
never gives us anything [inwardly.] . . . We get up each morning with nothing,
and we go to bed with nothing. (pgs. 302-304, Account of the Union Meeting for the Promotion of Scriptural Holiness,
Held at Oxford, August 29 to September 7, 1874.
Chicago: Revell, 1874)
Great Salvation, Barabas.
Great Salvation, Barabas. It is
noteworthy that an examination of the personal journals of T. D.
Harford-Battersby, co-founder and chairman of the Keswick convention, “do
not bear witness to unfailing victory, to neverbroken peace,” but to a kind of
spiritual life that is entirely consistent with the classical Baptist and old
evangelical view of Romans 7:14-25 (pgs. 188ff., Memoir of T.
D. Harford-Battersby, Harford). Mr.
Harford-Battersby’s private journal was more honest about the continuing
reality and influence of indwelling sin in the regenerate than was the public
preaching of the Keswick theology.
Great Salvation, Barabas.
. is to stop working” (Journal, 1867, reproduced in the entry for March 26 of The Christian’s Secret of a Holy Life,
Hannah W. Smith, ed. Dieter). Compare
Evan Roberts’s exhortation to be “simply trusting and not trying,” a maxim on
sanctification that was also adopted by Pentecostalism (pg. 65, Azusa Street: The Roots of Modern-Day
Pentecost, Frank Bartleman, ed. Synan).
Salvation, Barabas.
Great Salvation, Barabas.
Great Salvation, Barabas.
Great Salvation, Barabas.
Great Salvation, Barabas.
Great Salvation, Barabas.
Great Salvation, Barabas. Keswick
theology often affirms that Romans 6:6 does not actually teach that the body of
sin is progressively, through mortification, “destroyed,” but that it is merely
“counteracted.” As noted in the
discussion above in the section “The Body of Sin Is Indeed Destroyed, Not
Merely Counteracted,” this conclusion of Keswick is false.
Great Salvation, Barabas.
Great Salvation, Barabas.
Great Salvation, Barabas.
Great Salvation, Barabas.
Great Salvation, Barabas.
g., pg. 128, The Life that is Life
Indeed: Reminiscences of the Broadlands
Conferences, Edna V. Jackson.
London: James Nisbet & Co,
1910.
Great Salvation, Barabas.
Great Salvation, Barabas.
g., pg. 128, The Life that is Life
Indeed: Reminiscences of the Broadlands
Conferences, Edna V. Jackson.
London: James Nisbet & Co,
1910.
Faith the Only Reliable Epistemology: It’s Got to Be Faith, pt. 5
Part One Part Two Part Three Part Four
Among other points, I have written in this series that we can’t trust sight or evidence, versus faith, for knowledge because of our own depravity, the trampling of “evidence,” that is, we don’t live in a closed system, and then added the lack of perspective. For the latter reason, with God there “is no variableness, neither shadow of turning” (James 1:17). You can’t count on getting it right if you can’t see everything, relating to sight or evidence. On the other hand, faith is what brings glory and pleasure to God. “Ye see. . . how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called. . . . Your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God” (1 Cor 1:26, 2:5).
I want to take faith as the only reliable epistemology and compare it to sight or “evidence” in order to know that we have every word of scripture available for usage today. By faith we know that we have every word and that every word is available. This is the position of premodernism, which is why this is the sole position about preservation of scripture up until modernism. Premodern epistemology was based upon revealed knowledge from authoritative sources — the ultimate truth could be known and the way to this knowledge was and is through direct revelation. This direct revelation was assumed to come and to have come from God. Therefore, the church, being the holder and interpreter of revealed knowledge was also the primary authority source in premodern time — “the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Tim 3:15).
The church agreed that it had every word, that every Word of God was generally available to every generation of believer, in the language in which it was written. Men knew they had every Word by faith. A new epistemology, a modernistic one, fueled the denial of this revealed knowledge. The dominant approach of the modern period was empiricism, knowing through the senses, which developed into scientific empiricism or modern science with the diversion into modernist methodology. Rather than knowledge standing in the Word of God, it stands in the “wisdom of men” or the “wisdom of this world” (1 Cor 1-3, James 3). “For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, He taketh the wise in their own craftiness” (1 Cor 3:19).
With the new epistemology, the authority shifted from the church to the university as the source of power. You see this affect everything in the world, let alone the church. Every field of knowledge has left the church and moved into the university. Religion on the campus is viewed as art, art something that can’t even be known in modernism and now postmodernism, but both religion and art just a matter of personal taste. Doctrine has left the realm of knowledge and evangelicalism cooperates heavily with this. They themselves see much of what premoderns believed and knew as only a matter of personal taste.
A major reason you can see a lack of strength in men today, and I’m not just talking about the church, but the church is mainly responsible, is because men don’t know anything anymore. In general their breadth of knowledge stops short of anything more than what entertains them or gratifies them. This is why we see in James that “this wisdom [that] descendeth not from above . . . is earthly, sensual, devilish” (James 3:15). Paul describes their philosophy or direction as their “end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.” The knowledge of God descends to man through supernatural means, acquired by faith. God expects us to believe what He says and know.
Men very often don’t know today. They know very little. They have very little certainty. This has come because of the acceptance of wisdom of men or evidence as the means of knowing. God intended for us to know Him “in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col 2:3). We know Him by faith.
For men to lead with authority, they must know. They need to have certainty to tell those people they lead, that they are right. They know they are right. What you can interpret today as the effeminate quality of men looks like a lack of confidence, which is why you might hear the word “like” come out of a mouth again and again. They “like” know. They don’t know. Evangelicalism fuels that. These men who deny preservation of scripture, like a James White, Daniel Wallace, and a large segment of the leaders of fundamentalism, are a major cause of that lack of confidence.
You hear the term “evanjellyfish,” which may have been coined by Douglas Wilson (I’m not sure), it comes from this lack of certainty, toward which in fact Douglas Wilson himself contributes. He adds quite a bit of jelly to the fish with his capitulation to new Calvinism among other weakness. Nevertheless, the weakness of evangelicals arises from its unwillingness to know by faith.
As this relates to the denial of the preservation of scripture, a modern pendulum swing is one category of King James Onlyism led by such men as Sam Gipp, that says that the Word of God was lost in the original languages. These men deny preservation too, but their desire for certainty results a kind of double inspiration, where the English translation becomes the new authority. Many men take this position in the United States, but it is fueled too by doubt and not faith. They don’t get that position from scripture.
Spiritual warfare applies spiritual weaponry. “The sword of the Spirit . . . is the Word of God” (Eph 6:17). The “pulling down of strongholds” doesn’t come through carnal methods, which include the modernistic ones utilized by James White and other apologists. The problem is a supernatural problem and the Word of God should be depended upon.
I’m going to explore this further in future posts.
Keswick’s Rejection of Effort: in Keswick’s Errors–an Analysis and Critique of So Great Salvation by Stephen Barabas, part 12 of 17
also argues against the position he terms “supression of the old nature.”[1] He writes:
“Perhaps the most widely-held view of sanctification is that it is to be
gained through our own personal efforts by trying to suppress the flesh in us. Justification, it is believed, is by faith,
but sanctification is by works—at least to a large extent.”[2] Barabas argues against this position in three
ways. First, he sets forth the erroneous Keswick view of Romans 7:14-25.[3] Second, he argues for the teaching Keswick
adopted from Hannah W. Smith and the Broadlands Conference[4]
that sanctification is by faith alone, not works.[5] Third, he makes arguments such as: “Neither a tree nor a man grows by effort.[6]
. . . It is a kind of sanctification of the flesh. . . . the [failed attempt
at] the conquest of self by self . . . [the] legalism . . . to assume that
justification is by faith, [but] sanctification is somehow by struggle.”[7] Barabas warns that to “fall back upon mere
moral processes to overcome sin is not Christianity, but pagan philosophy,
which offers nothing better than self-effort as the only way of improvement.”[8] Based on such reasoning, he concludes: “It is the teaching of Keswick that an
important reason for the defeat and failure of so many Christians is that they
try to supress the old nature. . . .
Sanctification is therefore not by works but by faith. . . . That is the
distinctive method of Keswick.”[9]
entirely different ideas, combined with some faulty exegesis. If he only wished to prove that anyone
who attempted to be holy without depending upon the Triune God for strength was
doomed to failure, and that believers need, consequently, to live by faith
(Habakkuk 2:4), his exhortation would be correct, and its warning well
taken. The necessity of living by faith
and of experiential and personal communion with Jesus Christ by the Spirit is
extremely important, and it has been regarded as such by Christians who lived
centuries before the invention of the Keswick theology in association with the
preaching of Hannah W. Smith. If
self-dependence, seeking the ultimate ground for growth in holiness within
one’s own person, and “mere moral processes to overcome sin” as in “pagan
philosophy” were all Barabas wished to combat when he warned of the “man who is
trying to be good and holy by his own efforts and is defeated every time,”[10]
he would be right on target, warning against a serious sin that the believer’s
fleshliness naturally inclines him to commit.
“most widely-held view of sanctification,” which Barabas seeks to argue is in
error, is not actually an independent moralism, based on pagan philosophy, that
fails to depend upon Christ and the Spirit—although such errors are indeed taught
in large portions of the apostate denominations which Keswick ecumenicalism
refuses to repudiate. Rather than
restricting his argument to the real error of an independent moralism, Barabas
argues that believers are not to try to suppress the old nature or to struggle
against sin in sanctification.
Regretably, when Barabas warns against the “man who is trying to be good
and holy by his own efforts,” he does not just condemn self-dependence, but
also the truth that the Christian himself should personally make effort and
strive to mortify sin, depending upon Christ and the power of the Spirit. Barabas’s opposition to “sanctification . . .
by struggle” is an error ignores the many texts such as “Ye have not yet
resisted unto blood, striving against sin” (Hebrews 12:4). Indeed, Paul’s conclusion, after setting
forth in a lengthly chapter the necessity of living by faith (Hebrews 11), is
“wherefore”[11]
(Hebrews 12:1)—in light of Hebrews 11 and those who lived by faith in that
chapter—“lay aside every weight . . . run with patience . . . consider [Christ]
. . . resis[t] unto blood, striving against sin . . . nor faint . . . endure
chastening . . . be in subjection . . . [be] exercised . . . lift up the hands
which hang down, and the feeble knees, and make straight paths for your feet .
. . follow peace . . . and holiness. . . loo[k] diligently,” and so on (Hebrews
12:1-16). Living by faith, Biblically,
is not only compatible with struggling and striving for holiness, but it
necessarily produces it. Biblical sanctification does not state: “We cease from labor because we trust in
God,” but “we . . . labour . . . because we trust in the living God” (1 Timothy
4:10). For Paul, living by faith means
one will “run . . . striv[e] for the mastery . . . fight . . . keep under [the]
body, and bring it into subjection” (1 Corinthians 9:24-27). The Bible says to do exactly what Barabas
says not to do. The Christian’s attitude
must not be “let go and let God,”[12]
but “trust God and get going!”[13] Faith in sanctification does not lead the
believer to cease striving, but to strive ever the harder, trusting in the Lord
for strength to fight. The Christian
does not labor independently and faithlessly, but “labour[s], striving
according to [God’s] working, which worketh in [him] mightily” (Colossians
1:29). For Keswick to affirm a genuine
dichotomy between independent moralism and ending all “trying to conquer the
old nature . . . effort . . . [and] struggle,”[14]
so that one must choose the one or the other, is a serious misrepresentation,
one that ignores the true position that sanctification involves a faith-based,
God-dependent struggle.[15] By discouraging believers from striving to
mortify their indwelling sin, Keswick theology hinders the work of
sanctification.
the Keswick theology recognizes other “other erroneous methods”[16]
of sanctification. Following Hannah W.
Smith,[17]
Barabas warns that believers must not “trust for their sanctification to a
diligent use of the means of grace, to watchfulness over their own heart and
life, taking themselves to task ever and again for the coldness of their
heart.”[18] It is an amazing thing that Barabas’s book
explaining the Keswick theology never once quotes any of the numerous verses in
Scripture that connect sanctification with the Word of God, but attacks as an
“unscriptural wa[y] of pursuing holiness”[19]
employing the means that God has given to increase and strengthen inward grace,
such as, centrally, the Word.[20] Rejecting watchfulness over one’s heart and
life as a means of avoiding sin and growing holy is astonishing when the Son of
God specifically states that watching and praying protect one from temptation
(Matthew 26:41) and are essential for spiritual preparedness for His second
coming (Mark 13:33-36). The Lord Jesus
said, “Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy”[21]
(Luke 21:36), thus demonstrating that watching helps the believer be more
holy. Scripture is filled with commands
to watch,[22]
and the Lord Jesus Himself commanded, “What I say unto you I say unto all,
Watch” (Mark 13:37)—but Barabas rejects such watchfulness as an unscriptural
means of growing in grace! As for its
being “unscriptural” to take oneself to task over the coldness of one’s heart,
it is evident that some of the psalms, which the Spirit-filled Christian is to
sing (Ephesians 5:18-19), are not appropriate for the advocate of Keswick. God’s inspired songbook teaches the righteous
man to pray: “For in thee, O LORD, do I hope: thou wilt hear, O Lord my God”
(Psalm 38:15) and yet complain: “There is
no soundness in my flesh because of thine anger; neither is there any rest in my bones because of my sin. For mine
iniquities are gone over mine head: as an heavy burden they are too heavy for
me” (Psalm 38:3-4).[23]
The saint who can say “I waited patiently for the LORD . . . thou art my help and my deliverer” (Psalm
40:1, 17) also prays, “mine iniquities have taken hold upon me, so that I am
not able to look up; they are more than the hairs of mine head: therefore my
heart faileth me” (Psalm 40:12). The
holy man in the Bible, who says “I put my trust in thee” (Psalm 25:20), can
nonetheless pray: “Mine eyes are ever toward the LORD; for he shall
pluck my feet out of the net. Turn thee
unto me, and have mercy upon me; for I am
desolate and afflicted. The troubles of
my heart are enlarged: O bring thou
me out of my distresses. Look upon mine
affliction and my pain; and forgive all my sins” (Psalm 25:15-18). Keswick is dead wrong when it condemns
sanctification through the diligent use of the means God has appointed to grow
in grace, when it deprecates watchfulness, and when it affirms that the saint
should not take himself to task over the coldness of his heart. Following this unscriptural advice of Keswick
will hinder the believer’s sanctification.
Keswick critique of the Biblical facts that believers grow inwardly more holy
by sanctification and that indwelling sin is actually reduced in its strength
through mortification is a total failure.
Barabas misrepresents the classical orthodox doctrine of sanctification
held by his theological opponents, such as Warfield, refutes straw men of his
own creation, and then concludes that actually untouched non-Keswick
alternatives have been refuted.
Scripture employed by Barabas is often misused, and Scripture that
refutes the Keswick position is often ignored.
One actually convinced by the Keswick position advocated by Barabas
would be led to many unbiblical actions:
despiaring of any hope that the Holy Spirit would make him a particle
more holy; ceasing to mortify indwelling sin; stopping diligent Bible study to
grow in grace; ceasing from watchfulness as a means to avoid sin and become
more holy; and failing to lament the remaining sinfulness of his heart. These positions of Keswick theology are
blatently unscriptural and, if adopted, will hinder the sanctification of God’s
people if adopted.
Great Salvation, Barabas.
Great Salvation, Barabas.
Life.” The Keswick position is evaluated in that chapter. It will not be discussed further here.
the Broadlands doctrine of faith was “[s]ome of the most valuable of the
teaching at Broadlands,” preached there by “Mrs. Smith” (pgs. 263-264, The Life that is Life Indeed: Reminiscences of the Broadlands Conferences,
Edna V. Jackson. London: James Nisbet & Co, 1910).
alone, just as justification is by faith alone, is evaluated in the chapter “Does
Colossians 2:6-7 Teach Sanctification by Faith Alone?”
stops eating, drinking, exercising, and the like, he will grow weak and sickly
with great speed. The man who grows
physically strong so that he can become the winner of a race works very hard (1
Corinthians 9:24). So spiritual eating,
drinking, and exercise are necessary for spiritual growth. It is pushing an analogy far beyond its
proper limits, and ignoring the many plain statements about the striving and
struggle God commands the believer to employ in sanctification, to draw Keswick
conclusions from growth metaphors. While
Keswick conclusions about effortlessness in the Christian life are not
validated by the metaphors of Scripture, they are the indisputable fruit of the
pre-Keswick Conventions at Broadlands, Oxford, and Brighton, e. g.: “Fruit is an effortless thing, it comes by
abiding in the vine . . . not by struggles” (pg. 241, Account of the Union Meeting for the Promotion
of Scriptural Holiness, Held at Oxford, August 29 to September 7, 1874.
Chicago: Revell, 1874).
Great Salvation, Barabas.
Great Salvation, Barabas.
Great Salvation, Barabas.
Great Salvation, Barabas.
(BDAG), an “emphatic marke[r] of
result, often associated with exhortation — ‘for this very reason, therefore,
hence, therefore indeed, so then’” (Louw-Nida).
by Victorious Life leader Mark Trumbull.
Note the comments on pgs. 155-157, Keep
in Step with the Spirit, Packer.
Snodgrass notes:
of God. . . . [b]ut . . . it is important in another view that we should regard
it as the work and the duty of man. The subject of it . . . is bound to be
holy[.] . . . [H]e is properly dealt with in the use of arguments,
exhortations, and motives. He has a duty
to perform and work to do; and that is to follow holiness, to purify himself,
to cleanse himself from all filthiness both of the flesh and of the
spirit. In prosecuting this work, his
reliance for success must be [o]n the Spirit of God working by appointed
means. He must be active, yet he must
not depend on himself. He must have
recourse to meditation and prayer, to watchfulness and self-examination, to
[C]hristian intercourse and counsel, and to all positive institutions,
especially the reading and hearing of the word; but, in all this, he must
remember that the means are nothing without an influence from God to render
them effectual. Their whole efficiency
lies in the fact . . . that they are of God’s appointment, and that he has
promised to bless them. And hence, our
only encouragement to be active in the use of means, is made to rest upon our
knowledge of the interposition and the agency of God. “Work out your own salvation with fear and
trembling; for it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his
good pleasure” [Philippians 2:12-13].
Nor is the[re] any inconsistency or confusion in the idea of these two
agencies as working together in the production of the same result. They are not of the same kind; the sphere of
their operation is not the same; one is efficient, the other instrumental. And,
so accustomed are we to assign to each the place and position of a real agency,
that we often ascribe the same event, sometimes to God, and sometimes to
man. We say of an individual that he has
risen from indigence to affluence, or from obscurity to distinction, by the
Providence of God; but we are not supposed to contradict ourselves, if we
afterwards say, that he has succeeded by his own prudence, wisdom, and
skill. Both statements are true, though
in different senses. And accordingly
they are both adopted by the sacred writers in reference to the work of
sanctification. In one place, we are
taught to call upon God to sanctify us; in another, we are commanded to
sanctify ourselves. One introduces God
as promising us a new heart and a right spirit, and another commands us to make
to ourselves a new heart and a right spirit.
And both these views are important in practice, as well as true and
consistent in theory. We need the idea
of human agency to incite us to activity; and we need the doctrine of Divine
influence and efficiency to remind us of our dependence, to make us “pray
without ceasing[.]” . . . [Thus] sanctification . . . [is properly] considered
both as the work of God and the duty of man. (pgs. 13-18, The Scripture Doctrine of Sanctification, W. D. Snodgrass)
pg. 128, Keep In Step With the Spirit,
J. I. Packer.
Great Salvation, Barabas.
follows from the erroneous [Keswick] conception of holiness is the
representation that pervades these writings of the attainment of holiness by
the believer without effort on his part.
The idea which they have suggested to us is that of a man put into a
boat, lying in it in absolute rest, and being carried down a gently flowing
stream; whereas that suggested by the apostolic writings is that of a strong
rower, straining every muscle to stem the current, with the knowledge that he
shall ultimately succeed in reaching the goal, but only in virtue of strength
imparted to him by Christ, and received by faith. The one representation is that of faith
dispensing with effort, the other of faith enabling for effort. The one seems to say, “Work not out your salvation, for God worketh for you;” the other says, “Work out your salvation, for God worketh
in you.” In both cases a certain work of God is the
premise, but the conclusions are directly the opposite of each other, just
because the works postulated in the premises are altogether different. Somewhere in the course of our reading of
[Higher Life] works, we have fallen upon the expression, “sanctification by
works,” as opposed to “sanctification by faith,” and descriptive of the prevalent
[classical evangelical, non-Keswick] view of sanctification. No one who understands that view, and who
does not design to misrepresent it, could possibly state such an antithesis. .
. . The question is as to the specific action of faith in the production of
holiness in the heart and life of the believer.
We hold as strongly as our [Higher Life] friends can hold that Christ is
made to his people sanctification, quite as really and quite as much as he is
made unto them righteousness or justification; but in ways according with the
essential difference between justification and sanctification, between judicial
righteousness and personal holiness. (pgs. 267-268, “Means and Measure of
Holiness,” Thomas Smith. The British and Foreign Evangelical Review
(April 1876) 251-280)
Great Salvation, Barabas.
support Barabas, at least Hannah W. Smith’s writings do so. She taught:
“[W]e are passive of choice and willingly . . . are to grow . . .
without any concern about our own growing[.]”
We are to “tak[e] no . . . care for . . . spiritual growth” (Letter to
Daughter, May 25, 1878 & Letter to Anna, July 27, 1878, reproduced in the
entries for August 26-28 & September 3 of The Christian’s Secret of a Holy Life, Hannah W. Smith, ed.
Dieter).
Great Salvation, Barabas. Of course,
one must trust ultimately in Christ, not in the means through which Christ
gives His people grace, but Barabas does not merely speak against such an
error.
Great Salvation, Barabas.
Sanctification,” by James Petigru Boyce, for the role of the Word of God in
sanctification and its connection with other things termed “means of grace” in
Protestantism, such as baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Were Barabas warning against
sacramentarianism or an ex opere operato
form of doctrine, his warning would be wholesome and welcome. Unfortunately, he never even mentions or
gives a single word of warning against sacramental corruptions, while attacking
as unscriptural the idea that sanctification comes through the means God has
appointed for the believer’s growth in holiness.
other uses of the verb in Luke 20:35; Acts 5:41; 2 Thessalonians 1:5.
1 Peter 4:7; Revelation 3:3, etc.
concept that the righteous man should not complain about the sinfulness of his
own heart:
38:0 A Psalm of David, to bring to remembrance. 1 O
LORD, rebuke me not in thy wrath: neither chasten me in thy hot
displeasure. 2 For thine arrows stick
fast in me, and thy hand presseth me sore.
3 There is no soundness in my
flesh because of thine anger; neither is
there any rest in my bones because of my sin. 4 For mine iniquities are gone over mine
head: as an heavy burden they are too heavy for me. 5 My wounds stink and are corrupt because of my foolishness. 6 I am troubled; I am bowed down greatly; I
go mourning all the day long. 7 For my
loins are filled with a loathsome disease:
and there is no soundness in my
flesh. 8 I am feeble and sore broken: I
have roared by reason of the disquietness of my heart. 9 Lord, all my desire is before thee; and my groaning is not hid from thee. 10 My heart panteth, my strength faileth me:
as for the light of mine eyes, it also is gone from me. 11 My lovers and my friends stand aloof from
my sore; and my kinsmen stand afar off. 12 They also that seek
after my life lay snares for me: and
they that seek my hurt speak mischievous things, and imagine deceits all the
day long. 13 But I, as a deaf man, heard not; and I was as a dumb man that openeth not his mouth.
14 Thus I was as a man that heareth not, and in whose mouth are no reproofs. 15 For in thee, O LORD, do I hope: thou wilt
hear, O Lord my God. 16 For I said, Hear me, lest otherwise they should rejoice over me: when my foot slippeth, they
magnify themselves against me. 17 For I am
ready to halt, and my sorrow is
continually before me. 18 For I will
declare mine iniquity; I will be sorry for my sin. 19 But mine enemies are lively, and they are
strong: and they that hate me wrongfully are multiplied. 20 They also that render evil for good are
mine adversaries; because I follow the
thing that good is. 21 Forsake me not, O LORD: O my God, be not
far from me. 22 Make haste to help me, O
Lord my salvation.
poor fit at a Keswick convention, and Hannah. W. Smith would be much displeased
with the Scriptural holiness set forth in it.
Keswick’s Misrepresentation of Orthodox Sanctification: in Keswick’s Errors–an Analysis and Critique of So Great Salvation by Stephen Barabas, part 10 of 17
Barabas
argues against Warfield: “The word of
God does not teach us to expect, in this life, either the eradication or the improvement
of the ‘flesh.’”[1] While he does not cite the verse, Romans 7:18
clearly teaches that the flesh does not improve in any way. Barabas’s statement, however, equivocates on
the word eradication—if he means
“absolute elimination of the flesh,” he is entirely correct. If, however, Barabas wishes to refute
Warfield’s position, he must demonstrate that the influence and power of the
flesh is absolutely unchanged, which he fails to demonstrate or even argue for
effectively. Instead of refuting
Warfield, Barabas sets up a false dichotomy, arguing that “the tendency to sin
is not extinct, but is simply counteracted,”[2]
as if those were the only two options.
The classical orthodox position represented by Warfield is that while
indwelling sin does not itself get any better (Romans 7:18), mortification
weakens the power of the sin principle and vivification strengthens the power
of the new nature. The ethically sinful
flesh itself does not improve, but progressive sanctification weakens its
influence as indwelling sin is put to death or mortified, a process only
completed when the believer reaches heaven.
In this sense only did Warfield affirm gradual eradication, and in this
sense Barabas does not touch his position.
goes on to argue that Warfield’s position would require that “the longer a
person lived the Christian life the less possible it should be for him to sin .
. . [b]ut . . . spiritual growth is not determined by the length of time [one]
has been a Christian.”[3] Since Warfield never taught that simply
surviving for a longer time as a Christian resulted in one’s growing less able
to sin, Barabas’s criticism again leaves Warfield’s doctrine untouched. Warfield would affirm that the more the
Christian mortifies sin and the more his new nature is renewed by the Spirit,
the more holy he is. He never taught
that sanctification was in direct and sole proportion to the length of time
since the believer’s regeneration.
association with the misrepresentation of Warfield’s position as one of
sanctification by survival, by a Christian’s existing for a longer period,
Barabas argues that the record of Demas in 2 Timothy 4:10 proves that living
longer as a Christian does not necessarily involve greater sanctification. Furthermore, Barabas employs 1 Corinthians
9:27 to prove that “years after his conversion on the Damascus road, Paul himself
declared that he dared not be careless[.]”[4] Unfortunately for Barabas’s arguments, in
addition to the severe problem that he is refuting a position Dr. Warfield did
not advocate, Demas is presented as an example of a professing but unconverted
individual, one who has no true love for the Father and who will not abide
forever with God but will go to hell (2 Timothy 4:10; 1 John 2:15-17), while
Paul’s spiritual growth led him to ever-greater carefulness. To aver that Warfield’s position is in error
because if Paul were more holy years after his conversion he would be more
careless about sin, rather than more careful to avoid it, is an astonishingly
poor argument.
last and presumably crowning argument against Warfield’s position is:
were right . . . [then] [i]f we lived long enough . . . we must reach a stage
of spiritual development where the old nature was completely eradicated [and]
sin were no longer in us . . . such injunctions as “reckon,” “yield,” “put
off,” . . . would no longer have any meaning for us. . . . And when we reached
this state of purity we would no longer have to depend upon Christ and the Holy
Spirit to enable us to live a holy life. . . . Keswick is plainly right in
rejecting [Warfield’s view, because of] . . . 1 John 1:8 . . . [and] John 15:5
. . . [his theory] tempts the Christian to negligence . . . carelessness [is] .
. . easily fostered by a belief that sin was eradicated from one’s nature.[5]
the fact that a huge emphasis in Warfield’s two volume work against
perfectionism is that sin never is “no longer in us” at any moment before the
believer reaches heaven. Since Warfield
confessed that “[t]he moment we think that we have no sin, we shall
desert Christ,”[6] to argue
against his position by making it into almost exactly
its reverse is a terrible caricature.
Those—such as Warfield—who affirm the Biblical fact that God actually
makes the believer more holy do not say that the more Christlike a believer
grows the more self-dependent, careless, and negligent he becomes,[7]
and the less concerned he is about yielding to God, putting off sin, and the
like.[8] To argue that God cannot make Christians more
holy in this life because growing more holy makes one ever the more careless
and negligent about spiritual things would mean that the saints in heaven would
be the most careless and negligent of all.
What is more, if carelessness and negligence are only avoided by
eliminating real progressive sanctification and the supernatural eradication of
indwelling sinfulness, replacing this blessed truth with a mere counteraction
of sin, then believers in heaven must also not have their sinfulness
eradicated, but only counteracted. Only
so could the heavenly hosts avoid carelessness and negligence. On the contrary, the more the victory over
sin described in Romans 6-8 becomes manifest in the believer’s life, the
greater is his abhorrence of his remaining indwelling sin—the more he loathes
it, longs for perfect deliverance from it, and guards himself against it
(Romans 7:14, 20-24). While Barabas may not recognize it, Scripture teaches
that the Spirit actually makes believers more holy and less sinful, and a
concomitant of that greater holiness is greater, not lesser, watchfulness,
carefulness, and God-dependence.
following extensive quotation from Warfield, discussing the old evangelical
piety of another of its staunch defenders, Thomas Adam,[9]
both explains well the truly Scriptural and old evangelical orthodox position
that Barabas opposes and shows just how radically Barabas misrepresents
Warfield’s position:
Evangelicals . . . [embraced] “miserable-sinner Christianity” . . . for
themselves[.] We may take Thomas Adam as an example. His like-minded
biographer, James Stillingfleet, tells us37 how, having been awakened
to the fact that he was preaching essentially a work-religion, he was at last
led to the truth . . . particularly by the prayerful study of the Epistle to
the Romans. “He was,” writes his biographer, “rejoiced exceedingly; found peace
and comfort spring up in his mind; his conscience was purged from guilt through
the atoning blood of Christ, and his heart set at liberty to run the way of
God’s commandments without fear, in a spirit of filial love and holy delight;
and from that hour he began to preach salvation through faith in Jesus Christ alone, to man by nature and practice
lost, and condemned under the law, and, as his own expression is, Always a sinner.” In this italicized
phrase, Adam had in mind of course our sinful nature, a very profound sense of
the evil of which coloured all his thought. In one of those piercing
declarations which his biographers gathered out of his diaries and published
under the title of “Private Thoughts on Religion,”38 Adam tells us how
he thought of indwelling sin. “Sin,” says he, “is still here, deep in the
centre of my heart, and twisted about every fibre of it.”39
But he knew very well that sin could not be in the heart and not in the life.
“When have I not sinned?” he asks,40 and answers, “The reason
is evident, I carry myself about with me.” Accordingly he says:41
“When we have done all we ever shall do, the very best state we ever shall
arrive at, will be so far from meriting a reward, that it will need a pardon.”
Again, “If I was to live to the world’s end, and do all the good that man can
do, I must still cry ‘mercy!’”42—which is very much what
Zinzendorf said in his hymn. So far from balking at the confession of daily
sins, he adds to that the confession of universal sinning. “I know, with
infallible certainty,” he says,43 “that I have sinned ever
since I could discern between good and evil; in thought, word, and deed; in
every period, condition, and relation of life; every day against every
commandment.” “God may say to every self-righteous man,” he says again,44
“as he did in the cause of Sodom, ‘show me ten, yea, one perfect good action,
and for the sake of it I will not destroy.’”
morbidity here and no easy acquiescence in this inevitable sinning. “Lord,
forgive my sins, and suffer me to keep them—is this the meaning of my prayers?”
he asks.45 And his answer is: “I had rather be cast into the burning
fiery furnace, or the lion’s den, than suffer sin to lie quietly in my heart.”46 He
knows that justification and sanctification belong together. “Christ never
comes into the soul unattended,” he says;47 “he brings the Holy Spirit
with him, and the Spirit his train of gifts and graces.” “Christ comes with a
blessing in each hand,” he says again;48 “forgiveness in one, and
holiness in the other, and never gives either to any who will not take both.”
But he adds at once: “Christ’s forgiveness of all sins is complete at once,
because less would not do us good; his holiness is dispensed by degrees, and to
none wholly in this life, lest we should slight his forgiveness.” “Whenever I
die,” he says therefore,49 “I die a sinner; but by the grace of God,
penitent, and, I trust, accepted in the beloved.” “It is the joy of my heart
that I am freed from guilt,” he says again,50 “and the desire of
my heart to be freed from sin.” For both alike are from God. “Justification by
sanctification,” he says,51 “is man’s way to heaven, and it is odds
but he will make a little [sanctification] serve the turn. Sanctification by
justification is God’s, and he fills the soul with his own fulness.” “The
Spirit does not only confer and increase ability, and so leave us to ourselves
in the use of it,” he explains,52 “but every single act of
spiritual life is the Spirit’s own act in us.” And again, even more plainly:53
“Sanctification is a gift; and the business of man is to desire, receive, and
use it. But he can by no act or effort of his own produce it in himself. Grace
can do every thing; nature nothing.” “I am resolved,” he therefore declares,54
“to receive my virtue from God as a gift, instead of presenting him with a
spurious kind of my own.” He accordingly is “the greatest saint upon earth who
feels his poverty most in the want of perfect holiness, and longs with the greatest
earnestness for the time when he shall be put in full possession of it.”55
dependence on grace, and in never ceasing need of grace (take “grace” in its
full sense of goodness to the undeserving) the saint goes onward in his earthly
work, neither imagining that he does not need to be without sin because he has
Christ nor that because he has Christ he is already without sin. The
repudiation of both the perfectionist and the antinomian inference is made by
Adam most pungently. The former in these crisp words:56 “The moment we
think that we have no sin, we shall desert Christ.” That, because Christ came
to save just sinners. The latter more at length:57 “It would be a
great abuse of the doctrine of salvation by faith, and a state of dangerous
security, to say, if it pleases God to advance me to a higher or the highest
degree of holiness, I should have great cause of thankfulness, and it would be
the very joy of my heart; but nevertheless I can do without it, as being safe
in Christ.” We cannot set safety in Christ and holiness of life over against
each other as contradictions, of which the one may be taken and the other left.
They go together. “Every other faith,” we read,58 “but that which
apprehends Christ as a purifier, as well as our atonement and righteousness, is
false and hypocritical.” We are not left in our sins by Him; we are in process
of being cleansed from our sins by Him; and our part is to work out with fear
and trembling the salvation which He is working in us, always keeping our eyes
on both our sin from which we need deliverance and the Lord who is delivering
us. To keep our eyes fixed on both at once is no doubt difficult. “On earth it
is the great exercise of faith,” says Adam,59 “and one of the
hardest things in the world, to see sin and Christ at the same time, or to be
penetrated with a lively sense of our desert, and absolute freedom from
condemnation; but the more we know of both, the nearer approach we shall make
to the state of heaven.” Sin and Christ; ill desert and no condemnation; we are
sinners and saints all at once! That is the paradox of evangelicalism. The
Antinomian and the Perfectionist would abolish the paradox—the one drowning the
saint in the sinner, the other concealing the sinner in the saint. We must, says
Adam, out of his evangelical consciousness, ever see both members of the
paradox clearly and see them whole. And—solvitur
ambulando. “It is a great paradox, but glorious truth of Christianity,”
says he,60 “that a good conscience may consist with a consciousness
of evil.” Though we can have no satisfaction in ourselves, we may have perfect
satisfaction in Christ.[10]
“miserable-sinner Christianity” is a Christianity which thinks of pardon as
holding the primary place in salvation. To it, sin is in the first instance
offence against God, and salvation from sin is therefore in the first instance
pardon, first not merely in time but in importance. In this Christianity,
accordingly, the sinner turns to God first of all as the pardoning God; and that
not as the God who pardons him once and then leaves him to himself, but as the
God who steadily preserves the attitude toward him of a pardoning God. It is in
this aspect that he thinks primarily of God and it is on the preservation on
God’s part of this attitude towards him that all his hopes of salvation depend.
This is because he looks to God and to God alone for his salvation; and that in
every several step of salvation—since otherwise whatever else it might be, it
would not be salvation. It is, of course, only from a God whose attitude to the
sinner is that of a pardoning God, that saving operations can be hoped. No
doubt, if those transactions which we class together as the processes of
salvation are our own work, we may not have so extreme a need of a constantly
pardoning God. But that is not the point of view of the “miserable-sinner
Christian.” He understands that God alone can save, and he depends on God alone
for salvation; for all of salvation in every step and stage of it. He is not
merely the man then, who emphasizes justification as the fundamental saving
operation; but also the man who emphasizes the supernaturalness of the whole
saving process. It is all of God; and it is continuously from God throughout
the whole process. The “miserable-sinner Christian” insists thus that salvation
is accomplished not all at once, but in all the processes of a growth through
an ever advancing forward movement. It occupies time; it has a beginning and
middle and end. And just because it is thus progressive in its accomplishment,
it is always incomplete—until the end. As Luther put it, Christians, here
below, are not “made,” but “in the making.” Things in the making are in the
hands of the Maker, are absolutely dependent on Him, and in their remanent
imperfection require His continued pardon as well as need His continued
forming. We cannot outgrow dependence on the pardoning grace of God, then, so
long as the whole process of our forming is not completed; and we cannot feel
satisfaction with ourselves of course until that process is fully accomplished.
To speak of satisfaction in an incomplete work is a contradiction in terms. The
“miserable-sinner Christian” accordingly, just as strongly emphasizes the
progressiveness of the saving process and the consequent survival of sin and
sinning throughout the whole of its as yet unfinished course, as he does
justification as its foundation stone and its true supernaturalness throughout.
These four articles go together and form the pillars on which the whole
structure rests. It is a structure which is adapted to the needs of none but
sinners, and which, perhaps, can have no very clear meaning to any but sinners.
And this is in reality the sum of the whole matter: “miserable-sinner”
Christianity is a Christianity distinctively for sinners. It is fitted to their
apprehension as sinners, addressed to their acceptance as sinners, and meets
their clamant needs as sinners. The very name which has been given it bears
witness to it as such.[11]
both the Spirit’s work in progressively eradicating indwelling sin and making
the believer more holy and the Spirit’s work in reminding the Christian that he
is simil iustus et peccator—both
righteous and a sinner. Such
teaching—which is eminently Biblical—leads the Christian to recognize and hate
his indwelling sin the more, and cling the more passionately to Christ alone,
the more the Spirit makes him holy.
Steven Barabas’s attempt to set aside old orthodox position represented
by Warfield fails utterly as a refutation. Indeed, Barabas fails to even
understand and represent accurately the position he so strongly opposes.
Salvation, Barabas. Italics in
original.
49, So Great Salvation, Barabas.
Great Salvation, Barabas.
Great Salvation, Barabas.
Salvation, Barabas.
129, Studies in Perfectionism, Part One,
The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield, Vol.
7, B. B. Warfield. Bellingham, WA: Logos
Bible Software, 2008.
“The Biblical Doctrine of Faith” (Biblical
Doctrines, Vol. 2 of Works), made
statements such as: “Freed from all
illusion of earthly help, and most of all from all self-confidence, [the
believer] is meanwhile to live by faith (Habakkuk 2:4).” Perhaps instead of grossly misrepresenting
Warfield and affirming that the Princeton theologian’s position leads a
believer to more and more self-dependence, carelessness, and negligence,
Barabas should have considered what Warfield actually said, and noted that
Warfield warned that the life of faith requires, “most of all,” a rejection of
“all self-confidence.”
. not . . . be conscious of [his] . .
. tendency to sin” (pgs. 49-50, So Great
Salvation, Barabas) and that he must desist from “struggle and painful
effort . . . earnest resolutions and self-denial” (pg. 90) is more likely to
lead one to let down his guard than the doctrine of Scripture that sin,
although progressively eradicated by the Spirit, remains within the believer
until the return of Christ or the end of his life, and he ought to always be
conscious of it, guard against it, and strive against it. However, while Barabas dangerously affirms
that the Christian does not need to be conscious of his tendency to sin, he
does at least warn that one must not “be ignorant of Satan’s devices” (pg. 50)
about sinlessness. Hopefully the
Christian who hears Keswick preaching will not take the affirmation of freedom
from the consciousness of sin too seriously, while taking the warning not to be
ignorant of Satan’s delusions on this matter very seriously, and consequently
not be much less watchful than if he believed what Scripture actually teaches.
e. g., pg. 183, The Biographia
Leodiensis, or Biographical Sketches of the Worthies of Leeds and Neighbourhood,
R. B. Taylor (London: Simpkin, Marshall & Co, 1865), for a brief
biographical sketch of Thomas Adam (1701-1784).
Thoughts on Religion,” by the Rev. Thomas Adam: ed. Poughkeepsie, 1814, pp. 22
ff. There are many other editions.
“These
entries from his private diary, which were meant for no eyes but his own, bring
before us a man of no common power of analytic and speculative thought. With an
intrepidity and integrity of self-scrutiny perhaps unexampled, he writes down
problems started, and questionings raised, and conflicts gone through; whilst
his ordinarily flaccid style grows pungent and strong. Ever since their
publication these ‘Private Thoughts’ have exercised a strange fascination over
intellects at opposite poles. Coleridge’s copy of the little volume (1795) . .
. remains to attest, by its abounding markings, the spell it laid upon him,
while such men as Bishop Heber, Dr. Thomas Chalmers, and John Stuart Mill, and
others, have paid tribute to the searching power of the ‘thoughts.’ ” A.
B. Grosart, in Leslie Stephen’s “Dictionary of National Biography,” i. 1885,
pp. 89, 90.
P.
74.
P.
212.
P.
129. In the same spirit with these quotations, but with perhaps even greater poignancy
of rhetorical expression is this declaration of Alexander Whyte’s (“Bunyan
Characters,” iii. 1895, p. 136): “Our guilt is so great that we dare not think
of it. . . . It crushes our minds with a perfect stupor of horror, when for a
moment we try to imagine a day of judgment when we shall be judged for all the
deeds that we have done in the body. Heart-beat after heart-beat, breath after
breath, hour after hour, day after day, year after year, and all full of sin;
all nothing but sin from our mother’s womb to our grave.”
P.
103.
P.
180.
P.
179.
P.
216.
P.
219.
P.
247.
P.
225.
P.
231.
Pp.
223 f.
P.
220.
P.
253.
126-133, Perfectionism, Part One, Vol.
7 of The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield,
by B. B. Warfield.
130-132, Perfectionism, Part One,
Warfield.
Keswick’s Confusion on the Holy Spirit: in Keswick’s Errors–an Analysis and Critique of So Great Salvation by Stephen Barabas, part 8 of 17
Keswick theology is right to call believers to the “renunciation of all known
sin . . . and . . . surrender to Christ for the infilling of the Holy Spirit.”[1] Keswick does well to affirm that the Holy
Spirit “dwells in every child of God . . . [but] not every Christian is filled
with the Spirit . . . [and] to be filled with the Spirit is not presented in
Scripture as an optional matter, but as a holy obligation that rests upon all
Christians.”[2]
Keswick is correct that the “Christian is expected to live in communion with
the Spirit.”[3] Nonetheless, the Keswick pneumatology[4]
differs at important points from the pneumatology of Scripture.[5]
Barabas is incorrect when he affirms
that only some isolated “statements . . . from addresses and books by Keswick
speakers . . . seem to . . . outrun Scripture.”[6] Some of the Keswick theology of the Spirit
not only seems to, but does, in fact, outrun Scripture. The historic Baptist position that Spirit
baptism was a first century corporate blessing authenticating the church, which
was accompanied by miraculous signs and wonders, and which does not take place
today, is the teaching of Scripture.[7]
It is incorrect to hold either to a view that affirms that Spirit baptism is a
post-conversion blessing for today that bestows special powers, or to the
doctrine that “the Holy Spirit, on the condition of faith, baptizes a man into
Christ and joins him permanently and eternally to Him, [so that Spirit baptism
makes] a man ‘in Christ,’ in union with both the person and the work of Christ
. . . [a teaching allegedly] clearly set forth in the sixth chapter of Romans.”[8] Scripture nowhere, and certainly not in the
sixth chapter of Romans, teaches that “every Christian . . . has been baptized
by the Spirit.”[9] Nor does God’s Word teach that the “full
blessing of Pentecost is the inheritance of all the children of God,”[10]
as all the children of God today are not wonder-working apostles with the
miraculous ability to speak in foreign languages, the spiritual gift of healing,
and other supernatural powers that ceased early in Christian history—a fact
that is itself denied by the strongly dominant Keswick continuationism or
anti-cessationism in the matter of spiritual gifts.[11] Furthermore, if Keswick “distinguishes
between being ‘full’ and being ‘filled’” with the Spirit, so that the latter
refers to a “filling, or momentary supply . . . as special difficulties arise,”[12]
such a distinction is difficult to reconcile with the fact that the command in
Ephesians 5:18 is to be filled, not to be full, of the Spirit.[13] Furthermore, while the Spirit does fill
believers to empower them for specific tasks (Acts 4:31), when the Keswick
theology employs Acts 5:32[14]
to make a point about being “endue[d] with the divine power”[15]
to serve the Lord, or as a proof-text for recommended means of believers
becoming Spirit-filled, it misinterprets Scripture. In Acts 5:32, Peter teaches that God gives the
Holy Spirit to believers,[16]
while God does not give the Holy Spirit to those, such as the council of
Pharisees and Sadducees that the Apostle was addressing, who reject Jesus
Christ, disobeying the command of God to receive Him as the risen Lord and
Savior (Acts 5:28-33, 38-42). Consequently,
every Christian on earth has the Spirit in the sense mentioned in Acts
5:32. What is more, the obedience
mentioned in Acts 5:32 is a result of the receipt of the Spirit at the moment
of regeneration, not a means to obtain spiritual power.[17] The Christian should consequently recognize
that the power of God the Holy Ghost is essential for his effective
sanctification and service, but reject the unbiblical aspects of the Keswick
pneumatology.
Salvation, Barabas.
Great Salvation, Barabas.
Salvation, Barabas.
when he stated that for “multitudes of Christians the Holy Spirit is an
impersonal divine influence” (pg. 130, So
Great Salvation; cf. pg. 137, Forward
Movements, Pierson), such a declaration is careless, as one who truly
denies the Trinity to affirm that the Holy Spirit is simply an impersonal
influence is an idolator, not a Christian.
However, it is not clear that Barabas is simply employing hyperbole in
his denial of the necessity of faith in the Trinity since his anti-Trinitarian
affirmation has clear precedent among Keswick leaders. Hannah W. Smith did not (she thought) need
the Triune God of the Bible; a mystic, non-Trinitarian “bare God” was enough for
her. Keswick leaders such as F. B. Meyer
taught that all believers in the Old Testament thought that the Holy Spirit was
not a Person, but a force, and denied that a saving conversion involves belief
in the Trinity. If Barabas meant what he
said, he was true to much of Keswick piety, although a traitor to the
Trinitarianism confessed in Christian baptism (Matthew 28:19).
the chapters in this composition on Spirit filling and Spirit baptism.
Salvation, Barabas. Barabas, on this
page, does not actually concede that even isolated statements from Keswick
speakers and books do in fact outrun Scripture, but only that they seem to do
so. If not even an isolated statement
from any Keswick speaker or writer, for decade after decade, outran Scripture,
the conference truly would be remarkable, as it would differ from every other
conference of similar length held by fallen men that has ever existed in
history. H. C. G. Moule, while very favorable
to the Keswick theology, is more admirably honest than Barabas: “I venture to think that some new statements
made [at Keswick], particularly at first, in the course of the movement we have
here before us, failed in either scriptural accuracy or scriptural balance. . .
. There is no such thing on earth as a vast assembly where, in the utterances
of day after day, no mistake is made, no sin of excess or defect in speech
committed” (pgs. xi, xiii, preface by Moule in Harford, Memoir of T. D. Harford-Battersby).
Similarly, Harford-Battersby noted:
“I am not going to deny, indeed I am sadly conscious of the fact, that
certain elements of error have been imported into the movement . . . by some
less cautious speakers and writers, which, if not eliminated . . . might prove
of considerable danger to the minds of those who receive them” (pgs. 173-174, Memoir of T. D. Harford-Battersby,
Harford). Thus, “there were elements of
danger connected with Mr. Smith’s presentation of truth” (pg. 174, Ibid).
Evan Hopkins likewise believed that at early Keswick conventions and
other Higher Life meetings “things had been said . . . which did lack balance
and had a dangerous drift . . . things were certainly said there . . . which
were not balanced, and which only disturbed my mind and soul” (pgs. 11, 13, Evan Harry Hopkins: A Memoir, Alexander Smellie). Barabas would have done well to acknowledge
such concessions by the founders and pillars of the Keswick theology.
Completed Historical Event. An Exposition and Defense of the Historic Baptist
View of Spirit Baptism.” The fact that
Luke 11:13 does not teach the Keswick doctrine that “Christians [should] ask
for the Holy Spirit” (pg. 140, So Great
Salvation, Barabas) is also examined there.
The Keswick view of Luke 11:13 was also taught at the Broadlands
Conference (e. g., pg. 265, The Life that is Life Indeed: Reminiscences of the Broadlands Conferences,
Edna V. Jackson. London: James Nisbet & Co, 1910). What is more, Keswick writers like Andrew Murray even
taught that the unconverted could be saved by asking for the Holy Spirit (cf. pg. 14, Why Do You Not Believe?: Words of Instruction and Encouragement for All
Who Are Seeking the Lord, Murray).
Such an idea is totally contrary to Scripture’s consistent teaching of
justification by faith in Christ alone, not by prayer, and the direct object of
saving faith as Christ crucified (cf. John 3:14-18), not specifically the
Person of the Spirit. Of course, it is
also true that faith in Christ really involves faith in the Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit (cf. John 5:24).
Great Salvation, Barabas.
Salvation, Barabas.
Salvation, Barabas. Barabas follows
Andrew Murray in the quoted affirmation.
Murray, since he believed that all the gifts, from healing to tongues,
were for the entire church age, could, with the modern charismatic movement,
consistently make this affirmation.
Modern non-charismatics who seek to combine cessationism with Keswick
theology cannot do so, and nobody should do so, since the Bible teaches that
the sign gifts have ceased.
Salvation, Barabas.
specifically defined if it is to be employed of the terms in the book of
Acts. Careful consistency in terminology
is not employed by Barabas himself, as he quotes Evan Hopkins’s affirmation for
a filling/full distinction on pg. 133, and then on pg. 134 quotes G. Campbell
Morgan making a different distinction between a “perpetual filling [not
perpetual fulness] of the Spirit” and “specific fillings to overflowing.”
referenced by Barabas from pgs. 134-145, the section where he sets forth the
Keswick position on how to become Spirit-filled. It is unfortunate that the only verse cited
has nothing to do with the question, other than the fact that one cannot be
Spirit filled until he has been converted, a fact which is not at all the point
made by Barabas in his use of the text.
Salvation, Barabas.
Corinthians 1:22; Galatians 4:6; 1 John 3:24.
Compare also the uses of di÷dwmi in Acts 5:31 & 11:18.
is, in Acts 5:32 God gave (aorist) the gift of the Spirit (to Pneuvma . . . to
›Agion, o§ e¶dwken oJ Qeoß) to those who
are now obeying Him (present participle, toi√ß peiqarcouvsin aujtwˆ◊). The verse
does not affirm that God will give the Spirit to those who will obey, or that
the Holy Spirit was given to those who had gone through some process of
obedience or certain steps set forth in Keswick theology in order to obtain
Him, but that He was given through the new birth to those who are now obeying
Him—a description of all regenerate people.
An Analysis and Review of Kevin Bauder’s “Landmarkism”, pt. 4
Part One, Part Two, Part Three
Kevin Bauder sees a “universal church” in Matthew 16:18. Then he argues for the universal church from 1 Corinthians 12:13. When you examine every other usage of ekklesia by Jesus other than Matthew 16:18, it is obviously an assembly and local only. The burden of Bauder and those like him is to show that Matthew 16:18 is different than all the other usages of the word by Jesus. It is also the first appearance of ekklesia in scripture. Jesus doesn’t distinguish it as a different meaning than how it is used previously in history, that is, how people would have understood it in that day. Ekklesia has meant, “assembly,” and there is no reason to think it means something different. What I’m describing are hermeneutical principles that describe “plain meaning.”
Since ekklesia is a singular noun in Matthew 16:18, it could only be a particular ekklesia or a generic usage of ekklesia. There are several good reasons that Jesus is speaking of His church in a generic way, or what I sometimes label “an institutional sense.” By “my church,” He was distinguishing from other congregations. Israel was an ekklesia (Acts 7:38) and then there was the governing institution of the Greek city state, the ekklesia, the town meeting. Jesus had His governing institution for which He gave His authority, the keys of the kingdom.
1 Corinthians 12:13
I (and Thomas Ross) have written a lot about 1 Corinthians 12:13 here and other places (Me: here, here, here, here, here, here; Thomas Ross: here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here), which would be good to examine, rather than reinventing the wheel. Bauder uses 1 Corinthians 12:13 as the clinching text for the universal church. Here’s the verse:
For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit.
By One Spirit
He treats the identity of “Spirit” as crucial in the interpretation. Thomas Ross and I take the same position on 1 Corinthians 12:13, and yet we know that different authors with the same position identify “Spirit” in different ways. I don’t mind the “Spirit” definition, not seeing it is a crucial to the local only position. Thomas Ross says that “Spirit” is “Holy Spirit” and I have said that I prefer “spirit of unity” for pneuma. We had a tract in our tract rack for years by Forrest Keener on 1 Corinthians 12:13, taking the identical position as Thomas and I, also believing that “Spirit” (pneuma) is the Holy Spirit. Bauder makes the same argument for “Holy Spirit” as Thomas does. What I’m writing now is that we don’t believe that the identity of pneuma is the deciding factor on the meaning of the verse.
Bauder doesn’t even deal with the major argument for reading “spirit of unity.” If he wanted to debunk that, he should at least treat the primary reason for thinking pneuma is spirit of unity. The identical phrase en heni pneumati, translated “by one Spirit” in 1 Corinthians 12:13, is translated “in one spirit” in Philippians 1:27 by the King James translators, and means “spirit of unity.” The New King James and the New American Standard both understand Philippians 1:27 the same way. The end of Philippians 1 and 1 Corinthians 12:13 are similar contexts. Both speak in the context of unity. Bauder shouldn’t write or act amazed, when there is an identical wording and context that translates it as “spirit of unity.” Even though “Spirit,” as in “Holy Spirit,” is common in 1 Corinthians 12, there is only one usage of en heni pneumati, and it is a usage similar to how it is understood in Philippians 1:27.
Another argument for “in one spirit” that I see is the regular usage of the Greek preposition, en. The normal understanding is “in,” not “by.” “By” isn’t a wrong translation. The same translation is found in 1 Corinthians 12:3, which is a good argument for that. A. W. Pink takes the same view on “in one spirit.”
We
Bauder says that “we all” cannot be the church at Corinth because it includes Paul. When Paul writes “we,” he is including at least himself, so I agree that “body” in 1 Corinthians 12:13 cannot be only the church at Corinth. However, a conclusion does not follow, like Bauder makes, that “we” refers to all believers, just because Paul includes himself.
One Body
Bauder writes (p. 207),
The question is whether a single local church can account for the language that Paul used in this verse. If “we all” includes Paul (let alone all believers everywhere), the one body cannot possibly refer to the church at Corinth.
This is a situation where Bauder argues a straw man. No local-only advocate I know or have ever read says that “one body” is identical to the church at Corinth in 1 Corinthians 12:13 and for the very reason that Bauder asserts. I and they agree. However, one cannot then conclude like Bauder concludes (pp. 207-208) :
Because he (Paul) included himself in the one body, Paul forced his readers to understand that the body transcends the individual church at Corinth. . . . Paul’s teaching in 1 Corinthians 12:13 definitely indicates, first, that a universal Body of Christ exists; second, that this body includes all believers and not just members of the particular congregation; and third, that this baptism is constituted by baptism in or by the Holy Spirit.
If Bauder is going to debunk local only ecclesiology, then first, he needs a more thorough dealing with 1 Corinthians 12:13, and, second, he needs to deal with the belief or position of local-only ecclesiology on 1 Corinthians 12:13. He does neither.
Bauder does not establish what “one body” is and why. Is one numeric one or one in unity? Writing to the church at Rome, the Apostle Paul writes in Romans 15:6
That ye may with one mind and one mouth glorify God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
This is an instance where “one” is a “one in unity.” Paul is not expecting one big mind or a universal mind, but unified minds. “One body” is a unified body. The previous verse, 1 Corinthians 12:12, should cue one into Paul’s meaning:
For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ.
Paul is talking about a physical body and he says that it is “one.” He’s using the physical body as a metaphor for the church. “One” stands for unity and “many members” stands for diversity. In a physical body, there is unity, the body is one, and diversity, it has many members or body parts. The point isn’t that there is only one body on all the earth, when it says “one body.” In the same way, the very next verse is not saying there is one numeric body. No.
Bodies are local. The church is local. The body of Christ is local. It’s not universal. Body works the opposite of universal. The members are in one place. That’s how they unify and work together. The body isn’t universal. That is seen as you work your way down through the chapter, never more apparent than in verse 27:
Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular.
Paul defines the body of Christ by saying, “ye are the body of Christ.” A particular church is the body of Christ. I repeat, the body of Christ. The body is defined here. A church can’t be the body and then something else the body. There is no unequivocal place in the Bible that says the body of Christ is all believers. You don’t see it anywhere. However, we do know an individual church is the body of Christ.
With 1 Corinthians 12:27 saying, “ye are the body of Christ,” how then does the “we” of 1 Corinthians 12:13 work? It isn’t hard to figure out. It isn’t meant to be hard. Paul includes himself because he too was baptized into one body. He doesn’t exclude himself from being baptized. He was baptized. Consider 1 Timothy 3:12:
Let the deacons be the husbands of one wife, ruling their children and their own houses well.
I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance: but he that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire.
It is baptism in or by the Holy Spirit, an it is of such a nature that it places individuals into a single body that includes believers from multiple local churches.
An Analysis and Review of Kevin Bauder’s “Landmarkism”
Someone gave me a copy of two books by Kevin Bauder, his Baptist Distinctives and New Testament Church Order, and One in Hope and Doctrine: Origins of Baptist Fundamentalism, 1870-1950, the latter co-written by Robert Delnay. Despite our differences and perhaps even his protests, Kevin Bauder and I have a lot in common, I think more in common by far than we have different. If he ever visited our church, I believe he might even say he has more in common with our church than almost all evangelicals and most fundamentalists. I sympathize with his defense of fundamentalism, even though I disagree. I appreciate his desire to elucidate and defend Baptist distinctives. Above all, I appreciate his desire to encourage conservative churches. Even though I greatly object to his position on the preservation of scripture and the Bible version issue, his chapters on the subject are the most respectful writing I have read from the other side. Bauder is obviously the clearest and best position of the four in The Spectrum of Evangelicalism.
Despite my penchant for Kevin Bauder, I found motivation to write a blog series in order to criticize one chapter in his book on Baptist distinctives — “Landmarkism” (pp. 198-220). It interested me that he found that subject worthy of a chapter, providing enough of a motivation for him to repudiate. It is not one of his better pieces of writing. I am going to spend a good amount of time over upcoming weeks analyzing the chapter, because I think it provides a teaching moment for readers here. Much of what he denounces is actually biblical teaching. He also errs in his representation of those who believe what he misrepresents.
What Bauder labels “landmarkism” is a name given to a very particular ecclesiological and historical position, which was then called “landmarkism.” When an author discounts what he disbelieves, he should document his representation of it. He should offer quotes straight from the pen or mouth of the advocate along with footnotes or endnotes. In other words, he should deal with what people actually have said. Bauder doesn’t do that with his chapter. As a result, I am saying that he portrays and then knocks down a strawman of what he calls, landmarkism.
As his first sentence (p. 198), Bauder writes:
THE LANDMARK BAPTIST (capitals his) movement began in the American South during the mid-nineteenth century.
The effect of such a statement is that everything following, which Bauder lumps in with landmarkism, began in the mid-nineteenth century, which is false. Some of what James Robinson Graves taught did originate with him at that time, never seen before in church history. The same criticism could be made, however, of dispensationalism, so would require some nuance in explanation for an accurate representation. For instance, did J.M. and B.H. Carroll take the identical teaching as Graves that says that the kingdom is or synonymous with the church? They didn’t. Graves defined landmarkism and he included that peculiarity in his definition. Some aspects of landmarkism are unique to Graves himself as a teacher.
Bauder presents without proof a view of Baptist history. He suggests a stream of Baptist history, which he says are the “regular (historic) Baptists,” interrupted by Landmarkers, who emerge from and interrupt that stream. I submit a conflicting position to his, that his “regular Baptists” emerge and interrupt and “pose problems” for true Baptists. It’s true that both of us can’t be right. He, however, does not prove the history of his position — just asserts.
Before Bauder begins dealing with “the distinctive teachings of Landmark Baptists,” he writes:
To those who have never been exposed to Landmark Baptists, some of these teachings may seem to border on the bizarre. This strangeness may lead one to think of Landmarkism as a cult.
For poisoning the well, “bizzare” and “cult” function nicely. I see the exact opposite, that is, the bizarreness of what Bauder calls “regular,” which I will later demonstrate in this analysis of his presentation. I wouldn’t express kingdom teaching like Graves does. However, I have no problem with someone saying he believes that Christ’s churches are His kingdom on earth in the age in which we live. I could explain that and prove it from scripture. Graves goes beyond a scriptural comfort level for me, but I share his seriousness about the place of the Lord’s church on earth in this age, which contrasts with whom I consider “Protestant Baptists.”
A lot of the modern perversion of the gospel corresponds to the lack of connection between the church and the kingdom. Many problems in churches arise from not seeing the authority by which Jesus operates as King through the church. Many have never received Him as King and still see themselves as Christians. This lack of King and kingdom preaching has resulted in many unconverted in professing Baptist churches. Jesus gave all authority to His church (Matthew 16:18, 28:18-20, Rev 1:19-2:1, Titus 2:15), but churches don’t act like it because they are so, so careful to separate the church from the kingdom.
Bauder’s first problem with landmarkists is their definition of or understanding of the nature of the word church. He spends some time explaining its denial of a universal, invisible church (p. 199). He does fine. When I read material like Bauder writes, I read language that I would not use, so I don’t think it represents me. He often uses the terminology “local churches” and “local church.” That is “regular” for him, but it is peculiar for me. You don’t read “local church” in the Bible. Why do you think that is? It’s because there is only one church in the Bible and it is local. The Greek word translated, “church,” is ekklesia, and it means, “assembly.” Assembly is always local. It would be redundant and peculiar to say “local assembly.” It shouldn’t be normal for Baptists to say, “local church,” because it isn’t biblical. It’s normal for Bauder, because he doesn’t take his ecclesiology from scripture. He reads it into scripture.
Bauder says (p. 199) that “dispensationalists begin the church at the Day of Pentecost, while Landmarkers believe that it began with the ministry of John the Baptist.” I’m a dispensationalist too and I believe it began with the ministry of John the Baptist. The Bible teaches that the church existed before Pentecost. That is an exegetical position. Immersed believers were added to the church at Pentecost, which implies the church already existed. We also know that Jesus sang in the church (Hebrews 2:12). John Gill wrote concerning this verse:
This is to be understood . . . of the church below; and not of the synagogue of the Jews, but of the disciples of Christ, and of his singing an hymn to God, with and among them, as he did at the institution of the supper, ( Matthew 26:30 ) for though the number of the apostles was but small, yet they made a congregation or church, and which was a pure and glorious one.
Jesus teaches church discipline in Matthew 18:18-20, speaking as if the church already exists. There is no exegetical basis to say that the church began at Pentecost.
Bauder explains that the pre-Pentecost timing for the founding of the church blossoms from the landmark fusion of the church and the kingdom. As I said above, not all landmarkers believed that true churches comprise the kingdom since the days of John the Baptist. This is peculiar to a unique ecclesiology, perhaps beginning with Graves, but not homogeneous to those with a local only ecclesiology. I have been local only my entire adult life and I didn’t see that position ever until I read it in Graves very recently. I would wonder, however, how Graves’s kingdom position might be peculiar to Bauder, while Mark Devers’s amillennialism isn’t for a Baptist.
Everyone should take a biblical view of baptism. If the biblical position is landmark, then take a landmark position. Bauder writes (pp. 199-200) as if there is a conspiracy among these landmarkers to keep Baptist churches as the only true churches. To do that, he says that they make baptism the differentiating factor for being a church. To the landmarkers, those without true baptism (Catholics, etc.) are not churches. He explains that landmarkers expect “proper mode, meaning, subject, and administrator.” I hadn’t heard “meaning” ever as a criteria. However, Bauder says that historic Baptists (those he’s been with) don’t agree on administrator. He sets up a strawman to dispute this.
“The Landmark theory,” Bauder writes, “requires an unbroken chain of baptisms from the days of John the Baptist down to the present day.” This is where landmarkers get their designation, “chain-linkers.” I was local only in my ecclesiology in high school. I heard sermons in my local-only college (Maranatha Baptist Bible College at the time) that said that landmarkers were chain-linkers, which was a reason why we weren’t landmarkers. Since then, I’ve never met a chain-linker. Graves himself was not a chain-linker. In the preface of his book, Old Landmarkism, Graves writes (p. xiii):
Others have been influenced to believe. . . . that we hold baptism is. . . . ineffectual unless we can prove the unbroken connection of the administrator with some apostle; and. . . any flaw. . . in the line of succession, however remote, invalidates all his baptisms.
Graves debunks that gross mischaracterization that continues to spread from such as those like Bauder. He at least must deal with what Graves wrote in the very book that is supposed to be teaching his doctrine.
Despite the error by Bauder, he is somewhat in the ballpark (maybe the parking lot) on representing people like me on the subject of baptism. I am one of these guys he is misrepresenting, and I know that I believe that baptism must be performed by the proper administrator. Someone can’t go jump in a pool and call it baptism. Two people out swimming can’t immerse each other and call it baptism, even if they say it “means the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ.” God gave John the Baptist authority to baptize (Mt 21:25, Mk 11:30, Lk 20:4). Jesus traveled 80 miles to be baptized by John. I don’t believe Roman Catholics are true churches and since Protestants came out of Roman Catholicism, I deny their authority to baptize too. This is a matter of faith. We should do the best we can with authority by faith. It’s not a chain link, but a matter of obedience. I’m not taking my position as a way to find some path to calling others not true churches.
Bauder might rankle some Presbyterian friends and people very chummy with other Protestants by reporting a particular teaching of landmarkism, but proper administrator is just Bible teaching. Calling non-authoritative baptism, “alien immersion,” a term I have never used in my life, proceeds from a biblical belief in proper administrator. I inform him, although he probably already knows, that guys like me also reject Roger Williams as a Baptist because of this. We say John Clarke was the first Baptist in America. I call this, “just being serious about what the Bible teaches.” We should be regulated by what scriptural precept and example. This is what we see in the New Testament. We should be fine with calling something that isn’t biblical baptism, not baptism.
(More to Come)
Keswick’s Corrupt Gospel: in Keswick’s Errors–an Analysis and Critique of So Great Salvation by Stephen Barabas, part 7 of 17
the error of the Broadlands Conference[1]
and its successors[2]
that Christians can be justified but unsanctified[3]
if they do not enter into the secret of the Higher Life. The related Keswick weakness, likewise
adopted from Broadlands,[4]
on saving repentance[5]
and surrender to the Lordship of Christ at the point of the new birth and the
necessity of a conscious and clear conversion[6]
is another fearful error. Keswick’s related
idea that Christians can be brought into bondage to sin in the same way that
unsaved people are under the dominion of sin[7]
is similarly erroneous and very dangerous. God swears in the New Covenant: “I will put my laws into their mind, and
write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to
me a people” (Hebrews 8:10). Scripture
promises the saints: “[S]in shall not
have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace” (Romans
6:14). Indeed, this blessed promise undergirds
the command to the believer to yield to God (6:13). Thus, when Keswick affirms that “such sins as
. . . falsehood, theft, corrupt speech, bitterness, wrath, anger, clamour,
railing, [and] malice[,] may gain such dominion over [believers] that [they]
forfeit [their] freedom, and . . . become like a second nature”[8]
it is clearly in error. Indeed, based on
Romans 6:13-14, such Keswick teaching hinders believers from yielding to God by
taking away from them the precious promise that sin will not dominate
them. Keswick follows Robert P. Smith
and the Oxford Convention[9]
in teaching that Christians “are to be freed from the dominion of sin,”[10]
but Scripture states that Christians are
freed from the dominion of sin (Romans 6:14).
The Christian’s freedom from sin is actual, not merely potential.[11] It is a blessed fact that Keswick is in error
when it declares that “a Christian . . . [can] become an entire worldling.”[12] The power of the Son is greater than what is
stated in Keswick theology: “If the Son
therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed” (John 8:36).[13] There are no exceptions—Hallelujah!
fails to warn strongly about the possibility of professing believers not truly
being regenerate, although this is a clearly Biblical theme (Matthew 7:21-23; 2
Corinthians 13:5; Hebrews 12:15). It
adopted its unscriptural practice because Hannah and Robert P. Smith rejected self-examination,
following Madame Guyon and other reprobates.
Their rejection of self-examination passed from Broadlands[14]
through the Oxford and Brighton Conventions into Keswick.[15]
Keswick also adopts a dangerous teaching when, following Robert and Hannah W.
Smith,[16]
it states, without any explanation or qualification,[17]
that “some are regenerated without knowing when.”[18] What is more, its unbiblical concept that
believers can be justified but not sanctified, coupled with its rejection of
separatism and its stand with broad Protestantism, rather than with Biblical
Baptist churches composed of visible saints, leads Keswick to make statements
such as the following:
not advancing in holiness at all . . . [is] widely prevalent . . . [or] almost
universal[.] . . . The vast majority of Christians . . . [are] apparently . . .
making no advance or increase at all . . . [but live in] defeat and failure . .
. full of futile wanderings, never enjoying peace and rest . . . their own
spiritual condition absolutely unsatisfactory . . . stop[ping] short in their
experience of the blessings of salvation with the . . . forgiveness of past
sins and with the hope of Heaven.[19]
of Christians” never grow but live in an “absolutely unsatisfactory” spiritual
condition is a very dangerous misdiagnosis of the spiritual need of the
generality of Protestant church members, who are lost and who need to be truly
converted and then to separate from their false religious denominations and be
baptized into historic Baptist congregations.[20] Such people need spiritual life, not Higher
Life preaching. Backslidden saints are
certainly a serious problem, which should not be minimized. However, neither should the Biblical fact
that all believers will be different or the possibility of false profession be
neglected. Keswick’s setting aside of
Biblical self-examination, its teaching that the vast majority of Christians
make no advance in spiritual life at all, and its many other weaknesses on the
nature and power of the gospel, are extremely spiritually dangerous. Many are in hell today because of these toxic
Keswick errors.
g., at Broadlands people who were allegedly already true Christians came to a
post-conversion point where “they took Christ to be their Saviour, not only
from the guilt but [also] from the power and practice of sin” (pg. 125, Memorials [of William Francis Cowper-Temple, Baron Mount-Temple], Georgina Cowper-Temple. London:
Printed for private circulation, 1890).
Broadlands affirmed that one could
be spiritually alive and yet manifest no outward evidences of it whatsoever
(pg. 249, Ibid.). Then again, since as a Quaker universalist
Mrs. H. P. Smith believed that every man on earth has spiritual life because of
the Divine Seed in him, yet it is painfully obvious that the vast majority of
men do not live holy lives, the effete impotence of the Broadlands and Keswick
view of spiritual life is very easily explicable.
in this, that the speakers had not for a greater or less period after their
conversion experimentally known the secret of victory, and that consequently
for a longer or shorter time their Christian lives had been full of failure and
defeat; but that at last they had been taught either directly by the Spirit
through the Scriptures, or through the testimony of others—that the Lord Jesus
Christ was able and willing to deliver them, not only from the guilt of their
sins, but also from their power [for He had not delivered them from the power
of sin at their conversion]; . . . [t]he convincing nature of these
testimonies, and the Scriptural teaching that was brought forward, seemed to
carry the truth home to many hearts[.] (pgs. 290-291, Account of the Union Meeting for the Promotion
of Scriptural Holiness, Held at Oxford, August 29 to September 7, 1874.
Chicago: Revell, 1874)
Sanctification in Contemporary Evangelical Theology,” by William W. Combs (Detroit Baptist Seminary Journal 6 (Fall
2001) 17-44), provides a useful overview of the historical development of the
concept that justification and sanctification may be divided and offers a
critique of this erroneous and dangerous theological affirmation.
e. g., “Lord Mount-Temple was not only a believer but a disciple” (pg. 44, The Life that is Life Indeed: Reminiscences of the Broadlands Conferences,
Edna V. Jackson. London: James Nisbet & Co, 1910), for one could
be the former without being the latter.
A Broadlands evangelistic appeal could be, not to repentance and faith
in the finished work of the crucified and risen Christ, but to “Come to God . .
. for the forgiveness of sins, which all might have, who really desired and
asked for it” (pg. 224, The Life that is
Life Indeed: Reminiscences of the
Broadlands Conferences, Edna V. Jackson.
London: James Nisbet & Co,
1910). If, in Broadlands teaching, men
are lost at all—and such is very, very far from clear, so that an eternal hell,
for example, is not to be mentioned—salvation allegedly comes by asking, rather
than, as in the Bible, by the instrumentality of repentant faith alone, whether
one asks or not.
Keswick weakness on repentance carries over to modern advocates of classic
Keswick theology. For example, modern
Keswick evangelist John R. Van Gelderen misdefines the primary verb in the NT
for repentance, metanoeo, as merely “to change one’s mind,” and then argues that to
“make repentance more than this exchange of ways of thinking is to make
repentance something additional to the other side of the theological coin of
faith . . . this violates the usage of Scripture.” Consequently:
“If repent means turning from sins, why did Jesus die?”
(http://revivalfocusblog.com/series/repentance; cf. pgs. 190-200, The Evangelist, the Evangel and Evangelism,
John R. Van Gelderen). Contrast Ezekiel
33:11; Revelation 16:11; 1 Thessalonians 1:9-10, etc.
e. g., at Broadlands three stages in spiritual life were set forth—but not one
of the three was genuine conversion. One
could have spiritual life, “advance to higher life” and ascend the three-fold
spiritual ladder with a conversion that was as clear as the mudpit of a
sinner’s unregenerate life, or without any conversion and regeneration at all
(pgs. 191-193, The Life that is Life
Indeed: Reminiscences of the Broadlands
Conferences, Edna V. Jackson.
London: James Nisbet & Co,
1910). After all, as the Quakers taught,
the supernatural impartation of a new nature in regeneration and conversion
were unnecessary—all men have the Divine Seed, and they thus do not need and
ought not to be evangelically converted.
conversion with mental assent to the doctrine of justification by faith alone,
and both she and her husband, the theological sources of the Keswick theology,
were unconverted, it is not surprising that Keswick downplays the power and
certainty of the change associated with true conversion. The influence on Keswick of Anglicanism, a
denomination teeming with religious but unconverted people, and of Quakerism,
which denied the necessity of conversion at all, also make it easy to
understand how the weakness of the Keswick doctrine of regeneration and
conversion developed. The demons called
up by Lord and Lady Mount Temple at Broadlands would also have offered mighty
supernatural assistance in perverting of the gospel (cf. Matthew 13:19).
Great Salvation, Barabas.
Held at Oxford, August 29 to September 7, 1874.
Chicago: Revell, 1874, Robert P. Smith
teaches that Christians are under the dominion of sin until they “accept the
glorious emancipation” offered in the Higher Life, an affirmation he supports
by forcing Romans 6:14 to mean exactly the opposite of what it actually
states. The “saint . . . having been
freed from the guilt of sin,” is then to “com[e] to Christ to be freed from its
power” (pg. 43, Ibid).
Great Salvation, Barabas. Compare the
misrepresentation by William Boardman: “The
bulk of professing Christians . . . [are] indifferent, or opposed to the
glorious truth that Jesus can deliver from the dominion of sin,” but the
minority who enter the Higher Life discover that “sin had no longer dominion
over them” (pgs. 58, 141, Life and
Labours of the Rev. W. E. Boardman, Mrs. Boardman).
Paul’s teaching in Romans 6, there is at the same time shortcoming in the interpretation
and application of this passage and of others of like import. The freedom from the dominion of sin of which
Paul speaks is the actual possession
of every one who is united to Christ. It
is not merely positional victory
which every believer has secured (cf. pp. 84ff. [in Barabas]). When Paul says in Romans 6:14, “Sin shall not
have dominion over you,” he is making an affirmation of certainty with respect
to every person who is under the reigning power of grace and therefore with
respect to every one who is united to Christ. . . . This victory . . . is the
once-for-all gift of God’s grace in uniting us to Christ in the virtue of his
death and resurrection. But it is not
simply positional, far less is it potential; it is actual. And because it is actual it is experimental.
. . . It is true that there are differing degrees in which the implications of
this freedom from the dominion of sin are realized in experience. In other words, there are differing degrees
in which the “reckoning” to which Paul exhorts in Romans 6 is applied and
brought to expression in the life and experience of believers. But the victory over sin is not secured by
the “reckoning”; it is secured by virtue of union with Christ [at the time of]
. . . initial faith . . . and is therefore the possession of every believer,
however tardy may be his advance in the path of progressive
sanctification. Reckoning ourselves to
be dead indeed unto sin but alive unto God is not the act of faith whereby
victory is achieved; this reckoning is the reflex act and presupposes the
deliverance of which Paul speaks in Romans 6:14. If we fail to take account of this basic and
decisive breach with sin, specifically with the rule and power of sin, which
occurs when a person is united to Christ in the initial saving response to the
gospel, it is an impoverished and distorted view of salvation in Christ that we
entertain and our doctrine of sanctification is correspondingly impaired. (pgs.
284-285, Collected Writings of John
Murray, Vol. 4, reviewing So Great
Salvation, Barabas)
Great Salvation, Barabas.
kinds of Christians . . . depending upon whether the flesh or the Spirit is in
control in their lives” (pg. 54, So Great
Salvation, Barabas) is also liable to abuse. Certainly some Christians are right with God
and walking in sweet and conscious fellowship with Him, while others are
backslidden. To affirm, however, that an
underclass of Christian exists in whom “sin and failure are still master” and
for whom “it is impossible to receive spiritual truth” (pg. 54) is simply
false. Those who cannot know spiritual
truth are the unregenerate, not an alleged Christian underclass (1 Corinthians
2:14). Furthermore, one wonders how any
backslider could ever be reclaimed, if for believers who have fallen into sin,
it is “impossible” to receive spiritual truth.
Nor does 1 Corinthians 3:1ff. establish that sin is still the master in
some Christians—it simply affirms that Corinthian believers were allowing
sinful envying and divisiveness in their ranks.
Paul could tell the very same assembly that they had been freed from the
dominion of sin and been changed by God a few chapters later in the same letter
(1 Corinthians 6:9-11). First
Corinthians 3:1ff. does not by any means establish that sin is still the master
of some of the regenerate, or that it is impossible for some true believers to
receive spiritual truth. The idea of a
distinct class of Christian, “the ‘carnal’ Christian [who] is . . . characterized by a walk that is on the same plane as that
of the ‘natural’ man . . . [whose] objectives and affections are centered in
the same unspiritual sphere as that of the ‘natural’ man” (pgs. 10-12, He That is Spiritual, Lewis Sperry
Chafer, rev. ed.), that is, a class of “Christian” that is just like the
unregenerate, is a fiction not taught in 1 Corinthians 3 or in any other
portion of the Bible.
Broadlands Conference followed Hannah W. Smith to affirm: “Those who love have Him whether they recognize
it or not” (pg. 239, The Life that is
Life Indeed: Reminiscences of the
Broadlands Conferences, Edna V. Jackson.
London: James Nisbet & Co,
1910), so self-examination concerning whether one had consciously been
converted was certainly unnecessary.
self-reflective acts’” (pg. 107, Account
of the Union Meeting for the Promotion of Scriptural Holiness, Held at Oxford,
August 29 to September 7, 1874. Chicago: Revell, 1874).
Robert P. Smith stated: “Let us
have no retrospective acts,” since when “we have given up ourselves to a life
of full consecration and faith, we need not now be analysing our experience”
(pgs. 275, 323, Ibid), an error that
helped both Mr. and Mrs. Smith remain without true conversion and which allowed
them to adopt and spread the erotic Bridal Baptism heresy.
of their conversion” while setting forth his doctrine of post-conversion Spirit
baptism (pg. 251, Account
of the Union Meeting for the Promotion of Scriptural Holiness, Held at Oxford,
August 29 to September 7, 1874. Chicago: Revell, 1874), and testimonies of those who
received “the baptism of the Holy Spirit” through “Mr. Smith’s address” but
“cannot remember . . . [their] conversion” were considered valuable enough
witness to the truth of his doctrine to be printed and publicly distributed in
the standard record of the Oxford Convention (pg. 384, Account of the Union Meeting for the Promotion
of Scriptural Holiness, Held at Oxford, August 29 to September 7, 1874.
Chicago: Revell, 1874). William Boardman likewise downplayed the
importance of knowing the time of one’s conversion; see pg. 149, Life and Labours of the Rev. W. E. Boardman,
Mrs. Boardman.
head injury and loses his memory, including that of his conversion experience,
is still saved. Under other limited sets
of circumstances it is possible that a genuine convert might not know when he
was born again. For example, a person
might, with his whole heart, recognize his lost condition and come to Jesus
Christ in repentant faith, but later conclude that he was not really converted,
believe he was lost, and therefore seek to repent and believe again to receive
pardon. Such a one might be unsure,
looking back, on which occasion he really was saved. However, in light of the conscious workings
of the mind and will associated with repentance and faith, and the radical transformation
involved in regeneration, one who has been born again will almost certainly
know when this change took place. It is
most unusual that one could repent, be given a new heart and a new nature, pass
from being God’s enemy to being His dear child, and receive all the other
effects of salvation without knowing about it.
The convert who cannot remember when he came to Christ in repentant
faith and was regenerated should be about as rare as the husband who cannot
remember or say anything about what happened on his wedding day. Likewise, the paedobaptist error, afflicting
many Reformed churches, that allows people to allegedly have salvation “sealed”
to them by infant baptism so that they do not need to know when they were
regenerated but can assume that it happened at some point as long as they live
a moral life, and other common errors that fill the world with unconverted
people who claim they have been regenerated, but do not know when, must be
warned of and cried out against—but Barabas provides no such cautions, instead
simply making the unqualified statement that people can be regenerated and not
know when the new birth and their conversion took place.
Great Salvation, Barabas.
Great Salvation, Barabas.
those Higher Life preachers who denied the necessity of being converted and
regenerated at a particular moment of time and taught instead the extremely
dangerous error of gradual conversion, as was proclaimed, e. g., at the
Brighton Convention: “Some are suddenly
converted, others gradually; and perhaps in each case of conversion there has
been a blending of both gradual and sudden work. There has been a [converting] work going on
gradually, perhaps through years of our life” (pg. 203, Record of the Convention for the Promotion
of Scriptural Holiness Held at Brighton, May 29th to June 7th,
1875. Brighton: W. J. Smith, 1875).
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