Rev J MacLeod
The same Pelagian and Arminian principles are incorporated in the fourth main theory to be considered – the Perfectionism that came to be associated with the Oberlin University in the United States of America, the prom-
1These four main interpretations of the Perfectionist view of sanctification are the Pelagian, the Roman Catholic, the Arminian and the Oberlin. The first three of these were considered in last month’s article.
inent advocates of which were Charles G Finney and Asa Mahan. They, however, claimed that, far from drawing their doctrine from the teaching of others before them, they got it directly from the Bible. “I gave myself earnestly”, said Finney, “to search the Scriptures and to read whatever came to hand upon the subject, until my mind was satisfied that an altogether higher and more stable form of Christian life was attainable, and was a privilege of all Christians. . . . I was satisfied that the doctrine of sanctification in this life, and entire sanctification, in the sense that it was the privilege of Christians to live without known sin, was a doctrine taught in the Bible, and that abundant means were provided for securing that attainment.
The root of this whole system is found in the adoption of the principle that every man, in virtue of being a free agent, has full ability to fulfill all his obligations. Perfection, according to Mahan, “is a free and perfect discharge of our entire duty, of all existing obligations to God and all other beings,” and according to Finney, “Nothing, more or less, can possibly be perfection or entire sanctification than obedience to the law. . . . Nothing can possibly be perfection in any being, short of this; nor can there possibly be anything above it.” According to this school, all virtue consists in disinterested benevolence and nothing is sinful but voluntarily transgression of known law – a voluntary failure to meet obligation. Anything which lies beyond the range of voluntary action is not a matter of immediate obligation and can neither be holiness nor sin. Consequently, when a man’s generic choice or purpose is at any moment to promote the happiness of the universe, he is perfect.
But the law is again a modified law and the service required is regulated by our ability and condition. As God therefore expects from every man, at any given moment, only the best that he can do with his impaired faculties, perfection is simply “doing one’s best”! In other words, perfection is fully present in a surrendered will. This may be regarded as a sinless state because, according to this theory, nothing outside the will is sinful, there being no moral character in feeling, for example, and much less in states of mind not determined by the will. In affinity with the Methodist doctrine, the moral law is considered to have been superseded by the law of faith. The life of faith is now the perfect life and, when perfectly maintained, excludes the presence and power of sin.
Finney and his colleagues insisted that this sanctification is to be obtained by faith alone. Mahan tells us that, on seeking light on this great problem of Christian perfection, he found Christ to be “attainable” and that in Him not merely was justification to be had, but also sanctification, the one being as truly a gift of grace, as exclusively a work of God as the other and to be received from Him by a direct act of faith. This is how he himself claims to
have emerged out of the “twilight” state of the ordinary Christian into the sunlight of the perfect one. The gift of faith which makes perfect is a distinct bestowal of the Holy Spirit, a “second blessing” following the primary gift of faith. When Finney was made aware, as he claimed, of the “great truth” that, being “baptized with the Holy Ghost”, the Christian can be filled with all the “fullness of God”, he sought and obtained this second blessing also, and so, from then on, the doctrine became contagious and widespread as it was preached and taught.
This teaching today2 prevails among those who regard Christian perfection as being reached in this present world. Among them are the Higher Life movement, the Keswick movement and the Victorious Life movement. The Keswick school may be regarded as typical of modern Perfectionism. The perfect Christian, according to them, is one who has attained to “an entire surrender of the will to God, issuing in the power and joy of full concentration to His service”. This state is to be attained, not by long prayers and laborious effort but by “a deliberate and decisive act of faith”. What it amounts to is that sanctification and justification are thought of as two distinct “blessings”, each a gift of grace, each bestowed on condition of faith.
The Oberlin theory, A A Hodge maintained, appears to assimilate more nearly than the others the self-consistency and anti-Christian spirit of the Pelagian view. It is inconsistent with the true nature of God’s law, the true nature of sin, and the true nature of virtue.
Diverse as these theories of perfectionism may be in many respects, yet they all agree, as Charles Hodge pointed out, in teaching that the law of God has been lowered, in so far as its demands are satisfied by a lower degree of obedience than was required of Adam, or of man in his normal state – and therefore in calling that perfection which in fact is not perfection, either in the sight of God or of an enlightened conscience. It is, he says, a contradiction to say that a man is perfect whose acts and shortcomings need expiation and the pardoning mercy of God.
Warfield’s main criticism of Perfectionism lay in the inadequate notion of sin, in that the doctrine ignores the fact that sin consists of any lack of conformity unto the law of God as well as transgression of that law. This accordance with the Reformed tradition, which rejects any kind of earthly absolute perfection – sanctification being, in the words of The Shorter Catechism, “the work of God’s free grace, whereby we are renewed in the whole man after the image of God, and are enabled more and more to die unto sin, and live unto righteousness”.
It is at their death that the souls of believers are made perfect in holiness,
2It should be noted that this paper was written in the 1960s.
when they “immediately pass into glory”. At every stage prior to this it can only be said that “this sanctification is throughout in the whole man, yet imperfect in this life” (Westminster Confession of Faith 13:2). Many declarations of Scripture, such as, “There is not a just man upon earth, that doeth good, and sinneth not”, expressly condemn perfectionist views, as do the experiences of God’s people, as we have them recorded in the Word of God for our admonition and example.
Nowhere in the Scriptures do we read of a saint claiming that he is fully sanctified and free from imperfection. On the contrary, Paul says, “I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing: for to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not. For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do. . . . For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: but I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” The conflict thus described is the one in which all real Christians aspiring after perfection find themselves engaged, and the one out of which they are finally to emerge “more than conquerors” through Him who loved them.