Free agency implies liberty of will. xvi., pp. 1847 (a new edition enlarged and largely rewritten was published in London, 1851; and a condensed form of the London edition was issued by James H. Fairchild in 1878). Sensational Evangelist of Britain and America. In this excellent article, Dr. Mike Horton explains how Charles Finney distorted the important doctrine of salvation. 1 THE THEOLOGICAL METHOD OF CHARLES G. FINNEY by Dan Fabricatore TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION p. 2 I. Charles Grandison Finney was born in Warren, Connecticut, on August 29, 1792. We are saved “by free grace drawing and securing the concurrence of free-will”366—a formula which, so far as the words go, might have a good meaning; but not in the sense which Finney puts on them, for in Finney’s sense “drawing” means just teaching. The Augustinian variety supposes that God, respecting the free will of men, approaches them, just as in the other variety, with “suasive grace” only; but Himself adapts this grace so wisely to the hearts of those whom He has sovereignly selected to save, that they yield freely to its persuasion and are saved. Are we moral beings only when we are acting, but become unmoral and only brutes whenever we are quiescent? “Reply to the ‘Warning Against Error,’ written by the Rev. Fortunately this antinomy, left unresolved in this brief popular tract, is abundantly resolved in Finney’s earlier and more extended writings. 1, i. If the happiness of being is the end to which everything is to give way, it is difficult to see why we should be excluded from our share of it. Finney having endeavored to reduce “Rightarianism” to absurdity Charles Hodge is doubtless justified in retorting with a happier attempt on his part to reduce Finney’s teleological ethics to absurdity.415 He says it belongs to the same mintage with Jesuit “intentionalism”—“the means are justified by the end”—and recommends Pascal’s “Provincial Letters” as a good book to be read at Oberlin. Thus all men become depraved from the very first moment when moral agency begins with them. In all other cases, they are passive emotions, like the involuntary impressions made upon the brain by the bodily senses. iv.–v. The “good” has become the “happiness”—or the “welfare”—of the whole body of sentient beings; and the “right” that which tends to this. Let universal reason answer.” Undoubtedly these are opposing theories; and universal conscience might well be left to decide whether we should will the good because it is right to do so, or will the right because it tends to a good result. We may safely challenge Hurtado de Mendoza, Sanchez, or Molina to beat that.” The illustrations which Hodge employs in this extract are not his, but Finney’s own,396 and they may help to indicate to us the thoroughness with which he cleansed our affectional movements from all moral character. It is all a sanctification of acts. C. G. Finney, developed in his Sermons and Lectures,” in same, March, 1838, pp. They have plenary ability in any case to meet all their obligations, and are fully responsible for their failure to do so. There were those who had it, and did not seem to have profited anything by it. A little more about Charles Finney. He leaves God equally responsible for human depravity, and deprives Him of all justification for attaching it to man. It is to this that Finney reduces Christianity. Self-determination with Finney, means arbitrary self-determination, independent of or in contradiction of the present preference, which is what other people mean by motive. V. Discussions: A. Rand, “The New Divinity Tried, Being an examination of a sermon by the Rev. If he should become a pirate, it would be for exactly the same reason.… Whichever course he takes … with the same degree of light it must involve the same degree of guilt.” By the “selfish man” in these extracts, there is not meant a man unusually selfish: “selfishness” is only the mark in Finney’s nomenclature of the imperfect, as “benevolence” is of the perfect man. The ultimate result is that, representing God as ordering the universe for the one end of the production of the greatest happiness of the greatest number, he finds himself teaching that men are left to perish solely for the enhancement of the happiness of others. 20, 38. Nothing. And Mahan lived to stand by the side of Pearsall Smith at the great Oxford Convention of 1874, and to become with him a factor in the inauguration of the great “Keswick Movement,” which has brought down much of the spirit and many of the forms of teaching of Oberlin Perfectionism to our own day. All Rights Reserved, Joel R Beeke, Dr Michael S Horton, Richard B Gaffin Jr, Greg Gilbert, Comfort in Remembering God's Judgments of Old in the Midst of Trial, An Encouragement to be Valiant in a Time of Persecution and Martyrdom, If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, Rethinking Regeneration (5-Part MP3 Series). And as this ready making for ourselves a new heart, makes us a perfectly holy heart, it is with this ease and despatch that according to Finney’s form of perfectionism we become perfect. What He does, it is affirmed, is effective to the end in the case of those whose salvation He conceives it “wise” to “secure.”350 But so far it is left obscure what the principle is on which the objects of salvation, the salvation of whom He judges it wise to secure, are determined—foresight, or election. “The best system of means for securing the great end of benevolence, included the election of just those who were elected, and no others.… The highest good demanded it.”351 A slightly different turn is given to this statement, when it is said: “The fact, that the wisest and best system of government would secure the salvation of those who are elected, must have been a condition of their being elected.” What is suggested by this is, that the reason, or one of the reasons, why just those who are elected are elected, is that they, and not others, would be saved under the system of government which God had in mind to establish. In 1851, he was appointed president, which gave him a new forum to advocate social reforms he championed, especially abolition of slavery. To act on selfish motives means with him to act on any other motives than the good of being as supreme end. For regeneration “implies an entire present change of moral character, that is, a change from entire sinfulness to entire holiness.”400—a “present entire obedience to God.”401 After this it is only a question of maintenance—of the maintenance of that “radical change of ultimate intention,” that change from a selfish ultimate choice to benevolent ultimate choice, which we may call indifferently repentance,402 or faith,403 or conversion, or regeneration, or sanctification. H. Clay Trumbull, “My Four Religious Teachers,” 1903, pp. “Lectures on Systematic Theology,” i. The rightness of these means is given to them by their inherent relation as means to this supreme ultimate end, to which they are related as its only means. 38–71. He prayed in colloquial, common, and "vulgar" language. “The Reviewer Reviewed, or Finney’s Theology and the Princeton Review,” 1847 (incorporated in the “Lectures on Systematic Theology” of 1851). And the appropriate, the only, instrument for the correction of our willing is persuasion. Charles Finney, Lecture 8, “Obedience to the Moral Law” p. 375-76 “It is not founded in Christ’s literally suffering the exact penalty of the law for them, and in this sense literally purchasing their justification and eternal salvation.” Charles Finney, Lecture 8, “Obedience to the Moral Law” p. 373 And it turns secondly on the nature of the depravity attributed by the Augustinians to man. According to him election proceeds on the foresight of salvability; but he does not suppose that the same grace is given to all men alike—although all receive “sufficient grace”—but that God employs in each case whatever grace it seems to Him wise to employ in order to accomplish His end. We do not need Christ’s strength: we have enough of our own. On the other hand, though God is supposed in the doctrine Finney is criticizing to have attached the communication of sinfulness to Adam’s posterity descended from him by ordinary generation, He is not represented as having done so arbitrarily but in a judicial sentence; so that a ground is assigned for His act and a ground in right—and Finney has not shown that this ground did not exist, or that existing, it was not a compelling ground in right. 357 Charles Hodge, The Biblical Repertory and Princeton Review, April, 1847, p. 244, says that it is “merely a dictum of philosophers, not of common people” that “I ought, therefore I can.” Every unsophisticated heart and especially every heart burdened with a sense of sin says rather, “I ought to be able, but I am not.” He cites Julius Müller’s reply to Kant, in “Lehre von der Sünde,” ii. It is at least an arresting phenomenon that the human will, inalienably endowed with an equal power to either part, should exhibit in its historical manifestation two such instances of absolute certainty of action to one part—in one instance affecting the whole mass of mankind without exception, and in the other the whole body of those set upon by the Spirit with a view to their salvation. “A System of Intellectual Philosophy,” 1845. 5. “This,” Finney continues, “must be by a moral influence, if its”—that is the will’s—“actings are intelligent and free, as they must be to be holy.” “That is, if he influences the will to obey God, it must be by a divine moral suasion.”. He soon became disenchanted with Presbyterianism, however (due largely to his growing belief that people could, with God, perfect themselves). Called the “father of modern revivalism” by some historians, he paved the way for later revivalists like Dwight L. Moody, Billy Sunday, and Billy Graham. It differs from that doctrine at this point only in its completer Pelagianism. “A truly regenerated soul cannot live a sinful life.” “The new heart does not, cannot sin. “This ability,” he says,359 “is called a natural ability, because it belongs to man as a moral agent, in such a sense that without it he could not be a proper subject of command, of reward or punishment. Charles Grandison Finney was a revivalist preacher and educator born in Warren on August 27, 1792. Finney stated that unbelief was a "will not," instead of a "cannot," and could be remedied if a person willed to become a Christian. Moved by this persuasion we “make ourselves a good heart”—we “change our mind,” as the phrase goes—and that is the whole of it. Sign Up For Our Newsletter Moral depravity is with Finney as universal a fact as it is with the Augustinian doctrine. Dr. Duffield,” 1848 (also incorporated in the “Lectures on Systematic Theology” of 1851). The Theology Of Charles G. Finney[1] The elements of Finney’s conception of the Plan of Salvation are given, in a very succinct form, in a summary of what he speaks of as the “provisions of grace.” 346 “God,” says he, “foresaw that all mankind would fall into a state of total alienation from him and his government. Perfectionist Publications of Other Oberlin Men. The only even apparent distinction between the two views lies in Finney’s calling his view a sanctification “by faith,” and setting it over against the other as a sanctification “by effort.” And as he expounds his view, that is a distinction without a difference. Hired by the Female Missionary Society of the Western District, he began his missionary labors in the frontier communities of upper New York. Benjamin B. Warfield, The Works of Benjamin B. Warfield: Perfectionism, Part Two, vol. But if, as we are told, its early perfectionism has left no trace of itself at Oberlin, that cannot be said of it elsewhere. Finney does allow this; and this is his sole concession to the supernaturalism of salvation. 237–277. The right is not a means to something else conceived of as the supreme good, but is itself the supreme good imposed on us as our duty by an adequate authority. "I will give my heart to God, or I never will come down from there," he said. “Freemasonry: its Character, Claims and Practical Working,” 1869. The moment this idea is developed, this committal of the will to self-indulgence must be abandoned, or it becomes selfishness, or moral depravity. Pure will plus external inducement—which may be in the way of temptation to evil, or may be in the way of incitement to good—that is all that comes into consideration in our moral judgments. 15–27. Finney is near to this crude form of statement when he writes:385 “Sin may be the result of temptation; temptation may be universal, and of such a nature as uniformly, not necessarily, to result in sin, unless a contrary result be secured by a Divine moral suasion.” He is still near it when he writes:386 “Sin may be, and must be, an abuse of free-agency; and this may be accounted for, as we shall see, by ascribing it to the universality of temptation, and does not at all imply a sinful constitution.… Free, responsible will is an adequate cause in the presence of temptation, without the supposition of a sinful constitution, as has been demonstrated in the case of Adam and of angels.… It is said that no motive to sin could be a motive or a temptation, if there were not a sinful taste, relish, or appetite, inherent in the constitution, to which the temptation or motive is addressed.… To this I reply,—Suppose this objection be applied to the sin of Adam and of angels. According to this theory, disinterested benevolence can never be duty, can never be right, but always and necessarily wrong.… If moral agents ought to will the right for the sake of the right, or will good, not for the sake of the good, but for the sake of the relation of rightness existing between the choice and the good, then to will the good for its own sake is sin. They are inevitably persisted in, and thus the poor babies become totally depraved because of habits formed before they knew any better. 358 P. 925. Books by Finney:—“Sermon Preached in the Presbyterian Church at Troy, March 4, 1827,” 1827. No single man is more responsible for the distortion of Christian truth in our age than Charles Grandison Finney. p. 38. It is willing the good and not the right as an ultimate end. 374 It was a matter of course that S. B. Canfield, “An Exposition, etc.,” 1841, pp. The main thing in this exhortation is the staring Pelagianism of the whole construction. He is willing to allow that they may have received a certain amount of moral injury through the physical deterioration that has come to them by evil inheritance. It appears that Finney wishes to make it appear that election is in some sense the cause of salvation. We do not assert that the Rationalistic account of human depravity which Finney exploits must necessarily leave God without justification for inflicting it upon man. For that, nothing less than a universal bias to sin will supply an adequate account. If We Say that We Have No Sin, We Deceive Ourselves, The Difference Between Legal & Gospel Mortification. “Self indulgence becomes the master principle in the soul of every child, long before it can understand that this self indulgence will ever interfere with the rights, or entrench on the happiness of others. The only place in the whole transaction in which any real sovereignty is shown, lies in God’s having established the particular government which He has established, and which determines who are salvable and who not. p. 435, bearing on perfectionism and showing no sympathy with it, may be consulted. That is the meaning of the statement which Finney quotes in order to repel, but so quotes as to empty it of its meaning. 381–392. When a last attempt was made at a resolution condemning questionable revivalistic practices, Finney countered by proposing a condemnation to "lukewarmness in religion." At Evans Mills, he was troubled that the congregations continuously said they were "pleased" with his sermons. We cannot do anything we will and call that a means to that end. This is what it is to walk in Christ. We said that God might be eliminated entirely from Finney’s ethical theory without injury to it: are we not prepared now to say that He might be eliminated from it with some advantage to it.406, “True religion,” says Finney, in one of his numerous brief summaries of his general views,407 “consists in benevolence, or in heart obedience to God.” This identification of “benevolence” and “obedience” does not appear obvious to the uninstructed mind and requires some explication. He conceives of the motive as always “objective,” intruding into the mind from without and determining the will, not as the mind itself, that is the agent, in a given state of preference. Books by Mahan:—“Principles of Christian Union and Church Fellowship,” 1836. B. Dod, “Finney’s Sermons,” in same, July, 1835, pp. James H. Fairchild gives us a very illuminating sketch of its fortunes there.426 “The visible impulse of the movement,” he says, “to a great extent expended itself within the first few years.” Men sought and found with decreasing frequency the special experiences—“the blessing,” “the second conversion”—which were connected with it as first preached. Finney’s doctrine of “the simplicity of moral action” continued to be enthusiastically taught even by his successor in the Presidency, J. H. Fairchild, although Fairchild found a way—not a very convincing way—to separate it from the “perfectionism” with which it was inseparably bound up by Finney. Voluntary subjection is its form, although the form of this subjection is described as the adoption of the Divine end as our own and the prosecution of it (always under the Divine prescription) with all our might. Which is the right to will, the good for its own sake, or the right? See The Oberlin Evangelist, 1839–1862; and The Oberlin Quarterly Review, 4 vols., 1845–1849. B. Warfield, © 2018 Monergism by CPR Foundation. “Letters on Revivals,” 1845. Charles Finney has been accused of being a semi-pelagian, yet in his Systematic Theology, he seems to have something like the distinction in the above illustration in mind. John Woodbridge expounds his teaching in the following fashion:392 “Concupiscence is reduced to the blameless, though, when they become excessive, somewhat dangerous cravings of physical appetite. We Must Find a Better Way to Talk About Race, Over 42.6M abortions conducted in 2020, surpassing world's leading causes of death, Social Justice Vs. After several hours, he returned to his office, where he experienced such forceful emotion that he questioned those who could not testify to a similar encounter. Asa Mahan … and others,” in The American Biblical Repository, January, 1841, pp. Explain the issues Americans took with traditional religious beliefs that led to the Second Great Awakening Identify Charles Finney and Lyman Beecher , and describe their role in … 348 It emerges in the end that Finney considers that it would have required God to change the government He had instituted as the wisest. As his influence is moral, and not physical, it is plain that he can influence us no farther … than we trust or confide in him.”418 “The Holy Spirit controls, directs, and sanctifies the soul, not by a physical influence, nor by impulses nor by impressions made on the sensibility, but by enlightening and convincing the intellect, and thus quickening the conscience.”419 Everything that the Spirit does for us is thus reduced to enlightenment; everything we receive from Him to knowledge. That is in brief the final form which Oberlin Perfectionism took. 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