The Reformed View of Patristics and Entire Sanctification
On this week's podcast I answered a listener question about how the Reformed view early church history and concluded with a discussion of the Wesleyan doctrine of entire sanctification. Here is the program.
Great podcast, Jordan, and one that calls to remembrance things that those of us who are ex-Arminian remember. A lot of what was said about the rhetoric used by Wesleyans concerning internal sins being "mistakes" is something used frequently. The pastor at the Nazarene church I used to attend quite frequently used the words "mistakes" or "shortcomings" when it came to things that should be called sins, and he reserved the harsher rhetoric (wickedness, evil) most of the time for the unbelieving world. And there is a real emphasis on the outward actions in the Arminian/Wesleyan world, which I think does indeed give an impression that the externals matter more than the internals.
Seems to me that a pastor who shortchanges his congregation by referring to internal heart matters like lust and unjustified hatred as just "mistakes" is guilty of minimizing sin to his flock.
Question related to this, if you don't mind: do you think there's any connection between this sort of "entire sanctification" idea and the idea that the gospel is only for the unbeliever at the "altar call" (another problem there!) while the solution for sin in the believer is more law?
Good observation. I think you are exactly right that there is a connection between these two ideas. You see this very clearly in Wesley's own preaching; he uses an extremely astute law-gospel methodology in his evangelistic sermons, but preaches pure moralism to those who are in the faith. Finney, Moody, and others took a cue from Wesley in bringing about the altar call type of theology.
An addendum just for an fyi: from what I've read of Wesley concerning perfectionism and entire sanctification, he seems to have believed that at the very least it was theoretically possible to be perfect, but was at least forthcoming enough to admit he was not perfect.
This was really helpful, Pr. Cooper. In fairness to our Reformed friends, they do have a couple folks who have done some work in patristics, most notably Dr. Charles E. Hill at RTS who published what looks to be an interesting work on patristic eschatology called Regnum Caelorum. Of course, as his bio states, he is a professor of NT. I also read once on Dr. R. Scott Clark's blog that Ligon Duncan has a Ph.D in patristics, and I believe there have been a couple graduates from WSC's M.A.H.T. program who have gone on to study patristics. I do think, though that the ones who get into the Fathers tend to head to more historic communions, as evidenced by this WSC graduate.
Great podcast. Studying patristics is also one of the things that caused me to question Calvinism. I have a friend who is now Eastern Orthodox that was studying at a Reformed Seminary and asked his professor why they don't study more patristics. He was told that Calvin already picked out all the good parts for them. Calvin himself seems rather irresponsible when quoting the church fathers to support his view of the sacraments. There's a list floating around the web of quotes from the church fathers that supposedly support TULIP. It's taken from Michael Horton's book "What's So Amaazing About Grace." No citations are given in the book and what I discovered when I tried to discover the source is that in many cases these were pieces of sentences from various works that had been pieced together into a single sentence and sometimes he would even include commentary by John Gill as if it were part of the quote from the actual church father. I tried to contact him about this as well as some of the blogs posting this list on the web but never received a response.
When I was in COGIC world, I remember a saying that went something like this: Can you live free from sin for one second? If you can do it for a second, you can do it for a minute. If you can do it for a minute, you can do it for an hour. If you can do it for an hour, you can do it for a day. Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof. of course, as long as you only thought if "sin" as the bad things that you do, that can work for you.
8 comments:
Great podcast, Jordan, and one that calls to remembrance things that those of us who are ex-Arminian remember. A lot of what was said about the rhetoric used by Wesleyans concerning internal sins being "mistakes" is something used frequently. The pastor at the Nazarene church I used to attend quite frequently used the words "mistakes" or "shortcomings" when it came to things that should be called sins, and he reserved the harsher rhetoric (wickedness, evil) most of the time for the unbelieving world. And there is a real emphasis on the outward actions in the Arminian/Wesleyan world, which I think does indeed give an impression that the externals matter more than the internals.
Seems to me that a pastor who shortchanges his congregation by referring to internal heart matters like lust and unjustified hatred as just "mistakes" is guilty of minimizing sin to his flock.
Question related to this, if you don't mind: do you think there's any connection between this sort of "entire sanctification" idea and the idea that the gospel is only for the unbeliever at the "altar call" (another problem there!) while the solution for sin in the believer is more law?
Good observation. I think you are exactly right that there is a connection between these two ideas. You see this very clearly in Wesley's own preaching; he uses an extremely astute law-gospel methodology in his evangelistic sermons, but preaches pure moralism to those who are in the faith. Finney, Moody, and others took a cue from Wesley in bringing about the altar call type of theology.
Thank you for the response, Jordan.
An addendum just for an fyi: from what I've read of Wesley concerning perfectionism and entire sanctification, he seems to have believed that at the very least it was theoretically possible to be perfect, but was at least forthcoming enough to admit he was not perfect.
This was really helpful, Pr. Cooper. In fairness to our Reformed friends, they do have a couple folks who have done some work in patristics, most notably Dr. Charles E. Hill at RTS who published what looks to be an interesting work on patristic eschatology called Regnum Caelorum. Of course, as his bio states, he is a professor of NT. I also read once on Dr. R. Scott Clark's blog that Ligon Duncan has a Ph.D in patristics, and I believe there have been a couple graduates from WSC's M.A.H.T. program who have gone on to study patristics. I do think, though that the ones who get into the Fathers tend to head to more historic communions, as evidenced by this WSC graduate.
Great podcast. Studying patristics is also one of the things that caused me to question Calvinism. I have a friend who is now Eastern Orthodox that was studying at a Reformed Seminary and asked his professor why they don't study more patristics. He was told that Calvin already picked out all the good parts for them. Calvin himself seems rather irresponsible when quoting the church fathers to support his view of the sacraments. There's a list floating around the web of quotes from the church fathers that supposedly support TULIP. It's taken from Michael Horton's book "What's So Amaazing About Grace." No citations are given in the book and what I discovered when I tried to discover the source is that in many cases these were pieces of sentences from various works that had been pieced together into a single sentence and sometimes he would even include commentary by John Gill as if it were part of the quote from the actual church father. I tried to contact him about this as well as some of the blogs posting this list on the web but never received a response.
That list that Horton puts together is terrible. I've been meaning to post a critique of it for a while now, but I haven't gotten around to it.
This is my critique of Horton's patristic quotations: http://lambonthealtar.blogspot.com/2011/11/tulip-in-church-fathers.html
When I was in COGIC world, I remember a saying that went something like this: Can you live free from sin for one second? If you can do it for a second, you can do it for a minute. If you can do it for a minute, you can do it for an hour. If you can do it for an hour, you can do it for a day. Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.
of course, as long as you only thought if "sin" as the bad things that you do, that can work for you.
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