Charles Finney,who was he really?

Whoops, thanks for the correction!

 

Phil Johnson has absolutely no credibility with me since his diatribe on fundamentalism in which he lied about my grandfather.

 

I know nothing about that. However, all you have to do is examine Finney's works, as he cited, to see for yourself that his allegations are true.

 

POB, I think you can see by the range of expression here already that the more Calvinistic someone is, the more they oppose Finney. :smilewinkgrin:

 

Some Basic Facts About Charles Finney

His most famous sermon was in stark contrast to the biblical messages of Jonathan Edwards , George Whitefield and Charles Spurgeon . C.F.'s gem was "Sinners Bound To Change Their Own Hearts " .

I have this memorized because it was so disturbing : " A revival is a purely philosophical result of the right use of constituted means ."

" Religion is the work of man . It consists in the right exercise of the powers of nature ."

" The evangelist must produce excitements sufficient to induce sinners to repentance ."

"Original sin is a monstrous and blasphemous dogma."

Finney believed that justification from imputed righteousness "
is a false and nonsensical assumption ."

He taught the Governmental theory of the atonement . He taught that Christ set an example of benevolence . So penal substitution went out the door for him .

He did not believe in regeneration and the sovereignty of God . He believed in "moral suasion" to convince sinners to come to the Lord .

Anyone who still claims Finney as a model to follow is after seeing him for what he was is in trouble with his/her soul .

Finney , Sunday , Sam B.Jones and others of their ilk are responsible for a bad strand of Fundamentalism locking hands with liberalism .

 

1. The following is a quote from Charles Finney's Systematic Theology:

2. You can judge for yourself.

 

I think a number of you who are not Calvinists should certainly condemn such wrong teachings that Charles Finney espoused . The topic of Finney goes beyond Calvinism vs. Arminianism .

 

I agree. But then my opinion about the facts doesn't matter because I'm a Calvinist.

 

The root of Finneyism is experientialism. He's not alone in that category, but surely he stands as its champion. He laid the groundwork for Pentecostals and charismatics, as well as revivalism.

 

Would you say that someone who lists these four things as conditions for justification believes in justification by faith alone (and I'm just copying the first line of each thing on the list, you can read the whole thing here)?

1. The vicarious sufferings or atonement of Christ is a condition of justification, or of the pardon and acceptance of penitent sinners.
2. Repentance is also a condition of our justification.
3. Faith in Christ is, in the same sense, another condition of justification.
   
4. Present sanctification, in the sense of present full consecration to God, is another condition of justification. [In this section he also explains that "perseverance in obedience to the end of life is also a condition of justification."]

As further explanation of his view he writes:

"We are justified upon condition of our faith, but not for our faith; upon condition of our repentance, love, obedience, perseverance to the end, but not for these things. These are the conditions, but not the reason, ground, or procuring cause of our justification. We cannot be justified without them, neither are we or can we be justified by them. None of these things must be omitted on pain of eternal damnation."

Is he not saying that, along with faith/repentence as a requirement for justification, there is also love (not sure what he means by that), and perseverance in obedience. Is this not justification by faith/repentence plus works?

 

Although it is never my goal to make a Calvinist happy, I suppose I'm duty bound to step up as a rabid Arminian and condemn Finney's heresy alongside of y'all.

Back when I was just a little Fundamentalist, I became a Finneyite by reading of his evangelistic successes. He was baptized with the Holy Ghost in a dramatic event; he could just walk into a place and people would get under conviction and drop to their knees and cry out to God. While preaching, he would thrust at them with the sword of the Spirit and they'd start keeling over all through the church building. This guy, I figured, had the goods.

So I read everything he ever wrote (except for the excised portion of his ST). One summer I laboriously agonized through his entire ST, line by line, struggling to follow his logic--which Hodge or Warfield said was as tight as Euclid. I wanted to be another Finney. I even denied original sin for a while. (This was before I had kids.) I reasoned that anybody that full of God must have his theology straight.

Eventually, step by step, I began to understand what the problems were. I still think that Finney was a good guy, but his Taylorite-theology-on-steroids is indefensible by anyone's standards. An Arminian finds nothing in Finney's thought to admire. Even his opposition to predestinarianism was leveled at only a certain kind of overemphasis which he believed to be holding people back. In the part of his ST that Bethany censored out of their reprint, he actually affirmed the Prebyterian doctrine of the perseverance of the saints.

I have to second the recommendation of Iain Murray's Revivals and Revivalism. It's not the final word, but it provides a genuine and soundly based alternative to modern ideas about the topic.

 

Just a little warning: Finney took infinite pains to define his terms precisely and to build carefully. Any time one takes quotations from his work, the tendency is always to understand the terms in the quotations according to OUR use of them, rather than his.

See what I mean?

 

Thanks for the acknowledgement that Finney was in grave error ( though you still think he was a good guy anyway ) PD .

Since you have poured over his ST with a fine-tooth comb you must have come across some obscure thoughts of his which he did not define . Don't you find him relying on philosophy a bit too much ? He rationalized a great deal of the time . He reasoned with a methodology that did not lend itself to what we would call theology . He constructed his own god of fair play doncha' think ? And that without regard to biblical teachings which countered him at every turn of his attorney's mindset he plowed on .

 

Years ahead of his time. Millenial Exclusionists are just now catching up to Finney.

 

Revival And Revivalism -- Iain Murray

Regarding Finney :

When God commands us to do a thing it is the higest possible evidence that we can do it . He has no right to command unless we have power to obey .

[ Hmm ... I am thinking of the P-word . Can you spell P-E-L-A-G-I-A-N-I-S-M boys and girls ? --- Rip ]

The sinner has all the faculties and natural abilities requisite to render perfect obedience to God . All he needs is to be induced to use these powers and attributes as he ought ... God cannot do the sinner's duty , and regenerate him without the right exercise of the sinner's own agency .

[ !!! -- Rip ]

The above two quotes are from his Lectures On Revivals .

 

Which is why I gave the link to the whole systematic theology. I've read pretty much all of it over the years, and I read the portion on justification very carefully tonight. I do think he espouses justification conditioned on our obedience (among other things).

 

No - Finney said there were a lot of things you couldn't do to the glory of God - Namely hunting and fishing for amusement in this quote.

 

Sorry, I didn't get that from it. Here's what I got.

I take it that you are an avid hunter and fisherman. I enjoy fishing myself. Let me ask you. Is it right to go fishing if the sole goal of the trip is pleasure? I don't think it is. The fishing trip ought to be to relax us and renew us so that we can serve God better. Note the following quotes:

1Ti 5:6--But she that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth.

Ro 14:23--Whatsoever is not of faith is sin.

 

Right on both counts.

But Finney seems to get too much attention. After you've trashed him, what have you gained? Almost nobody looks at his ST, so you aren't correcting anyone. If the altar call is a bad idea, or if a soulwinning technique is too Pelagian, that can be argued without bringing in Finney.

He's important for understanding trends in the antebellum era ("Why did the Yankee Christians decide that their Southern brethren needed to be killed?"). I don't think he's important for understanding trends today. People today do what they do, and think what they think, for reasons far, far removed from whatever Finney said and did.

 

I hear what you say and I agree.

But I think you misunderstood Bro. Finney. I believe if you had met him on the road with a rod and reel over your shoulder and he knew you were a preacher he would have chastised you for fishing while sinners died and went to hell and no amount of your defending your need to rest and relax would have appeased him.