The Pelagian Captivity of the Church

Charles Finney was a well-known nineteenth-century preacher, but he had a distorted view of the gospel. The essence of the preaching and teaching of Finney was to call people to change their lives, to amend their living, to stop sinning and start obeying, start being righteous, because for Finney the only way God will ever justify a person is if they are first sanctified. Finney spoke to hundreds of thousands of people, yet what he believed and taught was in conflict with some of the foundational tenets of the Christian faith. And unfortunately, we see the negative influence Finney has had on the twenty-first-century church.

Today on Renewing Your Mind, we present the final message of Dr. R.C. Sproul's series, Willing to Believe, a message that may ruffle some feathers for fans of Charles Finney. When I wrote the book, Willing to Believe, a volume on which these lectures on free will is based, I made the observation by way of speculation that I thought that if Luther were alive today and were observing the evangelical world of our culture, that a book he might write instead of the one that was so controversial and inflammatory in his day, which he called the Babylonian captivity of the church, I thought that the book he would write today would be the Pelagian captivity of the church. And the reason I made that speculative comment was, as I look around, I see an unprecedented degree of influence of Pelagianism rising up in every quarter in the evangelical world of our time, and I frankly am very much concerned about it. Now, there are several factors that contribute to that renaissance of Pelagian thinking that has invaded the church, but I certainly would include among those contributing factors the ministry, the work, and the theology of a nineteenth-century minister by the name of Charles Finney. Finney's systematic theology has been reissued in a 1994 edition, and on the book cover of that he is heralded as, quote, America's greatest revivalist. And many see Finney as the founder of modern mass evangelism. It is said of Charles Finney that in his evangelistic ministry of the nineteenth century that he led over 500,000 people to Christ. And his methodology of evangelism became the basic structure or format for mass evangelism in America ever since. He had a profound influence, for example, on Billy Sunday, who was popular earlier in the twentieth century, and for later evangelists down to the present day. And yet in his own day, he received some sharp theological criticism from some of the most learned theologians of that era.

Dr. B. B. Warfield of Princeton once wrote of Finney, quote, God might be eliminated from His, that is Finney's, theology entirely without essentially changing its character. That's quite a criticism. In our day, Dr. Robert Godfrey, a church historian, has commented that there in his judgment has never been a theologian in the history of the Christian church more consistently Pelagian, not semi-Pelagian, but Pelagian as Finney himself. In fact, in some degrees it can be said that Finney out-Pelagians Pelagius, and we're going to see at what point he is. Now, the reason again why Dr. Godfrey insists that students read Finney himself, and I would recommend you do the same thing, that you pick up his systematic theology and search it out for yourself and don't take my word for what Finney says and teaches or did teach, is because Charles Finney is a bona fide evangelical hero. But the question I have as I read Finney is whether Finney was even an evangelical. Historically, when we think of what it means to be an evangelical, we don't normally include Pelagians in that category, nor do we include people in the category of evangelicals who steadfastly and categorically deny the substitutionary satisfaction view of the atonement. But most significantly, the term evangelical historically has functioned as a description for those people within Protestantism who embrace the biblical doctrine of justification by faith alone.

Evangelicals were first called evangelicals in the sixteenth century because the word is taken from the New Testament word for gospel, and carried over into English the word for gospel is the evangel. And so an evangelical was someone who subscribed to the gospel as articulated by the Protestant reformers vis-à-vis the doctrine of justification by faith alone. Now, if you would take the time to read the systematic theology of Charles Finney, you will see that he labors the point regarding his opposition to the doctrine of forensic justification and to the doctrine of sola fide. Now, to review the bidding, the doctrine of sola fide, or justification by faith alone, declares that when the sinner looks to Christ by faith and puts his trust in Christ and in Christ alone, that God legally declares that sinner just by virtue of the imputation or the transfer of the merit of Christ and the righteousness of Christ to the legal account of the sinner who lacks merit and who lacks any righteousness of his own. Now, according to Finney, such a view of justification would be a travesty of divine justice, and God indeed would never make a legal declaration calling somebody just who in fact in and of Himself was not just. At that point, he shares a common objection to forensic justification that was articulated by the Roman Catholic Church in the sixteenth century. So, he says of justification of the sinner that sinners are not justified by God, rather they are pardoned, that they are not declared just, and the doctrine of imputed righteousness, says Finney, quote, is founded on a most false and nonsensical assumption. The merit of Christ is not and cannot be the basis of our salvation. So, in no uncertain language, Charles Finney rejected the doctrine of imputation and along with it the historic Protestant doctrine of justification by faith alone.

Now, let me review the bidding for a second. If Sola Fide, or the doctrine of justification by faith alone, is an essential article of historic evangelicalism and Charles Finney rejects it, then the question is obvious, how could he be considered an evangelical? In fact, the question can go even deeper than that. If Sola Fide accurately reflects the biblical gospel and Charles Finney vehemently rejects the biblical gospel, how can he be a Christian? Well, he can be a Christian insofar as that he was a strong admirer of the virtues of Jesus and as an attorney as a trained lawyer, using all of the powers of persuasion at his disposal, he undertook to convert people to become followers of Jesus, but not in the biblical sense of being a follower of Jesus. And yet, he became extremely adept at evangelistic methodology and the powers of persuasion. I remember the first year I was a Christian, an evangelist came to town, and this evangelist said to me personally, give me any person alone for fifteen minutes, and I will get you a decision for Christ. And I was a young Christian, but I was astonished by that claim that anybody could think that they could lead anybody to Christ, and I was astonished by that claim that somebody could lead anybody to Christ in fifteen minutes.

But he was not kidding. He was serious, and he was convinced that all it would take to lead anybody to Christ is good, sound, persuasive argument, and on the strength of that persuasive argument alone, a person could make a decision for Christ. Now, this is called, in its broadest sense, decisional evangelism, where the whole focal point of evangelism is to persuade somebody to exercise their will to make a decision to follow Christ. Now, in and of itself, there's nothing wrong with trying to be persuasive as we possibly can in calling people to embrace Christ. Certainly, the preaching of the New Testament called people to embrace Christ and to receive Christ, and in that sense, they used every persuasive thing that they had, at the same time telling us that the power for the efficacy of the gospel was not resting in the eloquence of men or in the persuasiveness of our arguments, but in the person and work of the Holy Spirit who applies the gospel to the hearts of those who hear.

But there are those who really believe that the Holy Spirit is not necessary if indeed a person does not have to be regenerated by the Holy Spirit in order to be converted. Now, before I talk more about that with respect to Finney, let's go to the next point, and that has to do with his view of the atonement. He categorically rejected the idea of substitutionary satisfaction view of the atonement, and he did it on a legal basis. He said that there's no way that anybody could have extra merit that could legally be applied to somebody who lacks it, so that if Christ had a perfect life, His perfection could only count for Him and not for somebody else. And by the same token, he could not satisfy the justice of God by bearing our sins through the imputation of our guilt to Him, because if God were just and strictly applied the law of God, God could not accept the payment of one man's life for someone else's.

And so, he rejected out of hand both the substitutionary aspect of the atonement and the satisfaction dimension of the atonement, both central doctrines of classic and historic Christianity, and instead fell back on what is sometimes called the governmental theory of the atonement and other times called the moral theory of the atonement. This is called the moral influence view of the atonement. According to Finney, Christ does not satisfy the justice of God, but in quotes he will talk about a certain kind of satisfaction of public justice, that is, by the cross and God's expression of judgment on Christ. This demonstrates or displays to the world that God takes sin seriously, and that we ought to take sin seriously, and that if we don't repent of our sins, we will be exposed to the just wrath of God. And God saves us by pardoning us, not by justifying us on the basis of somebody else's righteousness.

He pardons us. Now, the fact that He pardons us by His mercy could lead people to a cavalier view towards the law and towards righteousness and away from the need to repent, and thinking that God doesn't take sin seriously. And so, in order to display to the world that God does take sin seriously, we have the cross. But the cross is not redemptive in the sense that an atonement has been made for you or for me. But rather, it displays to the world the seriousness of our call to righteousness and the seriousness of evil. And it is an illustration to be a check against an unbridled spirit of antinomianism.

And that's what he's talking about in the sense of satisfying public justice. It places a guard against people thinking that because God is gracious and merciful, we therefore have a license to sin. And so, the essence of the preaching and teaching of Finney was to call people to change their lives, to amend their living, to stop sinning and start obeying and start being righteous. Because for Finney, the only way God will ever justify a person is if they are first sanctified.

God will only declare a person just when that person actually is just. So, for Finney, justification is based upon sanctification. Whereas in classic Protestant theology, sanctification grows out of justification and does not depend upon our justification. We are justified by the virtue of Christ's righteousness, and then how we are actually being conformed to the image of Christ describes the process of our sanctification.

Not so for Finney. You have to be converted by stopping your sin, turning away from your sin, coming to Jesus to be righteous, and only when you are righteous will God declare you righteous. Now, over against Edwards and against classical theology, the crux of Finney's theology is in his categorical rejection of original sin. Like Pelagius before him, he grants that people sin, but they don't sin because there's something inherently corrupt in their nature. They sin as a matter of the exercise of their will, but man in his natural state, as he is born now, has both the natural ability to be righteous and also the moral ability. Now, early on, Finney was impressed with the teachings of Jonathan Edwards, but by the time he wrote his systematic theology, he was bending over backwards to critique the theology of the moral ability. Now, he was impressed with the teachings of Jonathan Edwards, but by the time he wrote his systematic theology, he was bending over backwards to critique the theology of Jonathan Edwards, particularly at the view of Edwards' distinction between moral and natural ability. Edwards said, we have the natural ability to make choices, but we don't have the moral ability to do the things of God. Finney completely rejected that, saying that man still has within his nature, without the assistance of grace, the ability to live a life of perfect obedience.

And at that point, he is Pelagian to the core. He defines regeneration as a change that is brought about by the choice of a human being. It's a change of mind.

It's a change of behavior that takes place when a person is persuaded of the need to change and makes a decision to change. Let me read from Finney himself regarding his view of regeneration. He says that regeneration consists in a change in the attitude of the will or in its ultimate choice in tension or preference. Now he says this, the change is both passive and active.

In what sense? Well, he explains it. He is passive in the perception of the truth presented by the Holy Spirit. I know that this perception is no part of regeneration, but it is simultaneous with regeneration. It induces regeneration.

It's the condition and occasion of regeneration. Therefore, the subject of regeneration must be a passive recipient or percipient of the truth presented by the Holy Spirit at the moment and during the act of regeneration. The Spirit acts upon him through or by the truth, and thus far he is passive.

He closes with the truth, and thus far he is active. Neither God nor any other being can regenerate him if he will not turn. If he will not change his choice, it is impossible that he should be changed, for regeneration is a change of choice. You hear what he's saying, that where we are passive is in our understanding as we are now learning what the Holy Spirit is teaching. That's why it's so important for the preacher to be persuasive and clear in his argument in order to change the person's thinking so that the person will now make the right choices. But there is no need of the Holy Spirit's invasion into the heart or into the soul to change the sinner's constituent nature in order for that person to repent. It's a matter of decision and decision alone by a will that is no longer or ever have been in bondage to sin.

Finney's natural man is alive and well. He is infected by bad decisions, but he can recover through an act of his own moral decision. That view of conversion has become, according to the polls, the majority report in churches that claim to be evangelical. And I think that here, as we said at the beginning, the problem that we face is the intrusion into the Christian community of a pagan view of man, a pagan and humanistic view of the will that fundamentally denies the impact of the fall upon us and the bondage of the will to which the New Testament speaks. A strong message from Dr. R.C.

Sproul today. I know that Charles Finney's influence still reaches into many modern churches. It was Dr. Sproul's hope that what we've heard this week on Renewing Your Mind will help us discern where error exists in our churches today. In his series, Willing to Believe, R.C.

helps us see the relationship between free will and the sovereignty of God. We'd like for you to have this entire series. There are 12 lectures on three DVDs, and when you contact us today with a donation of any amount, we will be glad to send it your way. You'll find us online at renewingyourmind.org, or you can call us with your gift at 800-435-4343.

Today is the last day we're making this offer available, so you'll want to request the three DVD sets soon. Once you've done that, we'll also add a digital copy of the study guide to your online learning library. So again, request Willing to Believe by Dr. R.C.

Sproul. Our number again is 800-435-4343, and our online address is renewingyourmind.org. Monday we're going to continue our focus on the 19th century. Dr. W. Robert Godfrey has a new teaching series that looks at how Reformed and Presbyterian Christians navigated theological controversies, cultural tensions, and even a civil war.

I hope you'll join us for that beginning Monday. Thank you for being with us today, and we close with a Coram Deo thought from R.C. We've come now to the end of our brief survey of history of the controversies that have arisen in the past regarding the extent and scope of human fallenness as a result of original sin. Now, the reason why we've paid attention to these things is that we might come to understand the graciousness of grace. The Scriptures tell us that where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. And they also really tell us that where the Spirit of the Lord isn't, there is only bondage. And we're told in the New Testament when the Son makes us free, we are free indeed. He has released us from the bondage of sin and from moral captivity. And we look at this not simply to speculate on abstract matters of philosophy and theology, but that in our new liberty we can assign the honor and the glory and the praise for that liberty to where it belongs to the grace of God and to the grace of God alone.