The Three Ladders of Aquinas
Thomas Aquinas adopted as did Medieval theology the three ladders
of Augustine. Medieval theology thought it self-evident that
if man is be saved he would have to ascend to God's level. The
salvation of the soul is its ascent from the imperfect world to
the perfection of God. And there are, in particular, three ladders
to heaven for the soul's ascent: (1) the ladder of Merit; (2)
the analogical ladder of Speculation; (3) the anagogical ladder
of Mysticism.
"When our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ wished to teach us how we might ascend to heaven, He Himself did what He taught: He first descended, and as His simple divine nature, which can neither lessened nor increased nor undergo any other change, did not permit Him either to descend or ascend, He took up into the unity of His person our nature -- that is, human nature. In this He descended and ascended and showed us the way by which we, too, might ascend."Bernard sees in the upright form given to man at creation an evidence that he is meant by God to direct his desire upward. But the natural man in his attempt to raise himself up, takes a false path of pride and presumption, and sinks even deeper down. He can only be rescued when Christ shows him the right way. We are called to be followers of Christ. In this life we are to follow Him in lowliness and humiliation. But that is not all. Our "Imitatio Christi" [Imitation of Christ] is to include both humiliation and exaltation. We are to follow Christ in everything, not only when He descends in His Incarnation, but also when at His Ascension He ascends into heaven. To both Bernard applies the words of Jesus in Luke 10:37: "Go, and do thou likewise." On these lines Bernard interprets the Sermon on the Mount. The eight Beatitudes signify eight rungs on the mystical heavenly ladder, whose foot is here below while its top reaches up to heaven. On this ladder we must ascend above ourselves and above everything in the world. Only then can our spirit reach the higher world and come to full and immediate union with God. But during this life, this highest happiness is granted to man in isolated and fleeting moments.
The Protestant Reformers
The Reformers, both Lutheran and Calvinist, rejected the
three ladders, the ladders of Merit, of Speculation, of Union,
by which one could obtain perfection. But they retained the Augustinian
understanding of man as having a sinful nature and that consequently
man cannot obtain perfection in this life. This original sin
remains with man until death, even in those who are declared righteous
by the imputation of Christ's merits through faith. These believers
are regenerated receiving a new nature, but the old nature is
still there in the believer. The experience of chapter 7 of Romans
is interpreted as the conflict between these two natures. The
Christian life is characterized as struggle with the sinful nature
to keep it under control, subject to God's law. Because of this
sinful nature, spiritual perfection is impossible in this life.
Lutheran theology saw the believer both simultaneously a saint
and sinner. Calvin says that while the goal toward which
the pious strive was to appear before God without spot or blemish,
the believer will never reach that goal until the sinful physical
body is laid aside in death. He saw the physical body as the
residence of the depravity of concupiscence. Thus perfection
and the physical body are mutually exclusive.
Martin Luther
Martin Luther insisted, in opposition to all egocentric form of
religion, upon a purely theocentric religion. Whatever the subject
he dealt with, the idea of justification, the Lord's supper, etc.,
he opposed the egocentric tendency. In his campaign against Catholic
Christianity, Luther is governed by this opposition. In catholic
piety he finds the egocentric tendency; there everything centers
upon man himself, what he does and what happens to him. Salvation
which is God's own work, which God has reserved to Himself alone
and accomplished through Christ, is transformed into a work of man;
righteousness is transformed from something that God gives into
something man achieves. Obedience to God is transformed by the
idea of merits into that which yields profit for man. Everything
is measured by the standard of human desire and by the importance
it has for man. This even applies to God Himself. When God is
extolled as the highest good, summum bonum, it is as man's
highest good. Luther's main objection to Catholic piety is always
this, that it puts man's own self in the place of God. Luther
sees himself to be the herald of theocentric religion in his campaign
against all egocentricity. This is expressed with clarity in the
manifesto which Luther introduces his lectures on Romans (1515-1516).
He declares that there is something which is to be broken down
and destroyed, and something contrary that is to be built up
and planted. And what is to be broken down and destroyed is everything
"that is in us," all our righteousness and wisdom, absolutely
everything in which we take a selfish delight. What is to be built
up and planted is "everything that is outside us and in Christ."
The righteousness by which God saves us, is not produced by us,
but has come to us from outside us; it is not derived from earth,
but has come to us from heaven. Luther observed that the whole
Catholic doctrine of love displays an egocentric perversion. However
much Catholic piety speaks of God's love, the emphasis is primarily
placed on the love we owe to God. The love of God is less God's
love for us than our love for God. Love is regarded essentially
as a human achievement. In the Catholic presentation, love never
looses the marks of acquisitive love and this can be traced logically
back up to self-love. In contrast to Catholic piety, Luther sets
a thoroughly theocentric idea of love. When Luther speaks about
love in the Christian sense, he draws not from the realm of human
love at all, but from God's love, especially as this has been
revealed in Christ. And this love is not acquisitive love, but
a love that gives. This is seen especially when Luther speaks
about justification. In his famous autobiographical fragment with
which he prefaced the Latin edition of his complete works in 1545,
Luther speaks of Rom. 1:17 where he made the discovery that changed
his understanding of the righteousness of God. Justification is
not a question of the "iustitia" [righteousness]
in virtue of which God makes demands upon us, but the
"iustitia"
which God bestows, so Christian love is not concerned with the
love with which we love God, but with the love with which God
Himself loves. God's righteousness is the righteousness that God gives
[dono], and not the righteousness God requires. Luther
uses here the scholastic distinction between active and passive
righteousness, rejecting the righteousness of God in the active
sense, but accepting it in the passive sense.
Luther was fully aware of the revolutionary nature of his message. He knows that by it he is pronouncing judgment not only upon Catholic "work-righteousness," but upon "all religions under heaven." Here there is no difference between Jews, Papists and Turks; in all of them we find the same religious attitude. All false religions are characteristic by the same reasoning: "If I do this and that, God will be gracious to me." Ultimately, there is only two religions, that which is built on faith in Christ, and that which builds on reason and one's own works. These are absolutely opposed to each other; if we can deliver ourselves from sin and enter by our righteousness into heaven; then Christ is superfluous. Thus Christianity is bound to regard these false religions as its adversaries. Their religions are man's attempt to climb up to heaven and is counter to the message that God came down from heaven in Christ and offered eternal life as a gift to be received by faith. This message destroys all false religions that attempt to earn eternal life by the merits of their righteous works. It demolishes all false, egocentric religions.
To understand Luther at this point, we must look at his view of man. Luther rejects the view of man as his nature having a higher and lower part, as having a "spiritual" and a "carnal" nature. For Luther the natural man is "fleshly" in his whole being, in all that he does and is. Not merely the sensible part of man, not merely what his "fleshly" nature makes him do, but also the highest and best in him, and primarily this is "flesh." Even his righteousness, his religion, and works belong to the "flesh." Even when he is saved, being justified by faith, the Christian is "simultaneously righteous and a sinner" [simul iustus et peccator]. God justifies the sinner as righteous in such way that the sinner remains a sinner. It is this assertion of Luther's that the sinfulness of man remains even in the justified man, that has caused offense in Catholic circles.
The medieval interpretation of Christianity is marked by the upward
way to God. This is asserted in the legalistic piety of popular Catholicism,
but also in the rational theology of Scholasticism and the ecstatic
religiosity of Mysticism. These are three ways or ladders by which
man climb up to God. Against these three ways of ascent, Luther
makes his protest. He will have nothing to do with this "climbing
up into the majesty of God." At the center of Luther's protest
is his rejection of the way of merit. The "good works"
that Catholicism promotes are not really good works because they
performed for the wrong intention. The general Catholic view
is that a work is good and meritorious before God, only when
it is done with the intention of obtaining eternal blessedness.
It is this intention, this motive, which according to Luther robs
it of its value; even makes it condemnable. The one who does the
good in order to win "merits" and to promote his blessedness
is not wholly devoted to the good itself. He is only using it
as a means for climbling up to the Divine Majesty. Only when this
intention is rooted out, and the good is done "to the glory
of God and the benefit of our neighbor," is it really good
at all. Thus Luther rejected the idea of good works as a ladder
to heaven. Luther equally rejects all attempts to ascend to God
by the way of reason and speculation. He himself tried
this way during his time in the monastery. One of the books he
took as his guide at that time was Bonaventura's Itinerarium mentis
in Deum. From it he learned of the ascent by the analogical ladder
of speculation. Later he rejected any attempt "to climb up
to heaven by thinking" because it is doomed to failure. The
Way of speculation is impassable as was the Way of merit. If God is
to be known, it is only if God chooses to reveal Himself; otherwise,
God is unknowable. And God has chosen to reveal Himself in the
Incarnation of the Word; in the Incarnation God has descended
to us. At the manger of Bethlehem, the Way of reason is exposed
as false and vain. Reason in its attempt to ascend to heaven does
not get God but only its idea of God. It is not the truth that
Way of reason reaches, but just speculation. Luther's objections
to the attempt to ascend up to God by the ladders of merit and
of speculation are also applicable to the mystical Way
of ascent. Luther rejects the interpretation of the passage of
Scripture that has been taken by mysticism for its support, Matt. 5:8:
"Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God."
This Scripture seems to point to the mystical experience of seeing
God (visio Dei) as the final goal of the Christian life.
Does it not speak of purification as the way to that goal, much as
Plato speaks of purification which is necessary in order to reach
the vision of the self-subsistent Being and Beauty. But Luther
will not accept this interpretation. He explains this text not
according to an ascent to God, but according to God's descent.
"Thou mayest not climb up to heaven nor run into a cloister after it.... But that it is a pure heart, which looks and thinks upon what God says."And the vision spoken of this text has nothing to do with mystical Vision of God.
"To see His face, as the Scripture says, means rightly to perceive Him as a gracious, good Father, to whom we may look for all good things. But this only comes through faith in Christ."Another passage of Scripture that mysticism used in proclaiming the Way of mysticism is the story of the heavenly ladder which Jacob saw in his dream (Gen. 28), Luther rejected their interpretation of this passage as teaching that the heavenly ladder is the ladder of mysticism. God has not commanded us to raise a ladder up to heaven to come to Him; God Himself has provided the ladder and come down to us. In Christ, God has come down to meet us; Christ is the heavenly ladder and the "Way" furnished by God (John 14:6).
The one subject on which Luther and Augustine seem to be in agreement is that self-love is the root of all evil. Augustine stresses this emphatically, especially in the The City of God [De civitate Dei], when he traces the opposition between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of the world back to that between love of God [amor Dei] and love of self [amor sui]. But this self-love refers to "inorderd" [inordinata] self-love, which seeks its satisfaction in something other than God, in temporal and transient things. In addition to the perverted self-love, Augustine speaks of a right self-love, which seeks its satisfaction in God Himself. This sort of self-love is so far from being opposed to love for God, that it is equivalent to it. Thus for Augustine, sin is obviously not self-love as such, but only its wrong direction that is sin and the root of sin; Augustine is using another criterion of sin. This other criterion that Augustine finds is the idea that it is linked with sensible and material things. Since man's nature is at once both spiritual and sensible, man is a citizen of two worlds. By God's appointment, man has the highest good above him. Man should, therefore, direct his thoughts and desires up towards the super-sensible, spiritual world. But now man's sensible side of his being offers resistance, and it seeks to drag man down and puts him in bondage to temporal goods. Hence, when Augustine wishes to characterize the sinful man, he says that man is "curvatus." He is not, as he ought to be, erect and looking upwards, but crooked, bent down to the earth.
Luther's view is the direct antithesis to these ideas of Augustine. When Luther calls selfishness, self-love, as sin and as the essence of sinfulness of sin, Luther means what he says without any qualification. Luther knows no good self-love. In the commandment: "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," Augustine had actually held that a commandment of self-love was implied, even if it is not expressly stated by a separate commandment. Luther, on the contrary, asserts that the Commandment of Love involves the rejection and condemnation of all self-love whatsoever. On the basis of Christ's words in John 12:25
("He who loves his life will lose it,Luther takes as a fundamental principle:
and he hates his life in this world shall keep it to eternal life."),
When stating what man's corruption is, Luther uses Augustine's expression: man is crooked or "bent" (curvatus). But Luther uses it in a different sense than Augustine. When Augustine says that man is "bent," "crooked" (curvus, curvatus), he meant that man's desires are bent down to the things of earth, that he loves and pursues the lower, temporal things. Luther took it to mean that man has a selfish disposition and he is bent back on himself. In other words, the will is not straight, but "crooked," turned back to itself. Luther's concept of sin is governed by self-love. When Paul wrote, "Love seeks not its own" (I Cor. 13:5), Luther sees that sin is the opposite of this; the essence of sin is that man seeks its own self. And since the whole of natural human life is governed by this principle, all humanity is under the dominion of sin. Sin has its seat not merely in man's sensible nature, but it embraces the whole man. And furthermore sin is not just evil acts of men, but permeates the greatest and most praiseworthy deeds; for they are done for man's own glory. Even the very highest that man can attain, that is, fellowship with God, is polluted by this egocentricity. It is this that arouse Luther's hostility to Catholic piety, in which the attainment of this highest good is reduced to a system to obtain it. And it was this Augustinian and Medieval view of self-love as the Way of Salvation that Luther opposed; it must be plucked up by the roots, if true love is to take its place.
The culmination of Luther's attack on Catholic piety is the removal of love outside the context of justification entirely and elimination of the Catholic idea of "fides caritate formata" [faith formed by love] which asserts that man is justified by faith and love. That is, the decisive thing for man's justification is not faith but love, Charitas. In the Aristotelian thought, the form of a thing is what gives to matter its reality and value. So love, Charitas, is what gives to faith its reality and value. Faith is the matter, and as such is insubstantial and powerless. Love is the form, the formative principle, that gives to faith its worth and real being. So justification is ultimately not by faith, but by love, Charitas, that man is justified and comes into fellowship with God.
In opposition, Luther asserted that justification takes place by faith alone, "sola fide." When Luther reads in Paul: "a man is justified by faith, without the works of the law," he found not merely a rejection of salvation by meritorious works, but the rejection of salvation by love. Justification is not only not by outward works of the law, but also and especially not by love, which is the fulfilling of the law. This teaching has been misunderstood that Luther has set love aside as unimportant and that he was asserting the importance only of faith; and that he had replace the "religion of love" with a "religion of faith." From the Catholic point of view, Luther has been regarded as the destroyer of the Christian idea of love. Though most Evangelicals do not agree with this judgment, they regard Luther's treatment of love as the weakest point in his thought, and his polemical position has pushed love too much into the background. Some Evangelicals think that Luther's preoccupation with his religious task has caused him to forget about the ethical side of Christianity. Although his emphasis on "sola fide" is his religious strength, it is considered to be the source of his ethical weakest, in so far as it caused him to separate, not only the works of love, but love itself, from the basic relationship to God. That "Love has had to stand down in favor of faith" is the almost universal view in this matter.
But Luther is not the destroyer of the Christian idea of love, but the destroyer of the wrong idea of Christian love that dominated Catholic piety. The Catholic idea of love is a distortion of the Christian idea of love. And Luther is not neglecting the ethical side of Christianity by emphasizing "sola fide" but is the restoring of the true basis for the ethical side of Christianity. Luther is rejecting the idea that man's relationship to God is based on the good that man does and is, that is, on man's love and his works of love. It is this idea that Luther is rejecting in his emphasis on justification by faith alone. Luther is not setting faith against love, but is asserting the correct relationship of faith to love. It is not our love for God that justifies us, but God's love for us that justifies us through faith receiving that love. Luther understood love as nothing other than God Himself; thus Luther can say of the man who abides in love, "that he and God become one cake [eine Kuche]". Luther had no intention to minimize and depreciate love. In rejecting the Scholastic doctrine of "fides caritate formata" Luther is rejecting the idea that it is our love for God that justifies us. By "justification by faith alone" Luther does not mean that it is our faith, our believing, that justifies us, but by our faith we receive the righteousness that God in His love has provided for us in Christ. We are justified not by our righteousness but by God's righteousness. To preach faith in Christ is nothing other than to preach love, that is, God's love. Through faith we are the children of God, and we love by the love we have received. This is the true basis for the ethical side of Christianity. Luther also rejects the idea of grace of Catholic piety as the enablement of God through the sacraments to do the good works by which the Christian can merit eternal life. He understood God's grace as God's unmerited favor, whereby God provides the righteousness that we need.
Christianity is a religion of love. Luther's opposition and criticism
of Catholic piety and theology was directed against its misunderstanding
of love. His problem with Catholic piety was its understanding
of love as egocentric, self-centered love. Luther's understanding
of love was the direct antithesis of Augustine's ideas of love.
Augustine understood all love to be acquisitive love, which seeks
its satisfaction in something. Augustine distinguishes between
perverted self-love and right self-love; perverted self-love is
directed to the temporal and transient things, seeking find its
satisfaction in something other than God. This sort of self-love
is opposed to love for God, which seeks its satisfaction in God,
as its summun bonum. Luther rejected this understanding of love,
which came to dominate Catholic piety. Luther brands all self-love
as sin; he held that self-love is the essence of the sinfulness
of sin. Luther argued that all love that is not centered in God,
not theocentric, is evil, and it is wrong to call it "love":
"To love is the same as to hate oneself"
[Est enim diligere se ipsum odisse].
John Wesley
John Wesley (1703-1791), the founder of Methodism, was born in
Epworth, England, to Samuel and Susana Wesley; he was the fifteenth
of nineteen children. Although John's grandparents were Puritan
Nonconformist, his parents returned to the Established Church
of England, where his father for most of his ministry held the
livings of Epworth (1697-1735) and Wroot (1725-1735). He was a
staunch High Churchman. Wesley in his early years was instructed
by his remarkable mother, who sought to instill in him a sense of
piety leading to a wholehearted devotion to God.
John was educated at Charterhouse, a school for boys in London, and then at Christ Church, Oxford University, where he received the B.A. degreein 1724 and the M.A. degree in 1727. He was a serious student of logic and religion, but he did not experience his "religious" conversion until 1725, when he was confronted with the decision of what he was to do for life. Through the influence of his mother and a friend, and the reading of Jeremy Taylor and Thomas a Kempis, he decided to make religion "the business of his life". In 1725 he was ordained a deacon, elected to a fellowship at Lincoln College at the same university (1726), and served as his father's curate at Wroot (1727-1729). He preached his first sermon in South Leigh. And in 1728 he was ordained a priest by John Potter. He returned to Oxford and became the leader of a small band of undergraduate students, including George Whitefield, that was organized earlier by his younger brother, Charles, for spiritual improvement. This band, called the "Holy Club", were later called "Methodist" because of their strict method of studying the Bible and their rigid rules of self-denial and works of charity. During this period (1729-1735) both he and his brother came under the influence of the nonjuror and mystic, William Law. It was during this period that he formed his views on Christian perfection, that was to become the hallmark of Methodism, even though he did not understand justification by faith yet, and, as he confessed later, he was seeking to be justified by his own works-righteousness.
In 1735, when Wesley began his Journal and he continued it until his death, Wesley went to Georgia in the New World as a missionary, accepting the invitation from the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel to undertake a mission to the Indians and colonists there. Although the Indians alluded him, he served as a priest to settlers there under General James Oglethorpe. During a storm on the crossing over to Georgia, Wesley was deeply impressed by a group of twenty-six German Moravian missionaries on board the ship. Their simple faith in the face of death (the fear of dying had been constantly with Wesley since his youth) opened him to the Moravian evangelical faith. The cheerful courage of this company in a storm convinced Wesley that the Moravian had a trust in God that was not yet his. Soon after reaching Savannah he met Spangenberg, who asked him the question: "Do you know Jesus Christ?" Welsey answered, "I know He is the Saviour of the world." Spangenberg replied, "True, but do you know He has saved you?" When Wesley returned to England in 1738, after his disastrous experience in Georgia, he met the Moravian, Peter Boehler, who exhorted him to trust Christ alone for salvation. As the result of his conversations with Boehler, Wesley was "clearly convinced of unbelief, of the want of that faith whereby alone we are saved." At a Moravian band meeting, an Anglian "society", in Aldersgate Street, London, (Wednesday, May 24, 1738), as he listened to the reading of Luther's preface to the Commentary on Romans, Wesley felt his "heart strangely warmed". As he recorded later,
"About a quarter before nine, while he [Luther] was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and a assurance was given me, that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death."This experience determined Welsey's understanding of the normal mode of entrance into the Chirstian life. And it also made him an evangelist. He declared later, "Then it pleased God to kindle a fire which I trust will never be extinguished."
Shortly after this conversion experience, Wesley went to Germany and visited the Moravaian settlement at Herrnhut and met Count Zinzendorf. When he returned England, with a former member of the Holy Club, George Whitefield, he began to preach salvation by faith. This "new doctrine" was considered redundant by the sacramentalists in the Established Church, who believed that people were saved by virtue of their infant baptism. The established churches began to close their doors to their preaching. This did not deter the Methodist (the name carried over from their Oxford days). Wesley believed that he was called "to reform the nation, particularly the Church, and spread Scriptural holiness over the land." So he and Whitefield began preaching in the open air. In April, 1739, Wesley followed Whitefield to Bristol, where a revival broke out among the miners of Kingswood. In order to conserve the gains of their evangelism, Wesley organized the new converts into Methodist "societies" and "bands", which sustained both them and the revival. The revival continued under his direct leadership for fifty years. He traveled some 250,000 miles throughout England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, preaching some 40,000 sermons. Although Wesley never visited North America again, he sent preachers there and 1784 he ordained Thomas Coke to superintend the work there. Wesley literally considered the "world as his parish" to which he spread "scriptural holiness throughout the land". He remained loyal to the Established Church all his life. Methodism did not become a separate denomination until after his death.
Wesley's Theology
Wesley's theology is essentially Arminianism, which is usually
contrasted with
Calvinism.
But his Arminianism is not just a negation
of the five points of Calvinism. Wesley affirms the sovereignty
of God to overcome the "sinful, devilish nature" of
man, by the work of the Holy Spirit. Wesley called this process
prevenient grace, justifying grace, and sanctifying grace (grace
being nearly synonymous with the work of the Holy Spirit).
Prevenient grace for Wesley is the universal work of the Holy Spirit in the hearts and lives of people between their conception and their conversion that prepares them for conversion. Original sin, according to Wesley, makes it necessary for the Holy Spirit to initiate salvation, because people are bound by sin and death. People experience the gentle wooing of the Holy Spirit, which prevents them from moving so far from "the way" that when they finally understand the claims of the gospel upon their lives, they have the freedom to say yes. The justifying grace is the work of the Holy Spirit at the moment of conversion when they say yes to the call of prevenient grace by placing their faith and trust in Jesus Christ. Wesley understood conversion to have two phases in a person's experience. The first phase is justification which includes the Spirit imputing to the believer the righteousness of Christ. The second phase is regeneration or the new birth. This lays the ground work for sanctification or the imparting of righteousness. These two phases mark the distinctiveness of Wesley's theology. Here he combines the "faith alone" emphasis of the Protestant Reformation with the passion for holiness so prevalent in the Catholic Counter-Reformation. Sanctifying grace describes the work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of the believers between their conversion and their death. Faith in Christ saves them from hell and sin for heaven and good works. Imputed righteousness, according to Wesley, entitles one to heaven, and imparted righteousness qualifies one for heaven. Here Wesley goes to great lengths to describe his view of Christian perfection. The process of sanctification or perfection culminates in the experience of "pure love" where one's love becomes devoid of self-interest. This second work of grace is the main work of the Holy Spirit in lives of believers. The first work of grace, justification, imputing of Christ's righteousness, must be followed by the second work of grace, sanctification, the imparting of Christ's righteousness. According to Wesley this second work of grace was not just a single experience but was also an on-going, continuous and dynamic process moving toward perfection, perfect love. This concept of continuous process was later clarified by the mystics such as Francois Fenelon, whose phrase "moi progressus ad infinitum" ["my progress is without end"] impressed Wesley and became the major teaching for the perpetuation of the Evangelical Revival. The watchword of the Revival was "Go on to perfection; otherwise you cannot keep what you have." According to Wesley prevenient grace is a process and justifying grace is instantaneous, but sanctifying grace is both a process and instantaneous. Although Wesley spoke of the instantaneous experience that he called "entire sanctification" subsequent to justification, his major emphasis was upon the continuous process of going on to perfection.
Holiness Movement
But this understanding of sanctification as a process was lost
by Wesley's followers. In the 1840s and 50s there originated in
the United States a movement that endeavored to preserve and propagate
John Wesley's teaching on entire sanctification and Christian
perfection. Sanctification was seen as instantaneous experience,
a second work of grace, in which inbred sin is eradicated. This
Holiness movement emphasized that salvation involved two experiences.
The first was conversion or justification, in which one is freed
from the guilt of sin, and in the second experience called entire
sanctification or full salvation, in which one is liberated from
the flaw in their moral nature that causes them to sin. This experience
makes possible for them to fulfill the entire law of God. This
doctrine of entire sanctification became the distinctive of the
Holiness Movement. When contemporary writers and teachers within
Methodist Church attempted to downplay this instantaneous experience
and emphasize the continuous character of sanctification, the
Holiness people withdrew from the Methodist Church and formed
their own denominations: the Wesleyan Methodist in 1843 and the
Free Methodist in 1860. These became the first two denominations
with the Holiness teaching of entire sanctification. After the
Civil War a full-fledged Holiness revival broke out within the
ranks of Methodist, and in 1867 the National Camp Meeting Association
for the Promotion of Holiness was formed. From 1893 it was known
as the National Holiness Association (NHA) and in 1971 it was
renamed the Christian Holiness Association. Until the 1890s the
Methodist dominated the movement and channeled its work into their
churches. By the 1880s as tensions between Methodism and the Holiness
association increased, the first independent Holiness denominations
began to appear, The gap between the two widened as Methodist
practice drifted toward a sedate, middle-class American Protestantism,
while the Holiness groups insisted that they were practicing primitive
Wesleyanism and were the successors of Wesley in America. The
small schismatic bodies gradually coalesced into formal denominations,
the largest of which were the Church of God, Anderson, Indiana
(1880), Church of the Nazarene (1908), and the Pilgrim Holiness
Church (1897), which later merged with the Wesleyan Methodist
in 1968. The polity of these churches was a modified Methodism
toward somewhat more congregational autonomy, and the "second
blessing" of entire sanctification was the heart of their
theologies. Most of them operated with a strict perfectionist
code of personal morality and demanded that their adherents wear
plain dress and abstinence from "worldly" pleasures
and amusements. Almost all of them allowed women to be ordained
into the ministry and occupy leadership positions.
The Holiness teaching quickly spread beyond Methodism. A Mennonite group, the United Missionary Church (formerly the Mennonite Brethren in Christ and since a merger in 1969 is known as Missionary Church), adopted a doctrine of entire sanctification and Holiness standard of personal conduct. Another group, the Brethren in Christ, founded in 1863, of mixed Pennsylvania pietists and Mennonites, also adopted Wesleyan perfectionism. Four Quaker yearly meetings that had been influenced by the Holiness teachings came together in 1947 to form the Evangelical Friends Alliance. The Salvation Army also adopted the Holiness teachings. The Christian and Missionary Alliance with its teaching on Christ as Savior, sanctifier, healer, and coming King, had affinities with the Holiness movement, but never accepted the doctrine of the second work of grace and the eradication of the sinful nature. Two of its teachers and ministers, A. B. Simpson and A. W. Tozer, were widely read in Holiness circles.
Pentecostalism
The Pentecostal movement began as an offshoot of the Holiness
Movement. It began at a small school, Bethel Bible School, in
Topeka, Kansas, which was founded by a Holiness evangelist, Charles
Fox Parham. Parham had concluded that speaking in tongues was the
sign of the second work of grace, after a student, Agnes Ozman,
experienced speaking in tongues, or glossolalia, in January,
1901. The teaching and practice spread rapidly among Holiness
groups. They became known as Pentecostals because they identified
their experience with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the
120 gathered in the upper room on the day of Pentecost recorded
in Acts 2. They called their experience the "baptism of the
Holy Spirit" on the basis of the promise of the risen Jesus
recorded in Acts 1:5, "John baptized with water, but before
many days you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit."
The movement came to Southern California in 1906 when a student of
Parham, William J. Seymour, a black Holiness evangelist from Houston,
Texas, came to Los Angeles, Calif., and began to hold revival
meetings at an abandoned African Methodist Episcopal Church on
Azuza Street in downtown Los Angeles. The Azuza Street Revival
from 1906 to 1909 became the center from which Pentecostalism became
a world movement. Other Holiness groups were pentecostalized rapidly
as leaders of Holiness Movement came to Azuza Street to investigate
what was happening there. Among the Azuza Street "pilgrims"
were G. B. Cashwell (North Carolina), C H. Mason (Tennessee),
Glen Cook (California), A. G. Argue (Canada), and W. H. Durham
(Chicago). Within a year from the opening of the Azuza Street
meetings (April, 1906), these and others spread the Pentecostal
message across the nation. But many of the Holiness groups were
not willing to believe that speaking in tongues was sign of the
second work of grace. Sharp controversies and divisions developed
in several Holiness denominations. The Pentecostals left or were
forced to leave their Holiness denominations and they formed the
first Pentecostal denominations, among which were the Pentecostal Holiness
Church, the Church of God in Christ, the Church of God (Cleveland,
Tennessee), the Apostolic Faith (Portland, Oregon), the United
Holy Church, and the Pentecostal Free-Will Baptist Church. Most
of these churches were located in the southern states and experienced
rapid growth after the Pentecostal Revival. Two of these, the
Church of God in Christ, and the United Holy Church were predominantly
black. A controversy developed among these churches about sanctification.
Some like Parham and Seymour taught that speaking with tongues
was the sign of the "second work of grace", but others
held that the baptism of the Holy Spirit with speaking in tongues
was a "third work of grace". Then there were those like
William H. Durham
who in 1910 began to teach his "finished
work" theology, which taught that sanctification is progressive
work of the Holy Spirit based on the finished work of Christ on
Calvary. The baptism of the Holy Spirit was the first filling
of the Holy Spirit by which one is enabled by the Holy Spirit
to live and minister. The Assemblies of God was formed in 1914
based on Durham's teaching and soon became the largest Pentecostal
denomination in the world. Most of the Pentecostal Churches after
1914 were formed on the model of Assemblies of God. They include
the Pentecostal Church of God, the International Church of the
Four Square Gospel (founded in 1927 by Aimee Semple McPherson),
and Open Bible Standard Church.