ChurchMouse and Finney's Revivals

http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/entry.php?rec=142

churchmousec (http://churchmousec.wordpress.com/) has left a new comment on your post "Finney's Legacy Explains the Amalgamation of the E...":

A powerful post, Dr Jackson. My thanks. I might borrow some of it for a follow-up post on mine. Emphases mine below.

Thank you for quoting Charles Spurgeon, a Confessional ('Particular') Baptist (London Confessions of Faith 1689) and another Calvinist, B B Warfield, one of the 'Princeton Greats' before Princeton's seminary went Modernist. The Reformed Confessions -- the aforementioned Baptist and Westminster Confessions of Faith (1646), along with the Heidelberg Catechism (1563), Belgic Confession (1566) and Canons of Dordt (1619) -- have nothing to do with universalism, UOJ, Amyraldism, Remonstrants, Evangelicalism or Finneyism.

I am surprised that Finney never studied the Presbyterian confessions (i.e. Westminster); perhaps he was a natural rebel and bunked off Sunday School and ignored his parents. Or perhaps they were lax. If he had studied and absorbed them, he never would have set along the heretical path of Pelagianism. It seems he wanted Scripture his own way.

Many will appreciate the lesson against legalism:

'The Western half of New York became known as "the burnt-over district," because of the negative effects of the revivalist movement that culminated in Finney's work there.'

And, this passage explained much, since I know New England quite well and could never come to grips with their secularism and gravitation towards Unitarian 'churches':

'Despite Finney's accounts of glorious "revivals," most of the vast region of New England where he held his revival campaigns fell into a permanent spiritual coldness during Finney's lifetime and more than a hundred years later still has not emerged from that malaise. This is directly owing to the influence of Finney and others who were simultaneously promoting similar ideas.'

The New England states, even today, put much misplaced faith in the government and secularism as answers to the world's woes. Note how Harvard and Yale, former seminaries, changed since their founding.

However, as my reader Linda Kimball and the retired Anglican Bishop of Durham N T 'Tom' Wright who is now a professor at St Andrew's University, would point out (although on opposite ends of the spectrum), the Enlightenment had a significant part to play in apostasy, deism and agnosticism.

This is certainly a topic which deserves more exploration. Many would be surprised, particularly if the socio-political angle is brought into play.

Churchmouse

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GJ - Earlier revivals combined appeals to faith with social improvement. Absent the Means of Grace, these efforts followed the same downward trajectory as Pietism, which began in Biblical studies and ended in rationalistic rejection of the Bible (while teaching the Bible at Halle University).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Rauschenbusch
The cool guys among the Lutherans quoted Rauschenbusch,
the equivalent of having "Church Growth Eyes" today.

The Social Gospel Movement, which peaked with Walter Rauschenbusch's Social Gospel lectures at Yale, thought the church should use its power for social reform. That was the theology behind FDR's New Deal - the same programs too. The Social Gospel movement was extremely liberal about all Biblical doctrines, including the divinity of Christ.

The Social Gospel platform was first published in the Federal Council of Churches, which became the National Council of Churches after they were exposed as Communist led. Nothing changed except the title.

The Social Gospel became an unpopular term, but the movement continued in the mainline denominations, because they had no religion except do-goodism. Each generation has to be more extreme, so ALC/LCA/ELCA went through various fad movements and settled on homosexuality as the last frontier...for the moment.

Church Growth never claimed to be changing society. Instead they convinced the dim-witted denominational leaders that Drucker's Management by Objective and savvy marketing would make them successful.

Emergent or Missional thinking is grunge Church Growth and very close to mainline radicalism. Like Andy Stanley, the more they try to fit in with current trends, the more irrelevant they will become. WELS and Missouri are clambering aboard a sinking ship, starting emergent churches with wacky names, preparing a generation of their followers to leave the Lutheran Church altogether.

Andy has trained many WELS workers - Missouri too - I presume.
Note the faded jeans.
Andy cannot admit to being Babtist, so he serves "Northpoint Community Church."

Finney's Legacy Explains the Amalgamation of the Evangelicals And Shrinker/Emergent Lutherans

Charles Finney was the original fake, talking his way into certification,dividing believers.

He was president of Oberlin College, which was a model of rationalistic do-goodism.

The man Oberlin was famous for good works.

Finney described his certification exam:

Unexpectedly to myself they asked me if I received the Confession of faith of the Presbyterian church. I had not examined it;—that is, the large work, containing the Catechisms and Presbyterian Confession. This had made no part of my study. I replied that I received it for substance of doctrine, so far as I understood it. But I spoke in a way that plainly implied, I think, that I did not pretend to know much about it. However, I answered honestly, as I understood it at the time
[Charles Finney, The Memoirs of Charles Finney: The Complete Restored Text (Grand Rapids: Academie, 1989), 53-54].

He went on to brag, according to this site:

"As soon as I learned what were the unambiguous teachings of the Confession of faith upon these points, I did not hesitate at all on all suitable occasions to declare my dissent from them," he boasted. "I repudiated and exposed them. Wherever I found that any class of persons were hidden behind these dogmas, I did not hesitate to demolish them, to the best of my ability" [Memoirs, 60]. The fact that Finney had obtained his own preaching credentials by professing adherence to the Confession did not faze him at all. "When I came to read the Confession of faith, and saw the passages that were quoted to sustain these peculiar positions, I was absolutely ashamed of it," he frankly stated. "I could not feel any respect for a document that would undertake to impose on mankind such dogmas as those" [Memoirs, 61].

He rejected justification by faith, the imputation of righteousness:

Finney spends a considerable amount of time in several of his works arguing against "that theological fiction of imputation" [Memoirs, 58]. Those who have any grasp of Protestant doctrine will see immediately that his attack at this point is a blatant rejection of the doctrine of justification by faith alone (sola fide). It places him outside the pale of true evangelical Protestantism. The doctrine of imputed righteousness is the very heart of the historic difference between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism. The whole doctrine of justification by faith hinges on this concept. But Finney flatly rejected it. He derided the concept of imputation as unjust: "I could not but regard and treat this whole question of imputation as a theological fiction, somewhat related to our legal fiction of John Doe and Richard Roe" [Memoirs, 60].

Finney's effect, by preaching false doctrine, led to Joseph Smith inventing the Mormon religion:


Predictably, most of Finney's spiritual heirs lapsed into apostasy, Socinianism, mere moralism, cultlike perfectionism, and other related errors. In short, Finney's chief legacy was confusion and doctrinal compromise. Evangelical Christianity virtually disappeared from western New York in Finney's own lifetime. Despite Finney's accounts of glorious "revivals," most of the vast region of New England where he held his revival campaigns fell into a permanent spiritual coldness during Finney's lifetime and more than a hundred years later still has not emerged from that malaise. This is directly owing to the influence of Finney and others who were simultaneously promoting similar ideas.


The Western half of New York became known as "the burnt-over district," because of the negative effects of the revivalist movement that culminated in Finney's work there. These facts are often obscured in the popular lore about Finney. But even Finney himself spoke of "a burnt district" [Memoirs, 78], and he lamented the absence of any lasting fruit from his evangelistic efforts. He wrote,

I was often instrumental in bringing Christians under great conviction, and into a state of temporary repentance and faith . . . . [But] falling short of urging them up to a point, where they would become so acquainted with Christ as to abide in Him, they would of course soon relapse into their former state [cited in B. B. Warfield, Studies in Perfectionism, 2 vols. (New York: Oxford, 1932), 2:24].
One of Finney's contemporaries registered a similar assessment, but more bluntly:

During ten years, hundreds, and perhaps thousands, were annually reported to be converted on all hands; but now it is admitted, that real converts are comparatively few. It is declared, even by [Finney] himself, that "the great body of them are a disgrace to religion" 
[cited in Warfield, 2:23].

B. B. Warfield cited the testimony of Asa Mahan, one of Finney's close associates,
. . . who tells us—to put it briefly—that everyone who was concerned in these revivals suffered a sad subsequent lapse: the people were left like a dead coal which could not be reignited; the pastors were shorn of all their spiritual power; and the evangelists—"among them all," he says, "and I was personally acquainted with nearly every one of them—I cannot recall a single man, brother Finney and father Nash excepted, who did not after a few years lose his unction, and become equally disqualified for the office of evangelist and that of pastor."


Thus the great "Western Revivals" ran out into disaster. . . . Over and over again, when he proposed to revisit one of the churches, delegations were sent him or other means used, to prevent what was thought of as an affliction. . . . Even after a generation had passed by, these burnt children had no liking for the fire 
[Warfield, 2:26-28].

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GJ - When justification by faith is denied, Christianity becomes a law religion. As Hoenecke said about Pietism and The CORE in Appleton -

life over doctrine, sanctification over justification, piety not as a consequence but a stipulation of enlightenment, leading to a kind of synergism and Pelagianism. 
Dogmatik, III, p. 253. Jackson Living Translation [unlike Mequon grads, I read German]

This is precisely where Werning, Kent Hunter, Valleskey, Paul Calvin Kelm, F. Bivens, Glende and Ski have led people. Why do they love the Babtists and New Agers so much? Denying justification by faith and the Means of Grace, they look for a source of comfort in their amalgamation of rationalism and subjectivism.

Missouri and WELS have fallen for these toxins because they did not teach or affirm the efficacy of the Word, the Means of Grace, and justification by faith. Their ministry is purely a ministry of condemnation, of works demanded but never sufficient to satisfy the leaders. Naturally, an emphasis upon grand effects rather than fidelity to the Word has led to criminal hypocrisy.

WELS excommunicates for questioning their Reign of Terror while publicly absolving a heinous felon shortly before he pleads innocent of all charges.

Many pastors are trembling in their offices, furtively reading this blog, knowing what they ought to do, but more afraid of spineless bullies than the Word of God.

Finney was famous for creating burnt-over districts, fertile ground for the growth of cults like Mormonism. He ruined minsters who fell by the wayside in their rationalism and infidelities.

Luther predicted it in his own lifetime.

The papal Antichrist is not persecuting Lutherans today,
but the little Antichrists (DPs and SPs) are.

Churchmouse Campanologist

Churchmouse Campanologist:

"Until a few years ago, the name Charles Grandison Finney meant nothing to me. However, many American Protestants will have been unknowingly influenced by his 19th century Pelagianism.

In 1995, Dr Michael Horton examined the long shadow of Finneyism on the American Church in ‘The Legacy of Charles Finney’, written for Modern Reformation magazine.  Horton is the J. Gresham Machen professor of apologetics and systematic theology at Westminster Seminary California (Escondido, California), a host of the White Horse Inn broadcasts and editor-in-chief of Modern Reformation magazine. He is author of many books, including The Gospel-Driven Life, Christless Christianity, People and Place, Putting Amazing Back Into Grace, The Christian Faith, and For Calvinism."

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Legalistic Lutheranism (and Applied Finneyism) – Part 1 « Churchmouse Campanologist

Legalistic Lutheranism (and Applied Finneyism) – Part 1 « Churchmouse Campanologist:

"Yesterday’s post concerned the legacy of Charles Grandison Finney, one of America’s foremost evangelists — and Pelagians — of the 19th century. Even today, his legacy reaches the Protestant church in subtle ways.

The following first-person story from a Lutheran pastor explains why Finneyism is alive and well in the 21st century. The Revd Matt Richard is a regular contributor to a confessional LCMS pastors’ blog, Steadfast Lutherans (The Brothers of John the Steadfast) [see my blogroll]."

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Legalistic Lutheranism (and Applied Finneyism) – Part 2 « Churchmouse Campanologist

Legalistic Lutheranism (and Applied Finneyism) – Part 2 « Churchmouse Campanologist:


Today’s post concludes with the LCMS pastor — the Revd Matt Richard’s — journey to confessional Lutheranism.

Yesterday, he detailed his Folk Lutheranism. In Part 2, he describes the four main hurdles he faced in coming to a confessional understanding of the Christian faith.  Excerpts follow, emphases mine.

Shift #1: My View Of Sin?
My Folk Lutheranism understood sin primarily as a series of actions that I did or did not do. Sure, I confessed that I was a sinner, but in all reality my belief of sin was narrowly focused on external actions alone …

I slowly began to realize that I wasn’t a sinner because of my sinful actions, but rather I was a sinner who sinned. This idea of sin was a much more serious problem than I had originally realized.

Read more on his blog.


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