Theopedia

Holiness movement

The Holiness movement is a nineteenth-century offshoot of American Methodism teaching that, after justification, a believer may receive entire sanctification as a distinct, instantaneous “second work of grace,” cleansing the heart of inward sin rather than merely subduing it gradually over a lifetime. It draws directly on John Wesley’s doctrine of Christian perfection. Holiness theologians affirm the Trinity and the deity of Christ; the dispute concerns the nature and timing of sanctification, not the person of Christ or the ground of salvation itself.

Historical Origin

The doctrine descends from Arminius through Wesley. Arminius himself, by his own account, left the question of present perfection open,1 but his early followers among the Remonstrants developed a theory of perfection that Archibald Alexander Hodge calls “apparently identical with that taught by Wesley”: that a man “can, with the assistance of divine grace, keep all the commandments of God perfectly, according to the gospel or covenant of grace.”2

John Wesley made this doctrine of “Christian perfection,” alongside conversion, what Herman Bavinck calls “the great, all-controlling idea of Methodism.”3 Wesley taught that complete holiness was obtainable by faith immediately after justification, “for God wanted it, and Christ was mighty and ready to grant it in an instant.”3 He set out the doctrine at length in A Plain Account of Christian Perfection (1777).4

A further nineteenth-century variant arose at Oberlin College under Asa Mahan and Charles Finney, who grounded perfection not in the gospel covenant, as Wesley had, but in God’s original moral law adjusted, as a matter of “sheer justice,” to fallen ability.5 Hodge’s Outlines of Theology (1878) devotes a sustained, question-by-question section to comparing the Pelagian, Roman, Wesleyan, and Oberlin accounts of Christian perfection.6

Core Tenets

Bavinck summarizes Wesleyan sanctification in four points.7

A second, distinct work of grace. Justification, which forgives sin’s guilt, must be followed by a further, complete deliverance from sin’s “pollution and power,” since Christ is a whole Savior. Wesleyan theology calls this second work “a real change,” in contrast to justification’s merely “relative change”: the second of what Bavinck, quoting Toplady’s hymn “Rock of Ages,” calls sin’s “double cure.”8

Entire, not partial, deliverance from sin. Although its advocates disagree among themselves on the details, this sanctification consists in complete deliverance from sin’s pollution and power, not merely its progressive weakening.7

Obtained by faith, in an instant. The perfection is received by a faith Bavinck describes as “the conviction that God is mighty and willing to grant this complete holiness now at this very moment,” following the pattern of Mark 11:24. Wesley himself put it this way: “I believe this perfection is always wrought in the soul by a simple act of faith, consequently in an instant. But I believe there is a gradual work, both preceding and following that instant.”9

Marked by strong experience. Reception of this “second bestowal” of the Spirit is often accompanied, Bavinck notes, by deep emotion and physical response, and Methodism has historically tied it to expectation of Christ’s imminent return. Bavinck credits the movement with real fruit in missions and philanthropy alongside the risk of excess.7

Wesley did not claim sinlessness outright. He distinguished “sin, properly so called, i.e., a voluntary transgression of a known law” from “sin, improperly so called, i.e., an involuntary transgression of a divine law, known or unknown,” and held that entire sanctification excludes only the former: “I believe there is no such perfection in this life as excludes these involuntary transgressions, which I apprehend to be naturally consequent on the ignorance and mistakes inseparable from mortality.”10 Even the perfect Christian’s obedience, he wrote, “can not bear the rigor of God’s justice, but needs atoning blood,” so that the holiest “must continually say, ‘forgive us our trespasses.’”10

Comparison with the Reformed Confessions

The 1689 Second London Baptist Confession states, against any doctrine of entire sanctification attainable in this life, that sanctification “is throughout the whole man, yet imperfect in this life: there abideth still some remnants of corruption in every part, whence ariseth a continual and irreconcilable war; the flesh lusting against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh.”11 Rather than a second, instantaneous work completing sanctification, the confession describes a lifelong conflict in which “the regenerate part doth overcome,” so that “the saints grow in grace, perfecting holiness in the fear of God,” without reaching sinless completion before death.12 The Westminster Confession and Savoy Declaration state the same doctrine of sanctification as ongoing and incomplete in this life in substantially identical language, so the confession here represents Reformed teaching generally rather than a Baptist distinctive.

Hodge states the confession’s position this way: “The Scriptures never assert that a Christian may in this life attain to a state in which he may live without sin.” He reads Scripture’s own descriptions of “perfect” men, such as Noah (Gen. 6:9) and Job (Job 1:1), as using the term relatively, “to signify simple genuineness or sincerity,” rather than sinless completion.13 The confession’s own appeal is to the same testimony the apostle John gives directly: “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8).

Where Wesley locates the standard of Christian perfection in the “law of Christ” or gospel covenant rather than the original moral law given to Adam, Berkhof notes this as one further point distinguishing Wesleyan from earlier Arminian anthropology: Arminius grounded the restoration of human ability to cooperate with grace in divine justice, while “Wesley regarded this as a matter of pure grace.”14

Variants

Hodge distinguishes four nineteenth-century theories of Christian perfection. All agreed that a present, complete fulfillment of one’s obligations to God is attainable; they disagreed on its ground. The Pelagian theory denied any deterioration of human moral powers and so denied any need of supernatural grace to reach perfection. The Roman theory held the same original law to be the standard, its demands lowered to fallen human ability by grace, for Christ’s sake, admitting “venial” alongside “mortal” sins. The Arminian/Wesleyan theory held that Christ fulfilled the original law himself, so that the believer is now bound only by the “law of Christ,” the gospel covenant. The Oberlin theory, associated with Asa Mahan’s Scripture Doctrines of Christian Perfection and Charles Finney, held the same lowered standard as the Roman view but attributed the lowering to God’s “sheer justice” rather than to grace.15

Related Doctrines

Sanctification is the doctrine the Holiness movement redefines by adding a second, instantaneous stage to it. Arminianism is the wider theological tradition the movement inherits its account of human ability and grace from, and John Wesley is its founding theologian. Regeneration and Justification are the prior works of grace the movement’s “second blessing” is held to follow.

References

  1. Archibald Alexander Hodge, Outlines of Theology (New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1879), chap. 35, “Sanctification,” Question 28, 531, citing The Writings of Arminius, trans. James Nichols (n.p., n.d.), 1:256. ↩

  2. Hodge, Outlines of Theology, chap. 35, Question 28, 531, quoting Simon Episcopius as cited in George Peck, Christian Perfection (n.p., n.d.), 135-136. ↩

  3. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 20, “Justification, Sanctification, and Perseverance.” ↩ ↩2

  4. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, chap. 20, citing J. Wesley, A Plain Account of Christian Perfection (New York: Methodist Book Concern, 1925). ↩

  5. Hodge, Outlines of Theology, chap. 35, Question 33, 533-534, citing Asa Mahan, Scripture Doctrines of Christian Perfection, and Charles Finney, Oberlin Evangelist 4, nos. 15 and 19. ↩

  6. Hodge, Outlines of Theology, chap. 35, Questions 27-38, 530-536. ↩

  7. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, chap. 20. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  8. Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics, chap. 20, alluding to Augustus Toplady’s hymn “Rock of Ages”: “Be of sin the double cure: save from guilt and make me pure.” ↩

  9. Hodge, Outlines of Theology, chap. 35, Question 32, 533, quoting John Wesley as cited in Peck, Christian Perfection, 47-48. ↩

  10. Hodge, Outlines of Theology, chap. 35, Question 30, 532, quoting John Wesley, “Tract on Christian Perfection,” in Methodist Doctrinal Tracts (n.p., n.d.), 294, 310, 312, and Peck, Christian Doc. of Perfection, 204. ↩ ↩2

  11. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1677/1689), chap. 13, “Of Sanctification,” para. 2. ↩

  12. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1677/1689), chap. 13, para. 3. ↩

  13. Hodge, Outlines of Theology, chap. 35, Question 35, 535-536. ↩

  14. Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (London: Banner of Truth Trust, 1969), 406. ↩

  15. Hodge, Outlines of Theology, chap. 35, Questions 33-34, 533-535. ↩