Joel Gets Involved in Church Politics (Not Clickbait)

 

This article is something very unusual for me. I usually try to deal with things that are abstract and even impractical—partly because that is what interests me and partly because I think, paradoxically enough, that impracticality is what the world needs most at present. This is the first time, at least on this platform, that I have written an article concerning something so direct and immediate. I apologize in advance for how crude and unprofessional this may be and also for how irrelevant it will be for at least some of my readers.

I am a member of the Allegheny Wesleyan Methodist Connection (Original Allegheny Conference)™. This year, the general conference of our church proposed certain changes to our statements of beliefs, proposals which will be voted on by the members of our churches in just a few weeks. These proposals (technically called “memorials”) are mostly intended to update and clarify some of the admittedly archaic language of the original. I have no intrinsic objection to clarifying or even changing our doctrinal position if there is good reason. But I do not believe that, taken as a whole, these changes are good, and I am writing this article in hopes of explaining my reasons for this position and, perhaps, convincing some others to agree. (For that reason, this article may not be especially interesting or even comprehensible to those outside Allegheny.)

I know some will say that, after all, a statement of belief is only an assortment of words and really makes no difference to anybody—that it is not worth fighting over. The obvious response is that if it makes no difference, then why bother changing it in the first place? If the stated doctrine of our church is important enough to amend, it is important enough to amend properly.

I could, if I had time, go through each memorial and discuss the values and demerits of each. But because this issue is time sensitive, and I want to get this out while it is still relevant, I will focus solely on Memorial 7, which proposes a change to the statement regarding entire sanctification.

For a long time, I have been impressed by the Discipline's statement regarding entire sanctification, which takes an extremely complex and controversial issue and states it very simply, shortly, and elegantly. The present statement is also (perhaps deliberately) worded in such a way as to avoid many of the internal conflicts which exist in the Holiness Movement--so that nearly anyone who believes in entire sanctification at all can assent to it. And therefore, I can't help feeling a little disappointed and mildly annoyed that the proposed changes completely destroy that, giving us a longer and more complicated statement that seems purposely to step on as many toes as possible. 

I do not want to be unreasonable. I know how hard writing this kind of thing can be. Complications and offenses are inescapable results of clarification. I am not saying that I could write anything better. My point is that we don't have to since we already have a very good statement on the matter. For purposes of comparison, this is how the statement reads at present: “Entire Sanctification is that work of the Holy Spirit by which the child of God is cleansed from all inbred sin through faith in Jesus Christ. It is subsequent to regeneration, and is wrought when the believer presents himself a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God, and is thus enabled through grace to love God with all the heart and to walk in His holy commandments blameless.”

I do not want to sound reactionary. I do not object to this change simply because it is different. And while I do think there are issues here on a merely literary level, that is not why I am writing this article. There are several reasons why I believe this proposed change is either unnecessarily controversial or flat-out wrong.

The second sentence of this proposed change contains most of my objections and so serves as a good starting place for this article. It reads: “[Entire Sanctification] is wrought when sin is eradicated from the heart by the baptism with the Holy Spirit, and comprehends in one experience the cleansing of the heart from sin and the abiding, indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit, empowering the believer for life and service.” And my first objection arises specifically from the use of the word eradicate.  Eradicate literally means to-pull-up-by-the-roots; it gives us a word picture of a thing like a plant being dug up and cast away. The idea is that sin (i.e., the carnal nature) is removed from the soul in Entire Sanctification. 

The issue is that this particular word picture is seldom, if ever, used in Scripture. (Hebrews 12:15 refers to sin—or sinners—as a 'root,' but there is no reference to uprooting. The verse is about prevention, not cure.) And some prefer other metaphors. Some prefer to describe the carnal nature as an absence, as a hole within the soul that must be filled. Some describe it, not as a presence or an absence, but as a twisting or perversion of the soul which must be straightened out—an idea that goes back to Charles Wesley, who referred to it as a “bent to sinning.” Some describe the whole thing as relational—that carnality is being in an improper relation to God and sanctification is a proper relation.

Obviously, none of these metaphors are literally true. The carnal nature is not literally a root or a hole or a broken axle or a dark room or a corrupt piece of computer code or any other metaphor you could come up with. All language for spiritual reality (or even psychological reality, for that matter) is metaphorical. My point is that of all the possible words that could have been used to describe sanctification, they chose the one word which seems to lock us into one particular metaphor. The same thing could be urged against the original statement, which used the word “cleansed”--but that at least has the advantage of being a Biblical term (1 John 1:9) and of allowing at least a little more freedom of interpretation. (1 John 1:9 is not specifically about Entire Sanctification, but I think it includes that idea for reasons too complicated to go into here; we'll talk about it in another article eventually.)

The word eradication has been used in the Holiness Movement for a long time, and I am not here complaining about its use; my objection is to giving this one particular word (and therefore one particular point of view) the fixed and formal position of dogma and thereby refusing any alternate point of view. However, while it seems an unwise decision, it is not definitively wrong. 

What is definitively wrong is the conclusion of the sentence which states that sanctification, besides being a cleansing of the heart, involves “the abiding, indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit, empowering the believer for life and service.” Though this is not explicitly stated, the over-powering, inescapable implication is that there is no abiding or indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit in the Christian life prior to Entire Sanctification. This implication is strengthened (perhaps coincidentally) by the fact that any mention of the Holy Spirit has been removed from the statement about regeneration by Memorial 5.

One of the most important passages on Entire Sanctification is 1 Corinthians 2-3, where Paul clearly delineates the two possible states of the Christian life, the spiritual and the carnal. Paul states that the Corinthians were carnal but also Christians while also implying that he was not in the same class but was spiritual. That is basically the whole case for Entire Sanctification. But just a matter of verses after laying out this general pattern, Paul goes on to beseech these carnal Christians to live a higher life, asking them: “Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?” (1 Corinthians 3:16)

You could argue that Paul only means that the Spirit dwells in the church collectively and not specifically in its members. But in Romans 8 (coming at the end of another important Biblical passage on Entire Sanctification), Paul makes this statement: “But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness.” (Romans 8:9-10) From this, we can draw the following conclusions—that all Christians have the Spirit dwelling in them and, by the Spirit, have Christ dwelling in them, and without that reality, there is no Christian life at all. The carnal Christian has the Spirit, or they would be carnal sinners and not Christians—the carnal state is a mixed or hybrid state where the Flesh and the Spirit coexist within the soul.

If that is not true--if the carnal Christian does not have both the Flesh and the Spirit--then the only two other alternatives are to say that Carnal Christians do not have Spirit and do not belong to Christ or to say that the term 'carnal' does not apply to Christians at all. In other words, the only two alternatives are to deny salvation or to deny entire sanctification—neither one of which seems to be exactly healthy for the church. And yet that is exactly what we must do if we accept Memorial 7—if there is no “abiding, indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit” prior to Entire Sanctification, then there is no Christian experience and no salvation prior to Entire Sanctification. And that hardly seems like the position we should be taking—seeming more strange given the fact that Memorial 6 makes a point of establishing that those who are saved but not entirely sanctified can go to Heaven.

But this contention is not merely my own; this is a position taken by others throughout our heritage.“'If any man have not the Spirit of Christ'--Dwelling and governing in him--'He is none of his' --He is not a member of Christ; not a Christian; not in a state of salvation. A plain, express declaration, which admits of no exception.” (John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament, note on Romans 8:9.) “If we have not the Spirit in some measure, we are not Christ’s.” (Dr. Yocum Teaches the Epistles of Paul, note on Romans 8:9-11) “There is no state of grace independent of the indwelling Holy Spirit...” (Steele, “The Wesleyan Doctrine of Holiness as Defined by Daniel Steele,” The Allegheny Wesleyan Methodist 74, no. 12 (December 2012): 9) “...[T]hey all ‘received the Holy Ghost’ when they were justified. God then ‘sent forth the Spirit of his Son into their hearts, crying, Abba, Father.’” (John Wesley, Works, 12:416)

This issue is quite simple and quite straightforward. There is already enough confusion within the modern Holiness Movement regarding entire sanctification without changing our stand to this statement which brings confusion rather than clarity. 

My next statement will be more controversial, but I do have Biblical support (though admittedly less.) This objection arises from the fact that this memorial makes entire sanctification equivalent or concurrent with the Baptism with the Spirit. This is actually stated multiple times throughout Memorial 7; Memorials 1 and 6 take the same position, though calling it the Baptism of the Spirit. The objection to this is 1 Corinthians 12:13, where Paul lays out the foundation for the unity of the church by saying: “For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit.” Though the KJV translates this as baptism 'by' the Spirit, the word is the same in Greek as those passages referenced in the memorial that concern baptism 'with' the Spirit.

If, therefore, the Baptism with the Spirit is what gives us entrance into the church, and it is also the same as Entire Sanctification, then that means that those who are saved but not sanctified are not part of the church and so, by the logic of the New Testament, are not fully Christian. Once again, we find ourselves asked to deny salvation in order to affirm entire sanctification.

Now, it is entirely possible that there is more than one Baptism of the Spirit; that both initial salvation and entire sanctification involve a baptism of the Spirit as they both certainly involve the agency of the Spirit. The gospels and Acts speak of a baptism of the Spirit in connection to Pentecost—and trying to understand what happened at Pentecost (and the other Pentecostal events in Acts) is admitted difficult from any perspective. There is something in these scriptures that stubbornly refuses to be fitted comfortably into anybody's theories. But discussing all of that would take too much space in this already over-long article. And the bottom line is this. There is much room for discussion here as we try to understand what is meant by the various Scriptures regarding the baptism (or baptisms) of the Spirit. But that is only because we are working under the present Discipline, which leaves the whole question open. If we accept this change (and if anybody actually cared about following the Discipline), then all discussion is at an end. We are locked (for at least four years) into accepting the identification of Entire Sanctification with Baptism of the Spirit and, with that, the secondary implication that those who are saved but unsanctified are not truly part of the church. And I submit to you that this is wrong.

That is the bulk of my objection to Memorial 7. I wish I could go through all the attached Scripture references one by one to analyze and exegete them, but if I do, the voting will be over before this article is finished. Besides, when someone tells me—in the precise and serious context of formal dogma—that Romans 15:29 or 1 Thessalonians 4:3 are texts about Entire Sanctification, it is hard to take the whole thing seriously enough to research the matter further.

The requirement for membership in our church, as listed in Paragraph 107 of the Discipline, is to answer yes to the question: “Do you cordially accept our articles of faith?” I could say that to our present statement regarding Entire Sanctification. I could not say it to the replacement form of Memorial 7. I could not say it was Biblical orthodox or faithful to the Wesleyan Tradition or, even, that it was a rationally coherent statement of any kind. It adds needless controversies and complications which muddies the truth and quite definitely (whether intentionally or accidentally) implies the denial or at least degradation of salvation in an attempt to affirm entire sanctification. And that is why I intend to vote against this memorial and why I am writing this article in hopes of convincing some of my readers to do the same.