Wesleyan and Reformed Impulses in the Keswick and Pentecostal Movements

Editor’s note: This academic paper by Peter Althouse, whom Jürgen Moltmann described in his autobiography as one of “the younger theologians of the Pentecostal movement,” investigates the roots of the Keswick movement and its influence on Pentecostalism.

1. Introduction

The first Keswick Convention convened in June 1875, when a few hundred men and women gathered in the Northwestern British town of Keswick for a series of Bible studies, addresses and prayer meetings designed to promote “practical holiness.”¹ This convention was directly influenced by Robert Pearsall Smith, a Quaker glass maker with Holiness leanings who, with his wife Hannah Whithall Smith and Presbyterian friend W.E. Boardman, conducted a series of meetings in 1873 in an effort to foster a “higher Christian life” for both clergy and lay-persons. In August 1874, R.P. Smith, Theodore Monod, Otto Stockmayer, Evan Hopkins, Asa Mahan and W.E. Boardman conducted a conference at Oxford, one which had significant influence on the later Keswick conference. Finally, just a month prior to the Keswick conference Smith, Hopkins, Mahan and Monod conducted a meeting in Brighton with the same goals in mind. T.D. Harford-Battersby and Robert Wilson then invited the Smiths to Keswick to conduct a “Union Meeting for the Promotion of Practical Holiness,” but just before the conference Smith withdrew from the meeting for reasons shrouded in mystery. The leadership of the first Keswick Convention consequently fell to Battersby.²

The Keswick Convention was evangelical in its orientation,³ but unlike the American revivalism which influenced it, Keswick would more accurately be defined as a renewal movement. Keswick, while meeting annually to this day, had not formed an “official” theology, had not schismed into a new denomination and, like its first meeting, consisted of an interdenominational constituency with its own organizational structures.⁴ Yet the Keswick movement was an important development in the history of British Christianity, particularly in its validation of a Christian life of holiness for those who were uneasy with Wesleyan perfectionism. It had significant influence as well, specifically in its impact upon the development and tensions within American Pentecostalism as Keswick theology was reintroduced into North America.

More generally, the Keswick movement was impacted by two streams of theology: the “new light” and New School Calvinism of American revivalism, particularly in the figures of Charles G. Finney and Asa Mahan of the Oberlin school and Wesleyan perfectionism particularly in the Holiness movements. Yet, in the interplay of Wesleyan and Calvinist theological streams, tensions existed, particularly in the doctrine of sanctification. J. Robertson McQuilkin, a Keswick scholar, has pointed out that Keswick was accused by Presbyterian minister B.B, Warfield of teaching perfectionism of the Wesleyan kind⁵ and from the other side, H.A. Baldwin, a Free Methodist minister, objected to Keswick holiness when he commented “‘Keswickism’ is described as ‘one of the most dangerous enemies of the experience of holiness…for they give us to understand that such a thing as the entire eradication of the carnal nature from the soul is an impossibility in this world.”⁶ This friction was due, in part, to the diversity of leadership. While the leadership of the Keswick conferences was dominated by evangelical Anglicans and American revivalists, there were some Wesleyans in the group. However, modern scholarship generally agrees that the Keswick view of sanctification had more of a Reformed view.

This paper will argue that the Keswick understanding of sin and sanctification did in fact adopt a “New School” Calvinist view distinct from the Wesleyan perfectionist view, even though there was a definite interplay of Wesleyan perfectionism in both New School and Keswick thought. Furthermore, this understanding had a direct and divisive impact on the formation and development of American Pentecostalism. This position will be argued by first examining the theological environment of Wesleyan Holiness and American Revivalism’s understanding of sin and sanctification as a prolegomena to the Keswick Conferences. Second, the Keswick view will be examined with its distinctiveness from its forbearers. Finally, the implications that the Keswick view had on the formation and development of American Pentecostalism will be examined, particularly in the sanctification controversy of 1910 centred around the theological distinctions of William Durham. At the same time, it will be argued that the very seeds of the controversy were in place at the very onset of the Pentecostal movement in 1900/1908 and that this was part of the reason for the formation of the movement.

II. The Perfectionism of Wesleyan Methodism and the Holiness Movement

John Wesley’s theology of salvation, as it related to his understanding of sin and sanctification, has had significant impact upon Protestant Christianity (including the Keswick movement) for the past two centuries. Unlike subsequent Wesleyan and Pentecostal movements which understood elements of salvation as stages of Christian experience, i.e. conversion, perfection as the “second blessing and/or baptism of the Holy Spirit, Wesley understood salvation as moments or dimensions of faith. Thus conviction of sin, repentance, justification and sanctification were dimensions of salvation which spanned across the life of the Christian.⁷ Wesley preached that

…we experience the proper Christian salvation, whereby, “through grace,” we “are saved by faith,” consisting of those branches, justification and sanctification. By justification we are saved from the guilt of sin, and restored to the favour of God; by sanctification we are saved from the power and root of sin, and restored to the image of God. All experience, as well as Scripture, show this salvation to be both instantaneous and gradual.⁸

For Wesley, salvation was both instantaneous and progressive, which created real tension in his understanding of sanctification as the perfecting of the Christian.⁹ In The Plain Account of the Christian Faith he stated:

I believe this instant [of perfection] generally is the instant of death, the moment before the soul leaves the body. But I believe it may be ten, twenty or forty years before.

I believe it is usually many years after justification; but that it may be within five years or five months after it. I know of no conclusive argument to the contrary.¹⁰

The tension between instantaneous and progressive sanctification was an equivocation which Wesley could not resolve, but generally he saw perfection as the goal of the Christian life.

Wesley argued that perfection was the reorientation of fallen human existence, which changed one’s inward motivation so that a sinless existence was possible.¹¹ The Christian was freed from both inward and outward sin. For Wesley, believers were “saved in this world from all sin, from all unrighteousness; that they [were] now in such a sense perfect as not to commit sin, and be freed from evil thoughts and evil temptations.”¹²

The concern which Wesley had was that if one argued that perfection in faith were not possible in this world, then one could argue that sin was inevitable. As Albert Outler, a Wesleyan scholar, argued:

“Perfection” [was] the fulfillment of faith’s desire to love God above all else and all else in God, so far as conscious will and deliberate action [were] concerned. To deny this as at least a possibility seemed to Wesley to imply that deliberate sin [was] inevitable and unavoidable—which would say that man was made to sin and that his sinful disposition [was] invincible.¹³

John Wesley thus defined Christian perfection as the possible realization of living a holy life in this world, but the tension that Wesley maintained between the instantaneousness and progressiveness of perfection was to swing to an instantaneous experience of perfection in later Holiness articulations. The Holiness movements of the mid- to late- nineteenth century defined Christian perfection as a “second blessing” experience.

Wesley’s perfectionist theology was to take root in nineteenth century American culture in the form of Methodism. The first Methodist society was established as early as the 1760s in Maryland by Robert Strawbridge and in New York City by Barbara Heck. Wesley also sent two missionaries, Richard Boardman and Joseph Pilmore, to the United States in 1779. People such as Francis Asbury, who oversaw the Methodist movement, Philip William Otterbein and Martin Boehm, who established the United Brethren denomination (1815), and Jacob Albright, who established the Evangelical Association (1816) were paramount in the success of American Methodism. The general thrust of these Methodist denominations were the themes of Jesus Christ as Saviour, the authority of Scripture for theology and sanctification.¹⁴

Thomas Langford argued that before 1840, the theme of perfection was not really stressed,¹⁵ but Timothy Smith showed that perfectionism was still a concern in Methodism. In the Methodist General Conference of 1824 and 1832 the need for holiness was stressed and the theme of holiness had so infiltrated American culture that it had gained intellectual respectability.¹⁶ American historian George Tindall made a similar point when he argued that Americans of the nineteenth century believed themselves to be the embodiment of perfectionist virtue, a people who had rejected the corruption of the European Establishment church and had envisioned a new era of liberty and virtue.¹⁷

In the late 1830s, a concern for the practical realization of holiness pressed to the fore. In 1839, Phoebe Palmer claimed to have experienced the blessing of entire sanctification and preached that one could obtain this perfection through the “shorter way.” The older form of Methodism insisted that the “longer way” of perfection involved waiting upon the assurance of the Holy Spirit that this perfection had indeed been received. This waiting often took a life-time of seeking.¹⁸ The “longer way” of perfection focused on the progressive element of Wesley’s theology at the expense of the instantaneous. Palmer, however, focused on the instantaneous. She argued that one who sought perfection needed only to trust in the grace of God.

Palmer believed that complete sanctification was offered to the believer by the grace of God and could be immediately realized when the believer responded to this call by placing “all upon the altar.” As she argued, “It was thus, that by ‘laying all upon this altar,’ she, by the most unequivocal Scriptural testimony, as she deemed laid herself under the most sacred obligation to believe that the sacrifice became ‘holy and acceptable….'”¹⁹ This “shorter way” involved three steps: The first one demanded an entire consecration, where one surrendered all earthly desires upon the altar. The second step was an act of faith where perfection was accepted as the promise of God when the conditions of consecration had been met. The third step involved the testimony of perfection as a means to encourage others to seek perfection.²⁰

With the Holiness movement, perfection theology became an instantaneous experience of God by the working of the Holy Spirit. As one minister said in 1840 regarding the lack of practical holiness, “[l]et us not suppose it is enough to love this doctrine in our standards; let us labour to have the experience and power of it in our hearts.”²¹ The influence of Wesleyan perfectionist theology upon the Keswick Conferences was not so much in the actual theological formulations, but in the belief that a “necessary” life of sin was unscriptural. Yet the holiness theme of Keswick was the direct influence of a modified Calvinist understanding of sin and sanctification. This being said, the Wesleyan perfectionist theme influenced Calvinist theology, particularly the revivalism of the Oberlin school, as its general implications were evident in American culture.

III. Sanctification in American Revivalism and the Oberlin School

Parallel to Wesleyan perfectionism and the growth of Methodism in the United States was a Calvinist movement which reinterpreted predestination theology to stressed the need for an experiential, personal conversion. William McLoughlin argued that the first great awakening (1730-60) led by revivalist Jonathan Edwards was, in part, rooted the belief that the Calvinist doctrine of predestination was no longer defensible.²² A more tenable argument, however, was that the Calvinist doctrine of predestination was reinterpreted to fit the conditions of eighteenth and nineteenth century America, particularly in the heightened place of human subjectivity and culture. Strict predestination, which was interpreted in the social conditions of European monachicalism, was reinterpreted in the nineteenth century by a fledgling American democracy, informed by Enlightenment beliefs of human responsibility and Romantic beliefs in human self fulfilment. Whatever the case, the first great awakening witnessed a break between “old-light” factions and “new-light” factions, where there was a new-light (revelation) from God regarding the destiny of his people.

Old-light factions were divided into two groups. One, which consisted primarily of Arians, Socians, Arminians, tended to be rationalists, deists, Unitarians and Universalists. This group opposed the doctrines of predestination, innate depravity and believed in the freedom of the will and the universal offer of salvation. Furthermore, this group argued that there was no necessity for a “conversion experience,” but that salvation could be attained through moral discipline and a respectable life. The second old-light group upheld the Calvinist covenantal theology with a modification of certain church practices. Though many old-lights were sympathizers of Edwards revival, they reacted in opposition when church schisms occurred.

The new-light factions were also divided into two groups. One group consisted of ordained minister who supported Edwards’ reforms. The second group was more radical and demanded drastic ecclesiastical reforms. While many schismed into new denominations of Separatists and Separate Baptists, a good many stayed within their own churches to initiate internal reforms.²³

New-light Calvinists, also described as Evangelical Calvinists, emphasized a crisis conversion and spiritual regeneration independent of the social conditions. In other words, God’s grace, it was believed, was still manifested independent of rational or social conditions. The human response to God was with the heart. McLoughlin claimed:

Evangelical Calvinism was conceived with the power that change[d] depraved, selfish men from rebels against God to loving servants of God. Such power [could] not derive from education, worldly experience, prudence, or moral self-discipline. True holiness or benevolence toward God [was] so ineffable, so indescribably different from anything we [could] know from worldly, sensual experience that it [could] not come to us through the intellect and understanding. The link between man and God [was] not reason, the head, but the heart (italics mine).²⁴

Reinterpretation of predestination theology was an adaptation of covenantal theology which allowed for human response to God’s grace. By arguing for a “conditional” covenantal theology, the new-lights argued that predestination was not absolute. There was a human response necessary in God’s act of grace, so the human being needed to prepare the heart, accept God’s grace and live morally. These activities did not guarantee redeeming grace, but fulfilled the prerequisites for salvation. Hence, the person participated in the process of regeneration.²⁵ In other words, new-light theology was still covenantal because only God could offer salvation, but whether this offer was accepted or rejected depended on human agency, an agency made possible by the grace of God.

The importance of the first great awakening and new-light Calvinist theology for the later Keswick movement was its emphasis upon the experiential in salvific regeneration, distinct from a strictly rational assent to doctrinal beliefs. Thus there was a certain affinity between the Wesleyan emphasis upon the experience of salvation, moral purity and the growth of grace manifested in perfection²⁶ and the new-light Calvinist emphasis upon the experience of salvation as an act of grace which resulted in the imputation of righteousness. Of course, within the new-light Calvinist tradition, this righteousness was not fully realized until the believer faced Jesus Christ in the day of judgment.²⁷ The emphasis upon human response, however, was to become an even more important issue in the second great awakening when the New School Calvinist theology of Charles F. Finney and Asa Mahan rocked Oberlin college to its core, and this revival was to have a direct influence upon the Keswick understanding of sanctification.

Donald Dayton, in agreement with Richard Carradine, contended that the Calvinist revival of the second great awakening was primarily the result of an encroachment of Methodist ideas and practices into Calvinist theology. The revivalist theologies of Charles G. Finney and Asa Mahan with the controversy they created in the Oberlin school were, in Dayton’s view, a Wesleyanization of Calvinist doctrine. He argued:

…Charles G. Finney began to turn to the Wesleyan tradition for clues to achieving the experience [of holiness], preaching up the topic before personally experiencing the ‘blessing,”…. Oberlin perfectionism was basically Wesleyan in character, though influenced by its context (explicitly or implicitly) in the Calvinist New Divinity to give greater weight to ‘moral law’ (reflecting Mahan’s moral philosophy and tendency toward Kantianism) and ‘free-will’ (especially in Finney, who emphasized the call to perfection implie[d] the ability achieved in the nineteenth century.²⁸

Yet while there was certainly an influence of Wesleyan perfectionism upon Calvinist predestination doctrine, Dayton’s assertion did not account for the vitality and dynamics of Reformed theology to interact with American culture.

Timothy Smith maintained that Finney’s emphasis upon human agency in responding to God’s offer of salvation and his interest in personal holiness was less a conversion to Wesleyan perfectionism than a general acceptance of the perfectionist ideals implicit in American culture.²⁹ Granted, the perfectionist ideals were influenced by Wesleyan spirituality in the United States, but they were also influenced by the experiential nature of Edward’s revival a generation earlier. So Smith argued that there were four theological streams within the matrix of the second great awakening: the Traditionalists (High Church Episcopalians and Old Lutherans), Orthodox Calvinists (Old School Presbyterians, Anitmission Baptists and some conservative Congregationalists and Presbyterians), Revival Calvinists (New School Presbyterians, most Congregationalists, Low Church Episcopalians, Regular Baptists, Disciples of Christ and New Lutherans) and Evangelical Arminians (Wesleyan). While Smith suggested that Revival Calvinists and Evangelical Arminians differed more in practice than creed, he was careful to argue that Revival Calvinists mostly drew upon Reformed theology except to adopt an Arminian position on election and free will.³⁰

McLoughlin made a similar argument, but seemed less willing to credit Revival (Evangelical) Calvinists with adapting its own Reformed heritage. He stated:

Sometimes described as ‘the decline of Calvinism’ or ‘the rise of romantic evangelicalism,’ [the second great awakening] would better be called the transformation of Evangelical Calvinism into Evangelical Arminianism or perhaps, the interaction between the Age of Reason and the Age of Romanticism. At the heart of the transformation lay the question of free will.³¹

Nathan W. Taylor, for example, maintained that human consent was fundamental in the relationship between God and humanity and that free agency was evident in human understanding, conscience and will. He contended, however, that the ability to sin remained outside of the grace of God. This was in direct opposition to the Calvinist thinking of an earlier generation, particularly that of Edwards’ student Samuel Hopkins, who maintained that damnation itself came under absolute divine sovereignty and therefore both election and damnation were for the glory of God. For Taylor, “Redemption [was] found as the sinful will, by the gracious permission of God and aided by the Holy Spirit, chose to accept the redeeming work of Christ. On this basis, one may experience not just the hope of salvation, but personal certainty of it.”³² It was this kind of argument that would influence Finney and the New School theology.

New School proponents adopted two practices which created controversy in Reformed circles. One was the “new measures,” which were rational principles for creating a human response to the offer of salvation. The other was the possibility of living a holy life.

The new measures were principles for leading people to salvation based in the belief that showing the sinner a rational, systematic approach to appropriate salvation, peppered with a touch of the experiential, would allow the sinner to accept God’s offer. However, even the capacity to accept salvation was only possible through God’s (prevenient) grace. The new measures involved all-night prayer meetings, prayer for sinners by name, the involvement of women in prayer and exhortation even when men were present, a denunciation of “old school” ministers as “dead” and “cold,” and an emphasis upon the anxious seat as a place where awakening sinners would come for special prayer.³³ These practices were possible because for Finney, conversion was not an unexplainable miracle but “a philosophical result of the right use of constituted means.”³⁴

The controversy focused, of course, in the proposition the a sinner could be brought to salvation through rational principles. This made Old School Calvinists nervous because it seemed to diminish divine sovereignty in predetermining the elect of God. New School Calvinists would argue, however, that predestination did not negate the need for preaching the Gospel to all people and that a human response to God’s call was necessary. Furthermore, Old School Calvinists believed that salvation would take time and discipleship with a long period of regeneration. New School Calvinists believed that conversion culminated in the experiential response to God’s call.

The possibility of holiness was an issue which Finney took up in 1836, when he read Wesley’s Plain Account of Christian Perfection. While Wesley’s understanding of perfection certainly influenced Finney’s thinking, Smith asserted that “the Oberlin doctrine did not look back to an eighteenth-century prophet, but rather grew out of the religious climate of the age….”³⁵ While the Wesleyan doctrine of entire sanctification, particularly in the holiness movement, culminated in the “second blessing” of perfection as an impartation of the grace of God through the activity of the Spirit, New School advocates argued that holiness was a consecration of the experience of the fullness of the love of Christ and not freedom from the appetites of the flesh or from error and prejudice. Furthermore, they did not speak of the possibility of “sinlessness,”³⁶ but to be fair, sinless perfection was something Wesley was also unwilling to assert.

The Old School advocates, particularly James H. Fairchild, then president of Oberlin College, opposed the “second blessing” heresy because he believed it not only violated the Calvinist doctrine of depravity, but that it adopted the modernist reliance of human ability.³⁷ The concern of Old School advocates was that New School proponents were being unduly influenced by German liberal theology, particularly in the elevation of humanist philosophy.³⁸ It was ironic, therefore, that what was to become the mainstay of Evangelicalism in the late nineteenth and twentieth century—that is revivalism which fractured into political fundamentalism and experiential pentecostalism—was birthed in the ideas of modernity.

Finney’s understanding of sanctification was actively linked to his understanding of the baptism of the Holy Ghost. This baptism involved two elements. One was that the baptism of the Holy Ghost was “the secret of the stability of Christian character.” The emphasis here was on moral perfection and was similar to the Wesleyan idea of “second blessing.” The second was that the baptism of the Holy Ghost was a means of empowerment for Christian service.³⁹ In Finney’s mature thought, however, the emphasis upon Christian service dominated, while references to sanctification or cleansing disappeared.⁴⁰

Asa Mahan, a colleague of Finney’s and a one time president of Oberlin, articulated the doctrine of sanctification somewhat differently. Unlike Finney who moved away from Methodist formulations, Mahan tended to use Methodist distinctions⁴¹ of Christian perfection.⁴² Yet even Mahan was Reformed in his articulations, for he preferred to believe that the “higher experience subjugated rather than destroyed the propensity for sin; but these were in his eyes emotional and physical rather than a root principle of depravity, as with Wesley.”⁴³ This was an articulation which would come to dominate the theology of Keswick.

Mahan would also toy with the idea of three distinct acts of grace—conversion, entire sanctification and the baptism of the Holy Spirit—a formulation that would re-emerge in early Pentecostalism. Mahan not only started to speak of the “second blessing” as a baptism of the Holy Spirit as well as a cleansing from sin, but in Divine Life he suggested that “purity [was] one thing, power [was] quite another.”⁴⁴ The consequence of this baptism included a quickening of our “natural powers,” an “accumulation of moral and spiritual power,” “soul transforming apprehensions of Truth,” “absolute assurance of hope,” intimate “fellowship with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ,” “a deep and permanent spiritual blessedness,” and a “unity of the Spirit” among believers.⁴⁵ Though Mahan did not follow through with his thoughts about three acts of grace as distinct experiential moments, this belief would take root in Pentecostal articulations.

William Edwin Boardman, a Presbyterian grocer from Illinois, began to seek the experience of sanctification, but was resistant to Methodist instruction. However in 1842, after reading the testimonies of Finney and Mahan, Boardman and his wife attained “the blessing.” Boardman published his experience in a book he called The Higher Christian Life, a title intended to distinguish itself from Wesleyan and Oberlin perfectionism.⁴⁶ The popularity of Boardman’s book was likely due to its non-scholarly approach, setting a tone which was resonant with the revival of 1858.⁴⁷ Boardman was to later link up with Mahan to conduct revivals in both America and Britain, and both were to have a direct influence on the spiritual and theological direction of the Keswick Conferences.

IV. Sanctification in the Theology of the Keswick Conferences

The Oxford and Brighton conferences, two small but significant meetings, forged a link between New School revivalism and the Keswick conferences. Oxford and Brighton, for the most part, harmonized with the Keswick conferences to form the general tenor of Keswick spirituality. In fact, both Keswick leaders and contemporary Keswick scholars included Oxford and Brighton in the Keswick movement.⁴⁸

T.D. Harford-Battersby, an adherent of Oxford and Brighton and the presider of the first Keswick Conference, indicated that the purpose of Keswick was “the promotion of Scriptural holiness.” Harford-Battersby believed that through the work of the Holy Spirit, the Christian could overcome temptation. This involved a deliberate act of surrender, so that holiness was the result of an experiential crisis leading to a process.⁴⁹ The emphasis upon a crisis was, admittedly, borrowed from Holiness theology, but Keswick’s understanding of this crisis followed the theology of American revivalism, though with unique Keswick articulations.

The links between Keswick and New School revivalism were many. Both Mahan and Boardman’s involvement in the Oxford and Brighton conferences “helped unify the higher life aspirations arising from the ‘Oberlizing of England’.”⁵⁰ Furthermore, the Reverend John Moore was close friends with Charles Finney, a relationship which no doubt had influence on his son, C.G. Moore, one of the early Keswick speakers.⁵¹ However, “Keswick was American Wesleyan/Holiness spirituality shorn of the troublesome feature of perfectionism,” an interpretation accepted by most critics.⁵²

The watchword of Keswick holiness was, in the words of Evan Hopkins, “the Blessing is not an attainment but an attitude.”⁵³ “Attitude” was a distinctive Keswick notion linked to the crisis of sanctification. On the opening day of the Brighton Conference, held May 29 to June 7, 1875, R.P. Smith preached:

The point to which we [were] aiming to bring our friends [was] not their personal perfection, but an attitude of the soul as to the purposes of their life in which they [should] make absolutely ‘no provision for the flesh.’ This [was] not the consummation of Christian perfection, but only the nominal commencement of a career of progressive sanctification,—a sanctification which is not retrogressive or intermittent, but a daily progress.⁵⁴

Both Asa Mahan and W.C.[?] Boardman took part in a theological discussion with the Reverend G. Wade Robinson, Mr. Maitland, the Reverend J.B. Figgis, among others, around the issue of sanctification. In the opening speech, Robinson articulated the Oxford/Brighton theological understanding of sanctification in distinction to the older progressive one:

…the attitude of sanctification…declare[d] that man ha[d] in himself no power to purify his heart, from which, as from a fountain, the life proceed[ed]. It declare[ed] that the same Jesus who [was] made unto righteousness [was] also made unto us sanctification; and that just as we came to Him at first, poor helpless sinners, to receive the forgiveness of sin, which He only could bestow, so now we may come to Him to receive power over sin, which [could] proceed from Him alone….In a word, [Keswick sanctification] not only [taught] progressive sanctification, but it also [taught], and emphasise[d] with untiring, reiteration, that attitude of surrender and trust in which only progressive sanctification [could] truly take place.⁵⁵

Robinson later stated that:

The attitude of sanctification represent[ed] the separation of the man to God in his own will, and the trusting in Christ as his sanctification….Progressive sanctification represent[ed] that separation to God over which the man himself ha[d] immediately no control, but which [was] wrought by the Spirit of God….⁵⁶

Thus, in the Keswick articulation of sanctification, a tension existed between the crisis and the progressive. The important point, though, was its emphasis upon the attitude of the believer. By believing, in faith, that one could have victory over sin, one could then experience a victorious Christian life of holiness. Bebbington suggested that Keswick holiness flowed from Romantic notions. There was a stress on the power of human will and its ability to govern affections, a perspective evident in Evan Hopkins’ belief that a believer was placed in a perfect state of holiness by a decisive act of the will. There was a limited doctrine of sin in the sense that only willed disobedience was sin, the consequence of which, according to Bebbington, was a lack of an objective morality.⁵⁷

Douglas Frank asserted that the emphasis on attitude and crisis created a psychological condition for motivating the will. The focus of evangelical Christianity, and particularly Keswick spirituality, was not so much on objective behaviour or even right doctrine,—though these were important and ought not be minimized—but on the inner self and its effort to control sources of anger, irritability and worry. The experience of sanctification would therefore free one from the tyranny of the self.⁵⁸ Keswick holiness emphasized not only moral action, but, to a greater degree than in Wesleyan perfectionism, human subjectivity.⁵⁹

The change to subjectivity was evident in the Keswick understanding of sin. The Reverend R.W. Dale, a Keswick participant, identified two classes of sin. One kind of sin was more objective and involved outward behaviour such as drunkenness or licentiousness, etc. These sins were overcome, with occasional lapses now and again, in the act of conversion. The other kind was related to the inner self and involved sins of the personality such as temper, selfishness, envy, etc. These inner sins were believed to be overcome through the crisis of sanctification.⁶⁰

Keswick sanctification exhibited a diversity of beliefs, primarily due to the diversity of denominational backgrounds of its speakers. There was a small group who held Wesleyan-Holiness beliefs. For example, Albert encouraged his listeners to seek the “essential truths and practical characteristics of ‘perfecting holiness in the fear of God,'”⁶¹ words quite similar to perfectionist language. Likewise, Baptist minister F.B. Meyer commented that while he was visiting the United States just prior to the conventions, he was cautioned not to speak of sinless perfection or holiness because it would create controversy.⁶²

Yet for the most part the conference speakers sided more with a Reformed view,⁶³ which defended itself from accusations of Wesleyan tendencies by asserting that the

sinful nature [was] not removed, but its tendencies [were] counteracted by the indwelling life of Christ in the believer. Thus, while the sinful nature still exist[ed] in the believer, it need have no power over the life of the believer. What [was] necessary to maintain this Spirit-filled life [was] a moment-by-moment surrender of the self to Jesus, and a moment-by-moment appropriation by faith of the cleansing and strengthening power of Christ. So long as the self [was] surrendered and Christ appropriated by faith, the Christian [could] be free from known sin.⁶⁴

The Reverend H. Webb-Peploe, a conference speaker, opposed perfection teaching, but he preached a life of holiness which insisted that “sin remain[ed] in us to the last, and that through Christ’s will by His Holy Spirit’s power [kept] the true believer moment by moment from failing into known and unknown sins, yet that every thought and deed of the Christian—to the last moment on earth—[was] tainted by the fact of indwelling sin or corruption, and that therefore the blood of Christ [was] needed….⁶⁵ Anglican bishop C.G. Moule articulated sanctification as “the work of the Spirit, ‘strengthening’ the Christian ‘in the inner man,’…with the Christian’s ‘faith,’ obviously as the result of that divine work.” He then contrasted the Keswick view with the older Wesleyan view by stating that the blessing was “secured and retained, on our side, ‘by faith;’ not by a process of discipline and labour, but by the same humble and reverent reliance on God….”⁶⁶

Moule’s view depicted the contrast between Keswick sanctification and the older theological views (both Wesleyan and Calvinist), which demanded a life of disciplines. Holiness and Keswick ideas of sanctification reformulated older Methodist ideas. Firstly, traditional Methodism taught that sanctification came at the end of a long spiritual quest, but Keswick and Holiness views saw it as a beginning. This change represented the difference between the Enlightenment view of “goal” and the Romantic view of experience. Secondly, where Wesley expected few to achieve perfection, the Holiness/Keswick school believed the experience was general and accessible to many. Thirdly, and this was specifically true for Keswick theology, there was a shift from the Wesleyan conviction that sin could be totally removed from the believer’s heart to a view that in a life of holiness the operation of sin was suspended.⁶⁷ It was this last point which took its influence from Calvinist theology, for one’s righteousness was imputed by the righteousness of Christ, but the essential nature of the believer was not changed, just suppressed.

The Wesleyan-Holiness movement thus emphasized an instantaneous removal of original sin by an instantaneous act of grace, but Keswick theology maintained a Reformed view of sin and a gradual process of sanctification, which commenced with a crisis:

Since Calvinism look[ed] upon those human weaknesses which produce[d] a lack of conformity to the perfect will of God (mistakes, lapses of memory, ignorance, etc.) as sin, it [was] not conceivable that followers of Keswick could think of a perfect cleansing of the individual in the world. Wesleyans, on the other hand, ha[d] no such theological impediment, for “sanctification” connote[d] for them the cleansing of the affections and motives, but not the undoing of the non-moral effects of the Fall.⁶⁸

The categories become, according to Bundy, “eradicationist” (Keswick term for the Holiness position) and “suppressionist” (Holiness Movement term for the Keswick position). The Keswick goal of “uniform sustained victory over known sin” was described as suppressionist, while the Wesleyan-Holiness goal of the elimination of sin from the heart of the believer was described as eradicationist. There was, however uniform agreement of the need for sanctification.⁶⁹

Thus the distinction that Keswick made in its understanding of sanctification was the emphasis upon a daily surrender. The idea of surrender correlated with a modified Calvinist belief in the depravity of sin, where sin could only be overcome through the constant and active work of the spirit of Christ, but that it could never be completely elimination in this world. This understanding of sin and sanctification was different from the Wesleyan understanding of an inward change realized in the moment of perfection.

To summarize, the distinction of the more Reformed Keswick view of sanctification and the Wesleyan-Holiness view, Ralph Thompson identified both the similarities and differences. First, both offered a basic doctrinal agreement in its appraisal of the unregenerated human, which asserted that humans were sinners by nature and unable to cease sinning. Second, both based their hope of salvation in the redemptive work of Jesus Christ. Third, they believed that justification was by faith in Christ, attended by regeneration and thus the sinner was made a child of God. Fourth, even though the sinner was forgiven in justification, at which time sanctification commenced, sin remained in the believer. The complete victory in Christ came through a second crisis experience as a second act of grace. The distinction between Wesleyan and Keswick centred around the fact that Wesleyans considered the “second-blessing” was a normal procedure in the economy of God, but that Keswick leaders believed that the “second-blessing” was necessary not because God intended sanctification to come after justification, but because the sinner was ignorant of the need for God’s provision through the agency of the Holy Spirit. Finally, both believed that the sanctified believer would grow in grace, but that sanctification could also be lost.⁷⁰

Thompson asserted, however, that there were differences in the Keswick/Wesleyan positions. Wesleyanism taught that the soul itself was delivered from sin in sanctification, while Keswick taught that the believer was not made holy because sin remained in the heart, but that one could live a victorious life over sin. The distinction was one of a realization of perfection (Wesleyan) as opposed to resting in the peace that God was able and would daily deliver the Christian from sin (Keswick). It was also a difference between a state of holiness (Wesleyan) and a condition of holiness (Keswick), and this was were the eradicationist/ suppressionist accusations came into play. For example H.W. Webb-Peploe objected to the Wesleyan holiness position by arguing that “The man who believe[d] in a sanctification which eradicate[d] sin from his person, as a principle, must be satisfied with his own condition, and be able to take his place more or less independent of the Saviour….”⁷¹ The Wesleyan response to Webb-Peploe centred around Wesley’s concern that sin was made a “necessity.” Thus D. Shelby Corlett responded to the Keswick position with the statement: “[Sin was] entirely removed from the heart of the Christian, because this sinful nature [was] enmity against God…[and that] it [could] not be incorporated into the Christian life, it [could] not be harmonized with the nature of God, nor [could] it be brought under perfect control.”⁷²

Keswick theology was reintroduced back into the United States by D.L. Moody, who in the 1890s, conducted a series meetings known as the Northfield Conventions.⁷³ Moody invited Keswick leaders such as F.B. Meyer, Andrew Murray, H.W. Webb-Peploe and G. Campbell Morgan to speak at a number of the conventions, Meyer returning five different years. Furthermore, the Keswick leaders linked up with Americans A.B. Simpson, the founder of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, and A.J. Gordon, a Baptist whose work was known primarily through Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. Both Simpson and Gordon adopted Keswick positions on sanctification, though strictly speaking they also influenced by the Oberlin school. They were also significant in establishing a link between Reformed/Keswick and Wesleyan-Holiness ideas to the Pentecostal emphasis of the baptism of the Holy Spirit.⁷⁴

IV. Sanctification in Pentecostalism: Two Works of Grace or Three Works of Grace?

The influence of the Keswick view of sanctification on the development of Pentecostalism has been disputed among Pentecostal scholars. Both Vinson Synan and Donald Dayton saw Pentecostalism as a schism within the Wesleyan-Holiness tradition, but with essentially Wesleyan theology. Synan’s thesis stated that “the historical and doctrinal lineage of American pentecostalism [was] to be found in the Wesleyan tradition.”⁷⁵ Dayton was in general agreement with this position, for he argued that leaders of the Holiness movement recognized Pentecostalism as one of its own, with only the gift of tongues setting it apart.⁷⁶

Yet there has been an alternate interpretation, primarily offered by Robert M. Anderson and Edith Blumhofer, which argued that Pentecostalism was something quite different than a Holiness schism. Anderson boldly stated:

The Keswick movement…was absolutely crucial to the development of Pentecostalism. Thus, I find it necessary to reject the central thesis of Synan…. To the contrary, the wing of the Pentecostal movement which had earlier connections with Wesleyanism became Pentecostal by accepting Keswick (i.e. Calvinist) teachings on dispensationalism, premillennialism and the Baptism of the Holy Spirit. This acceptance led logically to their ostracism by the “orthodox” Wesleyan Holiness movement, which held them guilty of the “Third Blessing Heresy.” The majority of Pentecostals were entirely consistent when they later rejected the Wesleyan view of sanctification as a second act of grace. Those Pentecostals who did not follow suit in this rejection, however, cannot be called Wesleyan since their doctrine is an amalgam of Wesleyanism and Keswick-Calvinism. In short, the Pentecostal movement was as much a departure from the Wesleyan tradition as a development from it.⁷⁷

The desire to recover the more Calvinist stream of Pentecostal theology, as modified by New School Calvinist and the Keswick Conferences, was a concern for Blumhofer as well. She too recognized the non-Wesleyan elements in the development of Pentecostalism,⁷⁸ and therefore offered a more balanced view. Thus the early Pentecostal understanding of sanctification was not simply a version of Wesleyan perfectionism, but was, in fact, a view emanating from the Keswick understanding of consecration and surrender to the Holy Spirit. Yet to date, the literature examining the Keswick-Pentecostal connections has been limited.⁷⁹

Briefly, the birth of the Pentecostal movement has been tied to Methodist preacher, Charles F. Parham, who conducted a prayer vigil at his school for healing in Topeka, Kansas, on December 31, 1900. In this meeting, Agnes Ozman and several of Parham’s students “spoke with other tongues,” which Parham theologically linked to the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Several years later, in 1906-7, another Methodist, William J. Seymour, one of Parham’s students, preached the Pentecostal message in Azusa Street, Los Angeles. It was in the Azusa Street revival that the Pentecostal message took root and started to spread throughout the United States and to the rest of the world. Both Parham and Seymour held a version of the Wesleyan-Holiness view of sanctification and therefore developed a doctrine of salvation which consisted of three acts of grace,—conversion, the “second blessing” of sanctification and the “baptized in the Holy Spirit” with speaking in other tongues as an enduement of power—each involving an experiential encounter with Jesus Christ.

Yet Keswick theology impacted the Pentecostal movement, for those who would provide leadership for the early Pentecostal movement had direct personal, contact with a number of Keswick leaders. Alexander Dowie, a man with Scottish Presbyterian roots who later pastored at a Congregational Church in Australia, was, according the early Pentecostal writer Donald Gee, an exponent of Keswick ideas.⁸⁰ After emigrating to the United States in 1888, Dowie founded the Christian Catholic Church and established Zion City, a religious community near Chicago which emphasized divine healing. In 1900, Parham visited Zion, probably because he was interested in Dowie’s healing ministry. The impact that Dowie’s community was unclear, but the articles of faith at Zion included statements that a candidate for membership was expected to be a believer (conversion) and that the believer needed to “witness a measure of the Holy Spirit.” There was no evidence that an experience of sanctification was required. Although Dowie rejected a number of Pentecostals who, in 1904, sought membership in his community, the collapse of Zion as a result of his increased authoritarian control saw many of Dowie’s followers drifting into Pentecostal groups.⁸¹

The most influential person with Keswick leanings was A.B. Simpson, the man who founded the Christian and Missionary Alliance in 1887 and the Nyack Missionary Training Institute. Simpson’s fourfold gospel of Christ as Saviour, Healer, Sanctifier and Coming King and his emphasis of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit were views accepted wholeheartedly by the Pentecostal movement. There was little emphasis of an experience of “second blessing,” but Simpson defined sanctification along Keswick lines. Sanctification involved the “indwelling of Christ,”⁸² “separation from sin,” dedication to God,” “conformity to the likeness of God and to the will of God,” “consecration,” “complete surrender,” and personal indwelling of Jesus.”⁸³

Nearly forty-five early Pentecostal leaders came out of the Christian and Missionary Alliance church. Early Pentecostal Thomas B. Barrat had not only read both Moody and Torrey’s sermons, but had met Torrey and Simpson in 1905-6 when they toured throughout the United States. Early Pentecostal George N. Elderidge had known Simpson personally and both Canadian Pentecostal A.H. Argue and Stanley H. Frodsham’s wife were healed through Simpson’s ministry. Agnes Ozman, the woman first credited with speaking in tongues at Parham’s watchnight service, was once a student at Simpson’s Bible School in Nyack, New York. Francisco Olazabal and Marie Burgess both attended the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago and Frank Bartleman, one of the earliest Pentecostal leaders, spent some time at the Moody Institute and worked with Moody in the Philadelphia campaigns of 1891 and 1892.⁸⁴

Yet the connections between the Keswick and Pentecostal movements did not rest solely on contact between the leaders of both. Holiness leader S.B. Shaw’s book The Great Revival in Wales, Also an Account of the Great Revival in Ireland in 1859, included reports by Keswick leaders Mrs. M. Baxter, F.B. Meyer and R.A. Torrey, a book which was circulated widely in the Azusa Street revival.⁸⁵ The Bible school of the Fire-Baptized Holiness Church, Georgia, one of the earliest Pentecostal denominations, based its curriculum on the Keswick works of James M. Gray’s Synthetic Bible Study and the writings of A.T. Pierson. The Pentecostal Holiness Advocate, an early Pentecostal periodical, advertised the works of Moody and other Keswick writers regularly. Furthermore, the Assemblies of God, a Pentecostal denomination with Reformed/Keswick leanings, was dominated by Christian and Missionary Alliance people such as Elderidge, J.W. Welch and D.W. Kerr. The Assemblies of God course for ministers also included works by Moody, Torrey, Simpson, Murray and Pierson. Probably the most important influence of Keswick thinking on early Pentecostalism was the popularity of C.I. Scofield’s edition of the Bible, which provided a vehicle for Keswick ideas, premillenialism and dispensationalism.⁸⁶

The Keswick view of sanctification started to dominate the Pentecostal movement in 1908 when, William H. Durham, a man of Baptist heritage who had substantial interaction with Seymour after receiving the Pentecostal blessing, articulated a view of sanctification which seemed to diverge from the Azusa Street version. Known as the Finished Work of Christ, Durham rejected the Holiness Pentecostal view that the second act of grace was for the perfection of the believer. He opposed this doctrine by stating that salvation did not “mean that we shall be partly saved by having our outward sin forgiven. This would not be salvation. Salvation [was] an inward work. It mean[t] a change of heart.”⁸⁷ Instead, he argued for a two act of grace doctrine, where the believer was believed to be made holy at the moment of conversion, in that both inward and outward sin was cleansed by the blood of Christ. The baptism of the Holy Spirit with speaking in tongues was consequently considered the second act of grace. Sanctification was thus realized at both the moment of conversion and in the ongoing of the activity of the Spirit in the life of the believer. Of course, Seymour and other Holiness Pentecostal leaders opposed his “two stage theory.” When Durham toured Los Angeles, he was refused admittance to Elmer Fisher’s Upper Room Mission. Although Durham was able to preach at the Azusa Street mission while Seymour was away on a preaching tour, when Seymour returned he immediately locked Durham out. Durham’s untimely death in 1912 would, however, leave the debate to other Pentecostals, but a fair number of Pentecostals had taken up Durham’s message.⁸⁸

Durham’s Finished Work doctrine was crucial in the development of Pentecostalism, for those of a more Reformed or Keswick view who were uneasy with the more Arminian theology of Holiness-Pentecostals could readily accept the two works of grace position. In 1913-14, a call was published in Word and Witness for a Pentecostal convention in Hot Springs Arkansas. The convention was convened at the insistence of Howard Gross and a number of Finished Work advocates who wanted to stabilize the movement, but the attempt to establish a fellowship seemed to violate the Pentecostal insistence that organization would grieve the Spirit. Even Durham contended several years earlier that organization would destroy the Pentecostal work.⁸⁹ Nevertheless, M.M. Pinson, a Finished Work advocate, delivered the opening message on “The Finished Work of Calvary,” and the movement started to shift to a two works of grace position. Sanctification was therefore believed to occur instantly in conversion, but only realized in the ongoing process of the Spirit in the life of the believer. The outcome of the convention in Hot Springs was the establishment of the Assemblies of God, the denomination which was to become the largest in the United States.⁹⁰ Thus the Keswick understanding of sanctification was significant in the development of early Pentecostalism, for it completed the shift away from the Wesleyan-Holiness belief in the “second blessing” as the moment of perfection, a shift that had already started in the Holiness Pentecostal interpretation, to an understanding that the second work of grace was, in fact, the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

The second act of grace doctrine of Reformed/Keswick Pentecostals appealed, for the most part, to those Pentecostals who had Baptist, Presbyterian, Keswick and Anglican backgrounds. While they had a certain uneasiness about professing sanctification as the second act of grace, they quelched that uneasiness for the sake of the more important message of Spirit baptism. However, while they had reservations concerning sanctification as a second act of grace, they had no qualms in the notion of a second act of grace. “Most had come to believe there was a second act of grace,” remarked Anderson, “but that it was an enduement of power, not a cleansing from sin or purification of spirit. On the other hand, the whole notion of a third act of grace, however defined, had been overwhelmingly rejected by these same people before their conversion to the Pentecostal movement.”⁹¹

Conclusion

John Wesley made clear and decisive distinctions between his theology and that of the Calvinists, but these distinctions would blur as Methodism and Calvinism interacted in the United States. While perfectionist theology was clearly Wesleyan, it would be picked up by a number of Reformed theologians and remoulded according to Calvinist views of sin and predestination. Though Calvin’s theology of predestination did not survive intact, neither did perfectionism as articulated by Wesley. However, in the interplay of Wesleyan/Calvinist theology in the United States, particularly in Wesleyan-Holiness and New School Calvinist articulations, the emphasis of holiness as an experience of grace or “second blessing” would start to dominate.

This holiness emphasis was to also dominate the Keswick Conferences in Britain, but in an effort to distinguish itself from Wesleyan perfectionism, Keswick would follow more in the Reformed tradition of the Oberlin school. Thus, Keswick defined sanctification as a crisis leading to a process, where sin was daily subdued by the activity of the Holy Spirit. This definition allied more with Reformed notions of utter depravity, than the Wesleyan notion of eradication.

The Keswick understanding of sanctification had direct historical and theological influences upon the early Pentecostal movement, but unlike Keswick, which believed that the second act of grace was an act of sanctification that would initiate a process of holiness, Pentecostal leaders focused around the issue of whether there were two or three acts of grace and whether or not the “second blessing” was an experience of sanctification or an experience of the baptism of the Holy Spirit accompanied by the gift of tongues. The two or three acts of grace issue would fracture the fledgling movement. Nevertheless, the Keswick notions of sanctification not only influenced the more Reformed/Keswick Pentecostals, but Holiness Pentecostals as well.

Finally, research into the historical and theological connections between the Keswick and Pentecostal movements was sorely lacking and in need of further research. Indeed, both the Keswick movement and the Pentecostal movement taken separately have been overlooked by many researchers. Furthermore, while beyond the scope of this paper, what was the relationship between Keswick and Fundamentalism in the United States and why did Pentecostalism diverge from the Fundamentalism stream? Nevertheless, the Keswick movement has had significant impact upon twentieth century Christianity.

PR

Originally published on the Pneuma Foundation (parent organization of PneumaReview.com) website. Later included in the Spring 2022 issue.

Notes

¹John Pollock, “A Hundred Years of Keswick,” Christianity Today: 19 (June 20, 1975): pp. 6-8.

²See David. Bundy, “Keswick and the Experience of Evangelical Piety,” Modern Christian Revivals, eds. Edith L. Blumhofer and Randall Balmer (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1993), pp. 125-8.

³David Bebbington developed a helpful definition of evangelicalism which included an emphasis upon conversionism, activism, biblicism and crucentrism (a focus on the cross). D.W. Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s (London: Unwin Hyman, 1989), pp. 2-3. Keswick emphasized all four, though generally speaking, most people who attended the conferences were already Christians who desired a deeper encounter with Jesus Christ through the activity of the Holy Spirit. There has been, however, a dissenting view regarding a definition of evangelicalism. Donald Dayton argued the evangelicalism has become such a convoluted category that it has become meaningless. Sixteenth-century Reformational theology, eighteenth-century pietism and conversionist theology and twentieth-century fundamentalism formed subsets which were isolated and unrelated. See Donald W. Dayton, “Some Doubts about the Usefulness of the Category `Evangelical’,” The Variety of American Evangelicalism, eds. Donald W. Dayton and Robert K. Johnston (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1991), p. 245.

⁴The Keswick convention was a bit of an anomaly to the sect/church typology articulated by sociologist Max Weber and theologian Ernst Troeltsch. Weber and Troeltsch argued that a new religious movement would soon schism from its host church and form a sect. This sect would be antagonistic to the culture around it (Neibuhr’s Christ against culture type). Over time, the sect would adopt the customs, mores and organizational structures of its culture, developing an alliance between the church and culture (Neibuhr’s Christ and culture). The sect consisted primarily of the lower classes, those who had little access to the resources of the church or society, while the church consisted of the middle and upper classes, which involved an easy allied between the two. See Max Weber, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, trans. H.H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946), pp. 306-7; 316-7; Ernst Troeltsch, The Social Teachings of the Christian Churches, vol. 1 (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1960), p. 33; and H. Richard Neibuhr, Christ and Culture (New York: Harper Touchbooks, 1951).

⁵J. Robertson McQuilkin, “The Keswick Perspective,” Five Views on Sanctification, eds. M. Dieter, et al. (Grand Rapids, MI: Academie Books, 1987), p. 156.

⁶From Objections to Entire Sanctification Considred, as cited by David D. Bundy, The Higher Christian Life: A Bibliographical Overview (New York: Garland Publishers, 1985), p. 45.

⁷Donald W. Dayton, Theological Roots of Pentecostalism (Metuchen, N.J.: The Scarecrow Press, 1987), p. 38.

⁸John Wesley, Sermon 85, “On Working Out Our Own Salvation,” as quoted by Dayton, Roots, pp. 45-6.

⁹This tension could be re-expressed eschatologically as that which is “already” but “not yet.” Though articulated here in a highly individualistic way (in the sense that the social dimension of eschatology has been omitted), the believer has “already” been saved, justified and sanctified instantaneously at the moment of faith in Christ Jesus, but the believer has “not yet” been saved, justified and sanctified. This will not occur until the moment a person stands face-to-face with Christ.

¹⁰John Wesley, A Plain Man’s Guide to Holiness, reprint of A Plain Account of Christian Perfection, ed. Halcyon C. Backhouse (Toronto: Hodder & Stoughton, 1988), p. 31.

¹¹Wesley was unwilling to use the phrase “sinless perfection,” John Wesley, “Thoughts on Christian Perfection,” John Wesley, ed. Albert C. Outler (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964), 287. However, as Albert Outler correctly pointed out, Wesley was concerned that the residue of sin in the human being would mean it was unbeatable. Albert C. Outler, Editor’s Introduction to Christian Perfection, John Wesley, p. 253.

¹²Wesley, Plain Account, p. 32.

¹³Outler, Introduction, John Wesley, p. 32.

¹⁴Thomas A. Langford, Practical Divinity: Theology in the Wesleyan Tradition (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1983), pp. 78-9.

¹⁵Langford, p. 92.

¹⁶Timothy L. Smith, Revivalism and Social Reform in Mid-Nineteenth Century America (New York: Abington Press, 1957), p. 116.

¹⁷George Brown Tindall, America: A Narrative History, 2nd ed. (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1988), p. 246. In an interesting aside, when the perfectionist ideal was infused into the political culture of America, it brought great hopes and great disappointments. The perfectionist ideal carried with it great expectations, which was realized in major social reforms and and advancements in human rights, but when those ideals went unrealized, cynicism and alienation followed. p. 486.

¹⁸Langford, p. 92.

¹⁹Phoebe Palmer, The Way of Holiness and Notes by the Way (New York: Lane & Scott, 1851), as quoted by Langford, p. 93.

²⁰Henry H. Knight, “From Aldersgate to Azusa: The Wesleyan Roots of Pentecostal Spirituality,” Springfield, Missouri: Paper presented to the Society for Pentecostal Studies, November 12-14, 1992, pp. 9-10.

²¹Smith, p. 116.

²²Including the breakdown of predestination theology, Mcloughlin suggested a number of reasons for the first great awakening: (1) there was rapid social change from the more stable communal life based in European patriarchy to an adaptation of social structures which facilitated rapid population growth; (2) a accounting for new environmental conditions of encouraging entrepenurial opportunities, the polarization between East and West and the supposed breakdown of law and order; (3) the growth of a “new aristocracy” consisting of well-to-do Americans who had abandoned the simple and pietistic lifestyle of earlier generations in America; and (4) the industrial revolution which replaced an older feudal, patriarchal order with bourgoisie capitalism. William G. McLoughlin, Revivalism, Awakenings, and Reform: An Essay on Religion and Social Change in America, 1607-1977 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), pp. 52-3. This argument was part of a thesis which claimed that revivalism was an  adjustment to “fundamental ideological transformation necessary to the dynamic growth of the nation in adapting for basic social, ecological, psychological, and economic changes.” p. 8.

²³McLoughlin, pp. 69-70.

²⁴McLoughlin, pp. 73-4.

²⁵Langford, p. 83.

²⁶McLoughlin, pp. 45-6.

²⁷The difference between new-light Calvinist understanding of positional righteousness and the Wesleyan understanding of imparted righteousness was really a matter of degree.

²⁸Dayton, pp. 66-7.

²⁹Timothy L. Smith, Revivalism and Social Reform in Mid-Nineteenth Century America (New York: Abington Press, 1957), p. 116. Perfectionist ideals were, in many ways, implicit in the political culture of the United States. The religious piety of perfectionist holiness combined with the political culture of America to expect a great degree of responsibility in the actions of individuals in their religious expectations, but that holiness of God’s people would lead to an ideal Christian society. Thus the perfectionist theme gave rise to social reforms involving the need for civil rights, the rights of women, abolition of slavery and prohibition. Vinson Synan, The Holiness-Pentecostal Movement in the United States (William B. Eerdman’s Publishing Company, 1971), p. 28. Also see McLoughlin, pp. 128-31.

³⁰Smith, pp. 32-3.

³¹McLoughlin, p. 113.

³²Langford, pp. 83-4, based in Taylor’s publication, Man, A Free Agent Without the Aide of Divine Grace.

³³McLoughlin, p. 124.

³⁴McLoughlin, p. 125.

³⁵Smith, p. 103.

³⁶Smith, p. 104.

³⁷Smith, p. 104.

³⁸Smith opted for the argument that New School Calvinists relied less on liberal theology and more on Wesleyan perfectionism. I think it a tenable argument, however, that New School theology was not only influenced by the rational pragmatism of the nineteenth century, particularly in the new measure  procedures, but that the emphasis upon human responsibility in New School Calvinism (sometimes at the expense of Reformed notions of depravity) was the direct result of modernist thought. In a very real sense, therefore, George Thomas’ thesis that religious movements articulated new collective moral orders which dominate a moral-political culture, rather than the result of a cultural crisis was very compelling. See George M. Thomas, Revivalism and Cultural Change (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), p. 2.

³⁹John L. Gresham, Charles G. Finney’s Doctrine of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 1987), p. 18. Finney’s understanding of the baptism of the Holy Ghost was found in two letters published in 1840 in The Oberlin Evangelist.

⁴⁰Dayton, Roots, p. 101.

⁴¹Melvin Easterday Dieter, The Holiness Revival of the Nineteenth Century (Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press, 1980), p. 23.

⁴²Smith, p. 104.

⁴³Smith, p. 111.

⁴⁴Dayton, p. 96. Mahan, Finney and other Oberlin theologians increasing saw the baptism of the Holy Spirit as an enduement of power for the purpose of Christian service.

⁴⁵Dayton, p. 89.

⁴⁶Smith, pp. 106-7.

⁴⁷Dieter, pp. 56-7.

⁴⁸Generally speaking, Keswick leaders would refer to Oxford and Brighton, as well as the Broadlands meetings hosted by W. Cowpter-Temple, as part of Keswick spirituality, and indeed many of the leaders attended both Keswick and the Oxford/Brighton conferences. See Charles F. Harford (ed.), The Keswick Convention: Its Message, Its Method and Its Men (London: Marshall Brothers Keswick House, 1907). Similarly, scholars such as Bebbington (p. 151) and Ian Randall treated the Oxford and Brighton conferences as part of the Keswick conferences. See Ian M. Randall, “Spiritual Renewal and Social Reform: Attempts to Develop Social Awareness in the Early Keswick Movement Vox Evangelica 23 (1993): pp. 67-86. For the sake of brevity, the Brighton and Oxford Conferences will be taken as part of the same religious movement as Keswick, in this paper, and thus the will all be considered a part of Keswick.

⁴⁹J.C. Pollock, The Keswick Story: The Authorized History of the Keswick Convention (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1964), pp. 25-6.

⁵⁰David Bundy, Bibliographic Overview, pp. 16-7.

⁵¹C. G. Moore, “Some of the Results,” The Keswick Convention, p. 112.

⁵²Bundy, “Keswick and the Experience of Evangelical Piety,” in Modern Christian Revivals, p. 118.

⁵³Pollock, The Keswick Story, p. 55.

⁵⁴R.P. Smith, in W.J. Smith, Record of the Convention for the Promotion of Scriptural Holiness held at Brighton, May 29th to June 7th, 1875 (London: S.W. Partridge and Co., c1896), reprinted by Donald W. Dayton, ed. “The Higher Christian Life”: Sources for the Study of the Holiness, Pentecostal, and Keswick Movements, vol. 39 (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1985), p. 36.

⁵⁵Robinson, in Convention for the Promotion of Scriptural Holiness at Brighton, p. 444.

⁵⁶Robinson, in Convention for the Promotion of Scriptural Holiness at Brighton, p. 445.

⁵⁷Bebbington, p. 168. Bebbington’s point was well taken, but Keswick leaders were careful to point out that the possibility of holiness was not the result of personal action. Harford-Battersby, for example, commented that overcoming sin was not the result of human endeavour. See Pollock, p. 26. Another Keswick writer stated that the message of Keswick searched heart and conscious “not by turning attention inward to questions of subjective experience, but upward to the glory of Christ’s Person,” (Pollock, pp. 50-1) yet Pollock concluded that one of the obstacles to the spread of Keswick holiness was its dependence on emotional, spiritual experiences. Pollock, p. 153. It could be argued that the effort Keswick leaders took to disclaim “excessive” spiritual experience was precisely because they were concerned that the conventions could be too experiential at the expense of Scriptural teaching.

⁵⁸Douglas Frank, Less Than Conquerors: How Evangelicals Entered the Twentieth Century (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1986), pp. 141-2.

⁵⁹The emphasis in Wesleyan holiness was, for the most part, upon the moral action of the Christian. With the emphasis upon attitude in Keswick holiness, there seemed to be a greater degree upon human subjectivity. At the Brighton Conference, Pasteur Theodore Monod preached that our “purpose at this meeting [was], first of all, to know ourselves.” (p. 66). Self-understanding was a key to a holy life.

⁶⁰R.W. Dale, in Convention for the Promotion of Scriptural Holiness at Brighton, p. 451.

⁶¹Albert Head, “The Watchword of the Convention,” The Keswick Convention, p. 114-5.

⁶²F.B. Meyer, “In Other Lands,” The Keswick Convention, pp. 160-1.

⁶³Aside from those leaders already mentioned, F.B. Meyer was Baptist, A.T. Pierson, J. Elder Cumming and George C. Macgregor were Presbyterians, Andrew Murray was Dutch Reformed and H.G.C Moule, H.W. Webb-Peploe, W.H. Griffith and J. Stuart Holden were Anglicans. All these traditions sided more with Reformed theology, although Anglicanism showed a certain diversity of theology. W. Ralph Thompson, “An Appraisal of the Keswick and Wesleyan Contemporary Positions,” Wesleyan Theological Journal 1 (Spring 1966): p. 13.

⁶⁴Frank, p. 114.

⁶⁵H. Webb Peploe, “Early Keswick Conventions,” The Keswick Convention: Its Message, Its Method and Its Men, ed. Charles F. Harford (London: Marshall Brothers Keswick House, 1907), pp. 38-9.

⁶⁶Bishop of Durham, “The Message: Its Scriptural Character,” The Keswick Convention, p. 71.

⁶⁷Bebbington, pp. 172-3.

⁶⁸Thompson, p. 16.

⁶⁹Bundy, Bibliographic Overview, p. 43.

⁷⁰Thompson, pp. 13-4. Thompson’s last point was overstated. The Keswick position did not assert that sanctification could be lost in the Arminian sense, but that sanctification was only possible in the continued and daily surrender to the work of the Spirit. If this surrender did not occur, then the believer’s exposure to the temptations of sin were manifold

⁷¹H.W. Webb-Peploe, as quoted by Thompson, p. 14.

⁷²D. Shelby Corlett, as quoted by Thompson, p. 15.

⁷³See The Victorious Life: Messages from the Summer Conferences of Whittier, California, June Princeton, New Jersey July Cedar Lake, Indiana, August including also some messages from the 1917 conference at Princeton and other material (Philadelphia: The Board of Managers of the Victorious Life Conference, 1918, reprinted by New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1988).

⁷⁴Dayton, Roots, pp. 104-6.

⁷⁵Synan, p. 8.

⁷⁶Dayton, Roots, p. 175.

⁷⁷Robert Mapes Anderson, Vision of the Disinherited: The Making of American Pentecostalism (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 1979/1992), p. 43. Anderson was correct to identify the substantial Keswick influences on the Pentecostal understanding of the second act of grace, but he equated Keswick and Fundamentalist theology. He identified this assumption when he stated that “the main body of the Pentecostal movement adopted a theological position [of sanctification] that differed hardly at all from that of Torrey, Chapman, Simpson, and other Keswick-Fundamentalists in the early years of the century (emphasis mine)” (p. 173). Furthermore, while he suggested that not only the two works of grace Pentecostals, but the three works of grace (Holiness) Pentecostals held views on sanctification that were more Keswick, and therefore more Calvinistic, he failed to support his position for the Holiness Pentecostals.

⁷⁸See Edith L. Blumhofer, The Assemblies of God: A Chapter in the Story of American Pentecostalism, vol. 1 (Springfield, MI: Gospel Publishing House, 1989), pp. 50-64.

⁷⁹Aside from a small essay by William W. Menzies, “The Non-Wesleyan Origins of the Pentecostal Movement,” Aspects of Pentecostal-Charismatic Origins, ed. Vinson Synan (Plainsfield, N.J.: Logos International, 1975), pp. 81-98, and brief examinations by Donald Dayton in Roots, Edith L. Blumhofer, Assemblies of God; and Robert M. Anderson, Vision of the Disinherited there has not been a close thorough analysis of the connections and influences of Keswick theology on the Pentecostal movement.

⁸⁰According to Donald Gee, an early British Pentecostal with some scholarly education, Dowie was Keswick in his beliefs. However, the Keswick connections were not made clear other than to state that they existed. See Menzies, p. 86.

⁸¹Menzies, pp. 86-7.

⁸²Menzies, pp. 87-8

⁸³Dayton, p. 106.

⁸⁴Anderson, pp. 111-2.

⁸⁵Bundy, Bibliographic Overview, p. 29.

⁸⁶Anderson, pp. 111-2.

⁸⁷William H. Durham, “The Finished Work of Calvary—It Makes Plain the Great Work of Redemption,” Pentecostal Testimony, 11:3, p. 5.

⁸⁸Thomas William Miller, Canadian Pentecostals: A History of the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada Mississauga, Ontario: Full Gospel Publishing House, 1994), pp.107-8.

⁸⁹William H. Durham, “Organization,” The Gospel Witness, nd., p. 13.

⁹⁰Anderson, pp. 166-8.

⁹¹Anderson, p. 171.

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