I personally can't read Chambers anymore. I grew up in a Keswick-influenced church. When I became Reformed, I saw the bankruptcy of that kind of "holiness."

Chambers' theology is all over the place, sometimes sounding Wesleyan, sometimes Keswick. His idea of holiness generally seems to be a "surrender" to God, resulting in the divine life overwhelming the carnal self. This is antithetical to Reformed theology, which sees the "self" being progressively transformed toward more holiness.

Here are some oddities in his writings:

"God will not give us good habits, He will not give us character, He will not make us walk aright. We have to do all that ourselves, we have to work out the salvation God has worked in. If you hesitate when God tells you to do a thing, you endanger your standing in grace" (May 10th).

"The experience of salvation means that in your actual life things are really altered, you no longer look at things as you used to; your de*sires are new, old things have lost their power. If you still hanker after the old things, it is absurd to talk about being born from above" (Nov. 12th).

"In the Bible it is never--should a Christian sin? The Bible puts it emphatically--a Christian must not sin. The effective work of the new birth life in us is that we do not commit sin, not merely that we have the power not to sin, but that we have stopped sinning" (Aug. 15th).

God does not give us overcoming life; He gives us life as we overcome. When the inspiration of God comes, and He says, "Arise from the dead," we have to get up; God does not lift us up (Feb. 16th).

Also, I remember reading an insightful article about Chambers that mentioned that even though his writing is about Christian growth and spirituality, there is very little reference to the Church. The result is that "holiness" appears to be something individualistic and introspective, largely judged by my current emotional attitude toward God.

If you have to read devotional material by non-Reformed people, why not try Tozer? He's eccentric, but seems to me to display a lot more doctrinal integrity than Chambers.

__________________
Charlie Johnson
Downtown Presbyterian Church (PCA)
Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, student