Reformed Covenanter
Cancelled Commissioner
These movements are named as English Methodism and above all in our day the so-called Sanctification-movement. The language in which they are introduced is very carefully guarded, but what is meant is simply that in these two movements, Methodism and what we know as the Higher Life Movement, with its continuations, we have “reactions” from the Reformation doctrine of the “miserable sinner.” And accordingly we are told clearly a page or two later, where the problem of sin in the Christian life is spoken of, that “Methodism and the Sanctification-movement present therefore a reaction from the solution of Christian miserable-sinnerism which is fostered in Lutheran circles.” This representation is true.
The perfectionist teaching of these several movements, whether in its crasser or in its more guarded forms, is a revolt against the Reformation doctrine not only of the continued imperfection of the Christian in this life where he enjoys only the first fruits of salvation, but of sin and grace in general, which constitutes the pivot on which the whole system of Reformation teaching turns.
And we may count it among the most beneficent results of the discussion of the Biblical teaching on the sins of Christians which we have been reviewing, if we can learn from it this fact; and with it this other fact, that the appeal of these movements to the Scripture in behalf of their teaching has, in the most elaborate effort which has yet been made to validate it, completely failed. The most striking thing about the long continued attempt which has been made to prove that to Paul the Christian is a sinless man is the clearness with which it has come out that Paul knows nothing of a sinless man in this life.
For the reference, see:
reformedcovenanter.wordpress.com
The perfectionist teaching of these several movements, whether in its crasser or in its more guarded forms, is a revolt against the Reformation doctrine not only of the continued imperfection of the Christian in this life where he enjoys only the first fruits of salvation, but of sin and grace in general, which constitutes the pivot on which the whole system of Reformation teaching turns.
And we may count it among the most beneficent results of the discussion of the Biblical teaching on the sins of Christians which we have been reviewing, if we can learn from it this fact; and with it this other fact, that the appeal of these movements to the Scripture in behalf of their teaching has, in the most elaborate effort which has yet been made to validate it, completely failed. The most striking thing about the long continued attempt which has been made to prove that to Paul the Christian is a sinless man is the clearness with which it has come out that Paul knows nothing of a sinless man in this life.
For the reference, see:
B. B. Warfield on Higher Life movements and Reformation theology
These movements are named as English Methodism and above all in our day the so-called Sanctification-movement. The language in which they are introduced is very carefully guarded, but what is meant…
reformedcovenanter.wordpress.com
