It's 7:55am and all the family are asleep. I've just posted today's entry for The Salvation Soldiers Guide and have just concluded a short time of personal prayer and reflection.
I've almost finished Finney's 'Lectures to Professing Christians' and it has been well worth the wrestle.
I like reading Finney because (although he wrote 150 years ago) he has a fresh approach to the bible - nobody else quite sees Christianity like he does.
Take for example his attitude to 'Christian Perfection'. Finney says things about holiness that out of context would sound like heresy - for example - Finney declares that everyone (whether regenerated or not) has within them the natural ability to obey God. At first this sounds unbiblical but then Finney unwraps the statement. What is it that really hold us back? Is it inability or a lack of desire? Is the problem that we can't obey God or more properly the fact that we choose not to? Finney then goes on to say that a change in our attitude depends upon two things working together in harmony - the power of grace through regeneration and the submission of our will to God.
Finney is very big on the importance of the will.
I am, according to Finney, what I choose to be and I do what I choose to do. Christian Perfection is nothing more than a man or woman simply obeying God - moment by moment. Such a thought of course calls to mind Paul's 'living sacrifice'.
I have always though that these verses in Romans 12 are key verses in the understanding of holinesss and I further think that the way they are rendered in the message is excellent.
"So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you."
It is this 'living sacrifice' - the complete and utter consecration of my 'everyday, ordinary life' my 'sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life' that will become the focus of my prayers between now and Friday.
Love and prayers
A
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3 comments:
Finney's theology is heretical. He denies original sin, makes obedience a condition of justificaiton, and is generally more moralistic than he is Christian.
Generally speaking, someone who has a "fresh approach to the Bible" should be avoided. The fact that no one else see Christianity like Finney is not a good thing.
"Whatever doctrine is new must be wrong; for the old religion is the only true one; and no doctrine can be right unless it is the very same 'which was from the beginning.'"
-John Wesley, Sermon 13, On Sin in Believers, III.9.
Comments like the above are inevitably from Calvinists who hate Finney because he so ably destroyed their God-dishonoring doctrine. Calvinists are cultists and, contrary to the "grace" they claim to profess, they are almost always nasty in their criticisms. They also have rarely taken the trouble to read Finney themselves, they just rely on Hodge and Warfield and repeat their tired mantras. The love of God flows out of Finney's writings like fresh water in a desert. Finney is a breath of fresh air to those who are wearied of gray, contradictory "seeker" theology. Read the Bible first and most. Read Finney for encouragement, insight, and inspiration from a brother in Christ.
I also want to respond to another aspect of the comment by "Anonymous" (why "Anonymous"? Ashamed of his views?). He uses a quote from the sainted John Wesley against Finney,
"Whatever doctrine is new must be wrong; for the old religion is the only true one; and no doctrine can be right unless it is the very same 'which was from the beginning.'"
-John Wesley, Sermon 13, On Sin in Believers, III.9.
Of course, this quote by Wesley is taken out of context by Anonymous to further his purpose of condemning Finney. Wesley was referring to doctrine, not practice. Further, Wesley himself was banned from pulpits for his innovations in the doctrines he preached and the ways in which he preached them. To use Wesley against Finney is like using Isaiah against Jeremiah.
Finally, it is the Calvinistic doctrine of "original sin" that is un-Biblical. It has contributed to error for hundreds of years.
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