CHAPTER I
HISTORY OF THE HOLINESS MOVEMENT UNTIL A.D. 1725
The Bible is one of the earliest written records of the interaction between humanity and an omnipotent God. During the period of history recorded in the Old Testament, the only way man could approach his Creator was through a blood sacrifice of an unblemished animal. This was in accordance with the law given by God to the Hebrew leader and prophet, Moses. These sacrifices pointed symbolically to a Messiah, who through the sacrifice of his own life, was to make it possible for man to attain a condition of holy interaction with God.1
When Jesus Christ was revealed as the Messiah, he announced his purpose was not to destroy the Old Testament law but to fulfill it.2 In Christian theology, events surrounding the life of Christ not only fulfilled the Mosaic law but also marked a central point in human history.3 Throughout his ministry, Jesus told the disciples that his kingdom was not of this world, that He would be crucified, raised from the dead, and ascend to heaven. The disciples, however, were not to be left alone; their Master promised them another Comforter in the indwelling person of the Holy Spirit.4
The eyewitness account by the Apostle Luke in the Book of Acts constituted the most trustworthy record of this event.5 When the apostles received the Holy Ghost, their lives changed specifically in two ways: first, they obtained special guidance through the Spirit, and also power to perform the work of spreading the Gospel for which Christ had chosen them. Following this transformation, the disciples went forth "preaching everywhere, the Lord working with them, confirming their [apostleship] with signs and wonders." Such actions caused a tremendous upheaval among the Jews at Jerusalem and, as time progressed, among the remainder of the people throughout the then-known world.6
Peter and the other disciples demonstrated this newly received spiritual power on the day of Pentecost when they spoke boldly to the people on the divinity of Jesus. As a result, the Jewish rulers warned the apostles not to teach that Jesus was the Christ. The apostles, however, showed fearless dedication in defense of the risen Christ. They asserted:...we are his witnesses of these things; and so is also the Holy Ghost whom God hath given to them that obey."7
Several distinctions during the early Christian era separated the followers of Christ from other religions. First, the Christians looked upon themselves as immediate recipients of the Old Testament heritage of Bible holiness. Consequently, they felt they made up the sanctified minority within traditional Judaism. As the followers of Christ (the Jewish Messiah) their mission was to proclaim first to the Jews and then to the Gentiles, the reconciling and sanctifying power of Christ. The believers made this new revelation public in three specific ways--preaching, written apologies, and the disciples' willingness and, even more important, their eagerness to show the excellence of the Christian religion through martyrdom.8
A controversy arose among Christian believers when the Gentiles first received the Holy Ghost. Many non-Jewish people believed previously that Jesus was the Son of God, but they had not received the promised Comforter. When this took place, and the Gentile Christians were accepted into equal fellowship with their Jewish counterparts, discord developed over the necessity of adherence to the Mosaic law. At a Church council in Jerusalem in A.D. 40, it was decided that the Gentile Christians would only be required to abstain from such moral pollutions as worshiping idols and committing fornication. This constituted a victory for the belief that salvation was obtained only through forgiveness of sins and the subsequent indwelling Holy Spirit, not through adherence to the works of the law.9 When the Gentiles were put on an equal basis with the Jews, the Church gradually lost its Jewish character. This was not to say that the Christian Jews forsook their heritage immediately. Rather, over a period of years, they turned from the legalism of the Old Testament to the physical and spiritual liberty initiated by Christ.10
Sainthood as exemplified in both spiritual experience and expression was not stressed as strongly during the second-century A.D. as it had been during the first. By the end of the first-century, the Church had within its ranks many learned apologists who not only based their theological precepts on Christian writings but consulted and relied on non-Christian philosophers to support their teachings. Such men felt that knowledge and true perfection were closely associated.11
Irenaeus (120-202) supported his written concepts concerning the combined providence and goodness of the Christian God (one) by quoting the Greek philosopher, Plato, who said: "God indeed, possesses the beginning, the end, and the mean of all existing things, does everything rightly,...justice always follows him against those who depart from the divine law." Further relying upon Plato, Irenaeus said that the "Maker and Framer of the universe is good and no envoy ever existed regarding Him." Thus a second-century Christian established conceptually the divine function and holiness of God. Such men used the philosophers to complement and support the inspired writings of the earlier apostles. They did this not only to demonstrate the nature of God but to show how man could attain a part in His holiness. 12
Clement of Alexandria (153-217) followed the pattern established by other Christian apologists and at the same time adopted the practice of referring to the believers as "true gnostics." By this twist of terminology Clement attempted to subtract good from what he considered to be heretical. 13 He often combined stoic, gnostic, and epicurean terminology and reason to demonstrate true Christian perfection. The Alexandrian exemplified this in his writings by using an epicurean phrase "medicine against grief," to describe the inner effect of salvation through Jesus Christ and reception of the Holy Spirit by the believer. Clement used Stoic terminology when he asserted: "The Word (Christ) through the power of the Holy Spirit tamed man, the least manageable of all wild animals." 14
Christ was first referred to as the Word or Logos ( ) by the Apostle John when he said: "In the beginning was the Word, ...and the Word was God. And the Word was made flesh and He dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory,..." The term logos was also used by the gnostics to refer to divine reason. Thus, the Apostle John used gnostic terminology to show that Christ was both God and man.15
The Logos, according to Clement, made the attainment of full salvation for men and women equally possible. Hence among Christians the double standard that had existed in the major cultures of the world since antiquity was abolished. Clement showed in his writings how Jesus freely disregarded Jewish custom by speaking to the woman at Jacob's well. He also showed that during the Apostolic Period (30-100) the Church leaders allowed women considerable freedom and authority. A typical example was Priscilla, who along with her husband, was responsible for instructing the Apostle, Apollos, in the way of holiness.16
Both men and women received painfully equal treatment when called on to sacrifice their lives as witnesses for Christ. The women were no more willing than the men to deny their Savior by making public sacrifice to heathen gods. Clement again used the different heretical philosophies to explain why his fellow Christians surrendered their lives so cheerfully. The apologist asserted that to be burned alive, devoured by wild animals, or crucified was considered by his fellows as the ultimate fulfillment and perfection of a holy life. Such steadfastness showed a literal contempt for the material world. As the Alexandrian pointed out, both Christ and the stoics taught such consecration, but only the Christians were able through the inner strength of the Holy Spirit to seal their faith with their own blood.17 An example of such consecration was witnessed when the noted Christian apologist and Bishop of Antioch, Ignatius, was condemned to death. Just before his martyrdom, Ignatius showed his consecration to Christ by saying: "Now I begin to be a disciple. I care for nothing, of visible or invisible things, so that I may but win Christ."18 Such a fate was shared by an innumerable multitude of Christians who through their dying testimony caused the ranks of Christianity by the end of the second-century A.D. to swell to approximately two-million followers within the bounds of the Roman Empire. 19
The Christian faith gained this remarkable numerical strength and the eventual acceptance of the Roman Emperor, Constantine, in A.D. 313, for several reasons. Among the most obvious were the Christian martyrs; heroic love and faith besides the inspired writings of their apologists who encourage the believers and showed to a heathen world that Christianity was based on strong philosophical, historical, and Scriptural precedents.20
The difference between the Emperor Nero (37-68), who was the first Roman ruler to persecute Christians, and Constantine, who granted them official acceptance, was startling. Nero burned Christians as a show and at times to provide light for garden parties, while Constantine provided a marked contrast when in A.D. 325, he sat at the first Church council held at Nicaea--a council attended by three hundred and eighteen Christian bishops who represented every geographical area of the Roman world. Many of these men "wore the insignia of torture on their maimed and crippled bodies which gave the highest sanction of authority to the eternal deity of the once crucified Jesus of Nazareth!" Acceptant of the Church and the Christian faith by the Roman civil authority affected the followers of Christ probably more than any other single event until the Protestant Reformation over a thousand years later. The consequences were negative both in a physical (structural) and spiritual sense.21
Spiritually the Church declined after the persecutions were stopped. To a great degree this was an outgrowth of the Alexandrian's philosophical approach to holiness and the higher Christian life. As result, two distinct factions developed within the Church. The first was made up of intellectuals who aspired to a holy or higher life through self-discipline and knowledge. These ascetics composed a moral nobility and self-appointed aristocracy while the second class represented the Christian masses who were not instructed in the way of holiness and were not expected to live in such a way as to obtain Christian perfection.22
Acceptance of this on the part of the Catholic or universal Church constituted a double standard of morality. To accommodate such a spiritual class system, distinctions were made between mortal and venial sins. Actually both classes departed from the personal evangelistic profession of Christian holiness stressed so strongly in the New Testament teachings of the Apostle Paul. Therefore, the positive aspects of holiness faded during the fourth and fifth centuries, and the ascetic life became more and more accepted as the appropriate expression of Christian perfection. These trends continued in the area of philosophical Christianity and resulted directly in what became known as the Monastic orders.23
Historians over the years attacked the monastic system for several reasons: first, "Flight from the world had no support in the Gospels; second, it implied that evil resided in matter; third, monasticism was a negation of life; and fourth, the Church universally identified it with perfection."24 As monastic orders developed during the fifth and sixth-centuries, the secular world proceeded toward a state of anarchy. Such conditions existed in part because taxes continued to increase while at the same time the populace lost confidence in the ability of the Roman civil authorities to withstand barbarian invaders from without and deal with a rising crime rate within the empire. The teachings of the Church regarding impending judgment from God, and the eminent physical return of Christ also caused many people to look upon their present life as uncertain. Such circumstances were vitally essential to the ascetics; justification of their negation of both civil and religious responsibilities. The very world the ascetics sought to escape needed desperately the holy example they could have provided.25
The principal ideological reasoning that supported the ascetics; rejection of humanity was not peculiar to the fifth and sixth centuries only but was rooted in concepts established by the third and fourth-century stoic and gnostic philosophers. These individuals taught that evil resided in matter and that perfection could only be gained through self-control and reason. Consequently, stoicism and gnosticism composed the natural philosophical parentage of monasticism. Christianity and heathenism again were combined, as they had been by the Alexandrians during the second-century, in order, supposedly, to preserve Christian holiness.26
The Church by the middle of the fifth-century had developed into an organization which resembled structurally the Roman civil government. Ecclesiastical authority vested in such a system with the Pope or Bishop of Rome as ruler was justified by the Western Church because of the tradition that the Apostle Peter was the first Bishop of Rome, and power was granted to him and his successors by Christ. Irenaeus supported this system of apostolic succession. He asserted that such a practice had been "derived from the apostles,...and comes down to our time by means of the succession of bishops:...in as much as the apostolical tradition has been preserved continuously,..."27
Actually it was not Peter's supposed bishopric of Rome that caused that city to be accepted as the center of the Christian world. It was the fact that the capital was the commercial center and chief focal point of all civil life and authority. From this standpoint, Rome was superior to other great cities of the Mediterranean world such as Alexandria, Constantinople, and Antioch. Constantinople assumed the leading political role within the empire by the fourth-century, but Rome remained the ecclesiastical center of the world.28
Growth of the well defined Western ecclesiastical hierarchy was supported by the bishops who constituted an elite body within the apostolic succession. The importance of the bishop was shown by Cyprian (200-256), one of the Church apologists, who quoted Peter: "Whence you ought to know that the bishop is the Church and the Church in the bishop; and if anyone be not with the bishop, then he is not in the Church."29
The influence or power of the priesthood was based mainly on the fact that the priests were the only ones who could administer the sacraments. Therefore, they were determinative in the salvation of each lay individual. The Lord's Supper, when performed and blessed by the priests, caused supposedly both the blood and body of Christ to be physically present in the sacrificial elements. Hence, what the priest did, he did as the direct representative of Christ. The Church, as a result, took on a new importance because it was only through its offices that the average Christian could receive the sacraments and consequent fellowship with Christ and his mystical (spiritual) Church.30 Cyprian summed up the importance of such a system by asserting: "He can no longer have God for his father, who has not the Church for his mother."31
Almost total emphasis shifted progressively toward orthodoxy and sacramental ritualism within the Roman Church by the end of the sixth-century. No individual could come to Christ without going through the Church. This was a departure from first-century Christianity which practiced the sacramental ordinances, but looked upon them as a type of what had been accomplished by Christ in his victorious death and resurrection, not as containing the actual power or embodiment of that resurrection. Early Christians placed primary emphasis on a personal experiential knowledge of Christ. Such a knowledge embodied two separate experiences: forgiveness of sins and consecration of the believer to the whole will of God whereby he received the Holy Spirit.32
The theological teachings of Aurelious Augustine (354-430) marked a pivotal point in Christian thought. The importance and magnitude of his writing were evidenced during the upheaval caused by the Protestant Reformation when both the Romans and the reformers relied on him for confirmation.33 The strong belief of Augustine in a personal relationship with God, and his abhorrence of sin passed inherently from Adam to each individual was evidenced in his statement that "the weight of sin always presses [humanity] downward to a steep abyss and charity [divine love] raises us up again through the Holy Spirit." Additionally, Augustine confirmed his consecration to God when he wrote: "Woe is me except in Thee; and all plenty which is not my God is poverty to me." Such teachings brought him within the scope of early Christian belief and practice and made his writings a valuable point of confirmation for later Church reformers.34
Augustine, however, backed the authority of the Church and high clergy as universal. He made his stand on this point very clear when he asserted: "I should not believe the Gospel except as moved by the authority of the Church."35 In other words, it was the
Neo-Platonizing and ecclesiastical Augustine rather than the Pauline, the author of The City of God and the champion of the One Holy Catholic Church as a visible institution, rather than the author of the Confessions or of the anti-Pelagain treaties, who became the ruling influence in mediaeval Christianity.36
Such a statement aptly characterized the principal aspects of Augustinian theology which the Papal Church nurtured for over a thousand years during the Middle Ages.37
The progressive misuse of Church power by the hierarchial succession of bishops from the sixth to the sixteenth-century led to an ecclesiastical revolt against sacramentalism and a partial recovery of the first-century emphasis on personal experience with God. According to the reformers, the four basic premises of primitive Christianity were: "(1) Man is justified by faith alone and not by works. (2) There is a general priesthood of all believers (God is accessible to every Christian without mediation of a priest or of the Church). (3) The Bible is the only source and standard for faith and life. (4) The Bible must be interpreted by the aid of the Holy Spirit."38
Martin Luther and John Calvin were the two most important men in the sixteenth-century reform movement. The Basis of their theological teachings constituted only a partial return to first-century Christianity. They stopped short of exhorting the Christian believer to go on to holiness as taught by Paul and the other Apostles. Luther in part supported the teaching of the early Church on the difference between original and actual sin. He said: "That original sin is to covet, lust, and desire, which is the root and cause of actual sin: such lust and desire in the faithful, God forgives, imputing it not unto them for the sake of Christ, seeing they resist it by the assistance of the Holy Ghost." On the other hands, the reformer deviated from the first-century apostles by asserting: "Original sin, after regeneration...remains in Christians until they die, yet itself is mortified and continually dying. Its head is crushed in pieces, so that it cannot condemn us."39
John Calvin varied little from Luther when he supported the reform doctrine that it was not possible for original sin to be eradicated from the heart of the believer before death. Calvin quoted Saint Augustine when he wrote:
all the pious ought, indeed, to aspire to this object, to appear one day immaculate and guiltless before this presence of God; but since the highest excellency in this life is nothing more than a progress towards perfection, we shall never attain it till being divested at once of mortality and sin,...40
The difference between the sixteen-century European reformers, Calvin and Luther, and the eighteenth-century Englishman, John Wesley, stemmed from the conviction of Wesley that "heart purity" was required by God for each individual believer during his lifetime.41 This resulted from an exacting study of the original Hebrew Scriptures and the original Greek language of the New Testament plus other theological works.42 To the Continental reformers, the only perfection possible during life on earth was faith in the redemptive power of Christ; Wesley added to this a consecrational perfection in love and obedience to God brought by the indwelling Comforter.43
Such teachings in part were derived from the writings of Montanus, who appealed to the mind of Wesley because of his systematic method of life and reliance on the Scriptures. In 1750 Wesley wrote in his Journal that Montanus and his followers were "real Scriptural Christians."44 ` Many years later in the Arminian Magazine, John Wesley wrote that Montanus "was not only a truly good man, but one of the best men who lived during the second-century; and his teachings were rejected by the Church because he severely reproved those who professed themselves Christians and had not the mind of Christ."45 In Wesley was culminated the teachings of the early Church; "his life embodied the morality of the Greek Christian (Fathers), the devotion of the third-century ascetic, and the philosophy of the platonists."46
3Lars P. Qualben, A History of the Christian Church, I. Cited hereafter, Qualben, Christian Church. BACK
4John 18:26-28; 14:16, 17. BACK
5The Acts of the Apostles 2:1-5. This Holy Spirit was to lift the believer to a new stratum of holy relationship with God. What the disciples received when the Holy Ghost descended on the day of Pentecost was not remission of sins but an indwelling strength and power to demonstrate to the world that Jesus was the Son of God. This two-fold aspect of salvation was taught during the first century, but by the second century, salvation was thought of as being obtained all in one experience. BACK
6Mark 16:20. John the Baptist, predicted this event when he told the people who came to the Jordan River to be baptized that there was coming a Savior mightier than he and who would baptize them with the "Holy Ghost and with Fire." Matthew 3:11. BACK
7The Acts of the Apostles 2:14-27, 5:29-32. The word Christian was first applied to the followers of Christ at Antioch, Syria, about A.D. 40. BACK
8Claude Holmes Thompson, "The Witness of American Methodism to the Historical Doctrine of Christian Perfection," 4 vols., Ph.D. dissertation (Madison, New Jersey: Drew University, 1949), 1, 81, 82 88. Cited hereafter, Thompson "Witness of Methodism." BACK
9The Acts of the Apostles 15:6-20. BACK
10Thompson, "Witness of Methodism," 1, 82. An example of the early Christian Jew's interaction with their ancient heritage was the fact that they continued to worship on the seventh day of the week at the Jewish synagogues and also on the first day of the week (known as the Lord's Day) with the Gentile believers. Frank C. Masserano, "A Study of Worship Forms in the Assemblies of God Denomination," Ph.D. dissertation (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University, 1966), 23. BACK
11Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, eds., The Ante-Nicene Fathers, Translations of the Writings of the Fathers Down to A.D. 325, 10 vols., Book 3, Irenaeus against Heresies by Irenaeus, 458-460. Cited hereafter, Roberts and Donaldson, eds., [Titles and authors vary] Irenaeus Against Heresies. BACK
12Ibid.,1, 459; Roberts and Donaldson, eds., Dialogue with Trypho a Jew, by Justin, 245. BACK
13John Ferguson, Clement of Alexandria, 124. Cited hereafter, Ferguson, Clement of Alexandria. The gnostics were a second and third-century school of philosophers within Christianity. Gnosis was equated with knowledge and cognition, and the philosophy from which it derived its name dealt with the metaphysical world and the nature of reality. This reasoning was applied to the reality of Christ; it was assumed that Jesus could not be both human and divine; he was therefore, a spirit who pretended merely to die on the Cross. Redemption could only be obtained by those who possessed sufficient ascetic and meditational powers. Therefore, only a select few could reach perfection. Carl Stevhenson, Medieval History, Europe from the Second to the Sixteenth-Century, 45. BACK
14Ferguson, Clement of Alexandria,46. BACK
15John 1:1, 14. (The Interlinear Greek-English New Testament with English Translation by Alfred Marshall). BACK
16Ferguson, Clement of Alexandria, 72. Ever since the earliest days of the Christian Church, its leaders who taught holiness have also allowed women to fill important ecclesiastical roles. The Quakers, Salvation Army, Methodists, and other small holiness groups constituted the major Christian organizations that held to this practice in more recent times. BACK
18William Byron Forbush, ed., Fox's Book of Martyrs a History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant Deaths of the Early Christian and the Protestant Martyrs,7, 8. BACK
19Roberts and Donaldson, eds., III, Apology by Tertullian, 55-58. BACK
20Qualben, Christian Church, 102, 104. BACK
21Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, 7 vols., Ante-Nicene Christianity, A.D. 100-325,II, 72-74. Cited hereafter, Schaff, Ante-Nicene Christianity, II. BACK
23Ibid.,305, 396. Mortal sins were those that were committed in a grave matter with awareness of guilt and full consent. Roman Catholicism taught that such transgressions brought death to the soul. Venial sins were ones committed in a minor matter or without reflection or consent. Such transgressions only merited temporal punishment. Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, 552, 985. BACK
24Thompson, "Witness of Methodism," I, 114. BACK
25George R. Crooks and John F. Hurst, eds., Library of Biblical and Theological Literature, 9 vols., History of the Christian Church, II, by John Fletcher Hurst, 681, 683. Cited hereafter, Crooks and Hurst, eds., History of Christian Church. BACK
27Roberts and Donaldson, eds., I, Book 3, Irenaeus Against Heresies, by Irenaeus, 459. BACK
28Crooks and Hurst, eds., History of Christian Church, II, 715-717. BACK
29Roberts and Donaldson, eds., V, Epistle 68, The Epistles of Cyprian, by Cyprian, 374, 375. BACK
30Stewart D.V. Salmond and Charles A. Briggs, eds., The International Theological Library. The Ancient Catholic Church from the Accession of Trajan to the Fourth General Council A.D. 98-451, by Robert Rainy, 231-233. Cited hereafter, Rainy, Ancient Catholic Church. The correlation between the Church and the sacrament of baptism was asserted by Cyprian when he wrote: "Dost thou believe in eternal life and remission of sins through the holy Church? We mean that remission of sins is not granted except in the Church,...Where there is no Church, sins cannot be put away...It is also necessary that he should be anointed by the Church priest who is baptized; so that having received the chrism, that is, the anointing, he may be anointed of God, and have in him the grace of Christ." Roberts and Donaldson, eds., V, Epistle 68, The Epistle of Cyprian by Cyprian, 376. BACK
31Roberts and Donaldson, eds., V. Treatise I, The Treatises of Cyprian, by Cyprian, 423. BACK
32Schaff, Ante-Nicene Christianity, II, 171-175. BACK
33William Hazlitt, ed., and trans., The Table Talk of Martin Luther, with a memoir by Alexander Chalmers, 141, 142, 217, 232, 233. Cited hereafter, Hazlitt, Luther Table Talk. BACK
34Whitney J. Oates, ed., with notes and intro., Basic Writings of Saint Augustine, 2 vols., I, 232 BACK
35Marcus Dods, ed., Against the Epistle of Manichaeus Called Fundamental, from The Works of Aurelius Augustine, V, Writings in Connection With the Manichean Heresy,101. BACK
36Thompson, "Witness of Methodism," I, 123, 124; James Vernon Bartlett and A.J. Carlyle, Christianity in History, A Study of Religious Development, 426. BACK
37Crooks and Hurst, eds., History of Christian Church, I, 457, 458. BACK
38Qualben, Christian Church, 229, 230. BACK
39Hazlitt, ed., and trans., Luther Table Talk, #244, 110; #256, 116. BACK
40John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2 vols., II, 36. BACK
41Thomas Coke and Henry More, The Life of the Rev. John Wesley, A.M. Including an Account of the Great Revival of Religion in Europe and American of Which He Was The First and Chief Instrument,53. Cited hereafter, Coke and More, John Wesley. At age twenty-three, Wesley was influenced by Rules and Exercises of Holy Living and Dying by Bishop Jeremy Taylor, a bishop in the Anglican Church, and a year later in 1726 by Christian Pattern by Thomas Kempis, who was an Augustinian Monk, and by Christian Perfection and Serious Call by William Law. These men were known for their piety and ascetic devotion. Ibid., 52. BACK
42John Whitehead, A Discourse Delivered at the New Chapel in the City-Road, On The Ninth of March 1791, At The Funeral of The Late Rev. Mr. John Wesley, 4, 5. BACK
43Thompson, "Witness of Methodism," 158. BACK
44John Wesley, Journal of John Wesley, 8 vols., III, August 15, 1750, 490. Cited hereafter, Wesley, Journal. BACK
45John Wesley, "Montanus," Arminian Magazine (London), VIII, January, 1785, 421. BACK
46John Allen Wood, "How Was Mr. Wesley Led to Receive and Teach The Doctrine of Holiness?" Advocate of Christian Holiness (Philadelphia), o.s XIII, February, 1881, 29. BACK