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The Humanism of Arminianism Apr 10, 2008 8:56 am
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"But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned." (I Cor. 2:14)

The term Humanism defined by Webster: "A doctrine, attitude, or way of life centered on human interests or values; especially a philosophy that assures the dignity and worth of man and his capacity for self realization through reason and often that rejects supernaturalism." This definition, as will be shown in the following consideration of the term is diametric or the very opposite of biblical anthropology.

Arminianism defined: It is a religious system centered in man. According to Arminianism, it is man that makes the decrees of God effectual. It consists of five (5) articles, i.e., 1. Conditional election. 2. Universal atonement; (That is, Christ in His sacrificial death made atonement for all of mankind). 3. Regeneration brings good works. 4. Divine grace is resistible. 5. Believers may finally fall from grace and be eternally lost.

The main or central feature of Arminianism and Humanism is the idea that man is superior to God, and that man can, in and of himself, solve all of his problems without any supernatural help. An early perpetrator of Arminianism and Humanism is third century Pelagianism, which exalted the human will above that of the God of the Bible.

MAN CAN CHOOSE HIS OWN SALVATION....MAN CAN THINK POSTITIVE AND BE ALL HE WANTS TO BE.....MAN CAN EXERCISE FAITH AND GET ALL HIS DESIRES....MAN CAN MANIPULATED GOD THROUGH SPIRITUAL LAWS. GOD LOVES MAN...GOD NEEDS MAN...GOD IS DEPENDANT ON MAN.

HUMANISM OF ARMINIANISM in the light of Scripture revelation concerning the absolute sovereignty of God. To say that God is sovereign is to own and proclaim that He is Almighty, the King of kings, the Lord of lords, and that "He hath done whatsoever He hath pleased."(Psa. 115:3). It is the inescapable obligation of the Adamic family to recognize the sovereignty of God, and to ascribe perfect praise unto Him. (Psa. 46:10; I Pet. 2:9). The God of the Bible has emphatically declared: "I am the first and the last; and beside me there is no God"(Isa. 44:6). Every other god (?) is conjured up by vain imagination, the figment of which is the very ground of both Humanism and Arminianism. The fatal aspect of these two nefarious "isms" is not that they do not have a god, but that their god is such an one as their inventors. (Psa. 50:21)
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HUMANISM AND THE GOD OF SELF Apr 10, 2008 8:48 am
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MAIN POINTS OF HUMANISM...WHERE THE DOCTRINE OF ARMINAINISM ORIGINATES.

WE Are FREE to select our goals, determine our future, correct our deficiencies.

the ego, which coordinates and controls our mental activity through its superordinate self-esteem goal the self actualizes our potentials.

We also have a will. The will exerts conscious control over actions, exercises choice between alternatives, applies practical reason, and brings the self to act. It is also a power, and as such, a facet of the self

Is the will free to choose? Most fundamentally, freedom is the power to independently generate or create actions. It is spontaneous originality. This definition strikes at the core meaning of the determinism versus free will controversy and enables us to deal directly with the question.

R.J. Rummel, The Conflict Helix, 1976 9 (SECULAR HUMANIST)

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BEFORE YOU WERE BORN YOU WERE ORDAINED TO HAVE A RELATIONSHIP WITH JESUS CHRIST Apr 9, 2008 10:38 am
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Jeremiah 1:5Before I formed thee in the belly

I knew thee; and before thou camest forth
out of the womb I sanctified thee, [and] I ordained thee a prophet
unto the nations.

FOREKNOWLEGE

It is God's knowledge about things that will happen. Past, present, and future are all "present" in the mind of God. He inhabits eternity (Isaiah 57:15). God has infinite knowledge (Isaiah 41:22,23) and knows all things in advance.

This means more than just "prior knowledge" since that is a quality of omniscience. The idea of foreknowledge in scripture (Greek - prognosko) is usually related to people and it means foreknown in terms of relationship, fore-loving, or a fore-choosing (see Gen 18:19; 24; Amos 3:2; Acts 26:5 )

To know

To percieve , to aquire knowlege, to be aquainted.

Sanctified

to be set apart, be consecrated,to be honoured, be treated as sacred,to be holy.

Ordained in the Hebrew is

asah
to do, work, make, produce,to prepare, to make (an offering), to attend to, put in order to observe, celebrate,to acquire (property)
to appoint, ordain, institute, to bring about
to use to spend, pass

(Niphal) to be done, to be made, to be produced
to be offered, to be observed, to be used
(Pual) to be made

"Behold, to the LORD your God belong heaven and the heaven of heavens, the earth with all that is in it. Yet the LORD set his heart in love on your fathers and chose their offspring after them, you above all peoples, as you are this day" (Deuteronomy 10:14-15; see also Psalm 33:12, 65:4, 106:5; Amos 3:2; and Haggai 2:23

In the Old Testament election was corporate, in the New Testament God has chosen individuals to be his people (Ephesians 1:3-14; Revelation 13:8, 17:

God's choice was not based on any reason in his chosen people. The election of Israel was solely because of God's promise to theirforefathers: "It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the LORD set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the LORD loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the LORD has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt" Deuteronomy 7 : 7,8

New covenant election was also not based on any reason in its members: "So then it [God's choice] depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has mercy" (Romans 9:16). Jesus himself said, "You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you" (John 15:16).
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CAN YOU CHOOSE A MIRACLE? Apr 8, 2008 8:57 am
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What is a miracle?

miracle

Any amazing or wonderful occurrence.

A marvelous event manifesting a supernatural act of God.

A miracle, derived from the old Latin word miraculum meaning "something wonderful", is a striking interposition of divine intervention by a God in the universe by which the ordinary course and operation of Nature is overruled, suspended, or modified.

An exception to the laws of nature escaping scientific verification since it cannot be repeated at will but is dependent upon the necessity of grace.

A miracle is a sovereign act of God. THE NEW BIRTH IS A MIRACLE. YOU CANNOT MAKE THIS HAPPEN OF YOURSELF. GOD GIVES MIRACLES BY HIS GRACE AND NOT AT THE COMMANDS OF MAN.

If you are truly born again by Gods Spirit, why don't you give him the glory? He chose you and you did not deserve it. NOR DID YOU HAVE ENOUGH FAITH TO RECEIVE IT. God bestows miracles and your salvation is one of his miracles!

John 1:13

Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God

1 Peter 1: 23

For you have been born again not of seed which is perishable but imperishable, that is, through the living and enduring word of God.
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ARE YOU MAKING GOD JEALOUS ? Apr 4, 2008 4:11 pm
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The bible says that God Is a jealous God. He will have no other gods before him. That means if one is serving another Jesus and believing another gospel then they are an Idolater. How Laodecia wants to compromise the truth. They just believe different than us, so be tolerant or our doctrines differ but we should strive for unity.They believe a little different but thats ok.

This is a new age gnostic belief system that has invaded the end time church and is sending multitudes of so called believers of Jesus to hell. Love is an all powerful force...let us love every body! Let us preserve unity. This is not the true gospel!

When human beings go after other lovers, that is, when they worships other gods and commit spiritual adultery, God is said to be jealous. When the term jealousy is applied to God in Scripture it is usually because people who say they are his are worshiping idols. In the second of His ten commandments God warned them not to do that, but they failed to listen to Him. Israel claimed to belong to God but under his nose they provoked Him with their high places and caused God to be jealous with their graven images.

Why does this make God jealous when people who claim to be his,( but really are not ) when in fact they are worshiping corrupted forms of him, worship idols under his nose? Well lets put it this way, what if someone wrote in the papers about you and distorted who and what you were thus causing many people to see you in the way they portrayed you rather than who you really are? How would that make you feel? God is jealous for his names sake (his glory) and not because he is so in love with his enemies who undermine his word and distort his character.

I am the LORD, that is My name;
I will not give My glory to another,
Nor My praise to graven images (Isaiah 42:

Idol worshipers are rip off artists who are mimicking him and stealing his glory...making a false god to be a true god when Jesus Christ alone is God. This is Satan's desire...to be like God and so his children also want to be like god and have various different forms of godlinessbut deny the power! They are not born of Gods holy Spirit but are fakers, pretenders,idolaterss, false brethren.

These believers are every where. Claiming to know Jesus Christ but hate his word which is truth. They will not submit to scripture even when confronted with it. Rather they will come up with all kinds of excuses. They are filled with false doctrines and false forms of worship.

Times are getting worse and so I wnat to warn Gods elect. Those who preach the true gospel will be persecutedd by these false brethren and they are many. Stay in the word of God. Read it with prayerfull heart. Make the word of God your first and foremost desire, for God is his word and Jesus is God manifest in the flesh!

Sweethoney
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ARE YOU A TRUE WORSHIPPER OF JESUS CHRIST? Apr 3, 2008 11:19 am
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MATTHEW 16:8-9

This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me.

But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.

Is worshiping Jesus Christ just about singing songs...is it only mouthing adoration's?....no it is not!

Is worshiping Jesus Christ just about serving? Telling people you love them.....no it is not!

True worship is loving truth....Gods word is the truth. If you have a false belief system contrary to the bible are you a true worshiper? No you are not!

Doctrine is Greek for “To Learn, To Instruct”. Webster’s dictionary says, “Principles, beliefs, imparted knowledge”. In other words,doctrine is God’s opinion that He wants us to learn.

Proverbs 4:1‑2 “Hear, ye children, the instruction of a father, and attend to know understanding

You have to want to know more than you know and be be teachable! What you believe is who you are.

Proverbs 23: 7 “As a man thinketh within himself, so is he”

If your doctrine is not sound, neither will you be.

John 8:32 “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free”

Ephesians 4:14 says that “we should no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine"

Do you let the word speak into your life? Do you adhere to all of it or only the part that makes you feel good? Are you teachable when someone speaks into your life?

Proverbs 27:6

Faithful are the wounds of a friend; but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful

Did you know that Jesus Christ was crucified for his doctrine?

John 7:16 “My doctrine is not Mine, but His who sent Me”

A lover of truth will take truth even if it hurts their feelings and wounds their pride!

I thank God for those over my life time who spoke into my life. I was a very rebellious young woman. I was a biker chick and lived on the streets by my worldly wits in a life of sin.

God sent those with guts enough to tell me that I was going to hell. No matter how wounded I was by all my abuse to make me the way I was, I was still guilty. A sinner condemned to die. Thank God for his unspeakable grace towards me! I would have never been saved unless he came to seek me out and save me!
Sweethoney

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DID JESUS MINISTER IN LOVE ? Apr 2, 2008 8:32 pm
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JOHN 8: 34-47

Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin. And the servant abideth not in the house for ever: but the Son abideth ever. If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed. I know that ye are Abraham's seed; but ye seek to kill me, because my word hath no place in you. I speak that which I have seen with my Father: and ye do that which ye have seen with your father.

They answered and said unto him, Abraham is our father. Jesus saith unto them, If ye were Abraham's children, ye would do the works of Abraham. But now ye seek to kill me, a man that hath told you the truth, which I have heard of God: this did not Abraham. Ye do the deeds of your father. Then said they to him, We be not born of fornication; we have one Father, even God. Jesus said unto them, If God were your Father, ye would love me: for I proceeded forth and came from God; neither came I of myself, but he sent me. Why do ye not understand my speech? even because ye cannot hear my word. Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it. And because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not. Which of you convinceth me of sin? And if I say the truth, why do ye not believe me? He that is of God heareth God's words: ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God. SIZE]
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NO LASTING FRUIT FROM FINNEYS MINISTRY Apr 2, 2008 7:46 pm
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Predictably, most of Finney's spiritual heirs lapsed into apostasy, Socinianism, mere moralism, cultlike perfectionism, and other related errors. In short, Finney's chief legacy was confusion and doctrinal compromise.

Evangelical Christianity virtually disappeared from western New York in Finney's own lifetime.

Despite Finney's accounts of glorious "revivals," most of the vast region of New England where he held his revival campaigns fell into a permanent spiritual coldness during Finney's lifetime and more than a hundred years later still has not emerged from that malaise. This is directly owing to the influence of Finney and others who were simultaneously promoting similar ideas.

The Western half of New York became known as "the burnt-over district," because of the negative effects of the revivalist movement that culminated in Finney's work there. These facts are often obscured in the popular lore about Finney. But even Finney himself spoke of "a burnt district" [Memoirs, 78], and he lamented the absence of any lasting fruit from his evangelistic efforts.

He wrote, I was often instrumental in bringing Christians under great conviction, and into a state of temporary repentance and faith . . . . [But] falling short of urging them up to a point, where they would become so acquainted with Christ as to abide in Him, they would of course soon relapse into their former state [cited in B. B. Warfield, Studies in Perfectionism, 2 vols. (New York: Oxford, 1932), 2:24].

One of Finney's contemporaries registered a similar assessment, but more bluntly:
During ten years, hundreds, and perhaps thousands, were annually reported to be converted on all hands; but now it is admitted, that real converts are comparatively few. It is declared, even by [Finney] himself, that "the great body of them are a disgrace to religion" [cited in Warfield, 2:23].
B. B. Warfield cited the testimony of Asa Mahan, one of Finney's close associates,
. . . who tells us—to put it briefly—that everyone who was concerned in these revivals suffered a sad subsequent lapse: the people were left like a dead coal which could not be reignited; the pastors were shorn of all their spiritual power; and the evangelists—"among them all," he says, "and I was personally acquainted with nearly every one of them—I cannot recall a single man, brother Finney and father Nash excepted, who did not after a few years lose his unction, and become equally disqualified for the office of evangelist and that of pastor."

Thus the great "Western Revivals" ran out into disaster. . . . Over and over again, when he proposed to revisit one of the churches, delegations were sent him or other means used, to prevent what was thought of as an affliction. . . . Even after a generation had passed by, these burnt children had no liking for the fire [Warfield, 2:26-28].

Finney grew discouraged with the revival campaigns and tried his hand at pastoring in New York City before accepting the presidency of Oberlin College During those post-revivalist years, he turned his attention to devising a doctrine of Christian perfectionism.

Perfectionist ideas, in vogue at the time, were a whole new playground for serious heresy on the fringes of evangelicalism—and Finney became one of the best-known advocates of perfectionism. The evil legacy of the perfectionism touted by Finney and friends in the mid-nineteenth century has been thoroughly critiqued by B. B. Warfield in his important work Studies in Perfectionism. Perfectionism was the logical consequence of Finney's Pelagianism, and its predictable result was spiritual disaster.

Charles Grandison Finney was a heretic. That language is not too strong. Though he excelled at cloaking his opinions in ambiguous language and biblical-sounding expressions, his views were almost pure Pelagianism. The arguments he employed to sustain those views were nearly always rationalistic and philosophical, not biblical. To canonize this man as an evangelical hero is to ignore the facts of what he stood for.

Don't be duped by sanitized 20th-century editions of Finney's works. Read the "Complete and Newly Expanded" 1878 edition of Finney's Systematic Theology. This volume shows the real character of Finney's doctrine. (The unabridged 1851 version is now online, and it also exposes Finney's errors in language not toned down by later redactors.) By no stretch of the imagination does Finney deserve to be regarded as an evangelical. By corrupting the doctrine of justification by faith; by denying the doctrines of original sin and total depravity; by minimizing the sovereignty of God while enthroning the power of the human will; and above all, by undermining the doctrine of substitutionary atonement, Finney filled the bloodstream of American evangelicalism with poisons that have kept the movement maimed even to this day.

Phillip R. Johnson
Charles Spurgen ministries
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Finney Denies the Doctrine of Justification by Faith Alone to Save. Apr 2, 2008 7:44 pm
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Specifically, what were Finney's most serious errors? At the top of the list stands his rejection of the doctrine of justification by faith. Finney denied that the righteousness of Christ is the sole ground of our justification, teaching instead that sinners must reform their own hearts in order to be acceptable to God. (His emphasis on self-reformation apart from divine enablement is again a strong echo of Pelagianism.)

Finney spends a considerable amount of time in several of his works arguing against "that theological fiction of imputation" Memoirs, 58. Those who have any grasp of Protestant doctrine will see immediately that his attack at this point is a blatant rejection of the doctrine of justification by faith alone (sola fide). It places him outside the pale of true evangelical Protestantism. The doctrine of imputed righteousness is the very heart of the historic difference between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism. The whole doctrine of justification by faith hinges on this concept. But Finney flatly rejected it. He derided the concept of imputation as unjust:

"I could not but regard and treat this whole question of imputation as a theological fiction, somewhat related to our legal fiction of John Doe and Richard Roe" Memoirs, 60. Dismissing the many biblical texts that expressly say righteousness is imputed to believers for their justification, he wrote,

These and similar passages are relied upon, as teaching the doctrine of an imputed righteousness; and such as these: "The Lord our righteousness" (Phil. 3:9). . . . "Christ our righteousness" is Christ the author or procurer of our justification. But this does not imply that He procures our justification by imputing His obedience to us. . . Charles Finney, Systematic Theology My note...what about the just for the unjust? His righteousness for our filthy rags.

Here Finney offers no cogent explanation of what he imagines Scripture does mean when it speaks repeatedly of the imputation of righteousness to believers ( Gen. 15:6; Rom. 4:4-6). But throughout all his discussions of imputation Finney repeatedly insists that neither merit nor guilt can righteously be imputed from one person to another. Therefore, Finney argues, the righteousness of Christ can provide no ground for the justification of sinners. Furthermore, he continues:

Foundation of the justification of penitent believers in Christ. What is the ultimate ground or reason of their justification?
1. It is not founded in Christ's literally suffering the exact penalty of the law for them, and in this sense literally purchasing their justification and eternal salvation Systematic Theology, .

My note...Beware of false prophets who come to you in sheeps clothing!Gods word is truth and not mans!

By employing terms such as "exact" and "literal," Finney caricatured the position he was opposing. (The immediate context of this quotation makes clear that he was arguing against the position outlined in the Westminster Confession, which accords with all major Protestant creeds and theologians on the matter of justification.) But Finney could not obscure his own position: Having decided that the doctrine of imputation was a "theological fiction," he was forced to deny not only the imputation of Christ's righteousness to believers, but also the imputation of the sinner's guilt to Christ on the cross.

Under Finney's system, Christ could not have actually borne anyone else's sin or suffered sin's full penalty in their place and in their stead ( Isaiah 53:6; 1 Peter 2:24; 1 John 2:2). Finney therefore rejected the doctrine of substitutionary atonement.

Finney's position on these matters also caused him to define justification in subjective, rather than objective, terms. Protestants have historically insisted that justification is a purely forensic declaration, giving the penitent sinner an immediate right standing before God on the merit of Christ's righteousness, not their own ( Rom. 10:3; Phil. 3:9). By forensic, we mean that it is a legal declaration, like a courtroom verdict or a marriage pronouncement ("I now pronounce you husband and wife"). It changes the person's external status rather than affecting some kind of internal change; it is a wholly objective reality.
The subjective transformation of the believer that conforms us to Christ's image is sanctification—a subsequent and separate reality, distinct from justification. Since the dawn of the Protestant Reformation, the virtually unanimous Protestant consensus has been that justification is in no sense grounded in or conditioned on our sanctification. Catholicism, on the other hand, mingles justification and sanctification, making sanctification a prerequisite to final justification.

Finney sided with Rome on this point. His rejection of the doctrine of imputation left him with no alternative: "Gospel justification is not to be regarded as a forensic or judicial proceeding" Systematic Theology, 360.
Finney departed further from historic Protestantism by expressly denying that Christ's righteousness is the sole ground of the believer's justification, arguing instead that justification is grounded only in the benevolence of God. (This position is identical to that of Socinians and theological liberals.)
Obfuscating the issue further, Finney listed several "necessary conditions" (insisting these are not, technically, grounds) of justification. These "necessary conditions" included Christ's atoning death, the Christian's own faith, repentance, sanctification, and—most ominously—the believer's ongoing obedience to the law. Finney wrote,

There can be no justification in a legal or forensic sense, but upon the ground of universal, perfect, and uninterrupted obedience to law. This is of course denied by those who hold that gospel justification, or the justification of penitent sinners, is of the nature of a forensic or judicial justification. They hold to the legal maxim, that what a man does by another he does by himself, and therefore the law regards Christ's obedience as ours, on the ground that He obeyed for us Systematic Theology.

Of course, Finney denied that Christ "obeyed for us," claiming that since Christ was Himself obligated to render full obedience to the law, His obedience could justify Himself alone. "It can never be imputed to us," Finney intoned Systematic Theology, The clear implication of Finney's view is that justification ultimately hinges on the believer's own obedience, and God will not truly and finally pardon the repentant sinner until after that penitent one completes a lifetime of faithful obedience. Finney himself said as much, employing the undiluted language of perfectionism. He wrote,

By sanctification being a condition of justification, the following things are intended:
That present, full, and entire consecration of heart and life to God and His service, is an unalterable condition of present pardon of past sin, and of present acceptance with God. That the penitent soul remains justified no longer than this full-hearted consecration continues. If he falls from his first love into the spirit of self-pleasing, he falls again into bondage to sin and to the law, is condemned, and must repent and do his "first work," must turn to Christ, and renew his faith and love, as a condition of his salvation. . . .
Perseverance in faith and obedience, or in consecration to God, is also an unalterable condition of justification, or of pardon and acceptance with God. By this language in this connection, you will of course understand me to mean, that perseverance in faith and obedience is a condition, not of present, but of final or ultimate acceptance and salvation Systematic Theology

Thus Finney insisted that justification ultimately hinges on the believer's own performance, not Christ's. Here Finney once more turns his guns against the doctrine of imputation:
Those who hold that justification by imputed righteousness is a forensic proceeding, take a view of final or ultimate justification, according with their view of the nature of the transaction. With them, faith receives an imputed righteousness, and a judicial justification. The first act of faith, according to them, introduces the sinner into this relation, and obtains for him a perpetual justification. They maintain that after this first act of faith it is impossible for the sinner to come into condemnation; Systematic Theology,

But isn't that precisely what Scripture teaches? John 3:18: "He that believeth on him is not condemned." John 5:24: "He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life." Galatians 3:13: "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us." It was immediately following his great discourse on justification by faith that the apostle Paul wrote, "There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus" (Rom. 8:1). But Charles Finney was unwilling to let Christians rest in the promise of "no condemnation," and he ridiculed the idea of security in Christ as a notion that would lead to licentious living. He continues, again caricaturing the position he opposes:
that, being once justified, he is always thereafter justified, whatever he may do; indeed that he is never justified by grace, as to sins that are past, upon condition that he ceases to sin; that Christ's righteousness is the ground, and that his own present obedience is not even a condition of his justification, so that, in fact, his own present or future obedience to the law of God is, in no case, and in no sense, a sine qua non of his justification, present or ultimate.

Now this is certainly another gospel from the one I am inculcating. It is not a difference merely upon some speculative or theoretic point. It is a point fundamental to the gospel and to salvation, if any one can be Systematic Theology, 369
As the final paragraph of that excerpt makes clear, Finney himself clearly understood that what he proclaimed was a different gospel from that of historic Protestantism. By denying the forensic nature of justification, Finney was left with no option but to regard justification as a subjective thing grounded not in Christ's redemptive work but in the believer's own obedience—and therefore a matter of works, not faith alone
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Charles Finney was a Humanist Apr 2, 2008 7:42 pm
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IT IS IRONIC that Charles Grandison Finney has become a poster boy for so many modern evangelicals. His theology was far from evangelical.

Finney's ministry was founded on duplicity from the beginning. He obtained his license to preach as a Presbyterian minister by professing adherence to the Westminster Confession of Faith. But he later admitted that he was almost totally ignorant of what the document taught. Here, in Finney's own words, is a description of what occurred when he went before the council whose task it was to determine if he was spiritually qualified and doctrinally sound:

Unexpectedly to myself they asked me if I received the Confession of faith of the Presbyterian church. I had not examined it;—that is, the large work, containing the Catechisms and Presbyterian Confession. This had made no part of my study. I replied that I received it for substance of doctrine, so far as I understood it. But I spoke in a way that plainly implied, I think, that I did not pretend to know much about it. However, I answered honestly, as I understood it at the time [Charles Finney, The Memoirs of Charles Finney: The Complete Restored Text (Grand Rapids: Academie, 1989), 53-54]

Despite his Clintonesque insistence that he "answered honestly," it is clear that Finney deliberately misled his examiners. (His ability to parse legal terms would have served him well had he been a politician in the late Twentieth Century. But he betrays an appalling brashness for a clergyman in his own era.) Rather than plainly admitting he was utterly ignorant of his denomination's doctrinal standards, he says he "spoke in a way" that implied ("I think") that he did not know "much" about those documents. The truth is that he had never even examined the Confession of Faith and knew nothing at all about it. He was woefully unprepared for ordination, and he had no business seeking a license to preach under the presbytery's auspices.

"I was not aware that the rules of the presbytery required them to ask a candidate if he accepted the Presbyterian Confession of faith," Finney wrote. "Hence I had never read it"

My note...what kind of lawyer (Finney was a lawyer) does not read the material of the contract he is signing???? Obviously this was deliberate deciet.[Memoirs, 60.] So when he told his ordination council that he received the Confession "for substance of doctrine," nothing could have been further from the truth! Nonetheless, the council naively (and all too willingly) took Finney at his word and licensed him to preach.

Finney's credibility is further marred by the fact that when he later read the Westminster Standards and realized he disagreed on almost every crucial point, he did not resign the commission he had received under false pretenses. Instead, he accepted the platform he had duped those men into giving him—then used it for the rest of his life to attack their doctrinal convictions. "As soon as I learned what were the unambiguous teachings of the Confession of faith upon these points, I did not hesitate at all on all suitable occasions to declare my dissent from them," he boasted. "I repudiated and exposed them. Wherever I found that any class of persons were hidden behind these dogmas, I did not hesitate to demolish them, to the best of my ability" [Memoirs, 60].

The fact that Finney had obtained his own preaching credentials by professing adherence to the Confession did not faze him at all. "When I came to read the Confession of faith, and saw the passages that were quoted to sustain these peculiar positions, I was absolutely ashamed of it," he frankly stated. "I could not feel any respect for a document that would undertake to impose on mankind such dogmas as those" [Memoirs, 61].

Finney's disagreements with his denomination's doctrinal standards clearly were not opinions he formed after his examination by the council. By his own admission, he had consciously rejected the basic theological framework of the Presbyterian confession long before he stood before those men. He writes of doctrinal debates he had provoked with his pastor, George W. Gale: "I could not receive his views on the subject of atonement, regeneration, faith, repentance, the slavery of the Will, or any of their kindred doctrines" [Memoirs, 46].

My note, Interesting that Finney opposed all reformation doctrines. He used the reformed faith to come to power and then attacked them with his secular reasoning and humanist theology.

Even prior to his conversion, Finney had raised many of the very same issues and objected strongly to Gale's teaching on such points. He wrote,I now think that I sometimes criticised his sermons unmercifully. I raised such objections against his positions as forced themselves upon my attention. . . . What did he mean by repentance? Was it a mere feeling of sorrow for sin? Was it altogether a passive state of mind? or did it involve a voluntary element? If it was a change of mind, in what respect was it a change of mind? What did he mean by the term regeneration? What did such language mean when spoken of as a spiritual change? What did he mean by faith? Was it merely an intellectual state? Was it merely a conviction, or persuasion, that the things stated in the Gospel were true? [Memoirs, 10-12.]

Finney's "conversion" does not seem to have altered his skepticism about his denomination's stance on any of these crucial evangelical doctrines. After his experiential crisis, those were the very issues on which he dissented from the Presbyterian Confession—only now with more vigor than ever. The intense emotional experience Finney regarded as his new birth seems merely to have confirmed his feeling that he was right about Christianity and Scripture—and that most of the leaders of his denomination were either stupid or deluded.

In fact, in his own account of his conversion and theological "training," Finney comes across as utterly unteachable. He meticulously recounts the issues on which he and Pastor Gale disagreed. They are for the most part the same points Finney says he objected to before his conversion. Never once does Finney acknowledge conceding any point to Gale (or to anyone else, for that matter). He obviously believed that his intuitive grasp of spiritual truth, combined with his legal training, automatically made him more doctrinally adept than all the seminary-trained Presbyterian preachers combined. He consistently portrays church leaders who adhered to the Confession of Faith as dupes and dullards. He was convinced they had nothing to teach him, and from the point of his conversion on, he casts himself in the superior role, as a reformer of their outdated and indefensible doctrines. He writes,

The fact is that Brother Gale's education for the ministry had been entirely defective. He had imbibed a set of opinions, both theological and practical, that were a strait jacket to him. He could accomplish very little or nothing if he carried out his own principles. I had the use of his library, and ransacked it thoroughly on all the questions of theology which came up for examination; and the more I examined the books, the more I was dissatisfied. [Memoirs, 55.]
Now convinced that his tutor (Pastor Gale) and all the Reformed and Puritan books in Gale's library were utterly worthless, Finney set out to devise a theological system more to his own liking.

At first, being no theologian, my attitude in respect to [Gale's] peculiar views was rather that of negation or denial, than that of opposing any positive view to his. I said, your positions are not proved." I often said, "They are insusceptible of proof." So I thought then, and so I think now. . . . I had nowhere to go but directly to the Bible, and to the philosophy or workings of my own mind as they were revealed in consciousness. My views took on a positive type but slowly. I at first found myself unable to receive his peculiar views; and secondly, gradually formed views of my own in opposition to them, which appeared to me to be unequivocally taught in the Bible. [Memoirs, 55, emphasis added.]

In other words, Finney's earliest opinions on "the subject[s] of atonement, regeneration, faith, repentance, the slavery of the will, [and] kindred doctrines" became baggage he dragged along into his own peculiar systematic theology. Having objected to Pastor Gale's doctrinal stance on these issues since before his conversion—and especially now that Finney realized these ideas came from the Confession itself—he grew to despise "Old School" doctrinal standards. He was not about to study books that defended such doctrines.

Without any "positive view" of his own (other than his obvious contempt for Reformed doctrine), he was content for a while to rebuff Gale's tutoring with "negation or denial." But Finney soon realized he needed something more than denial to answer the doctrines of the Presbyterian Confession. So he set to work scouring the pages of Scripture in search of arguments against the doctrines he despised, while devising new doctrines more suited to "the philosophy or workings of [his] own mind." Ideas Finney had toyed with since his pre-conversion days thus became the heart of the theology he espoused until the end of his life. In other words, as a new "convert," Finney simply devised a theology that fit his already-established prejudices.

In his Memoirs, his Lectures on Revival, and his Systematic Theology, what comes through, frankly, is not a man with a high regard for Scripture, but a man with an inflated view of himself. Where Scripture does not suit him, Finney resorts to sophistry to explain it away. Whole sections of his Systematic Theology contain paragraph after paragraph of philosophizing and moralizing—sometimes without a single reference to Scripture for many pages.

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