Charles Grandison Finney

Recounting his own theological formation, he says he went to the Bible and to his own reasoning, and could not take doctrine on anyone's authority. He had not read the Westminster Confession when the presbytery examined him for licensure in March 1824, and he accepted it only "for substance of doctrine, so far as I understood it." Church tradition and teaching office carry no weight in anything read; what stands beside Scripture in his own account is not the church but "the philosophy or workings of my own mind, as revealed in consciousness," which is why the state is a lean and not an unqualified affirmation of the first stance.

I found myself utterly unable to accept doctrine on the ground of authority.Memoirs, ch. IV (his doctrinal education at Adams)

Nothing found. The one passage read that comes near the question grades guilt by light: the heathen are guilty, but less so than hearers of the gospel, "the degree of their guilt being less by as much as their light is less." That says the heathen have some light and are answerable for it; it does not say whether creation and conscience reveal God clearly enough to leave everyone without excuse, which is what this locus divides on. The Systematic Theology treats the moral law as known by reason but does not take up the knowledge of God apart from Scripture in the lecture searched. Not found in the two texts searched, not a claim that he never addressed it.

Moral depravity is selfishness, a voluntary choice of self-gratification, and it lies in the will's act, not in a sinful constitution: "It is not a constitutional sinfulness." Adam's sin was the occasion of his descendants' sin, not its necessary cause, and it left them a damaged physical constitution and worse surroundings to form their character in, which are not sinful in themselves. The will stays free and able to obey. In regeneration the Spirit works through the truth, not by a physical change of nature, and the sinner is both passive and active: "The Spirit acts upon him through or by the truth: thus far he is passive. He closes with the truth: thus far he is active."

WORTH CORRECTINGHe is not a Wesleyan on this point, though his election and atonement rows match Wesley's. Wesley's prevenient grace restores an ability the fall took away; Finney holds the ability was never lost, so there is nothing for such a grace to restore. Reading him as an Arminian here puts him in the third stance, and that misses what he actually held.

The moral government of God everywhere assumes and implies the liberty of the human will, and the natural ability of men to obey God.Lectures on Systematic Theology (1878 ed.), Lecture XXXI (Natural Ability), VI

Everyone who will be saved was chosen from eternity to salvation "through the sanctification of their hearts by faith in Christ," with the means elected as really as the end. The election is not for foreseen good works but on condition of foreseen repentance, faith and perseverance. The stance's word "grounded" goes further than he does, though. The foreseen fact "must have been a condition in the sense of a sine qua non, of their election to salvation, but could not have been the fundamental reason for it." The reason he gives is the highest good of the universe: the best system of means for that end "included the election of just those who were elected, and no others." Conditioned on foreseen faith but not grounded in it, so the state is a lean.

WORTH CORRECTINGHe held a doctrine of election and argued for it at length, so he did not deny election, and holding one does not make him Calvinist either. What God foresees is a condition of the choice, not an unconditional decree.

God did not elect them to salvation, for or on account of their foreseen good works, but upon condition of their foreseen repentance, faith and perseverance.Lectures on Systematic Theology (1878 ed.), Lecture XLIII (Election), II.3

Evangelical faith is an act of the will, not of the intellect. It implies intellectual conviction, but the virtuous element that makes it faith "does not consist in it," because faith is always treated as a virtue and the intellect's states are not. What faith is, positively, is the will closing with the truths of the gospel and committing the whole person to Christ in his offices.

It is a trusting in Christ, a committing of the soul and the whole being to Him, in His various offices and relations to men.Lectures on Systematic Theology (1878 ed.), Lecture XXXV (Faith and Unbelief), II

No listed stance fits, though the reason is narrower than it looks. His answer to the locus question is a declaration and not a transformation: the sinner is not pronounced just but treated as if he were, the penalty set aside by a governmental pardon. What the first stance adds, imputation, he rejects outright, calling imputed righteousness "founded on a most false and nonsensical assumption," and he argues justification is not forensic because a law cannot pronounce a lawbreaker just. He also makes present obedience its condition: "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." A pardon without imputation, conditioned on present consecration, is not a making righteous either, so the second and third stances fail too. See PROPOSALS in the research folder.

It consists not in the law pronouncing the sinner just, but in his being ultimately governmentally treated as if he were justLectures on Systematic Theology (1878 ed.), Lecture XXXVI (Justification), II

The atonement is a governmental provision that satisfies public justice, not a payment of what the elect owed, and so there is no fixed quantity of suffering to be apportioned to particular people. It benefits the whole moral universe, and particularly this world: "All mankind can be pardoned, if they are rightly affected and brought to repentance by it." That it was made for all is shown by its being offered to all, and sinners are condemned for not receiving it.

That it was made for all mankind, is evident from the fact that it is offered to all indiscriminately.Lectures on Systematic Theology (1878 ed.), Lecture XXVI (Extent of Atonement), VI.6

True saints will certainly be saved. They are kept by grace and the Spirit through faith, so that after regeneration obedience is their rule and disobedience the exception. The certainty is not a necessity: "It must be naturally possible for all moral agents to sin at any time," and their salvation is certain only in the way any future free act is certain. He also rejects "perpetual justification, upon condition of one act of faith." Five lectures of the Systematic Theology are headed Perseverance of Saints; the first two were read.

WORTH CORRECTINGHe is often assumed to have denied perseverance because he denied original sin and unconditional election. He affirmed it and defended it from the "certainty" of the saints' free obedience, not from any necessity.

It is intended, that all who are at any time true saints of God, are preserved by His grace and Spirit through faith, in the sense that subsequently to regeneration, obedience is their rule, and disobedience only the exception; and that being thus kept, they will certainly be saved with an everlasting salvation.Lectures on Systematic Theology (1878 ed.), Lecture XLVII (Perseverance of Saints), III

No listed stance fits. He does answer the question, and his answer is that the promised Spirit comes after conversion. "After we believe we are sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise," and this blessing "is to be received by faith", by believers, and there are "thousands of Christians who have not received the promises on account of their ignorance and unbelief." What they lack is "that measure of the Holy Spirit which constitutes the New Covenant, and produces the entire sanctification of the soul." A reception subsequent to saving faith is not at regeneration, not at the moment of saving faith, and not tied to baptism. This rests on a single 1839 article. See PROPOSALS in the research folder.

It must not be supposed that every Christian has of course received the Holy Ghost in such a sense as it is promised in these passages.The Holy Spirit of Promise (Oberlin Evangelist, 1839), remarks

Finney calls the Christian warfare a war between the will and Satan, but he folds Satan in with the world, temperament, imagination and wandering thoughts as forms of one pressure on the sensibility. The victory is depending wholly on Christ's strength, and he contrasts this with the legalist who relies on watchfulness, prayer and resolutions.

WORTH CORRECTINGNeither stance fits. He sets the ordinary means against faith in Christ's strength, so putting him under them would misdescribe him, and nothing read concerns casting out spirits. He says relatively little about Satan anywhere.

"The Christian warfare is a war between the will and Satan. It is his great object to keep the will in subjection to the propensities of the sensibility.""Christian Warfare", Oberlin Evangelist, 1843

Nothing found on who should be baptized. What was found is about mode only. In an 1873 letter he says he "did not regard the mode of baptism, as essential to the validity of the ordinance," that he let converts choose their mode and administered it in several, and that he held immersion was not the original mode. None of that bears on believers against infants, and this corpus does not infer the answer from his Presbyterian ordination. Not found in what was read.

The bread and wine are emblems that represent Christ's broken body and shed blood. The rite's design is to show forth his death and to illustrate "the life of faith sustained by its appropriate spiritual food." The sermon never speaks of Christ as present in the elements. At the table the risen Savior "sees you eating of his symbolized body" and his heart "beats in sympathy with yours", which is sympathy from heaven and not presence in the bread. It never takes up the presence question either, so the state is a lean. The feeding the rite illustrates is real to him, and that is what keeps this from being a bare remembrance.

The breaking of this bread and the pouring out of this wine may well represent the breaking of Christ's body and the shedding of his blood, and these emblems so far considered, doubtless set forth the atoning death of Christ as a sacrifice for our sins.On the Lord's Supper (Oberlin Evangelist, 1846), I

Nothing found on whether the miraculous gifts continue. The passage nearest to it argues that a revival is not a miracle but the result of "the right use of the constituted means," and that the apostles used miracles to gain attention for their message and establish its authority: "the miracle was not the revival." That treats apostolic miracles as authenticating the message. It does not say whether they ceased. Not found in what was read.

The penalty of the moral law is endless, and it has to be. A lesser penalty would not give the strongest motive the case admits to restrain sin: "Either, then, God has no law, or its penal sanctions are endless." The death the law threatens is not natural death, which among his reasons falls on the forgiven righteous as well and on infants and animals, but endless suffering.

But the penal sanction of the law of God is endless death, or that state of endless suffering which is the natural and governmental result of sin or of spiritual death.Lectures on Systematic Theology (1878 ed.), Lecture XIX (Sanctions of Moral Law), VI

The millennium is something the church's faithfulness in revival can bring, and bring soon. Had the whole church gone to work ten years earlier, he says, "there would not now have been an impenitent sinner in the land. The millennium would have fully come in the United States before this day." That is the shape of the third stance: the gospel triumphs before Christ returns. The lecture does not discuss the timing of the return itself, so the state is a lean.

If the church will do all her duty, the millennium may come in this country in three years.Lectures on Revivals of Religion (1868 ed.), Lecture XV (Hindrances to Revivals), III.9