Charles Grandison Finney on Baptism
No position located on this map
Searched in the sources read for this figure and not found. A limit of the reading rather than a claim about the figure — a source not yet read could settle it.
THE POSITION
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.
WHY THERE IS NO QUOTATIONEleven of the fourteen positions carry a verbatim quotation. Baptism, spiritual gifts and natural revelation carry none because nothing on the question each locus asks was found in the texts searched. They are recorded as gaps, not as positions.
WHAT OTHERS HOLD HERE
ABOUT THIS FIGURE
Law student turned revivalist of the Second Great Awakening, licensed and ordained by a Presbyterian presbytery in 1824, later professor of theology and president at Oberlin College. His Lectures on Revivals of Religion argued that a revival is the right use of means and not a miracle. His Systematic Theology built a doctrine of salvation on moral government and on the sinner's natural ability, and denied original sin as a sinful nature, imputed righteousness, and that the atonement paid what sinners owed. This entry rests on that Systematic Theology (1878 edition), the Revival Lectures, one chapter of the Memoirs, three Oberlin Evangelist pieces and one letter.
Cite this page
"Charles Grandison Finney on Baptism", Examined Doctrine, July 2026 edition, https://examineddoctrine.com/position/finney/baptism (archived at https://examineddoctrine.com/editions/2026-07/position/finney/baptism).