Charles Grandison Finney on Justification
None of the stances fits without misdescribing the figure
Every listed stance was tested against the sources, and each asserts something the figure does not. The reasoning is recorded in full, and it is the content.
It consists not in the law pronouncing the sinner just, but in his being ultimately governmentally treated as if he were just
THE POSITION
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.
6 And David speaks likewise of the blessedness of the man to whom God credits righteousness apart from works: 7 “Blessed are they whose lawless acts are forgiven, whose sins are covered. 8 Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will never count against him.”
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 Justification", Examined Doctrine, July 2026 edition, https://examineddoctrine.com/position/finney/justification (archived at https://examineddoctrine.com/editions/2026-07/position/finney/justification).