Charles Grandison Finney on Authority of Scripture

Scripture alone is the final, only infallible authority

THE POSITION

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.

22 OTHERS HOLD THIS

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.