Keswick apologists Price & Randall,
discussing J. C. Ryle and J. I. Packer’s critiques of Keswick, join McQuilkin
in bringing the standard charge of misrepresentation of Keswick.[1] Again, no actual documentation of
misrepresentation is forthcoming. Packer,
for instance, is criticized for “misunderstand[ing]”[2]
Stephen Barabas’s Keswick work, So Great
Salvation, when Packer simply quoted Barabas’s own words without any
distortion whatever. Keswick authors have had a century[3] to
put in print actual evidence of Warfield or other Keswick critics misquoting
Keswick authors or otherwise engaging in misrepresentation, manipulation, or
misunderstanding. They have provided no
proof of this kind. The hard
facts indicate that the prominent Keswick
critics Warfield, Packer, and Ryle understood Keswick theology very well.
Shortly
after Warfield published his critique of the Higher Life, Keswick, and
Victorious Life movements in the Princeton
Review, W. H. Griffith Thomas wrote two articles in the Bibliotheca Sacra as a response to
Warfield’s critique of the Victorious Life.[4] Thomas affirmed that advocates of the Keswick
theology “do not believe Dr. Warfield’s interpretation of their position is
always and necessarily the true one,”[5]
possibly originating the common affirmation by later advocates of the Keswick
theology that Warfield misrepresented the Higher Life doctrine. Thomas made “[n]o attempt . . . to deal with
every contention, but only an effort to consider the more outstanding of
[Warfield’s] criticisms.”[6] Griffith Thomas makes some striking and
eye-opening statements in his response to Warfield, such as: “I am convinced that Dr. Warfield has failed
to recognize the element of truth, even in what he calls Pelagianism,”[7]
and: “‘Keswick’ stands for perfectionism.
I have heard that scores of times, and so have you—and it does.”[8] Modern Keswick apologists who charge critics
with misrepresentation for associating Keswick with perfectionism need to
similarly affirm that early defenders and promulgators of Keswick theology like
Griffith Thomas also were guilty of misrepresentation. Not only early critics of Keswick, such as
Warfield, but also early defenders, such as Griffith Thomas, must have failed
to see Keswick’s opposition to perfectionism—only modern Keswick apologists
have apparently discerned the truth invisible to those living far closer to the
time the Higher Life system originated.
While making striking concessions to
Warfield, Griffith Thomas also seeks to moderate Keswick errors, sometimes
through a certain historical revisionism.
For example, he wrote: “[H]ow
free Mr. Pearsall Smith really was from the errors attributed by some people to
him[!]”[9] Griffith Thomas’s revisionism leads him, at
times, to affirm positions directly
contrary to those of central leaders of the Higher Life and Victorious Life
movement whom Warfield critiques. Nonetheless,
one can be thankful for whatever Scriptural affirmations Griffith Thomas makes,
even if they contradict the actual affirmations of Keswick founders and
promulgators.
Thomas makes a variety of criticisms of
Warfield’s affirmations,[10] a
few of which are valid,[11] but
many of which are not themselves especially accurate. Thomas criticizes Warfield’s affirmation that
the Keswick theology denies the possibility of actually becoming more
sanctified or holy, but then strongly affirms that “there is no present . . .
deliverance from corruption . . . . [no] essential difference between the
youngest and the oldest Christian in regard to remaining corruption . . . no
eradication . . . or even improvement . . . [only] counteraction,”[12]
demonstrating that Warfield has not misunderstood the Keswick position at
all. Thomas attempts to separate the
Keswick theology from its roots in Wesleyan, Oberlin, and other earlier
perfectionisms. Nonetheless, he concedes
that the first Keswick convention had Oberlin leader Asa Mahan as speaker and
admits that Warfield can “quote [Keswick] writers”[13]
that support his affirmations. Griffith
Thomas himself even stated elsewhere that “the roots of the distinctive
teaching . . . [of the] Keswick Convention . . . can easily be traced in the
writings of . . . John Wesley [and his proposed successor in the Methodist
movement] Fletcher of Madeley.”[14] Indeed, Thomas very rarely seeks to
demonstrate that Warfield quoted any Higher Life writer out of context, and
Thomas never quotes any Keswick writer warning about or reproving the errors
Warfield exposes in those founders and writers of Keswick theology that the
Princetonian examines. The best Thomas
can do is to find, in certain situations, certain Keswick writers who are more
sane and orthodox than Higher Life and Keswick founders such as H. W. and R. P.
Smith or Mark Boardman, and then state that these authors—rather than the
Keswick teachers, leaders, and founders upon which Warfield focuses his
critique—truly represent the Higher Life position. However, while criticizing Warfield for
exposing the errors of Keswick founders, Thomas freely admits:
[T]he modern Holiness Movement came to England very
largely, if not almost entirely, through Mr. R. Pearsall Smith . . . Humanly
speaking, but for him there would probably have been no Conventions, beginning
with that at Oxford, extending to Brighton, and spreading all over the kingdom,
of which the Conventions at Keswick are best known[.] . . . [M]any thousands
who have been definitely helped [by Keswick theology] little know how much they
owe to “R. P. S.” for the life more abundant that they enjoy.[15]
Griffith Thomas avers that “Mr. Trumbull . . . H. W. Smith
. . . Mr. Boardma[n] . . . [are] men and women . . .sincere and . . . earnest”[16]
and fails to whisper the slightest warning about the severe errors they
held. Thomas’s critique of Warfield is
largely unsuccessful.
Griffith Thomas’s response to Warfield,
very regrettably but perhaps unsurprisingly, is not based solely on the results
of grammatical-historical exegesis. In
addition to making some very curious and unsustainable affirmations about the
meaning of passages,[17]
Thomas argues for the Keswick theology based on what he has “observed,” on
“experience,” and on “very many a Christian experience.”[18] In Griffith Thomas’s mind, Warfield is wrong
because “experience in general gives no suggestion” of his position and “there
is no general evidence of” Warfield’s doctrine “in Christian lives.”[19] While affirming, though not expositing
passages to prove it, that Warfield contradicts Scripture in affirming
progressive eradication and renewal, Thomas also argues that “Warfield . . . is
disproved . . . by experience of everyday life.”[20] Thomas’s second article, “The Victorious Life
(II.),” is almost useless for someone who wishes to build doctrine from
Scripture alone, as the great majority of it is essentially nothing but
testimonials from various people about how wonderful the Keswick theology is
and how it has helped them, a sort of compilation that the most extreme Word-Faith
proponent, or a member of Mary Baker Eddy’s cult, or a Mormon, could compile to
support their respective heresies. After
telling stories about how people adopted Higher Life theology and felt better
afterwards, Griffith Thomas concludes:
“I submit, with all deference to Dr. Warfield, yet with perfect
confidence, that the convinced acceptance of the Keswick movement by such [men]
. . . is impressive enough to make people inquire whether, after all, it does
not stand for essential Biblical truth.”[21] Griffith Thomas would have done far better had
he carefully exposited Scripture to develop his theology of sanctification, and
to have placed “perfect confidence” in the Word of God, the true sole authority
for faith and practice, rather than placing such confidence in men and their
testimonials. Properly exegeted
Scripture, not testimonial, is the touchstone for truth. Unfortunately, rather than arguing from
Scripture alone, Thomas concludes that since “Evangelical clergymen . . . have
found” the Keswick theology “to be their joy, comfort, and strength,” it must
be true:
[We are] more and more certain that in holding
[Keswick theology] and teaching it we are absolutely loyal to the “old, old
story.” . . . [A]ble and clear-minded Christian men bear testimony to [Keswick]
experience . . . [n]o experience which carries moral and ethical value can be
without a basis of some truth . . . the rich experiences to which testimony is
given . . . the possession of an experience which has evidently enriched their
lives . . . [is] not to be set aside by any purely doctrinal and theoretical
criticism.[22]
The
Keswick experience, Griffith Thomas avers, is not to be set aside by criticism
of its doctrine from Scripture alone. Thomas illustrates, in the final
paragraph of his critique, his paradigmatic response to Keswick critics.
He tells a story about a time when he was in the presence of an “Evangelical
clergyman in England who took a very strong line against Keswick and reflected
on it for what he regarded as its errors, in the light of . . . old-fashioned
Evangelicalism.”[23] Thomas did not, in response, show from
the Bible alone the truth of the Keswick theology; rather, he “told” the
critic of his “experience in the spiritual life” and entrance into “a spiritual
experience of light, liberty, joy, and power,” so that “the messages . . . of
the Keswick Convention” provided “confirmation . . . of my personal
experiences.”[24] Thus, Scripture must be interpreted in light
of Keswick experiences.[25] While one who rejects sola
Scriptura might find such argumentation of value, those who build
their doctrine from the Bible alone and evaluate spiritual experience from the
truth of its teaching alone will find Griffith Thomas’s case remarkably
unconvincing. If the Apostle Peter’s incredible experience of seeing the
transfiguration of Christ was subordinate to Scripture, a “more sure word of
prophecy” (2 Peter 1:16-21), what place can the experiences of Keswick
proponents have in comparison to Scripture? Thomas does, however,
effectively illustrate the methods through which the Keswick theology spreads
among the people of God. By means of personal narrations of having
“received the blessing,” entered the Higher Life, and the like, by means of
written testimonials and devotional works, and by means of special conventions
and gatherings where careful exegesis and Bible study are not undertaken, the
Keswick theology spreads among those who are not well-grounded in a Biblical
doctrine of sanctification, despite its abysmal failure to effectively deal
with devastating, unrefuted, and irrefutable exegetical and theological
critiques of Keswick.[26]
This entire study can be accessed here.
[1] Pgs.
210-227, Transforming Keswick: The Keswick Convention, Past, Present, and
Future, Price & Randall.
[2] Pg. 221,
Transforming Keswick, Price &
Randall.
[3] The
chapter on the Victorious Life movement by Warfield, as reprinted in his Perfectionism, volume 2, was originally
printed in The
Princeton Theological Review 16 (1918) 321-373.
[4] “The
Victorious Life (I.).” Bibliotheca Sacra (76:303) July 1919,
267-288; “The Victorious Life (II.).” Bibliotheca Sacra (76:304) October 1919,
455-467.
[5] Pg. 267,
“The Victorious Life (I.).”
[6] Pg.
267, “The Victorious Life (I.).”
[7] Pg.
279, “The Victorious Life (I.).”
[8] Pg.
283, “The Victorious Life (I.).”
[9] Pg.
285, “The Victorious Life (I.).”
[10] Pgs.
267ff. “The Victorious Life (I.).”
[11] E. g.,
Griffith Thomas is correct that Warfield downplays the resistibility of grace
(pg. 279, “The Victorious Life (I.).”).
[12] Pgs.
272-274, “The Victorious Life (I.).”
[13] Pg. 269, “The
Victorious Life (I.).”
[14] Pg. 223,
“The Literature of Keswick,” Griffith Thomas, in The Keswick Convention: Its Message, Its, Method, and Its Men, ed.
Charles Harford. In this work, Thomas
also lists other antecedents to Keswick theology, such as the Roman Catholic mystic
and heretic Madame Guyon.
[15] Pgs. 285-286,
“The Victorious Life (I.).”
[16] Pg. 463,
“The Victorious Life (II.).”
[17] E. g.,
Romans 8:1ff., pg. 271-272, “The Victorious Life (I.).” Thomas also states that he has “long ceased to
be concerned about whether [Romans 7:14-25] refers to a believer or an
unconverted man” (pg. 276) and makes arguments that would lead to the
conclusion that he is neither saved nor unsaved.
[18] Pgs. 273,
275, 277, “The Victorious Life (I.).”
[19] Pg. 464,
“The Victorious Life (II.).”
[20] Pg. 275,
“The Victorious Life (I.).”
[21] Pgs.
462-463, “The Victorious Life (II.).”
[22] Pgs. 465-466,
“The Victorious Life (II.).”
[23] Pg. 466,
“The Victorious Life (II.).”
[24] Pg. 467,
“The Victorious Life (II.).”
[25] Pg. 466,
“The Victorious Life (II.).”
[26] For other
examples of the spread of the Keswick theology by testimonial rather than
exegesis, see, e. g., pgs. 54, 71, Evan
Harry Hopkins: A Memoir, Alexander
Smellie.
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