Keswick
theology has severe problems. These
problems are natural in light of Keswick’s corrupt roots. Keswick’s errors and heresies include its
ecumenicalism, its theological shallowness or even incomprehensibility, its
downplaying of the role of God’s Word in sanctification, its distaste for
careful exegetical and systematic theology and the Biblical dogmatics arising
from such theology, its allegorical hermeneutical methods and exegetical
fallacies, its shallow views of sin, and its perfectionism. Furthermore, Keswick supports certain
Pelagian or semi-Pelagian positions, improperly divorces justification and
sanctification, is confused about the nature of saving repentance, denies that
God’s sanctifying grace always frees Christians from bondage to sin and changes
them, and fails to warn strongly about the possibility of those who are
professedly Christians being unregenerate.
Keswick likewise supports an unbiblical pneumatology, supports
continuationism as opposed to cessationism, advances significant exegetical
errors, distorts the positions and critiques of opponents of the errors of the
Higher Life movement, misrepresents the role of faith in sanctification,
supports Quietism, and denies that God actually renews the nature of believers
to make them less sinful and more personally holy. Keswick’s grievous errors and heresies should
have no place in any Christian’s life.
The Keswick
Convention intentionally “stands for no particular brand of denominational
theology. It could not, and have on its
platform men of many different denominational affiliations.”[1] There is an (alleged) “ecumenical value of
Keswick . . . gathering together as it has done men and women of . . . almost
all Protestant denominations,”[2]
for “denominational differences are put aside as of little importance in
comparison with what all Christians hold in common. The motto of the Convention is, ‘ALL ONE IN
CHRIST JESUS.’”[3] Following the great desire of Lord
Mount-Temple and his associates to unite heresy, apostasy, and orthodoxy in a
melting pot of ecumenical spirituality,[4]
the Broadlands, Oxford, Brighton, and Keswick Conventions fulfilled the wishes
of their ecumenical founders.[5] Therefore, at Keswick, “men . . . forget
their religious differences . . . [and the conflict] of creeds . . . [and] of
sects,” so that “Keswick has . . . no[t] weakened any of the old . . .
denomination[s.] . . . Its aim has been to send back Church members . . . to
their old circles.”[6] Keswick united Anglicans with their
sacramentalism, Quakers with their false gospel, Lutherans with their baptismal
regeneration, and many other religious organizations and individuals of “almost
every shade of religious opinion.”[7] Keswick accepted the Broadlands idea that
“[i]t is not our creed, but our conduct, that proclaims what our life is.”[8] The Keswick Convention consequently brings
together “ministers of all denominations,” uniting “High Churchmen and Low
Churchmen,” despite the damnable sacramental heresies of High Church
Anglicanism, and in this union spiritual wolves and sheep discover that “the
things on which they honestly differ are as nothing[.]” Keswick wishes to “hasten that day” when the
Anglican “Church and Dissent join hands” and “reunion is an established fact.”[9] The piety of Keswick is such that “the
dividing-lines between church and church are forgotten.”[10] Indeed, Keswick founder Canon
Harford-Battersby’s goal was “the Re-union of the Churches . . . bringing
together on a common basis members of all Christian churches,”[11]
a goal which shall be fulfilled in the one-world religious system centered in
Rome and described by the Apostle John as “BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF
HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH” (Revelation 17:5). Keswick follows the pattern of Robert and
Hannah Smith’s “preaching[,] [which] was not sectarian; they led no exodus from
any of the Churches, but taught only the need for the Higher Life.”[12] Robert Smith “presented himself as an unattached teacher, who would
fain serve all denominations alike.”[13] He would not visit a city and proclaim the
Higher Life without broad and ecumenical support.[14] He declared:
“I am not aware of a single instance in which these [Higher Life]
meetings have led Christian persons to change their denominational connection.”[15] On the contrary, he affirmed: “I have reason to believe that hundreds have
been saved by . . . this line of teaching . . . from temptation to change . . .
their ecclesiastical connections.”[16] After years of Keswick Conventions, its
leaders could boast that their “movement, so far as is known, never
resulted in a change of the Church connection of a single individual from that
in which it found him.”[17]
Keswick consciously and strongly embraced the teaching of the Broadlands
Conference that “a desire to proselytize . . . is entirely opposed to the
spirit and teaching of Jesus.”[18] Keswick maintained the passionate
ecumenicalism of its founders and early leaders.
The doctrinal confusion that results from Keswick ecumenicalism has
plagued the Convention from the time of its founding until modern times. As at
Broadlands a “great variety of spheres of thought were admitted for
consideration, and wide and progressive views were presented and listened to,”[19]
so at Keswick theological liberalism and apostasy were presented and listened
to. For example, following the steps of
Hannah W. Smith in the rejection of eternal torment, George Grubb, a key
Keswick leader from the 1880s onward, denied hell in favor of annihilationism
or conditional immortality.[20] In 1899 Grubb was the first Keswick leader
sent out to bring the Higher Life message to the world. He was an effective speaker; Keswick theology
and annihilationism arose everywhere he went.[21] In response to the annihilationism of Grubb
and other Keswick missioners such as Gelson Gregson, Keswick co-founder Robert
Wilson declared: “If Keswick won’t own
those whom the Lord does—Grubb, Moore, Gregson, etc., where are we? High and very
dry I fear?” In response to a query by a
lady Keswick missionary who held to annihilationism, “John Battersby Harford, as honorary
secretary of the Keswick Missionary Council, insisted . . . that there was no
official Keswick opinion about whether conditional immortality was true or
false.”[22] Rejecting what Jesus Christ plainly taught
about hell (Mark 9:43-48) was acceptable at Keswick.
Thus, Grubb “traveled extensively in . . . [spreading the] ministry [of]
. . . the Keswick message,” being among a select number chosen by Keswick to
spread the Higher Life “far afield” to countries such as “Australia, Canada, .
. . India and the Far East . . . the United States . . . and other lands.”[23] Indeed, Grubb “was the first to be sent
abroad as a ‘Keswick deputation’ speaker—a most fruitful aspect of the
Convention’s ministry . . . Mr. Grubb traveled widely as an ‘ambassador at
large’ of Keswick and was greatly used . . . especially in India, Ceylon and
Australia . . . his . . . ‘return home’ visits to Keswick . . . invariably had
a stimulating effect,” his messages making a “profound impression,” so that he
was among the “most renowned . . . [and] most distinguished exponents” of the
Keswick theology.[24] At his worldwide Keswick venues Grubb
promoted his heresies, from annihilationism to the Broadlands Conference
doctrine[25]
that people could make Jesus Christ return more quickly,[26]
while exemplifying Keswick ecumenicalism by “cross[ing] the oceans”
specifically to “conduct a mission” for the “extreme high church Bishop of Cape
Town.”[27] Grubb similarly spread the Higher Life
doctrine of a post-conversion Spirit baptism at Keswick in England and
worldwide,[28]
being Keswick’s “important influence . . . [and] advocate in the 1890s of the
baptism of the Spirit,”[29]
as well as “drawing particular attention to th[e] subject [of] . . . [h]ealing
. . . at Keswick . . . influences [that] were to find their way into
Pentecostalism in Britain and North America.”[30]
See here for this entire study.
[1] Pg. 29, So Great
Salvation, Barabas.
[2] Pg. 9, So Great
Salvation, Barabas.
[3] Pg. 186, So Great
Salvation, Barabas. Similarly, at
the Keswick-type Swanwick conferences led by Jessie Penn-Lewis, “[m]inisters of
many denominations, lay workers, and spiritual teachers” came together around
Keswick and mystical theology “in one spirit, and without controversy over
divergent points of view” (pg. 276, Mrs.
Jessie Penn-Lewis: A Memoir, Mary N.
Garrard; cf. pgs. 299-301). Visions were
seen and expounded at such conferences, in accordance with the continuationism
of the participants (e. g., pgs. 118-119, Transforming
Keswick: The Keswick Convention, Past,
Present, and Future, Price & Randall).
[4] Pg.
134, Memorials [of William Francis Cowper-Temple, Baron
Mount-Temple],
Georgina Cowper-Temple. London: Printed for private circulation, 1890.
[5] Pg. 119, Memorials [of William Francis Cowper-Temple, Baron Mount-Temple], Georgina Cowper-Temple. London:
Printed for private circulation, 1890.
Thus,
for example, at Broadlands “all shades of religious opinion” were present (pg. 139, Memorials [of William Francis
Cowper-Temple, Baron Mount-Temple], Georgina Cowper-Temple. London:
Printed for private circulation, 1890); at the Oxford Convention “High Churchmen and Low
Churchmen sat side by side; and Nonconformist ministers [joined them,] [a]ll
united in prayer[.] . . . It was surely a reason for praise to God that so many
Christians, differing strongly on important subjects, should listen . . . [to
the Higher Life] addresses on Holiness [by men including] Mr. R. Pearsall Smith
[and] W. E. Boardman” (pg. 119, Account
of the Union Meeting for the Promotion of Scriptural Holiness, Held at Oxford,
August 29 to September 7, 1874. Chicago: Revell, 1874). Those of “the Society of Friends . . .
Episcopalians . . . Presbyterians . . . Methodists . . . Congregationalists . .
. Baptist[s] . . . Wesleyan[s],” and others all joined together in ecumenical
unity (pgs. 262-263, 342; cf. 177-178).
Oxford ministers also recognized the value of Western and Eastern
Catholicism; they proclaimed: “Many of
the [Russian Orthodox] priests are believers, and are circulating the Word of
God” (pg. 230). One minister testified: “I was converted through the instrumentality
of a monk” (pg. 191). Those who believed
in the corrupt sacramental gospel of the Anglican High Church movement did not
come under conviction and see their need to receive the true gospel; rather,
they went away “comforted, consoled, peaceful, [and] joyful” in their false
gospel (pg. 362).
[6] Pg. 176, The
Keswick Convention: Its Message, its
Method, and its Men, ed. Harford.
[7] Pgs. 10, 427, Record of the Convention for the Promotion of Scriptural Holiness Held
at Brighton, May 29th to June 7th, 1875. Brighton: W.
J. Smith, 1875.
[8] Pg.
184, The Life that is Life Indeed: Reminiscences of the Broadlands Conferences,
Edna V. Jackson. London: James Nisbet & Co, 1910. For Broadlands and Keswick, creed and conduct
were to be set against each other. For Scripture
and in true spirituality, creed and conduct mutually reinforce one other in
evaluating the presence or strength of spiritual life.
The
rise of the “People’s Church” movement, which through the influence of the
Brighton Convention rejected historical Christianity for a Higher Life
agnosticism, illustrates where the unscriptural Keswick disjunction between
creed and conduct can lead:
[T]he Oxford-Brighton movement was . . . the means of
forwarding the agnostic ‘Peoples’ Church’ through an attendant at Brighton,
who, in a joyous sense of a yielded will, and full trust, feeling the force of
the historical difficulties in Christianity, tho [sic] he seemed as earnest, sincere, consecrated and true in heart
as ever, felt led with the same sort of personal devotion to making a church
for the large class of morally good men among the working classes whom he found
seemingly incapable of Christian faith, in its historical sense, and he formed
congregations out of such. (pg. 20, Forward
Movements, Pierson)
[9] Pg. 191, The
Keswick Convention: Its Message, its
Method, and its Men, ed. Harford.
[10] Pg. 177, pg. 11, Evan
Harry Hopkins: A Memoir, Alexander
Smellie.
[11] Pg. 221, Memoir of
T. D. Harford-Battersby, Harford.
[12] Pg. 13, Religious
Fanaticism, Strachey.
[13] “The Higher Life Movement,” Chapter 4 in Perfectionism, Vol. 2, B. B. Warfield.
[14] Pg. 432, pg. 12, Record of the Convention for the Promotion
of Scriptural Holiness Held at Brighton, May 29th to June 7th,
1875. Brighton: W. J. Smith, 1875.
[15] Pg. 432, Record
of the Convention for the Promotion of Scriptural Holiness Held at Brighton,
May 29th to June 7th, 1875. Brighton: W. J. Smith,
1875.
[16] Pg. 185, Account
of the Union Meeting for the Promotion of Scriptural Holiness, Held at Oxford,
August 29 to September 7, 1874. Chicago: Revell, 1874.
[17] Pg.
19, Forward Movements of the Last Half
Century, Arthur T. Pierson. New
York, NY: Funk & Wagnalls,
1900. The importance to Pierson of this
ecumenical anti-separatism as one of the merits of Keswick was such that he
emphasized it again on pg. 41; a “conspicuous result” of attendance at “Keswick
meetings” was for people to “incline to stay where they are, ecclesiastically,”
even in denominations with a “dead and formal service”; “no man or woman ever
yet being known, through its influence or under its teaching, to leave one
communion for another” (pg. 41, Ibid).
[18] Pg.
150, The Life that is Life Indeed: Reminiscences of the Broadlands Conferences,
Edna V. Jackson. London: James Nisbet & Co, 1910.
[19] Pg.
18, The Life that is Life Indeed: Reminiscences of the Broadlands Conferences,
Edna V. Jackson. London: James Nisbet & Co, 1910.
[20] Pgs. 88-97, The
Keswick Story: The Authorized History of
the Keswick Convention, Polluck.
[21] Pg. 110, Transforming
Keswick: The Keswick Convention, Past,
Present, and Future, Price & Randall.
[22] Pgs. 113-114, Transforming
Keswick: The Keswick Convention, Past,
Present, and Future, Price & Randall.
Italics reproduced from the original.
After all, as an authorized statement of Keswick declares, “Conditional
Immortality . . . [is] a doctrine . . . lying in that doctrinal limbo where
revelation grants no sharp outlines . . . not . . . clearly heterodox. The matter lay rather within the scope of
private judgment” (pg. 95, The Keswick
Story: The Authorized History of the
Keswick Convention, Polluck). God’s
Word states that the lost “shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which
is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be
tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in
the presence of the Lamb: and the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever
and ever: and they have no rest day nor night” (Revelation 14:9-11); but, for
Keswick, such texts are not clear. Who
can tell from such a passage whether “tormented with fire and brimstone . . .
for ever and ever . . . no rest day nor night” means the lost are tormented
with fire and brimstone for ever and ever, and have no rest day nor night, or
whether they are annihilated, so that they are never tormented with fire and
brimstone, but rest peacefully day and night?
[23] Pg. 21, Keswick’s
Authentic Voice, ed. Stevenson.
[24] Pgs. 249, 17, Keswick’s Authentic Voice, ed. Stevenson. See pg.
141, Transforming Keswick: The Keswick Convention, Past, Present, and
Future, Price & Randall, for the Keswick connection of George Grubb’s
nephew Norman.
[25] E.
g., those who adopted Broadlands’ doctrine could “hasten . . . the coming of
the kingdom of God” (pg. 269, The Life
that is Life Indeed: Reminiscences of
the Broadlands Conferences, Edna V. Jackson. London:
James Nisbet & Co, 1910; the teaching of Broadlands included
hastening both the current and eschatological aspects of the kingdom, hastening
it “in any and every way.”).
[26] Pg. 247, Transforming
Keswick: The Keswick Convention, Past,
Present, and Future, Price & Randall.
This teaching of the Broadlands Conference was also promoted by other
Keswick leaders such as Jessie Penn-Lewis. (See pg. 181, The Overcomer, December 1913.)
[27] Pg. 90, The Keswick
Story: The Authorized History of the
Keswick Convention, Polluck.
[28] Pgs. 51-52, Transforming
Keswick: The Keswick Convention, Past,
Present, and Future, Price & Randall.
[29] Pg. 76, Transforming
Keswick: The Keswick Convention, Past,
Present, and Future, Price & Randall.
[30] Pg. 178, Transforming
Keswick: The Keswick Convention, Past,
Present, and Future, Price & Randall.
