Friday, July 29, 2016

Keswick's Errors: Ecumenicalism & Summary of Other Errors, in an Analysis and Critique of So Great Salvation by Stephen Barabas, part 1 of 17

               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.

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