Furthermore,
when Keswick affirms, following the Pearsall Smiths and the Broadlands
Conference,[1]
that the believer’s sole responsibility in sanctification is to lie “quietly”
in the Potter’s hands, to “give up belief in . . . struggl[ing] or striv[ing]”[2] and
cease from “struggle and painful effort . . . earnest resolutions and
self-denial,”[3] it
teaches an unbiblical Quietism,[4]
exemplified in the Victorious Life motto, “Let go and let God.”[5] Barabas alleges that “Keswick is very careful
to point out that its doctrine of sanctification by faith is not Quietism,”
quoting “Bishop Handley Moule”[6]
to support this alleged opposition to Quietism by Keswick. However, Barabas either overlooks or
misrepresents[7]
the fact that Moule himself, who Barabas affirms was the greatest scholar ever
to adopt the Keswick theology,[8]
wrote that the believer’s part in the Keswick model of sanctification is “a blessed and wakeful Quietism,” so
that “Quietism . . . express[es] one side of [the] truth” in sanctification.[9] The explicit endorsement of a form of
Quietism by Keswick leaders was simply a continuation of the teaching of Lord
Mount Temple[10]
and Hannah W. Smith, reproduced at the Broadlands, Oxford, and Brighton
conferences, where “Quietism . . . was taught . . . in the sense of [the poem],
‘Sweet to lie passive in His hands/And know no will but His.’”[11] In sanctification, the believer is “simply to
. . . lie passive.”[12] Passivity is of the highest importance: “[I]n the disciple’s life, the . . .
first quality of a true instrument is passivity.
An active instrument would defeat its
own purpose . . . and then it not only becomes useless, but it works damage and
disaster. . . . [I]n the Word of God, we meet so frequently the symbols of
passive service.”[13]
Hannah and Robert Smith sought to bring others into a life of carefree
and quietistic happiness, since the Higher Life was “an easy life of rest and ease
. . . without effort,” indeed, “the only easy life.”[14] Unfortunately, when Moule and other Keswick
writers followed the Smiths and warned of “letting the self-life intrude itself
into the work of God,”[15]
they were not warning only of the danger of fallen, sinful volitions in man, or
of making one’s own self rather than the glory of God one’s goal. Rather, they were teaching the quietistic
doctrine that the human personality itself needed, in unbiblical ways, to be
passive, as Hannah W. Smith taught when she opposed the “self-life” in favor of
the Quietism of Quakerism and Roman Catholic mysticism, or when Lord
Mount-Temple and others exhorted at Broadlands, “Let us give up the self-life”
for the Higher Life flowing from the Divine Seed within.[16] Not sin—including the sin of selfishness—but
“self,” the active human personality, was the problem for Keswick. For Mrs. Smith and Keswick, the command of
Scripture to “reckon ye also yourselves to be
dead indeed unto sin” meant “[w]e must reckon ourselves to be dead to self,”[17]
for the active human personality itself was an evil to be set aside.
Thus, Bishop Moule, the man Keswick recognizes as its most scholarly
advocate, consciously and deliberately labeled the Keswick theology (which he
loved and defended) a form of Quietism, a fact supported by other Keswick
writers such as Andrew Murray and Jessie Penn-Lewis.[18] Contrary to the revisionist history set forth
by Barabas, the plain historical facts indicate that “the Quietists and other
Catholic mystics [were] widely accepted as part of the true holiness movement.”[19]
Thus, classic statements of the Keswick theology by its proponents affirm: “The Keswick message . . . [is] ‘quietism.’”[20] According to Keswick, by a cessation from
effort, the believer can pass from the state where the “Lord [is] unused” to one where he can “use the Lord”[21]
to become sanctified. The secret of
victory and sanctification by faith alone was that “we had nothing to do but
remain quiet, and the Lord would do everything for us.”[22] Keswick, following Hannah W. and Robert P.
Smith and the Broadlands Conferences,[23]
affirms that one is to “hand over the fleshly deeds of the body to the Spirit
for mortification . . . Romans 8:13 . . . [and] stand in faith[.] . . . It is
the Holy Spirit’s responsibility to do the rest. Sanctification is thus the
result, not of attempts at suppression of the flesh, but of faith in the
finished work of Calvary.”[24] In contrast to Keswick, the Bible says that
the believer is himself to actively “mortify the deeds of the body . . . through
the Spirit” (Romans 8:13; Colossians 3:5), not refuse to mortify them but hand
them over to the Spirit. Keswick teaches
that the Christian is not to try to suppress the flesh, but Scripture commands
him not merely to suppress his ethically sinful flesh, but to go far beyond
that, and put it to death. The Biblical relationship between
faith and effort in sanctification, which has already been explicated,[25]
is dramatically different from the Quietism inherent within the Keswick
theology. Scripture denies passivity and
Quietism in sanctification, and thus denies Keswick theology.[26]
See here for this entire study.
[1] E. g., Robert P. Smith set forth what became the standard
Keswick Quietism on pg. 220ff. Account
of the Union Meeting for the Promotion of Scriptural Holiness, Held at Oxford,
August 29 to September 7, 1874. Chicago: Revell, 1874.
Hannah W. Smith preached at Broadlands:
“We have the Divine life; we must see to it that we let it live, that we
let no other life live” (pg. 182, The Life that is Life Indeed: Reminiscences of the Broadlands Conferences,
Edna V. Jackson. London: James Nisbet & Co, 1910). That is, our own human life must cease, and
we must allow the Divine Seed, the Christ-life, to live instead of us.
[2] Pg. 88, So
Great Salvation, Barabas.
[3] Pg. 90, So
Great Salvation, Barabas.
[4] While Keswick is quietistic, its Quietism is often
milder than many of the historical manifestations of Quietism, and thus, while
its Quietism hinders the believer’s sanctification, it is not as theologically
aberrant as, say, the Quietism of the medieval Romanist mysticism that
influenced it. Keswick happily, though
inconsistently, denies that sanctification involves “the destruction of the
Christian’s personality” (pg. 134, So
Great Salvation, Barabas) while still affirming that, rather than the
world, the flesh, and the devil, “the greatest danger . . .
the individual has to dread is the inordinate activity of the soul with its
powers of mind and will” (pg. 335, The
Spirit of Christ, Andrew Murray; also cited in chapter 8, Soul & Spirit, Jessie Penn-Lewis).
[5] This phrase was popularized by Victorious Life leader
Charles Trumbull in his tract, “What is Your Kind of Christianity?” and
examined by B. B. Warfield in “The Victorious Life,” Chapter 5 of Perfectionism, Vol. 2 (see pg. 588). Compare, in Trumbull’s book Victory in Christ, the title to chapter
5: “Victory without Trying” (Elec. acc.
http://www.baptistbiblebelievers.com).
However, to his credit, “at Keswick . . . [William
Graham] Scroggie,” who “[i]n 1950 . . . was called ‘indisputably the foremost
living Keswick teacher’ . . . had opposed the idea of ‘Let go–and let God’ and
had said that victory came through ‘fighting and striving to make true in
experience what is true for us positionally.’”
Unfortunately, “Scroggie did not deny the possibility of contemporary
speaking in tongues,” and, “[s]peaking at one Keswick Convention on the subject
of the Apostles’ Creed, he argued that given the conflicts of the 1920s over
theological modernism (with fundamentalists calling for evangelicals to leave
the existing denominations), it was preferable to use the Apostles’ Creed as a
widely accepted basis of faith than for small groups to construct their own
bases of belief and split from the wider [universal] church” (“Scroggie,
William Graham,” Biographical Dictionary
of Evangelicals, pgs. 593-594).
Furthermore, “Scroggie . . . did accept that the gift of tongues might
still be available to Christians” (pg. 71, Transforming
Keswick: The Keswick Convention, Past,
Present, and Future, Price & Randall). While Scroggie sought to reform the dominant
Keswick Quietism, he maintained its unbiblical continuationism or anti-cessationism
and its ecumenicalism.
[6] Pg. 97, So
Great Salvation, Barabas. Packer, commenting on Barabas’s denial that
Keswick is quietistic, notes:
[Barabas’s denial is based]
on the ground that intense activity in using the means of grace is necessary to
keep up one’s consecration and to maintain faith. But such activity, as is explicitly stated in
the passage from Bishop Moule which he quotes, is merely preparatory: “the temptation
of the hour will be met less by direct efforts of the will than by indirect”—i.
e., by handing the matter over to the Spirit and ceasing to act in it oneself.
This is the quietism of Keswick teaching. (pg. 161, “‘Keswick’ and the
Reformed Doctrine of Sanctification,” J. I. Packer. The Evangelical Quarterly, Vol. 27 (1955) 153-167).
[7] It is possible that Barabas borrowed his misuse of Moule
from W. H. Griffith Thomas, who quoted Moule to respond to Warfield’s criticism
of Keswick Quietism on pgs. 278-279, “The Victorious Life (I.),” Bibliotheca Sacra 76:303 (July 1919), 267-288.
Griffith Thomas was Barabas’s predecessor in ignorance of or in failing
to state that, decades before Thomas wrote, Moule himself specifically
affirmed, in print, the Quietism of his beloved Keswick doctrine of sanctification. Perhaps, if ignorance of or bypassing of
inconvenient facts worked well enough for Griffith Thomas, it could work well
enough for Barabas also.
[8] “The adherence of Dr. Moule to the Keswick platform was
a great accession of strength . . . there is no doubt that Dr. Moule was [Keswick’s]
greatest . . . scholar” (pg. 175, So
Great Salvation, Barabas). Moule
adopted the Keswick theology through the influence of Evan Hopkins (pgs. 106,
148, Evan Harry Hopkins: A Memoir, Alexander Smellie). Nevertheless, even Bishop Moule did not write
any works for the world of scholarship, a fact put in the most favorable light
by his biographers:
Those who knew Dr. Moule’s
powers often longed that he would give to the Church some great work, which
would appeal to the world of pure scholarship and advanced studies; but . . .
he deliberately consecrated all his powers to meet the needs of the general
body of Christian people . . . it is not surprising that Dr. Moule should have
felt that he could best serve his day and generation by using his all-too-scanty
leisure upon such writings as were in the line of his pulpit and platform
ministrations. (pg. 173, Handley Carr
Glyn Moule, Bishop of Durham: A
Biography, John B. Harford & Frederick C. Macdonald)
Thus, Moule did not write
any exposition or defense of the Keswick theology for the world of scholarship,
just as nobody else has done, despite what will soon be a century and a half of
the worldwide promulgation of the Keswick theology. Perhaps such an exposition has never been
written because Keswick doctrine is unscholarly and cannot be defended at an
advanced level.
[9] Pg. 197, Veni
Creator: Thoughts on the Person and Work of the Holy Spirit of Promise, by
H. C. G. Moule. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1890; cf. repr. ed.,
Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel, 1977.
[10] E.
g., pg. 124, Memorials [of William Francis
Cowper-Temple, Baron Mount-Temple], Georgina Cowper-Temple. London:
Printed for private circulation, 1890.
[11] Pgs. 421-422, Record of the Convention for the Promotion
of Scriptural Holiness Held at Brighton, May 29th to June 7th,
1875. Brighton: W. J. Smith, 1875.
The pages affirm that “Quietism it may have been also in [another]
sense,” so that Quietism was the explicit teaching of the foundational meetings
that originated the Keswick theology in at least two senses. This Higher Life Quietism is explicitly tied
to that of the “most renowned of the quietists, Madame Guyon . . . one can only
wish that more went half as far as she did, in the passion for saving the
sinful” (pgs. 421-422), which she somehow was capable of doing, although she
believed a false gospel. The only
qualification stated to the commendation of Guyon’s Quietism is that she
“may”—it is only a possibility, not a certainty—have “gone somewhat further
than was right”—what is certain is that “one can only wish that more went half
as far as she did.”
[12] Pg. 295, Account
of the Union Meeting for the Promotion of Scriptural Holiness, Held at Oxford,
August 29 to September 7, 1874. Chicago: Revell, 1874.
Cf. pg. 299.
[13] Pgs.
68-69, Forward Movements of the Last Half
Century, Arthur T. Pierson. New
York, NY: London: Funk & Wagnalls,
1900. Italics in original. Pierson goes on to illustration the Higher
Life passivity by comparing his doctrine of the Christian’s role in
sanctification with impersonal, unthinking objects: the “machine . . . plane . . . knife . . .
axe . . . bow . . . rod . . . staff . . . saw . . . hammer . . . sword . . .
spear . . . threshing instrument . . . flail . . . vessel.” The idea that the believer is in willful,
deliberate cooperation with God by grace is definitively and deliberately
excluded, and solely impersonal symbols are employed. The Biblical metaphors that show a
Christian’s active willing and doing are all passed by—the Christian is not the
servant who obeys, the sheep that follows the Shepherd, the watchman who is
vigilant, the warrior who fights, or the athlete who wrestles, boxes, and
runs. He is only the “plane” or the
“machine” that runs when an electric current flows through it.
[14] See pgs. 58, 84, 86, 211, 313-314, Record of the Convention for the Promotion
of Scriptural Holiness Held at Brighton, May 29th to June 7th,
1875. Brighton: W. J. Smith, 1875; also pgs. 276, 292, etc., Account of the Union Meeting for the Promotion of Scriptural Holiness,
Held at Oxford, August 29 to September 7, 1874.
Chicago: Revell, 1874.
[15] Pg. 172, So
Great Salvation, Barabas.
[16] Pgs.
184-185, The Life that is Life
Indeed: Reminiscences of the Broadlands
Conferences, Edna V. Jackson. London:
James Nisbet & Co, 1910.
[17] Pg.
234, The God of All Comfort, Hannah
W. Smith. London: James Nisbet & Co, 1906; pgs. 231-232, Living in the Sunshine, Hannah W.
Smith. London: Fleming H. Revell, 1906. Hannah W. Smith’s transformation of Scripture’s
“dead to sin” into “dead to self” reappears in subsequent Keswick writers: “If I reckon myself to be indeed dead in
Christ, I am separated from self” (pg. 97, Holy
in Christ: Thoughts on the Calling of God’s Children to Be Holy as He Is Holy,
Andrew Murray. New York: Anson D. F.
Randolph & Company, 1887). “[Y]ou
reckon yourselves as alive from the dead, dead to self” (pg. 208, The Spiritual Life, Andrew Murray [Chicago:
Tupper & Robertson, 1896]; “It is an unfeigned delight to find that the
teaching of the Inner Life is becoming so widespread . . . the reckoning
oneself dead to self . . . and the Rest of Faith, Life across the Jordan in the
Land of Promise, these are familiar and deeply prized truths” (pg. 38, Forward Movements of the Last Half Century,
Arthur T. Pierson [New York; London: Funk & Wagnalls, 1900], quoting F. B.
Meyer in The Ram’s Horn.).
[18] Barabas himself (pgs. 138-139, So Great Salvation) quotes Murray’s quietistic affirmation (from
pgs. 65-73, The Full Blessing of
Pentecost, by Andrew Murray. New
York, NY: Revell, 1908) that, for the
Christian, “My life must be expelled; then the Spirit of Jesus will flow
in.” This teaching, Barabas concludes,
illustrates that “our own life must be utterly cast aside, to make full room
for the life of God.” For the influence
of the Romanist mystical Quietist Madame Guyon on Jessie Penn-Lewis, see the
section “Keswick Theology and Continuationism or Anti-Cessationism” below in
the chapter entitled “Evan Roberts and Jessie-Penn Lewis.”
[19] Pg. 64, Aspects
of Pentecostal-Charismatic Origins, ed. Synan.
[20] Pg. 181, The
Keswick Convention: Its Message, Its Method, and its Men, ed. Charles
Harford. In another chapter explaining
“some characteristics of the message,” of Keswick, the book affirmed: “[P]eople might call it Quietism. Call it
what they would, it was very real and very beautiful to see” (pg. 99).
[21] Pg. 174, So Great
Salvation, Barabas. The plain
Biblical truth is that God uses the believer—the phraseology of the believer
using God is unscriptural and repulsive, and too much like the thought of the
later Word of Faith heresy.
Nevertheless, at least among certain (though, happily, not all)
prominent Keswick writers, following the theological trajectory of the Keswick
precursor Conventions, the believer deciding to “use the Lord” or “use Christ”
or “use God” to become sanctified was a regular part of the terminology of
sanctification. For example, W. H.
Griffith Thomas, trying to clear up what he alleged were misrepresentations of
the Keswick theology by B. B. Warfield, and trying to put the most orthodox and
moderate view he could on the Keswick doctrine, quoted as paradigmatic Moule’s
preaching at Keswick and stating four different times that “we can use . . .
Christ” for our sanctification, and another Keswick convention minister stating
that “Keswick . . . is the idea of Christ . . . used fully” (see pgs. 279, 287,
455, 456, 458, “The Victorious Life (I.),” & “The Victorious Life (II.), W.
H. Griffith Thomas, Bibliotheca Sacra
July & October 1919, 267-288 & 455-467). Later Keswick writers, such as Watchman Nee’s
successor Witness Lee, could speak of “qualified” people who “can properly use
the Holy Spirit” (pg. 137, Guidelines for
the Lord’s Table Meeting and the Pursuit of Life, Witness Lee. Anaheim, CA:
Living Stream Ministry, 2005). Warfield
incisively notes:
It would probably be no exaggeration to say that no
heresy could be more gross than that heresy which conceives the operations of
God the Holy Spirit under the forms of the action of an impersonal, natural
force. . . . [This] deals with God the Holy Spirit, the source of all grace, in
utter neglect of his personality, as if he were a natural force, operating, not
when and where and how he pleases, but uniformly and regularly wherever his
activities are released. . . . The conception is not essentially different from
that of storing electricity, say, in a Leyden jar, whence it can be drawn upon
for use. How dreadful the conception is may be intimated by simply speaking of
it with frankness under its true forms of expression: it is equivalent to
saying that saving grace, God the Holy Spirit, is kept on tap, and released at
[one’s] will to do the work required of it. . . . [Men] contain in them the
Holy Spirit as a salvation-working power which operates whenever and wherever
it, we can scarcely say he, is applied. . . . And this obviously involves, in
the third place, the subjection of the Holy Spirit in his gracious operations
to the control of men. . . . The initiative is placed in [men] . . . and the
Holy Spirit is placed at their disposal. He goes where they convey him; he
works when they release him for work; his operations wait on their permission;
and apart from their direction and control he can work no salvation. It ought
to be unnecessary to say that this is a degrading conception of the modes of
activity of the Holy Spirit. Its affinities are not with religion in any worthy
sense of that word, which implies personal relations with a personal God, but
with magic. At bottom, it conceives of the divine operations as at the disposal
of man, who uses God for his own ends; and utterly forgets that rather God must
be conceived as using man for his ends. (pgs. 82-84, The Plan of Salvation: Five Lectures, B. B. Warfield. Philadelphia, PA: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1915)
[22] Pg. 173, Record
of the Convention for the Promotion of Scriptural Holiness Held at Brighton,
May 29th to June 7th, 1875. Brighton: W. J. Smith,
1875.
[23] E. g., Hannah W. Smith taught “the plan of handing over your
temptations to Him to conquer” instead of resisting them in His strength
(Letter to her cousin Carrie, February 26, 1867, reproduced in the entry for
February 20 of The Christian’s Secret of
a Holy Life, Hannah W. Smith, ed. Dieter).
Robert P. Smith proclaimed, based on a misinterpretation of Galatians
2:20, that the believer’s part is not to actively mortify sin: “[O]ur work is simply to hand everything over
to Him. . . . Suffer Christ to live out His own glorious life in you hour by
hour . . . [you will be] more . . . free from effort each day” (pg. 220, Account of the Union Meeting for the Promotion
of Scriptural Holiness, Held at Oxford, August 29 to September 7, 1874.
Chicago: Revell, 1874).
[24] Pgs. 106-107, So
Great Salvation, Barabas. Note the
false dichotomy Barabas makes between faith in the finished work of Christ and
active effort to mortify the flesh; in Biblical sanctification the two are the
most intimate friends, not the irreconcilable opposites Barabas makes them.
[25] See the chapters “The Just Shall Live by Faith” and “Does
Colossians 2:6-7 Teach Sanctification by Faith Alone?” above.
[26] Packer notes:
Passivity means conscious
inaction—in this case, inner inaction. A
call to passivity—conscientious, consecrated passivity—has sometimes been read
into certain biblical texts, but it cannot be read out of any of them. Thus, for instance, to “yield” or “present”
oneself to God (Romans 6:13; 12:1), or as it is sometimes put, to “surrender”
or “give ourselves up” to him, is not passivity. Paul’s meaning is not that having handed
ourselves over to our Master, we should then lapse into inaction, waiting for
Christ to move us instead of moving ourselves, but rather that we should report
for duty, saying as Paul himself said on the Damascus road, “What shall I do,
Lord? . . .” (Acts 22:10) and setting no limits to what Christ by his Spirit
through his Word may direct us to do.
This is activity! Again, being
“led by the Spirit of God” (Romans 8:14; Galatians 5:18) is not passivity. Paul’s meaning is not that we should do
nothing till celestial promptings pop into our minds, but that we should
resolutely labor by prayer and effort to obey the law of Christ and mortify sin
(see Galatians 5:13-6:19; and Romans 8:5-13, to which v. 14 looks back). This too is activity!
Surely we need not go
further. The point is plain. Passivity, which quietists think liberates
the Spirit, actually resists and quenches him.
Souls that cultivate passivity do not thrive, but waste away. The Christian’s motto should not be “Let go
and let God” but “Trust God and get going!” . . . [P]assivity [is] . . .
unbiblical . . . and hostile to Christian maturity. (pg. 128, Keep In Step With The Spirit, J. I.
Packer)
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