Keswick
theology, following the practice of the Broadlands Conference[1]
and the devaluation of doctrinal truth by Hannah W. Smith,[2]
downplays the role of the Word of God in sanctification to exalt testimonials.[3] While Deuteronomy 17:19 indicates that by
studying and growing in knowledge of God’s Word, one “may learn to fear the LORD his
God,” Keswick is “not interested in . . .
adding to the store of Bible knowledge of those who attend.”[4]
Maintaining a pattern set by earlier
Keswick classics, Barabas’s book, in the course of over two hundred pages,
never once cites John 15:3; 17:17; Acts 20:32; Romans 10:17; Ephesians
2:20; 5:26; Colossians 3:16; 1 Timothy 4:6; 1 Peter 2:2; Psalm 119:7; 119:50;
119:93, or any other text that teaches that sanctification takes
place through the instrumentality of the Word of God.[5] Such neglect is a serious error. The Bible is the instrumentality the Father
has ordained for the revelation of God’s glory through the Son by the Spirit,
the view of which transforms and sanctifies the believer (2 Corinthians 3:18; John
17:17, 26). Keswick’s downplaying of the
role of the Word of God in sanctification to exalt testimonials, a practice it
inherited from the Broadlands Conference[6]
and earlier Higher Life perfectionisms, is associated with its exaltation of
the testimonial as the key instrumentality for spreading its teachings. In the Keswick system, oral or written
testimonies of entering into and maintaining the Higher Life largely displaced
the expository preaching of and exegetical study of God’s Word.[7] Legions of books about those who discovered
the spiritual secret of Keswick theology, hundreds of testimonies of those who
discovered the Keswick system, and swarms of often inaccurate historical
accounts of blessings received by individuals, churches, and communities who
adopted the Higher Life system abound in Keswick settings. On the other hand, the “Convention is not
interested in . . . adding to the store of Bible knowledge”[8] of those who come to their
meetings, and “Keswick furnishes us with . . . no carefully prepared, weighty
discourses of a theological nature . . . for over seventy five years[.]”[9] Not even one carefully prepared discourse or
book expositing Scripture in a scholarly way has ever been written in favor of
the Keswick theology, as Keswick authors themselves testify. By downplaying the study of and growth in
knowledge of the Word of God and exalting uninspired testimonies instead, Keswick
hinders the believer’s sanctification.
D.
Martin Lloyd-Jones comments on Keswick’s failure to deal comprehensively and
carefully with the scriptural data related to the believer’s growth in holiness:
Instead of expounding the great New
Testament texts, [Keswick promulgators] so often started with their theory and
illustrated it by means of Old Testament characters and stories. You will find
that so often their texts were Old Testament texts. Indeed their method of
teaching was based on the use of illustrations rather than on exposition of
Scripture. An inevitable result was that they virtually ignored everything that
had been taught on the subject of sanctification during the previous eighteen
centuries. . . . Many of them boasted of this.[10]
Indeed,
even those who were passionately committed to the Higher Life theology, to the
extent that they were willing to favor it in print in its official literature,
admitted that sound Biblical interpretation was grievously lacking. Robert W. Dale testified:
I agree with every
word . . . about the singularly uncritical manner in which those who are
associated with this doctrine quote passages from both from the Old Testament
and the New. . . . But then let us remember that the gentlemen who represent
this particular movement are frankly and constantly acknowledging that they
have no claims to the kind of scholarship that is necessary to treat
theological questions scientifically. . . . I . . . [am] not hostile to this
movement, [but] favorable to it.[11]
Similarly,
another minister and friend of the Higher Life testified:
If there has been
anything to which exception might be taken it has been the fanciful and even
absurd interpretation occasionally given to passages of Scripture, particularly
those of the Old Testament. But where
the end is so great . . . one is little disposed to find fault[.][12]
Such
admissions were regularly made by those who were contending, in print, for the
Higher Life and Keswick theology. What,
then, will those without partisan pre-commitments to Keswick conclude?
The gross abuse, exegetical
fallacies, and silly allegorization of Scripture by advocates of the Higher
Life contributed to the Keswick consensus that discussion of doctrine and
careful exegesis of Scripture were not the way to spread the Blessing;[13] by such means the Keswick theology was so far
from being able to be propagated that it was certain to collapse. Examples of faulty
Keswick exegesis are legion. For
instance, consider the severe equivocation on the phrase “God’s people” in the
following argument by Barabas:
Christians are too apt to think that only
the unsaved are sinners. . . . This certainly is not Biblical. The truth is that God’s Word has a great deal
more to say about the sin of God’s people than it does about the sin of those
who do not know Him. It was the sin of
God’s people that delayed the entrance of Israel into Canaan for forty
years. It was the sin of God’s people
that was responsible for the Assyrian and Babylonian captivities. It was the sin of God’s people that caused
the crucifixion of the Messiah. It was
the sin of God’s people, more than the unbelief of the heathen, that caused
Paul heartache and sorrow. And it is the
sin of God’s people, more than anything else, that is hindering the
manifestation of His saving power in the world today. . . Keswick is right in
putting great stress on the fact that there must be a revival among Christians
of a sense of sin in themselves.[14]
The beginning and end of the
argument draw conclusions about those who are true believers, but the examples
in Scripture that are to prove the conclusion deal in each instance either
primarily or totally with the sin of those who merely professed to be God’s
true people, that is, those who, in the Old Testament, were merely “of Israel”
but not true spiritual Israel (Romans 9:6).
As demonstrated above,[15]
those who died in the wilderness wanderings pictured the professing but
unconverted, not backslidden saints. The
idolators who brought upon themselves the Deuteronomic curses, including the
Assyrian and Babylonian exile (Deuteronomy 28:63-68), went to hell (cf.
Revelation 21:8), as Paul indicates that those who are under the Deuteronomic
curse are the unsaved (Galatians 3:10; Deuteronomy 27:26) while all the
spiritual seed of Abraham are free from this curse and its penalty (Galatians
3:11-14). The passage concerning Paul’s
sorrow for his fellow Israelites indicates his sadness on account of their
coming damnation, not sorrow because they were on their way to heaven but
without a Higher Life (Romans 9:1-6).
And it was certainly not genuine believers, who were just a little
backslidden, who conspired against and crucified Christ! The Keswick conclusion drawn from this
argument—that Christians need to take sin in their lives very seriously—is
excellent. The exegetical basis provided
for the conclusion is a disaster.
Another
example of invalid exegesis is Barabas’s assertion: “Paul constantly urges Christians to make
instantaneous decisions (as the aorist of his verbs shows) to yield their
members unto God (Romans 6:13), to present themselves unto God (Romans 12:1),
[and] to mortify the deeds of the body (Romans 8:13).”[16] Such an argument, while based on the teaching
of Robert P. Smith that surrender is “a
thing done once for all . . . just as we look on our marriage for life,”[17]
misunderstands the nature of the aorist tense[18]—even
apart from the fact that the command to mortify
in Romans 8:13 is not in the aorist tense at all but is a present tense
imperative.[19] Similarly, the classic The Keswick Convention: Its
Message, its Method, and its Men, affirms that at Keswick “[t]he student
becomes aware of the spiritual significance of the aorist tense in the
programme of holiness”[20]
and proceeds to misinterpret a variety of texts based on an inaccurate view of
the nature of the Greek aorist.[21] Evan Hopkins follows the pattern of
misinterpretation in his Keswick classic The
Law of Liberty in the Spiritual Life.[22] Hopkins had a great “love [for] the Aorists
of New Testament Greek,” but, as a standard Keswick writer, he evidently did
not understand the tense very well.[23]
For “Keswick
there was no passage of Scripture that was more frequently to the front” than
Romans 6, so that “it is doubtful whether a Keswick Convention has ever been
held in which one or more speakers did not deal with this chapter . . . [t]here
is no understanding of Keswick without an appreciation of the place accorded by
it to this chapter in its whole scheme of sanctification.”[24] Unfortunately, this chapter is also
fundamentally misunderstood. As
demonstrated above, Romans 6 is Paul’s proof that the justified will not
continue in sin, while Keswick reduces the chapter to a merely potential
freedom from sin.[25] Keswick teaches that “[i]t is possible [for
believers] to serve sin again, but not necessary.”[26] However, the Apostle Paul taught in Romans 6
that all believers are no longer the servants of sin, but are now the servants
of righteousness. Furthermore, the reckoning of Romans 6 is commanded
because the believer is already dead to sin, alive to God, and a servant of
righteousness, realities that necessarily affect the believer’s practical
life. Keswick teaches that reckoning activates an inactive and merely
potential sanctification, and for those believers that fail to enter the Higher
Life death to sin and life to God have no necessary practical influence. Both the Keswick idea that victory over sin
is only possible and potential for believers but is not certain, and the idea
that the reckoning of Romans 6
activates a merely potential and inactive progressive sanctification come from
the preaching of Hannah W. Smith at the 1874 Broadlands Conference[27]
and Mrs. Smith’s writings,[28]
not from careful exegesis of the book of Romans. Of course, meditating on the
truths of Romans 6 can be of great aid in resisting temptation, but the chapter
does not teach that reckoning activates an inactive and merely potential
sanctification, no matter what Mrs. Smith claimed that she experienced, and no
matter how many Keswick writers follow and reproduce her teaching. Keswick theology falls into serious error
because of its misinterpretation of key passages of Scripture on
sanctification.
See here for this entire study.
[1] Compare
the very similar statements of purpose of the Keswick Convention (cf. pgs.
108ff., So Great Salvation, Barabas)
and the Broadlands Conferences (pgs. 262-263, 268, The Life that is Life Indeed:
Reminiscences of the Broadlands Conferences, Edna V. Jackson. London:
James Nisbet & Co, 1910).
Pg. 262, The
Life that is Life Indeed: Reminiscences
of the Broadlands Conferences, Edna V. Jackson. London:
James Nisbet & Co, 1910.
Hovey,
discussing other pre-Keswick forms of Higher Life theology, noted that they “at
least see[m] to depart . . . from the plain sense of Scripture by ascribing the
believer’s sanctification to the work of the Spirit, almost without the use of
the truth. Very little comparatively is
said of the office of truth . . . undervalu[ing] the sure word of God” (pgs.
126-127, Doctrine of the Higher Christian
Life Compared With the Teaching of the Holy Scriptures, Alvah Hovey).
[2] E.
g., note Mrs. Smith’s denial of the Biblical unity between doctrine and practice
and affirmation of the sufficiency of morality combined with doctrine so
watered down that even a Deistic, non-Christian deity was acceptable:
How true the old Friends were
when they used to tell us that it was not what we believed but how we lived that
was the real test of salvation, and how little we understood them! . . . And as
thee says, my opinions about God may all be wrong, but if my loyalty to Him is
real it will not matter. It seems as if it would be enough just to say, “God
is,” and, “Be good,” and then all would be said. It is the practical things
that interest me now. (Letter to Anna,
August 4, 1882, reproduced in the entry for November 18 of The Christian’s Secret of a Holy Life, Hannah W. Smith, ed. Dieter)
[3] The
exaltation of testimonials over literally interpreted Scripture also suits
Quaker theology very well; does not the Inner Voice arising from the Divine
Seed within give a Word from God for today that is of greater value than the
Word given thousands of years ago in the Bible?
Should not testimonies to such modern day Words therefore hold the
preeminent place? As Hannah Smith
explained:
A Quaker “concern” [alleged revelation] was to my mind
clothed with even more authority than the Bible, for the Bible was God’s voice
of long ago, while the “concern” was His voice at the present moment and, as
such, was of far greater present importance . . . the preaching I hear[d] was
certainly calculated to exalt the “inward voice” and its communications above
all other voices . . . since God spoke to us directly. (pgs. 82-83, The Unselfishness of God, by Hannah W.
Smith)
[4] Pg. 108, So Great
Salvation, Barabas.
[5] Barabas follows in the footsteps of earlier Keswick
classics such as The Keswick
Convention: Its Message, its Method, and
its Men, ed. Harford, which likewise never cites any of these passages in
the course of its 249 pages. Harford’s
work itself follows the pattern of Keswick’s most important exposition, Hannah
W. Smith’s The Christian’s Secret of a
Happy Life, which omits all mention of these texts. Andrew Murray’s Abide in Christ, although it is supposed to exposit John 15, in the
course of 236 pages never discusses any of these passages; even John 15:3
appears only within a quotation of John 15:1-12 at the very beginning of the book,
never to appear again. Many other
Keswick books manifest the same conspicuous neglect. (Of course, in the many hundreds and even
thousands of devotional books and pamphlets by Keswick authors, at some point
the verses above are cited somewhere; the affirmation is not made that no
Keswick writer ever cites them anywhere, but that the de-emphasis upon such
texts is striking.) Contrast the
classical Baptist view as set forth in the chapter in this volume “The Means Of
Sanctification,” by James Petigru Boyce. What Jacob Abbott stated, reviewing the
foundational Keswick classic The Higher
Christian Life by William Boardman, is regrettably true of the main body of
Keswick theology in general:
There is nowhere in [Boardman’s] volume a recognition
of the fact that the truth, as revealed in the holy scriptures, is the means of
sanctification. More than this: he puts faith in opposition to the use of means. . . . [H]is theory as to the means of sanctification . . . [is that]
it is derived immediately from Christ,
by faith, and not mediately, through the scriptures, appropriating them by faith, and finding Christ in
them, and through them bringing him into the soul. He quotes no such scriptures as these: “Sanctify them through thy truth; thy word is
truth;” [John 17:17] and John 15:3. 2 Pet 1:4.
He has very little to do with the Scriptures, any way; it is all theory, supported by what he calls
experience. He draws largely from the
experiences of men; very little from the inspired oracles of truth, and then
with a strange perversion or misapplication. . . . This theory as to the means of
sanctification, by Christ alone, received immediately by faith, in opposition
to the view that it is by the Spirit of Christ working in us through the truth,
is the one idea of the book, to which all else is intended to be subservient.
(pgs. 511-514, Review of William E. Boardman’s The Higher Christian Life, Jacob J. Abbott. Bibliotheca
Sacra (July 1860) 508-535. Italics
in original.)
[6] E.
g., at Broadlands when “the question of victory over temptation was
considered,” a careful exposition of what the Bible taught on resisting
temptation (such as is found in John Owen’s treatise Of Temptation) was not conducted; on the contrary, “personal
testimony was the interesting feature” that provided the way to enter into
victory (pg. 152, The Life that is Life
Indeed: Reminiscences of the Broadlands
Conferences, Edna V. Jackson.
London: James Nisbet & Co,
1910). Likewise, to prove that the
Broadlands Conference was presenting the truth, “changed lives and characters
were a witness to others that could not be gainsaid . . . by their actions and
disposition, not by their words . . . [by] a great and marked increase in
gladness and cheerfulness,” the teachings of the Conference were validated
(pgs. 246-247, Ibid). Of course, living a holy life is very
important, but the infallible record of Scripture is the only inerrant
testimony to the truth: “To the law and
to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them” (Isaiah 8:20).
[7] The
displacement of exposition of Scripture for testimonial among the advocates of
the Keswick theology is so pervasive that W. H. Griffith Thomas, when seeking
to respond to B. B. Warfield’s crushing critique of the Keswick and Victorious
Life movements in the Princeton Review,
spends about half of his response (“The Victorious Life (I.).” Bibliotheca
Sacra (76:303) July 1919, 267-288; “The Victorious Life (II.).” Bibliotheca
Sacra (76:304) October 1919, 455-467)
on testimonials to the value of the Higher Life. Thomas argues for the Keswick theology based on what
he has “observed” (pg. 273), on “experience” (pg. 275), on “very many a
Christian experience” (pg. 277).
Warfield is wrong because “experience in general gives no suggestion” of
his position and “there is no general evidence of” Warfield’s doctrine, Thomas
claims, “in Christian lives” (pg. 464). “Warfield
. . . is disproved . . . by experience of everyday life” (pg. 275). The great majority of Thomas’s second article
is a compilation of testimonials to Keswick theology. He concludes:
I submit, with all deference to
Dr. Warfield, yet with perfect confidence, that the convinced acceptance of the
Keswick movement by such [men as have given testimonials to it] . . . is
impressive enough to make people inquire whether, after all, it does not stand
for essential Biblical truth[.] . . . [T]he 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. (pgs. 462-466)
The Keswick experience,
Griffith Thomas avers, is not to be set aside by criticism of its doctrine from
Scripture alone.
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; compare also the foundational work The
Higher Christian Life, William Boardman.
[8] Pg. 108, So Great
Salvation, Barabas.
[9] Pg. 51, So
Great Salvation, Barabas. The
seventy-five years was as of 1952, when Barabas wrote. Keswick has still produced no carefully
prepared and weighty theological discourses as the 150-year mark approaches.
[10] Pg.
321, The
Puritans: Their Origins and Successors: Addresses Delivered at the Puritan and
Westminster Conferences, 1959-1978, D. M. Lloyd-Jones. Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth,
1987.
[11] Pg. 450, Record of the Convention for the Promotion of Scriptural Holiness Held
at Brighton, May 29th to June 7th, 1875. Brighton: W.
J. Smith, 1875.
[12] Pgs. 464-465, Record of the Convention for the Promotion
of Scriptural Holiness Held at Brighton, May 29th to June 7th,
1875. Brighton: W. J. Smith, 1875.
[13] Cf. pg. 59, Account of the Union Meeting
for the Promotion of Scriptural Holiness, Held at Oxford, August 29 to
September 7, 1874. Chicago: Revell, 1874.
[14] Pgs.
59-60, So Great Salvation, Barabas. Note that nothing that remotely approaches a
comprehensive study of the NT word aJmartwlo/ß, “sinner,”
is undertaken by Barabas—an examination of its 47 uses in the New Testament
gives strong support to the position that, although believers still sin, only
the unconverted man is a “sinner” (Matthew 9:10–11, 13; 11:19; 26:45; Mark
2:15–17; 8:38; 14:41; Luke 5:8, 30, 32; 6:32–34; 7:34, 37, 39; 13:2; 15:1–2, 7,
10; 18:13; 19:7; 24:7; John 9:16, 24–25, 31; Romans 3:7; 5:8, 19; 7:13; Galatians
2:15, 17; 1 Timothy 1:9, 15; Hebrews 7:26; 12:3; James 4:8; 5:20; 1 Peter 4:18;
Jude 15).
[15] See
the chapter “Hebrews 3-4 As An Alleged Evidence For Perpetually Sinning
Christians.”
[16] Pg.
125, So Great Salvation, Barabas.
[17] Pgs.
99, 136, Account of the Union Meeting for the Promotion
of Scriptural Holiness, Held at Oxford, August 29 to September 7, 1874. Chicago: Revell, 1874.
Italics in original.
[18] For
an examination of this error on the use of the Greek aorist, compare pgs.
554-557; 713-724, Greek Grammar Beyond
the Basics, Daniel Wallace and pgs. 67-73, Exegetical Fallacies, D. A. Carson.
(Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books,
1996).
[19] Qanatouvte.
[20] Pg.
179, The Keswick Convention: Its Message, its Method, and its Men, ed.
Harford.
[21] Pgs.
179-180, The Keswick Convention: Its Message, its Method, and its Men, ed.
Harford.
[22] Cf.
pgs. 108, 223, The Law of Liberty in the
Spiritual Life, Evan Hopkins.
[23] See pgs.
95-96, Evan Harry Hopkins: A Memoir, Alexander Smellie; Hopkins’s
exposition of various texts based on this erroneous view that the aorist
fundamentally specifies acts that take place in “one instant of time” follows.
Note
also the chapters above dealing with Romans 7:14-25; Colossians 2:6-7;
Galatians 2:20; and Hebrews 3-4. Keswick
writers misuse all of these texts and passages, as is evidenced in the
quotations in those chapters.
[24] Pg.
89, So Great Salvation, Barabas, cf.
pgs. 90-92, 104.
[25] Note
the chapter above entitled “The Just Shall Live by Faith.”
[26] Pg.
92, So Great Salvation, Barabas.
[27] At
Broadlands in 1874, Mrs. Smith used Romans 6 to testify that believers are not
certain to conquer, but only “can” conquer, and this merely potential conquest
was something she had learned by her own experience. She testified: “Friends, it is
true, I have found it! I have known it![”] . . . All listened
with breathless attention, not least so the many clergymen who were present,
and surely, each heart felt a longing to reach the place at which Mrs. Smith
had arrived[.]” Her testimony was not
confirmed by an analysis of the context of the passage, but by her pleasasnt
appearance: “[S]he stood with the dark
oak background, her tall figure, lifted head, and radiant countenance. It was good to look at her, to observe her
dear, beautiful face, shining hair, serene, deep-blue eyes, and absolutely
natural, easy attitude, a personification of purity, joyous health, and
vitality[.]” Surely someone who looked
so nice could not be wrong. (See pgs. 220-223, The Life that is Life Indeed:
Reminiscences of the Broadlands Conferences, Edna V. Jackson. London:
James Nisbet & Co, 1910.)
[28] The
idea that God does not work in the Christian until he, some time after
conversion, surrenders, reckons, and enters the Higher Life is found regularly
in Mrs. Smith’s writings. Only after
“surrender” does God first begin “to work in you . . . to do of His good
pleasure” (pgs. 57-60, The Christian’s
Secret of a Happy Life, Hannah W. Smith, rev. ed. London:
F. E. Longley, 1876).
