Christian History Home > Issue 20 > The Blessing of Abraham
The Blessing of Abraham
Finney's Christian Perfection
TIMOTHY L. SMITH [Historians of American religion have been indebted to Timothy L. Smith since his important book, Revivalism and Reform in 19th Century America (Abington). Dr. Smith is professor of History at Johns Hopkins University and Director of Johns Hopkins' Program in American Religious History. His most recent book is Whitefield & Wesley on the New Birth (Zondervan, 1986).] | posted 10/01/1988 12:00AM
Finney’s Perfectionist teaching not only shook the establishment in his day, but it added fuel to the growing fires of the Holiness Movement.
Reformed historians in America generally believe that Calvinism Stabilizes biblical orthodoxy while Arminianism in all its forms, especially the Wesleyan one, tends toward modernism. This may be partly true for the twentieth century. During the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, however, the career of Charles G. Finney demonstrates that Puritan theology was the one on the move. Many scholars, including my own research associate Thomas Umbel, are now discovering that New England religious thought was rapidly pulling away from Calvinism during the early national period, when Methodism was spreading through that section.
Others have concluded that revivalists like George Whitefield, who helped set in motion the Boston phase of the awakening that preceded the American Revolution, were “practical Arminians,” even though they were or became theoretical ... To view this item, you must be a member of ChristianHistory.net.
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