"Straight from the Laboratory of John Wesley" -- B. B. Warfield Reviews Lewis Sperry Chafer's "He That Is Spiritual" (Part Two)

Part One of Three

Part Two of Three

Part Three of Three

Having introduced Chafer’s book, He That Is Spiritual, and exposed the glaring theological contradiction championed by its author, Warfield turns his attention to Chafer’s use of several biblical passages marshaled in support of his notion of a bifurcated Christian life—a lower or “carnal” level and a higher or “spiritual” level of Christian experience.

Mr. Chafer opens his book with an exposition of the closing verses of the second and the opening verses of the third chapters of 1 Corinthians. Here he finds three classes of men contrasted, the “natural” or unregenerated man, and the “carnal” and “spiritual” men, both of whom are regenerated, but the latter of whom lives on a higher plane. “There are two great spiritual changes which are possible to human experience,” he writes (p. 8),—“the change from the ‘natural’ man to the saved man and the change from the ‘carnal’ man to the ‘spiritual’ man. The former is divinely accomplished when there is a real faith in Christ; the latter is accomplished when there is a real adjustment to the Spirit. The ‘spiritual’ man is the divine ideal in life and ministry, in power with God and man, in unbroken fellowship and blessing.”

Upon close inspection, Warfield realizes that Chafer’s system includes three levels of human experience, not two. The biblical data, supposedly, reveals potential movement in several self-determined stages; first from an unregenerate state (the natural man), to a second entry-level rung on the Christian ladder. This is the so-called “carnal Christian” who, after becoming a Christian, remains content not to advance up the ladder and achieve victory over sin despite the availability of sufficient divine power to do so. Any Christian who truly desires to move up to the higher level of Christian experience can do so by making an “adjustment to the Spirit.” Upon reaching this higher level, the so-called “spiritual man,” can live in unbroken fellowship with God and blessing from others. Chafer identifies this as “the divine ideal (i.e., God’s will).

Digging deeper into Chafer’s system, Warfield identifies virtually all of the “higher life” and “second blessing” notions despite Chafer’s claim that he has rejected all such teaching associated with the various holiness teachers and movements. Mind you, Chafer is a Presbyterian minister who supposedly subscribes to the Westminster standards which at many places, as Warfield demonstrates, Chafer openly rejects, favoring something akin to Arminianism in which human decisions prompt the blessings of divine grace. A few examples should help illustrate. Chafer tells us that Christ’s death saves no one until they choose to enter by faith. He teaches that those who take avail of God’s gracious provision can, by the same act of will, move up the ladder from the “carnal” level to realize a life of victory over sin. Those of us raised in evangelicalism have heard this kind of thing many times before. “God has done his part, now it is up to you to do yours.” “There is a higher level of Christian experience if you are willing.” Or in the words of the Jesus people, the move from carnal to spiritual is often re-defined as “the baptism in the Holy Spirit.” Warfield has identified the source of most bifurcated approaches to the Christian life found widely throughout American evangelicalism—the teaching of the coterie of Bible teachers and evangelists brought into the mainstream by reputable (if confused) theologians, one of whom is Lewis Sperry Chafer

Warfield continues to pull back the cover on Chafer’s conception of the Christian life as centered in seeking greater levels of victory over sin and cultivating a deeper spiritual experience.

This teaching is indistinguishable from what is ordinarily understood by the doctrine of a “second blessing,” “a second work of grace,” “the higher life.” The subsequent expositions only make the matter clearer. In them the changes are rung on the double salvation, on the one hand from the penalty of sin, on the other from the power of sin—“salvation into safety” and “salvation into sanctity” (p. 109). And the book closes with a long-drawn-out “analogy” between these two salvations. This “analogy” is announced with this statement: “The Bible treats our deliverance from the bond-servitude to sin as a distinct form of salvation and there is an analogy between this and the more familiar aspect of salvation which is from the guilt and penalty of sin” (p. 141). It ends with this fuller summary: “There are a multitude of sinners for whom Christ has died who are not now saved. On the divine side, everything has been provided, and they have only to enter by faith into His saving grace as it is for them in Christ Jesus. Just so, there are a multitude of saints whose sin-nature has been perfectly judged and every provision made on the divine side for a life of victory and glory to God who are not now realizing a life of victory. They have only to enter by faith into the saving grace from the power and dominion of sin.… Sinners are not saved until they trust the Saviour, and saints are not victorious until they trust the Deliverer. God has made this possible through the cross of His Son. Salvation from the power of sin must be claimed by faith” (p. 146).

This is a rather odd way for a minister in the Southern Presbyterian Church to speak of the progress of the Christian life–moving up a “double rung.” Step one is for the unsaved natural man to move to “saved in safety.” This is the carnal Christian who is saved by trusting the deliverer but is content to stop there. Step two is to move from “carnal” to “salvation unto sanctity,” and live victoriously by trusting the deliverer.

Chafer can protest all he wants, but this is of the essence of the theology of the higher life and the second blessing movements. It is thoroughly grounded in an Arminian notion of a provisional atonement which effectually saves no one, until its saving power is activated only by a human decision. Had a Methodist theologian made such a point, the errors would still be present, but not clothed in Presbyterian sheep’s clothing, which is likely what provokes Warfield’s ire. Ever the theological bloodhound, Warfield is on the scent of a full-throated Arminian conception of the Christian life in He That is Spiritual.

No doubt what we are first led to say of this is that here is the quintessence of Arminianism. God saves no one—He only makes salvation possible for men. Whether it becomes actual or not depends absolutely on their own act. It is only by their act that it is made possible for God to save them. But it is equally true that here is the quintessence of the Higher Life teaching, which merely emphasizes that part of this Arminian scheme which refers to the specific matter of sanctification. “What He provides and bestows is in the fullest divine perfection; but our adjustment is human and therefore subject to constant improvement. The fact of our possible deliverance, which depends on Him alone, does not change. We will have as much at any time as we make it possible for Him to bestow” (p. 148).

So, says Chafer, it remains up to us whether or not we are content to move beyond the lower rung and seek that higher life available to us. In He That Is Spiritual, Chafer urges his reader to climb ever higher and reach a level where Christians can live in the gracious provision of the possibility of a life without sin. Chafer sides with those in the movement who contend that through human willing the sinful nature can be suppressed if not fully eradicated.

When Mr. Chafer repels the doctrine of “sinless perfection” he means, first of all, that our sinful natures are not eradicated. Entering the old controversy waged among perfectionists between the “Eradicationists” and “Suppressionists,” he ranges himself with the latter,—only preferring to use the word “control.” “The divine method of dealing with the sin-nature in the believer is by direct and unceasing control over that nature by the indwelling Spirit.” (p. 134.) One would think that this would yield at least a sinlessness of conduct; but that is to forget that, after all, in this scheme the divine action waits on man’s. “The Bible teaches that, while the divine provision is one of perfection of life, the human appropriation is always faulty and therefore the results art imperfect at best” (p. 157). God’s provisions only make it possible for us to live without sinning. The result is therefore only that we are under no necessity of sinning. But whether we shall actually sin or not is our own affair. “His provisions are always perfect, but our appropriation is always imperfect.” “What he provides and bestows is in the fullest divine perfection, but our adjustment is human.… The fact of our possible deliverance, which depends on Him alone, does not change. We will have as much at any time as we make it possible for Him to bestow.” (pp. 148, 149.) Thus it comes about that we can be told both that “the child of God and citizen of heaven may live a superhuman life, in harmony with his heavenly calling by an unbroken walk in the Spirit,”—that “the Christian may realize at once the heavenly virtues of Christ” (p. 39); and that, in point of fact, he does nothing of the kind, that “all Christians do sin.” (p. 111). A possibility of not sinning which is unillustrated by a single example and will never be illustrated by a single example is, of course, a mere postulate extorted by a theory. It is without practical significance. A universal effect is not accounted for by its possibility.

The superhuman Christian life is a mere postulate and but a theory unrealized in the real world. John Welsey taught that Christian perfection was possible but he never claimed to have attained it. He does say he did know a Mrs. Smith living in London who had. As the familiar words of John’s epistle remind us, “if we say we are without sin, the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:5-2:2). Can we really live without sinning? Isn’t John telling us that even claiming such a thing a sin?

Warfield takes up Chafer’s erroneous notion that Christians have two natures after conversion, instead of one nature which was dead in sin, but now made alive in Christ. According to Chafer, there is no change from the “old man” to the “new” as taught by Paul. Rather an entirely new nature is given us at conversion, which commences the internal combat between the old man and the new, with the outcome dependent upon human willing.

Mr. Chafer conducts his discussion of these “two general theories as to the divine method of dealing with the sin-nature in believers” on the presumption that “both theories cannot be true, for they are contradictory” (p. 135). “The two theories are irreconcilable,” he says. (p. 139.) “We are either to be delivered by the abrupt removal of all tendency to sin, and so no longer need the enabling power of God to combat the power of sin, or we are to be delivered by the immediate and constant power of the indwelling Spirit.” This irreducible “either—or” is unjustified. In point of fact, both “eradication” and “control” are true. God delivers us from our sinful nature, not indeed by “abruptly” but by progressively eradicating it, and meanwhile controlling it. For the new nature which God gives us is not an absolutely new somewhat, alien to our personality, inserted into us, but our old nature itself remade—a veritable recreation, or making of all things new. Mr. Chafer is quite wrong when he says: “Salvation is not a so-called ‘change of heart.’ It is not a transformation of the old; it is a regeneration, or creation, of something wholly new, which is possessed in conjunction with the old so long as we are in the body.” (p. 113). That this furnishes out each Christian with two conflicting natures does not appall him. He says, quite calmly: “The unregenerate have but one nature, while the regenerate have two.” (p. 116.) He does not seem to see that thus the man is not saved at all: a different, newly created, man is substituted for him. When the old man is got rid of—and that the old man has to be ultimately got rid of he does not doubt—the saved man that is left is not at all the old man that was to be saved, but a new man that has never needed any saving.

Warfield’s sharpest blow lands when he points out that in Chafer’s utterly flawed notion of the Christian life, the old man is never “saved,” or transformed. Rather, in additional to the carnal nature which remains, an entirely new nature is given us, which is not tainted by sin and therefore never needed saving in the first place.

Part Three to Follow: