Part Two 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).

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