Warfield on Charles Finney's Gospel -- "A Mere System of Morals"

Toward the end of his illustrious career at Princeton Theological Seminary, B. B. Warfield took up his pen (beginning in 1918) in response to the burgeoning movement known as “Christian perfectionism,” and the closely related “higher-life” teaching. Both were then making a significant impact upon American Christianity. Warfield identified both as theological descendants of the ancient heresy of Pelagianism, now injected into the American evangelical bloodstream by one Charles Grandison Finney (1792-1875) and his many followers of the “Oberlin School” and among the higher-life teachers.

What follows are but a few brief citations from Warfield’s volume Perfectionism, (Volume Two) published posthumously in 1932. In a lengthy essay, Warfield dissects Finney’s theological “system,” exposing it for what is is, a “mere system of morals,” which in Warfield’s estimation would function just as well with God as without him.

Warfield writes of Finney’s theological system . . .

This brings us back to the point of view with which we began—that the real reason of the election of the elect is their salvability, that is, under the system of government [according to Finney] established by God as the wisest. God elects those whom He can save, and leaves un-elected those whom He cannot save, consistently with the system of government which He has determined to establish as the wisest and best (170).

The ultimate reason why the entire action of God in salvation is confined by Finney to persuasion lies in his conviction that nothing more is needed—or, indeed, is possible (172).

It speaks volumes meanwhile for the strength of Finney’s conviction that man is quite able to save himself and in point of fact actually does, in every instance of his salvation, save himself, that he maintained it in the face of such broad facts of experience to the contrary. How can man be affirmed to be fully able and altogether competent to an act never performed by any man whatever, except under an action of the Spirit under which he invariably performs it? (178).

There is no imputation; no transmitted corruption of heart. Indeed, there is no heart to be corrupted: “heart” with Finney means just “will.” All sin is sinning—and sinning is a purely personal business. It would not be quite exact to say that Finney permits to Adam no influence whatever on the moral life of his descendants. He is willing to allow that they may have received a certain amount of moral injury through the physical deterioration that has come to them by evil inheritance. He even suggests that could this physical deterioration be corrected—say through a wise dietetic system—the sin into which they have fallen partly through its influence might in a generation or two disappear too (179).

It is according to Finney, thus, only our purpose which “needs to be radically changed.” What we call a “wicked heart” is only a purpose; what we call a “good heart” is only a purpose . . . the theology, that is, which goes no deeper in its conception of salvation than a simple change of purpose, which conceives that all that happens to a man when he is saved, absolutely all that happens to him, is a change of purpose. A change of purpose is, naturally, an act of our own, and Finney therefore not only identifies regeneration and conversion, but polemicizes against all attempts to erect a distinction between them. We regenerate ourselves: only the man himself can “change his choice,” and if he will not do it, “it is impossible that it should be changed”—“neither God, nor any other being, can regenerate him, if he will not turn.” (192)

It is we ourselves then who make ourselves holy, and that at a stroke. For regeneration “implies an entire present change of moral character, that is, a change from entire sinfulness to entire holiness.”—a “present entire obedience to God.” After this it is only a question of maintenance—of the maintenance of that “radical change of ultimate intention,” that change from a selfish ultimate choice to benevolent ultimate choice, which we may call indifferently repentance, or faith, or conversion, or regeneration, or sanctification (193).

It is quite clear that what Finney gives us is less a theology than a system of morals. God might be eliminated from it entirely without essentially changing its character. All virtue, all holiness, is made to consist in an ethical determination of will. “What is virtue?” he asks, and answers: “It consists in consecration to the right end; to the end to which God is consecrated.” And “all holiness,” he defines, consists in “the right exercise of our own will or agency” (193).

You can find Warfield’s volume Perfectionism here, which includes the chapter from which these quotes were taken (“The Theology of Charles G. Finney”).