← White Horse Inn
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- [00:00]
Dr. Michael Horton
We often look for God in the spectacular, but Advent reminds us that our extraordinary God came in the ordinary, in flesh and blood, to dwell with us. This Advent reflects on the wonder of the Incarnation with Heaven Came Down, A new devotional by Dr. Michael Horton. Published by Sola Media over four weeks, it explores how the Almighty veiled himself in flesh, not to terrify us, but to save us. Your support helps us bring the good news to more people. Consider requesting a copy for your own Advent Reflections or as a gift for someone who needs hope this season. Get your copy with a donation of any amount to support our work@solarmedia.org offers.
- [00:49]
Bob Hiller
If you compare Immanuel Kant with We've talked about in another episode, Immanuel Kant and Charles Finney. They both believed that, as Kant put it, ought implies can. If God commands something, it must be possible. And so you can live a perfect life. You can surrender to the moral intuitions in such a way that as, as Kant himself put it, not the pleading of the blood of Christ, but your own repentance, your own conversion experience suffices now in the place of hell. Now you get out by the sincerity of your repentance. And that is very much Charles Finney's view.
- [01:58]
Dr. Michael Horton
Applying the riches of the Reformation to the modern church. This is White Horse Sin, a weekly roundtable discussion about theology and culture.
- [02:20]
Bob Hiller
Hello and welcome to another episode of White Horse Inn. You know, Charles Grandison Finney was born in 1875 and lived a very long life well into the 19th century, had a profound impact on the shaping of American Protestantism. What's ironic is, as George Marsden and other historians have pointed out, Finney really created the type of American revivalism that shaped both the liberal wing of Protestantism and the fundamentalist wing as well. And we're going to be taking a look at his impact. It was part of a nest. I kind of joke sometimes it's called the Finney farm, a nest of influences that had a profound effect on American culture. The rising millennialism, the expectation that the saints were going to get their act together and finally resolve all the issues, social issues of the day, and they would Christianize not only America, but the rest of the world through America. And so you really get this kind of, on one hand, social gospel, Christian, national, and on the other hand, a kind of premillennial reaction against that, but still with a revivalist impulse. Billy Graham even called Charles Finney the greatest evangelist since the apostle Paul. A lot of people in American evangelical circles think of Finney in terms of his success as an evangelist. Now, a lot of people haven't read his systematic theology, which Charles Hodge said should be called a systematic ethics. He denied original sin. It's impossible for the sins of one person to be imputed to the whole of humanity. And likewise it's impossible for the righteousness of one man, Christ, to be imputed to other people. And in direct conflict, of course, with Romans 5 and other passages. But then he also denied the substitutionary atonement for the same reason he was trained as a lawyer. And he said, my only difference now is that I have a retainer from the Lord. And so now I'm going to preach the gospel. And the gospel for him was not. Christ died for sinners. He says, you can't have one person bearing the sins of another person. That's illegal. Rather, Christ died to show us how serious God was about sin and how much he loves us so that we will repent and that repentance is the basis for God's acceptance of us. Charles Finney's theology was essentially Pelagian in historical terms, and yet he became known as one of the most important and popular evangelists to both liberals and fundamentalists. It's really remarkable to see the impact that he had. And we're going to talk about some of those. You know, we eat Kelloggs and Graham crackers and so forth. And you see the influence, you know, the dietary cults that emerge in the 19th century as well. A lot of it emerges out of this area of upstate New York that has been called the burned over district because that's where Finney's crusades were. And people got burned out. As Finney himself said, you have to have a revival all the time because people need to be reconverted. And to do that, you're always going to need new measures, new, as he called them, inducements to repentance. And so it got higher. The emotional pitch got higher and higher and higher. And eventually people got exhausted. And what grew out of that burned over district was Christian Science, various other mind science cults, the early New Age movement, and a lot of health crazes. And we're going to talk about all of those things in this episode of White Horse Inn with my good friends Bob Hiller, Walter Strickland and Justin Holcomb. I'm Mike Horton.
- [07:04]
Justin Holcomb
Did you say Finney was responsible for Graham crackers? Because in that case, like s' mores go back to Finney.
- [07:12]
Bob Hiller
Great. You know, he did some good things. No, it's really this perfectionist impulse. On the one hand, it's interesting, isn't it, that part of his Christianization program, his post millennial optimism about the church as a community of social reformers included, on the one hand, prohibitionism, and on the other hand, abolition.
- [07:45]
Justin Holcomb
Yeah.
- [07:46]
Bob Hiller
And so you can see how a lot, you know, some of his perfectionism was in the direction of what would be sort of more fundamentalist aims in the early 20th century, but others would be more of the sort of liberal or social gospel wing. He's really a remarkable figure of history in that regard.
- [08:09]
Walter Strickland
It makes me wonder what's happening socially that that area would be a place to absorb those two opposite ways of. And that his teaching, his ministry, his activities could be going both directions, because that area, western New York, is right at the crossroads of the Erie Canal. And so, you know, at that time, you have money coming in, you have migrants coming in, you have all this, a lot of mobility. You have few established, you know, pastors, clergy. And so you have this traveling revivalist kind of thing being common with. So it just sounds like this, the social churn of genuine interest, spiritual fads, cheap land, rapid town making, rewarding kind of entrepreneurial spirit. And so here he shows up and is like, here we go. I got some euphoria, I got some whiplash. I mean, so it just has this churn. When I think about what was happening historically in that area, it feels like the right simple word.
- [09:15]
Bob Hiller
Yeah. And you think that upstate New York at this time was the west, it was the frontier.
- [09:22]
Adriel Sanchez
Well. And it was really the context of the Second Great Awakening. That's the prime land for that. And if we think about the First Great Awakening, we think about people like Edwards and those who are more Reformed. Yeah. Whitfield. And Congregationalists and things like that. But if we look to the Second Great Awakening, there's a decisive theological shift away from the sovereignty of God and the hand of God bringing and drawing sinners to salvation through Christ. And so that's another sort of factor in all this, especially as we're going out into the place where there's not the trained clergy and things of that sort.
- [10:00]
Justin Holcomb
Well, there's a sort of combination of two things in Finney. One is the revivalism from the First Great Awakening. And that was. I think. I think you guys can correct me. I think it was mostly Calvinistic in its. In its emphasis, though Whitfield, I've read someplace, was Calvinist in his theology and Methodist in his methodology, I guess, like he was.
- [10:21]
Bob Hiller
Yeah, that's a good.
- [10:22]
Justin Holcomb
He didn't mind performing. And I think Benjamin Franklin was a big fan of, of the performances that, that Whitfield gave. But at the same time you also have this heavy influence of, of John Wesley coming over in this Arminian view, which I, I don't think Finney was Arminian, I think he was Pelagian.
- [10:39]
Bob Hiller
Yeah.
- [10:41]
Justin Holcomb
Think you have Wesley coming over and impacting sort of a holiness pursuit, a way to live a holier life and, and all of that kind of comes.
- [10:50]
Bob Hiller
Together in Finny Christian perfectionism.
- [10:52]
Justin Holcomb
Perfectionism, exactly Right. So the plain account of Christian perfectionism and Finney becomes kind of both of these things on steroids, where perfectionism for Wesley is. At some point he finally says it's just everything is done from a perfect heart of love. Whereas for Finney it's like. No, it is, it is full bore perfection.
- [11:11]
Bob Hiller
Yeah. In fact, it's interesting if you compare Immanuel Kant, we've talked about in another episode, Immanuel Kant and Charles Finney. They both believed that as Kant put it, ought implies can. If God commands something, it must be possible. And so you can live a perfect life. You can surrender to the moral intuitions in such a way that as Kant himself put it, not the pleading of the blood of Christ, but your own repentance, your own conversion experience suffices. Now in the place of hell, now you get out by the sincerity of your repentance. And that is very much Charles Finney's view of, of things.
- [12:14]
Justin Holcomb
He's got a, he's got a sermon called Sinners Bound to Change Their Own Hearts. So I mean, this is, this is.
- [12:22]
Walter Strickland
Like, this is like Avalon B totally does. So give us, give us that title again.
- [12:29]
Justin Holcomb
Sinners Bound to Change Their Own Hearts.
- [12:32]
Bob Hiller
Yeah.
- [12:32]
Adriel Sanchez
Which is a far cry from Sinners in the hands of Navy God. You know.
- [12:38]
Bob Hiller
He said the Westminster Confession of Faith is not only a paper Pope, but he said has ruined more souls than all the atheism in the world. He said its treatment of justification, its view of justification is pure antinomianism. Otherwise I don't know what antinomianism is. And he was right. He didn't know what antinomianism was.
- [13:07]
Justin Holcomb
He's got. So he's. So if we want to use like Reformation categories, and he may use these categories, he would say there's such a thing as immediate sanctification and progressive justification, which is just to get everything completely backwards. And so then you say, well, what about sin in the Christian life? Because I thought I was saved, but I keep struggling with sin. He says then you're not a Christian. And this is what he says about Romans, because we would say, well, look at Romans 7. Paul's describing the Christian life. And this is what he says on Romans 7. He says, I am fully convinced that interpreting verses 14 through 24 as a Christian experience has done incalculable evil and has led thousands of souls there to rest and go no further, imagining they are already as deep versed in Christian experience as Paul was when he wrote that epistle. And there they have stayed and hugged their delusion until they have found themselves in the depths of hell.
- [14:01]
Adriel Sanchez
Is dramatic.
- [14:02]
Justin Holcomb
He's dramatic. He's great.
- [14:03]
Bob Hiller
That's exactly what Pelagius told Augustine.
- [14:06]
Justin Holcomb
Just amazing.
- [14:07]
Adriel Sanchez
Yeah. So there's definitely this streak of the performative within Finney.
- [14:11]
Justin Holcomb
Yes. Even in the writing.
- [14:13]
Adriel Sanchez
Oh yeah. And there seems to be a streak of desire for that sort of performative, something to do towards our sanctification or justification. And it's even. You mentioned the Finney farm, Mike. It's even prevalent in, in the other religious expressions that were emerging from this burned over district in that time. And so there's a. I mean, let's see, there's a whole bunch of them here we can talk about.
- [14:39]
Bob Hiller
But can we get to. Before we get to those, can I say one more thing about Finney?
- [14:43]
Justin Holcomb
Oh, for sure.
- [14:44]
Adriel Sanchez
I mean, I hope to come back to Finney because there's so much more to say.
- [14:48]
Walter Strickland
I was curious because I'm with you, Walter. I'm thinking it kind of gives a context that Finney is like famous, but there's so many other faddish things happening that to me sets kind of the social context of going, okay, what in the world's going on? Is Finney's teaching just Finney's version of the snake oil stuff that is being sold spiritually around at this time like everyone else.
- [15:15]
Adriel Sanchez
So the religious imagination in the burnt over district was requiring certain things and Finney stepped right into it and said, I'm going to top them all is what I was kind of getting at.
- [15:24]
Walter Strickland
So.
- [15:25]
Adriel Sanchez
Oh, that's interesting, Mike. You can go ahead and come back to Finney after we give him some more context.
- [15:29]
Bob Hiller
It's not just that Charles Finney was a Pelagian and denied the doctrines not only of the Reformation, but of the Catholic faith, but he also, his methodology flowed out of that. And so there are a lot of people today who would say, oh no, no, no, I affirm original sin and substitutionary atonement and so forth. But their methodology might follow in Finney's wake. So you Got to realize that the methodology flew out of the. He said, a revival, like the New Birth itself is not. I'm quoting him, not a miracle or dependent on a miracle in any sense. It is simply the philosophical result of the right use of means. In other words, his new measures would induce repentance, which saved. That's the way he looked at it. Now, if you're going to take that approach again, everything falls on your ability as a communicator to whip up your own emotion so that that emotion is felt in the congregation. Remember we talked about Schleiermacher and the shift from the object preached to the subject, the audience. That's exactly what happened. It was now about the audience. BB Warfield tells the story of Charles Finney walking into a factory where all the girls swooned. They fainted. It was like the Beatles coming in, you know, and they swooned. And I love Warfield's response. He says, alas, the evangelist has become the sacrament.
- [17:18]
Justin Holcomb
Well, wow.
- [17:20]
Walter Strickland
What a great line.
- [17:21]
Justin Holcomb
Well, listen, so I have. This is fascinating to me.
- [17:24]
Walter Strickland
First.
- [17:26]
Justin Holcomb
God doesn't convert you. You have to. You're bound to change your own heart. But don't worry, Finney's here and he can help. Right? Like, we're not going to trust God.
- [17:34]
Walter Strickland
There's no miracle. It's the technique. No miracles. Techniques.
- [17:38]
Adriel Sanchez
And Finney we trust.
- [17:39]
Justin Holcomb
And if you don't think this stuff still exists. The music director at my church was telling me a story where he went to a conference where they were teaching worship music and all this stuff. And the person leading the conference stood up and said, now this is the chord you want to play when you want to bring about the Holy Spirit.
- [17:54]
Bob Hiller
No.
- [17:54]
Justin Holcomb
Yeah. So I mean, like, this is. You're just sitting there like, well, that's. It's not hiding it.
- [17:59]
Walter Strickland
I guess.
- [18:02]
Bob Hiller
I can't do the whistle, but it's like, hey, get down here. I've got a. I've got a G minor here.
- [18:09]
Justin Holcomb
Amazing.
- [18:10]
Bob Hiller
Wow.
- [18:12]
Walter Strickland
I want to go back to something, because, Mike, when you said something, you said the new measures. That's actually the phrase he used, was new measures. You weren't summarizing. He's like, here's the new measures. There's the anxious bench, the protracted meetings, the public pressure. And he basically said, revivals is like farming. And, you know, you use certain techniques and you get crops that after you plow and do the seeds, like, you do these things and this is what happens. It was a cause effect. Do this, make this happen.
- [18:43]
Bob Hiller
It was perfect. For the industrial age, the factory, if you just have the, you know, if you can duplicate the, if you can make one guitar by handicraft, you can basically make that a prototype and figure out how to put it on an assembly line and put those out. That's how he thought about revival and miracles. There are no miracles in this. It's just a philosophical result of the right use of techniques and, and that was perfect for the industrial age. It wasn't so perfect for Christianity. And he even admitted at the end of his life looking back at things, especially looking back over the burned over district, he said perhaps it exhausted people. Perhaps it did kind of people can't raise to those emotional highs constantly. It's like a drug, it keeps going higher. And that's what we see to this day in American. What's the next best big thing? What's the latest greatest fad? It's that kind of, you know, gotta ratchet up the emotions. And where's the Holy Spirit now? Well the Holy Spirit is where he's always been through the preached word and baptism and the Lord's Supper, the communion of saints. He's there in prayer as we talk to God, as he talks to us in scripture. The Holy Spirit is where he wants to be with Christ in the gospel.
- [20:27]
Dr. Michael Horton
At Sola Media we're committed to helping Christians deepen their faith through clear Christ centered teaching rooted in the riches of the Reformation. Every podcast, article and resource we produce is offered free of charge and it's only possible because of generous monthly supporters. When you become a partner Today, you'll receive two remarkable books as our Rediscovering the Holy Spirit by Dr. Michael Horton and Praying with Jesus by Pastor Adriel Sanchez. We believe these books can guide you into a clearer understanding of the spiritual work and a richer prayer life. To become a partner and receive these two books, visit solamia.org partner.
- [21:20]
Walter Strickland
This reminds me of the, the Lutheran pietism when, when Bob was talking about well this is where Luther was. This is why it was driving him absolutely insane. The mysticism and it's the same thing here. He's talking about the burned over district because well yeah, the anxious bench made people anxious and exhausted them. There's no comfort the rest for the heavy laden. If you're a sinner, you're good. He likes chief of sinners. He sent Christ to save them. Cast all your cares on him because he cares for you. The peace that passes all understanding. I mean it's the opposite of Christianity.
- [21:57]
Adriel Sanchez
So my grandfather, he part of his salvation story, which is really what repelled him from salvation in Christ, was the anxious bench. Interesting, because he. I think I told the story before on White Horse Sin, but he went to the front to sit on this bench, and the preacher was giving the appeal. And then when that appeal was given, they would receive the Holy Spirit, speak in tongues as confirmation of salvation.
- [22:26]
Bob Hiller
And.
- [22:27]
Adriel Sanchez
And he said, I never spoke in tongues. And I sat there and sat there and sat there. And the reason why I did. He says, I wanted God so bad, but he didn't want me.
- [22:36]
Justin Holcomb
Yeah.
- [22:36]
Bob Hiller
Oh, my goodness.
- [22:37]
Justin Holcomb
That's incredible.
- [22:38]
Adriel Sanchez
And so he walked out of the church doors and left for 60 years.
- [22:44]
Bob Hiller
Oh, my goodness.
- [22:45]
Walter Strickland
I went to. I went when I was in my teens. I, you know, I'm here in Central Florida, but I lived in southwest Florida, and Benny Hinn was in Orlando, and I was the youth. Youth leader for one of my churches at like, you know, 18 or something. And took a bunch of people, maybe older. No, I was. I was 17. We all went to Benny Hinn and it was the whole double anointing, you know, business back then. And he said, who wants the double anointing? And. And I ran up and I thought, why are there only like a hundred? There's like. There's like a. Like a thousand of us here. Why only the small group that wants the double anointing? Anyway, I was up there, you know, I was ready. TBN had their cameras on everything. And, I mean, same thing. Like when you said it, I started crying. I'm thinking. I remember that feeling, thinking, okay, I can't. I think I want this enough. I'm doing all my adverbs, right? And then he takes off his jacket, swings that everyone falls down. And I turn around, and there's no. I'm the only one standing with my hands up, waiting. And I look to my left and I look to my right, and everyone else is down. And I look up to him because he's just kind of looking at me. I didn't get the memo that I was supposed to fall. I thought it was going to happen. And I remember, hands up and looked at him. And just out of disgust and embarrassment at the same time, just kind of was like, ugh. And then I just walked over people. Went to the van, Went to the van and said, hey, I need someone else to drive. I was just too tired. I told him, I'm tired. I got to sleep. I had to process my entire theology right there, because I thought, okay, either God passed over me because I have sin in My life, I'm done. I can't look for any more sin like I've been looking. I mean, really. And I was like, either this has to be wrong because this is not livable, or something else is right and I'm going to go figure out what this is. And that is, I mean, the damage that that type of heresy has done to your grandfather. But like, there are people that they walk away because God's passing over and it's not just makes you anxious, it makes you fearful. The condemnation. That's the word.
- [24:52]
Justin Holcomb
That's it.
- [24:53]
Bob Hiller
How about this? This is Charles Finney in his critique of the Westminster Confession, does a Christian. First of all, he says in again a typical Kantian way, Kant says, so what if a venerable presbytery or synod decides on a particular doctrine? It can't be true tomorrow the way it's true today. Listen to Finney. That the instrument framed by that assembly should in the 19th century be recognized as the standard of the church or of any intelligent branch of it is not only amazing, but I must say that it is highly ridiculous. It is as absurd in theology as it would be in any other branch of science. It is better to have a living than a dead pope. And then chapter six and seven of his systematic theology are obedience entire. And here's what he says going back to what you guys, your reports, Walter and Justin. Does a Christian cease to be a Christian whenever he commits a sin? Whenever he sins. This is his catechism, I guess his answer. Whenever he sins, he. He must, for the time being, cease to be holy. This is self evident. See, this is his Kantian language. This is Enlightenment language. Self evident. You know, you get it in the Declaration of Independence. Self evident truths. This is self evident. Whenever he sins, he must be condemned. He must incur the penalty of the law of God, if it be so, see his logic there. Whenever you sin at that moment you are not holy and therefore condemned. Continuing, he must incur the penalty of the law of God. If it be said that the precept is still binding upon him, but that with respect to the Christian, the penalty is forever set aside or abrogated, I reply that to abrogate the penalty is to repeal the precept. For a precept without penalty is no law, it is only counsel or advice. The Christian therefore is justified no longer than he obeys and must be condemned whenever he disobeys or antinomianism is true in these respects, then the sinning Christian and the unconverted sinner are upon precisely the same Ground full present obedience is a condition of justification. But again to the question, can a man be justified while any sin remains in him? Surely he cannot, either upon legal or gospel principles, unless the law be repealed. But can he be pardoned and accepted and justified in the gospel sense while sin in any degree remains in him? Certainly not. And he says the Reformation's formula, simultaneously justified and sinful, is an error that has slain more souls, I fear, than all the universalism that ever cursed the world.
- [28:08]
Justin Holcomb
He's a flair for the dramatic, I'll tell you that.
- [28:10]
Adriel Sanchez
Yeah. And Mike, the next sentence, Mike, is for whenever a Christian sins, he comes under condemnation.
- [28:20]
Bob Hiller
There you go.
- [28:21]
Adriel Sanchez
Not even grief because of their sin condemnation and must repent and do the first works or be lost.
- [28:29]
Justin Holcomb
So if you go back to our first episode in this series, I mentioned this. This sort of theology in which Luther was. This negative theology where it's constantly looking inside of yourself to see just how sinful you are. That's what we're back to with Finney. Only Finney is. I think. I mean, I think he's left Christianity altogether at this point. This is strict Pelagianism with no miracle. I mean, it's just terrible.
- [28:53]
Bob Hiller
This isn't looking inside you to find out how sinful you are so you'll flee to Christ.
- [28:57]
Justin Holcomb
Right. It's to fix yourself.
- [28:58]
Bob Hiller
Yeah, fix yourself.
- [29:00]
Justin Holcomb
All right, so here's the deal. Finney wants us looking inside of ourselves. When I was preparing for this episode, I found some old paintings, and I saw one and I couldn't figure out why it was on the Finney page, because I thought it was a picture of Joseph Smith out in the trees in the wilderness of New York, praying to God and having this experience. It turns out it was Finney. And the paintings of Finney and Joseph Smith are kind of the same. So this gets me thinking. You got this whole district out there of crazy theologies coming up at once. You got revivalism with Finney. You've got Joseph Smith and Mormonism coming out of there. You got the Millerites coming out of there. So why don't we shift now over. Yeah, yeah, the Millerites, who? The Seventh Day Adventists come from the Oneida group. Let's talk about some of these other strange things that are coming out of it, because Justin was talking about this at the beginning. There's this weird mixture of all this stuff happening sociologically and the religious result is. Well, it's a chaotic nightmare. So what do you guys think? What do we want to start? Mormonism, first of all.
- [30:05]
Bob Hiller
Maybe we could start with today and work backwards. Look at the situation today where you've got ex evangelicals, a lot of people walking out of boomer churches that were all hype and Finney's kind of methods, or with fundamentalism and fix yourself and political causes and so forth, they walk out and many of them become spiritual but not religious. Well, now you're talking about the burned over district in upstate New York of Charles Finney where people are ex Finneyites, turning to these mind science cults, what we would call New age movement things, Joseph Smith and the multicolored coat and so forth. So it's, it's a swirl of things. Almost all of these movements, Christian Science, sda, almost all of these movements not only happen on the heels of Finney's revivalism in upstate New York, but come out of them. And almost all the leaders, including the first signs of feminism, the feminist movement in America, they all start in that region of upstate New York, the burned over district. And most of the leaders of all of these movements were in the anxious bench, sitting in the anxious bench while Charles Finney was preaching to them.
- [31:53]
Justin Holcomb
So you have this charismatic leader who in a certain sense is anti institutional. I think Finney who refused seminary, God bless him, until he got to teach at one, he's just sort of opposed to the institutional kind of stuff. And so now you have these people who have been through the anxious bench, who have to have their own experience with God and they each have their own experience with God and God's telling them different things. And for some reason there is some great deal of fear going on up in that region because they all start talking about being right and pure for the end of the world. And the Millerites, in fact, I think they predict the end of the world. Now I don't have the dates in front of me.
- [32:35]
Adriel Sanchez
Yeah, the exact October 22, 1844, but they were wrong.
- [32:41]
Justin Holcomb
So they had to recalibrate and it was like a few months later it.
- [32:44]
Bob Hiller
Was called the Great. It was so psychologically cataclysmic that it's called in history the Great Disappointment.
- [32:54]
Justin Holcomb
The Great Disappointment. Yeah.
- [32:56]
Bob Hiller
But see once again, this goes back to the Industrial Revolution and the model that's used here. Like Charles Finney, all you have to do is calculate the right methods, purely human methods to create conversion, repentance and revival and perfection. All you have to do for the second coming of Jesus is to calculate the dates. It has nothing to do with Jesus saying, you will never know that. You don't know even The Son of man doesn't know the time or the hour that the Father has appointed by his own calculation, his own determination. No, we can calculate this. We can do the math and we can figure it out. God really increasingly sort of becomes a prototype that we can manufacture on a factory assembly line. God becomes really. It's not hyper supernatural, it's anti supernatural. In fact, it's deistic. You don't need God. It's like the prosperity gospel. You don't need God for this. All you need to know is the secrets of the universe, the laws of miracles and so forth. And God, you know, God's out of the picture.
- [34:20]
Justin Holcomb
It's mechanical.
- [34:21]
Bob Hiller
Yep.
- [34:22]
Walter Strickland
Yeah.
- [34:22]
Adriel Sanchez
And those secrets of the universe, you know, emerge in some of the. I mean, even the clean eating movements. We already mentioned graham crackers as a very processed health food, but a health food considered by them nonetheless. Opposing things like, you know, processed or bleached flour, moving towards whole grains, vegetarianism, temperance, and even the YMCA as a means of, you know, wholesome recreation, fitness and things like this and a certain way of being masculine. All these things are ways to move towards something, but in a way that's attainable by human effort.
- [34:58]
Justin Holcomb
All I know is that graham crackers initially were bland and had no flavor, and now they're one of the greatest things you can ever put into a dessert every night.
- [35:08]
Bob Hiller
Yeah.
- [35:08]
Justin Holcomb
Oh, my gosh. Ice cream, marshmallows and chocolate. Man, this just. You know, it's nice that we corrected that heresy of bland graham crackers, because.
- [35:17]
Bob Hiller
That'S a terrible plan. That was a good one. There were other sects that came out of this, and by the way, they were joined by radical pietists from Germany who were, of course, they were given the left boot of fellowship and came over to the west and they formed colonies that were very closely associated with Finney. Colonies in western New York and also in Indiana. They kept moving westward. The Oneida community, the Amana community. Do these sound familiar? Now we have their appliances.
- [35:56]
Justin Holcomb
Oneida is the silverware company. They started as quite a fascinating little group.
- [36:03]
Bob Hiller
Yeah, yeah.
- [36:04]
Walter Strickland
Say more, Bob.
- [36:05]
Justin Holcomb
I'm trying to. I'm trying to find all my notes because I don't want to get this wrong, but they had this view of society where, like, they. They had no marriages, but it was a communal approved marriages.
- [36:17]
Adriel Sanchez
Yes.
- [36:18]
Justin Holcomb
It turns out that community lasted in such a manner for about one generation, and they realized, this isn't great, but, you know, we can make money on silverware. And so now we still have this.
- [36:31]
Walter Strickland
Yeah.
- [36:31]
Bob Hiller
These groups, the Ephrata community, the Amana community, the Oneida community, a lot of these different. The economy community, which actually Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels based a lot of their ideas on their socialist ideas on.
- [36:48]
Justin Holcomb
Oh, interesting.
- [36:50]
Bob Hiller
They're Anabaptist. These are Anabaptist pietist communities that said, yeah, marriage is wrong because basically the age of the spirit is going to lead back to the time before there was a separation of humanity into male and female. And so we will live like the angels, neither marrying nor giving in marriage, which is going back to Adam and Eve, before they were created male and female. And that original androgyny is what we're after.
- [37:28]
Walter Strickland
And that's what makes sense of the whole thing about Schleiermacher being what we said last time.
- [37:33]
Bob Hiller
Yeah, it all comes together.
- [37:37]
Adriel Sanchez
Yeah, this is wild. He's a technical term. But the androgyny piece is so interesting because we do have the emergence of this more masculine messiah, this Christian masculinity, the, you know, initial engagement with, like, women's. I don't know if it was suffrage, but just feminism.
- [37:58]
Bob Hiller
Yeah, yeah. So women feminism on one hand and masculinism on the other.
- [38:03]
Adriel Sanchez
Yeah. But then we have this, this sort of idea that you said they're moving towards androgyny. How do those things even hold together?
- [38:12]
Bob Hiller
Well, it goes way back to, you know, Plato's Timaeus myth of how the human race was one soul and then they were separated into bodies, male bodies and female bodies. But the goal is to go back to being one soul without bodies. So we're androgynous. Well, that just crept into the Gnostics and other, all the way down to the radical Pietists who thought that we're going to get back to before Eden. They didn't want to go back to paradise. They wanted to go back to before paradise, before there was any distinction between genders.
- [38:54]
Justin Holcomb
Well, you look at this. I mean, this is where I think this is actually very insipid and incredibly dangerous. When God creates heavens and the earth and creates creation, it does seem that he's laid out for us a number of institutions. There's. There's the family and then there's the. The relationship to God. So you have the church and you've got the relationship to the community around you, which we might call the. We might call the government. And these groups, they become their own communal group away from the government. They start their own form of religion. So they're not part of the church. And now they're undermining the Family by getting rid of male female distinction, like the way in which. So there's a gnostic reality that's setting itself in place that says there's no institution, we've just got to make it up and we'll follow the spirit. And it's very anti institutional and therefore very anti body, very anti human. I mean that we don't need male, female, all that kind of stuff.
- [39:48]
Bob Hiller
Yeah, it really does lay a lot of groundwork for, for where we are right now, doesn't it? And you look at back in Germany where they were trying these experiments out. Also in the Netherlands, in Amsterdam in particular, you had this group called the Collegiance Movement, which was basically the remonstrance, the Arminians who were kicked out of the church who then formed their own communities, basically the early liberal Protestants, which is different from Wesley's Arminianism. Anyway, then they invited in the Mennonites, the General Baptists, who were different from the Calvinistic Baptists and the Arminian Baptists. And then they brought in Quakers and others and set up this thing called the Collegiate movement where they met in conventicles that were very toned down doctrinally. No creeds, no confessions, no clergy. And in those sects you had similar ideas of democracy, complete egalitarianism that for example, one of the leaders of that sect brought to the new world in Maryland, in Delaware, the whole state of Delaware was part of the new Netherlands and was given to him and his sect before the British took it over. So you have, it goes way back, it's deep into. It's basically European radical pietists coming over to America and joining the radical pietists and radical Puritans who were already here. The more we study history, the more we realize that we're living it. As William Faulkner said, the past is not dead. It's not even past. What we call history is actually the movements, the trends that shape who we are, what we tend to think, the world that we tend to take for granted. And that's certainly true in the church where a lot of things that have gone before us, a lot of figures who have gone before us have sometimes challenged the way Christians have thought throughout history and the way they practiced their faith. And so it's very important for us to understand where we've come from in order to know where we are and where we're going so that we can take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. Thanks for listening.
- [42:33]
Dr. Michael Horton
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