04.13. Correspondence on Holiness
Holiness, The Heart of the Christian Experience By James Blaine Chapman
Chapter 13 CORRESPONDENCE ON HOLINESS New York Dr. J. B. Chapman
Dear Brother: A certain portion of our doctrine, pertaining to sanctification, is not clear to me. Does sanctification really eradicate "inbred sin"? If sanctification removes inbred sin, how then can a sanctified person backslide? If a sanctified person does backslide, will he not have Adamic sin in his heart again? If so, how can it be there if God removed it? If sanctification removes Adamic sin, can a person who backslides be sanctified again? What would be removed the second time if God had already removed Adamic sin the first time and remembers it no more? We are taught that God forgives, not only the sins for which we are responsible, but also those for which we are not responsible. But would not a backslider of the class described be responsible for inbred sin? and would not that result in two classes: one responsible for inbred sin and the other not so responsible? I cannot explain to my own satisfaction how inbred sin can ever be found in one’s heart again if God once removes it. I believe in sanctification, but I cannot explain how it includes the eradication of inbred sin. I have invented several mechanical devices. But when I found certain features were not workable, I reconstructed the model. Shall I not do the same in the spiritual realm? My Dear Brother: Your letter of recent date has reached my desk and I have read it very carefully and sympathetically. My counsel first of all is, Do not be discouraged over theological difficulties. Some people are not as good as their doctrine implies and some are much better than their doctrine requires. Theology is a necessity of the intellect, but salvation is a demand of the heart. Dr. Carradine used to tell about a cage which held a number of dogs of various breeds. There was a big-headed bulldog and a thin-headed greyhound among the rest. A gentleman came one day and set a dish of milk just outside the bars of the cage. The big-headed bull dog was unable to reach the milk, because his head was so large and unyielding. But the thin-headed greyhound thrust his head out between the bars and drank the milk. Dr. Carradine used to say that men are like that. Some are hindered by their heads, and others go after the blessings of God heart first and get what they seek. He used to say we should give first attention to the satisfaction of our hearts. We should send our hearts through on the fast express, he used to say, even though it may be necessary for our heads to come in on the slow freight. Be sure to get saved and sanctified wholly, even though you cannot explain all the questions involved in the doctrinal construction involved in the profession of holiness. Get a clean heart and keep a clean heart, even though a little more time and sincere effort may be required to obtain a clear head. Perhaps I can do just as well by approaching your difficulties from the dogmatic side, so I will make the statements first, and then enlarge on them somewhat later. If the emphatic statements appear abrupt, I am sure you will be patient until you have considered the fuller arguments with which I shall support the statements. Here then are the statements:
1. Entire sanctification does really eradicate inbred sin.
2. One who has obtained this state of grace can, by the power of the grace given, live a life of inner holiness and outward righteousness all the days of his life.
3. One who has obtained this state of grace is still in a state of trial or probation and can lose this grace, either by committing known sin or by failing to do what he realizes is his duty to do.
4. If a person who was once sanctified does backslide, he gets inbred sin back in his heart again.
5. A person who backslides from the grace of entire sanctification can be restored to the experience again, on the same conditions and by the same means that he obtained the blessing the first time.
6. There is a degree of difference in the responsibility of those who have had the blessing and those who have not had it. But I would scarcely divide all men, or even all Christians, into two sections just at this point. Responsibility is a variable thing, and only God knows how many classes there are regarding it. The fact is, I would not make men into classes at all on the basis of responsibility, but would rather say that each individual is in the nature of a class himself, seeing no one else in all the world has just the same light and the same degree of responsibility as he has.
7. You say you believe in sanctification, but cannot explain how it involves the eradication of inbred sin. Well, sanctification that does not involve the eradication of inbred sin is just Old Testament sanctification, which is really just consecration. And there is no middle ground between Old Testament sanctification or consecration and New Testament sanctification or Pentecostal sanctification which involves the eradication of inbred sin. Justification and regeneration do all that can be done in the way of adjusting relations and making the soul alive unto God. There is then no moral change that remains to be made except the purging out of the dross of fallen human nature, which dross is variously dubbed as inbred sin, Adamic sin, the sin of the world, the old man, the sin that doth so easily beset us, etc., according to the approach of the theologian. Therefore the line should be straightly drawn and one should be classed as believing in eradication of inbred sin or else as not believing in sanctification, seeing the day for 8.
Old Testament sanctification to be the standard is passed long ago.
Yes, I think your analogy is all right. The model should work, and if it just will not work, then the theory is wrong and should be corrected in keeping with the practical facts. But in this case the application turns the other way around. This model does work, and everyone who comes to God for the blessing on the conditions set forth in the Holy Scriptures and in the standards of Wesleyan theology is ready to add his testimony to my assertion that it is so. Perhaps you have in mind some instances in which those who claimed the blessing did not prove to your satisfaction that they had it. You may be even thinking of your own struggles and battles in connection with your profession of this grace. But there are two possibilities in this matter:
(1) You may be correct in your deductions. Perhaps the ones you have in mind did not have the blessing. But this proves nothing except that these particular ones did not have it. It by no means proves that others making the same profession are also wanting in the reality of grace.
(2) It may be that you have set up tests of your own making, and that you judge people more harshly than God does. Perhaps those whom you would condemn do, in spite of all appearances, have the blessing, for none of us know just exactly how much light or how much grace any other person has. I think it was Newton who said he had observed that when people are "getting religion" they have a tendency to be hard on themselves and easy on other people. But when they are losing religion or are already backslidden they have a tendency to be easy on themselves and hard on other people. I do not know, of course, that you are tempted at all along this line, but I know it is a good point on which to be warned, lest we condemn those whom God does not condemn. From your letter I should judge that you have been more or less in contact with that school of Christians whose error is that of literalizing the terms by which Christian verities are described, and that you have either consciously or unconsciously been influenced by them. One of their stock arguments is, "If one has been born of God, he cannot be unborn." But this is a fallacy too thin to bear the weight of the beginning of an investigation. For certainly one who has been born can die! But if one will stop for a moment he will realize that natural laws do not extend on into the spiritual world--the two