Peter Althouse: Wesleyan and Reformed Impulses in the Keswick and Pentecostal Movements

⁶²F.B. Meyer, “In Other Lands,” The Keswick Convention, pp. 160-1.

⁶³Aside from those leaders already mentioned, F.B. Meyer was Baptist, A.T. Pierson, J. Elder Cumming and George C. Macgregor were Presbyterians, Andrew Murray was Dutch Reformed and H.G.C Moule, H.W. Webb-Peploe, W.H. Griffith and J. Stuart Holden were Anglicans. All these traditions sided more with Reformed theology, although Anglicanism showed a certain diversity of theology. W. Ralph Thompson, “An Appraisal of the Keswick and Wesleyan Contemporary Positions,” Wesleyan Theological Journal 1 (Spring 1966): p. 13.

⁶⁴Frank, p. 114.

⁶⁵H. Webb Peploe, “Early Keswick Conventions,” The Keswick Convention: Its Message, Its Method and Its Men, ed. Charles F. Harford (London: Marshall Brothers Keswick House, 1907), pp. 38-9.

⁶⁶Bishop of Durham, “The Message: Its Scriptural Character,” The Keswick Convention, p. 71.

⁶⁷Bebbington, pp. 172-3.

⁶⁸Thompson, p. 16.

⁶⁹Bundy, Bibliographic Overview, p. 43.

⁷⁰Thompson, pp. 13-4. Thompson’s last point was overstated. The Keswick position did not assert that sanctification could be lost in the Arminian sense, but that sanctification was only possible in the continued and daily surrender to the work of the Spirit. If this surrender did not occur, then the believer’s exposure to the temptations of sin were manifold

⁷¹H.W. Webb-Peploe, as quoted by Thompson, p. 14.

⁷²D. Shelby Corlett, as quoted by Thompson, p. 15.

⁷³See The Victorious Life: Messages from the Summer Conferences of Whittier, California, June Princeton, New Jersey July Cedar Lake, Indiana, August including also some messages from the 1917 conference at Princeton and other material (Philadelphia: The Board of Managers of the Victorious Life Conference, 1918, reprinted by New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1988).

⁷⁴Dayton, Roots, pp. 104-6.

⁷⁵Synan, p. 8.

⁷⁶Dayton, Roots, p. 175.

⁷⁷Robert Mapes Anderson, Vision of the Disinherited: The Making of American Pentecostalism (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 1979/1992), p. 43. Anderson was correct to identify the substantial Keswick influences on the Pentecostal understanding of the second act of grace, but he equated Keswick and Fundamentalist theology. He identified this assumption when he stated that “the main body of the Pentecostal movement adopted a theological position [of sanctification] that differed hardly at all from that of Torrey, Chapman, Simpson, and other Keswick-Fundamentalists in the early years of the century (emphasis mine)” (p. 173). Furthermore, while he suggested that not only the two works of grace Pentecostals, but the three works of grace (Holiness) Pentecostals held views on sanctification that were more Keswick, and therefore more Calvinistic, he failed to support his position for the Holiness Pentecostals.

⁷⁸See Edith L. Blumhofer, The Assemblies of God: A Chapter in the Story of American Pentecostalism, vol. 1 (Springfield, MI: Gospel Publishing House, 1989), pp. 50-64.

⁷⁹Aside from a small essay by William W. Menzies, “The Non-Wesleyan Origins of the Pentecostal Movement,” Aspects of Pentecostal-Charismatic Origins, ed. Vinson Synan (Plainsfield, N.J.: Logos International, 1975), pp. 81-98, and brief examinations by Donald Dayton in Roots, Edith L. Blumhofer, Assemblies of God; and Robert M. Anderson, Vision of the Disinherited there has not been a close thorough analysis of the connections and influences of Keswick theology on the Pentecostal movement.

⁸⁰According to Donald Gee, an early British Pentecostal with some scholarly education, Dowie was Keswick in his beliefs. However, the Keswick connections were not made clear other than to state that they existed. See Menzies, p. 86.

⁸¹Menzies, pp. 86-7.

⁸²Menzies, pp. 87-8

⁸³Dayton, p. 106.

⁸⁴Anderson, pp. 111-2.

⁸⁵Bundy, Bibliographic Overview, p. 29.

⁸⁶Anderson, pp. 111-2.

⁸⁷William H. Durham, “The Finished Work of Calvary—It Makes Plain the Great Work of Redemption,” Pentecostal Testimony, 11:3, p. 5.

⁸⁸Thomas William Miller, Canadian Pentecostals: A History of the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada Mississauga, Ontario: Full Gospel Publishing House, 1994), pp.107-8.

⁸⁹William H. Durham, “Organization,” The Gospel Witness, nd., p. 13.

⁹⁰Anderson, pp. 166-8.

⁹¹Anderson, p. 171.

Bibliography  

Anderson, Robert Mapes. Vision of the Disinherited: The Making of American Pentecostalism. Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 1979/1992.

Bebbington, D.W. Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s. London: Unwin Hyman, 1989.

Blumhofer, Edith L. The Assemblies of God: A Chapter in the Story of American Pentecostalism. 2 Vols. Springfield, MI: Gospel Publishing House, 1989.

Bundy, David D. The Higher Christian Life: A Bibliographic Overview. New York: Garland Publishers, 1985.

— “Keswick and the Experience of Evangelical Piety.” Modern Christian Revivals. Eds. Edith L. Blumhofer and Randall Balmer. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1993.

Dayton, Donald W. “Some Doubts about the Usefulness of the Category ‘Evangelical’.” The Variety of American Evangelicalism. Eds. Donald W. Dayton and Robert K. Johnston. Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 1991.

— Theological Roots of Pentecostalism. Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press, 1987.

Dieter, Melvin Easterday. The Holiness Revival of the Nineteenth Century. Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press, 1980.

Tags: althouse, impulses, Keswick, movements, pentecostal, peter, reformed, wesleyan

Category: Church History