The Second Blessing of Spirit Baptism: British Reformation Roots of the Pentecostal Tradition

Paul Palma — Fri, 26 Jan 2018 14:39:16 +0000

The belief that Christian conversion was followed by a “second blessing” experience originated with eighteenth century Anglican priest and founder of Methodism, John Wesley. As elaborated by Wesley and his associate, the English divine and apologist John Fletcher, this belief laid down much of the theological agenda for the nineteenth-century Holiness movement and the twentieth-century advent of Pentecostalism. Indeed, the reality of a further blessing of the fullness of the Christian life subsequent to conversion provided a theological context for the development of the Pentecostal “baptism in the Spirit.”

John Wesley

Wesley called attention to the inward, experiential dimension of faith. This emphasis was in part a reaction to the Calvinism that permeated the social and political life of the English world in the seventeenth century. Also undergirding the movement was the “living faith” Wesley imbibed from his encounter with German Pietism. Wesley’s contact with the Moravians, Pietists within eighteenth-century Lutheranism that drew from Catholic mysticism, gave him an awareness for the emotional dimension of faith. This led to his personal conversion, during which as he described, “I felt my heart strangely warmed.”[1] Wesley understood the Christian life as consisting of two separate experiences of grace—conversion (or justification), and Christian perfection (or sanctification). The first, justifying grace, covered over all the “actual sin” one had committed. Sanctifying grace, on the other hand, was given for the “residue” of sin that remained after one became a Christian—the inherited (original sin) from Adam.[2] According to Wesley, sanctifying grace occurred subsequent to the justifying grace of conversion. Wesley refers to the reality of this subsequent sanctifying experience as “Christian perfection,” “perfect love,” and “heart purity.”[3] While this experience is gradual and works itself out over the entirety of the Christian life, as Peter Althouse explains, there is also an instantaneous dimension of sanctification for Wesley. It is this latter “crisis” sense that undergirds the Holiness view of sanctification and the Pentecostal baptism in the Spirit.[4]

Come, Holy Ghost, my heart inspire!

attest that I am born again;

come, and baptize me now with fire.

—Charles Wesley

As Vinson Synan maintains, Fletcher was the first to call this second work of purifying grace the “baptism in the Holy Spirit.”[5] Both Wesley and Fletcher upheld that saving grace was possible for all that believed as the first and principle source of grace—only salvation based entirely on this grace had the power to save anyone from the reality of original sin.[6] Yet, clearly for both there was an experience of grace, beyond the pivotal moment of conversion, belonging to the fuller Christian life that must be sought in earnest. Both Wesley and Fletcher aligned this post-conversion experience with deliverance from sin and the restoration of the image of God. While they agreed on the significance of subsequent grace, they differed somewhat in how they articulated it.[7] Wesley’s emphasis was on perfection in love as the purification of sin. Fletcher preferred the language of “baptism in the Spirit.” He conveyed this in terms of spiritual empowerment, “What I want is the light and mighty power of the Spirit of God.”[8] For Fletcher, baptism in the “Pentecostal power of the Holy Ghost,” introduced a stage of the Christian life characterized by the activity of the Spirit.^{^[9]} According to Donald Dayton, this moved Methodist theology further from the Christocentric framework of Wesley and closer to the Pneumatocentric emphasis that came to characterize many Pentecostals.[10]

Neil Hudson, You Will Never Know Where You Are Going Until You Know Where You Came From: British Pentecostals’ past development and future challenges

Neil Hudson — Fri, 31 Aug 2012 18:21:09 +0000

One hundred years ago, the thought that there would be a new grouping within Evangelicalism that would spread throughout the world with a rate of growth that in certain places would outstrip countries’ birth rates would have been deemed to be a flight of fancy. Yet this is exactly what happened. However, for all their shared roots, the relationship between Pentecostalism and Evangelicalism has often been distant and uneasy. Nevertheless, Pentecostals have increasingly been interested in examining their historical roots, recognising the points of contact and the diversions that have been part of their history. This article reflects this development. Emerging from the same parental stock, the Pentecostal child has grown into an adult with its own emphases, aspirations and dangers. This article will examine some of these aspects of Pentecostalism.

Pentecostalism’s Heritage

Pentecostalism’s formation and development looks to the nineteenth century Holiness Movement for its parentage. Perhaps every generation has looked at the Church they have inherited, compared it with the biblical account of the early Church and pronounced the diagnosis that something fundamental was awry. Certainly, by the late nineteenth century, Evangelicalism was ill at ease with itself and had spawned many agencies seeking to kick start the Church back into life.

In Britain, the Holiness Movement, particularly as mediated through the Keswick Convention, became a significant breeding ground for proto-Pentecostals. The theology surrounding this ecumenical event (its motto was ‘All one in Christ Jesus’) focused on the desire for a victorious Christian life that many of its delegates desired above all else. The answer to this overwhelming desire was to be found in an experience of a life lived in the ‘fullness of the Spirit’. Rejecting the more extreme views of ‘sinless perfection’, the clear expectation was that the believer, once justified by faith, could have a distinct divine experience which would become the gateway into leading a ‘life of overcoming’. This life would then be transformed into service—the work of the Spirit would provide the disciple with power to witness.

For many Evangelicals, convinced of the fact that too often the Church was leading a spiritually substandard life, this was deemed to be the obvious answer. Many early proto-Pentecostals became frequent visitors to the convention in Keswick, returning to their mission halls and prayer meetings having claimed this experience of sanctification by faith. That this was the answer to the problems of the Church was given credibility when the Welsh Revival broke out in 1904. Led by the trio of Holiness revivalists: Seth Joshua, Joseph Jenkins and Evan Roberts, the freewheeling dynamism of the Revival awakened many people’s imaginations to the possibility of a much wider spiritual renewal. The Welsh Revival was to be a significant precursor to Pentecostalism for a number of reasons. Some future Pentecostal leaders were converted in the Revival; others, such as Rev. A. A. Boddy, visited Wales and returned to their home churches having witnessed the radical freedom of the services, believing this to be a hallmark of the Spirit in action. A third reason related to the fact that the post-revival period was marked by small home-groups that delineated themselves as ‘Children of the Revival’. It was amongst these groups that Pentecostalism would break out. They had experienced the freedom of the Revival, were convinced that this was what churches had been missing for years and were not content to return to the formalism of non-conformist churches.

The Pneuma Review » british

The Second Blessing of Spirit Baptism: British Reformation Roots of the Pentecostal Tradition

Neil Hudson, You Will Never Know Where You Are Going Until You Know Where You Came From: British Pentecostals’ past development and future challenges