Crisis and Con-Sequence:
Sanctification and the Greek Tense[1]
By
- Prescott Johnson
* * * *
Having therefore these promises,
dearly beloved, let us cleanse
ourselves from all
filthiness of the flesh and spirit,
perfecting holiness in the fear
of God.
1 Cor. 7:1[2]
The Great Apostle enjoins upon the Corinthians a cleansing from all defilement and a perfecting of holiness. He makes it clear that the cleansing is a crisis event in the lives of believers, while the perfecting of holiness is a continuing process that is founded upon that crisis. The English term cleanse is, in the Greek, the hortatory aorist subjunctive καθαρίσωμεv, katharis_men: “let us cleanse.” It is in the aorist tense and as such denotes a crisis event. The English term perfecting is in the original text the present tense participle _πιτελo_vτες, epitelountes. Since the tense is the present, the perfecting denotes an on-going process. And the strict sequence of the tenses, first the aorist and secondly the present, unmistakably defines the order: first the crisis experience of sanctification and then the continuing life-experience of progress in Christian grace.
Now, while in the sequel some further attention will be given to the subject of consequence as a factor in the experience of Christian perfection, the primary concern of this article is that of the crisis character of sanctification.
The genius of the Wesleyan understanding of the doctrine of entire sanctification is its clear and unmistakable insistence that the experience is a crisis experience that is available to the children of God in this life. Herein lies the marked contrast with the view of the Protestant Reformers, who taught that sanctification is but a developmental, never completed, process.
Referring to hymns published in 1749, Wesley writes:
I have been the more large in these extracts, because, hence, it appears, beyond all possibility of exception, that to this day, both my brother and I maintained, (1.) That Christian perfection is that love of God and our neighbor, which implies deliverance from all sin. (2.) That this is received merely by faith. (3.) That it is given instantaneously, in one moment. (4) That we are to expect it, not at death, but every moment; that now is the accepted time, now is the day of this salvation.[3]
There is a further significant aspect of Wesley’s teaching on Christian perfection. It is his consistent and repeated reference to scriptural texts that address the subject of holiness. While he often refers to the experience of Christians, he finally and decisively supports his view by appeal to the biblical text. He therefore insists that the doctrine of entire sanctification is a biblical doctrine.
The question has been raised by some as to whether or not Wesley himself experienced “the Great Salvation” that he taught and to which he admonished others to testify. Is there any evidence in his writings that he obtained Christian perfection?
Olin Curtis believes that he has found the passage in the Journal where Wesley records his own obtainment of Christian perfection. In the Journal entry of December 23-25, 1744, Wesley writes:
Sun. 23.–I was unusually lifeless and heavy, till the love feast in the evening . . . .
Yet the next day [December 24] I was again as a dead man; but in the evening, while I was reading Prayers at Snowsfield, I found such light and strength as I never remember to have had before. I saw every thought, as well as action or word, just as it was rising in my heart; and whether it was right before God, or tainted with pride and selfishness. I never knew before (I mean not as at this time) what it was “to be still before God.”
Tues. 25.–I waked, by the grace of God, in the same spirit; and about eight, being with two or three that believed in Jesus, I felt such an awe and tender sense of the presence of God as greatly confirmed me therein: So that God was before me all the day long. I sought and found him in every place; and could truly say, when I lay down at night, “Now I have lived a day.”[4]
Curtis sums up the subject:
To anyone familiar with John Wesley’s careful, realistic manner of speech, it is evident that we have here the same sort of testimony to the experience of holiness that we have in his Journal, May 24, 1738, to the experience of conversion. If the one is not quite so near a full definition as the other, it surely is just as expressive of the fact. I find it almost impossible to read Wesley’s words in the light of all his later utterance about the doctrine of Christian perfection, and not consider this date, December 24, 1744, as the probable time when he began to love God supremely.[5]
The early Wesleyan theologians concur with Wesley that sanctification is an instantaneous work of grace. Richard Watson, the first of the Wesleyan theologians, writes:
The general promise that we shall receive “all things whatsoever we ask in prayer, believing,” comprehends, of course, “all things” suited to our case which God has engaged to bestow; and if the entire renewal of our nature be included in the number, without any limitation of time, except that in which we ask it in faith, then to this faith shall the promises of entire sanctification be given; which, in the nature of the case, supposes an instantaneous work immediately following upon our entire and wavering faith.[6]
William Burton Pope, the eminent Methodist theologian, writes in the same vein. While he gives a place to progressive sanctification, as a process of the believer’s yielding to the will of God, the finally decisive sanctification is entire sanctification. In this regard he says:
In his administration of sanctifying grace the Holy Spirit proceeds by degrees. Terms of progress are applied to each department of that work in the saint; or, in other words, the goal of entire sanctification is represented as the end of a process in which the Spirit requires the cooperation of the believer. This co-operation, however, is only the condition on which is suspended what is the work of Divine grace alone.[7]
Pope discusses the subject of entire sanctification under three rubrics: Purification from Sin, Perfect Love, and Evangelical Perfection. They are not, he writes, “distinct branches of Christian privilege. Each implies the other; and neither can be treated without involving the rest.”[8] In the section where he treats of Perfect Love, he characterizes it as “the crisis of perfection,” thereby indicating his belief that entire sanctification is a crisis experience. The passage is:
Its perfection is simply its soleness and supremacy. It is not in the measure of its intensity, which never ceases to increase throughout eternity until it reaches the maximum, if such there be, of creaturely strength; but, in the quality of its unique and sovereign ascendency, it has the crisis of perfection set before it as attainable.[9]
It does not appear that Wesley, Watson, or Pope, appeal to the Greek tense in support of their position regarding sanctification. But later holiness writers have done so. In particular, they have called especial attention to the import of the aorist tense. Contrary to some current thinking concerning the relevance of grammar and metaphor to the doctrine of sanctification, the attention given to the Greek tense by these writers is of paramount significance in articulating the biblical import of the doctrine.
In the last decades of the nineteenth century, following the American Civil War, Methodist scholars sought to recapture the perfectionist persuasion that had from the beginning defined Methodism. Not all of them dealt with the Greek tense, although many did so. Some attention may with profit be given to certain of those who labored for the cause of the doctrine of holiness.
In 1851 and later in 1871, Bishop Randolph Foster published his Christian Purity. He argued that, while there is a progressive, preparatory phase of sanctification, it is brought to instantaneous completion as entire sanctification:
And though there is progress toward it, yet . . . its attainment is not a mere ripeness ensuing by gradual growth, but is by the direct agency of the Holy Ghost, and instantaneously wrought, however long the soul may have been progressing toward it.[10]
Minor Raymond develops the same line of thought:
In this view, it is obvious that the work of complete sanctification is both progressive and instantaneous; progressive as to the acquisition of knowledge and ability to know, and instantaneous as to the appropriation of the blessing comprehended. . . . The Spirit may take time in preparing the holy temple for a habitation of God, but he enters and takes full possession, fills the temple with his presence in a single instant of time; the work may be long in doing, but there is an instant when it is done, completed, finished.[11]
Neither man refers to the Greek tense. But soon the reference was being made, as a means of emphasizing and clarifying the doctrine of entire sanctification. Daniel Steele, of Boston University, devoted a chapter in his Milestone Papers to the tense readings of the Greek New Testament. For example:
I Thess. V. 23: And the very God of peace, once for all, sanctify (aor.) you wholly, and your whole spirit, and soul, and body be preserved (initial aorist, to mark the beginning in the heart of the power that keeps the believer). The nicety of Paul’s grammatical knowledge is seen in verse 25: Brethren, pray (pres.) for us. Greet (aor.) all the brethren with a holy kiss. The praying was to be continuous, the kissing momentary.[12]
Beverly Carradine, commenting on Eph. 5:26, writes:
Here is sanctification promised to those cleansed by regeneration. And that it is a momentary act is seen from the aorist tense in which the verb appears.[13]
- Orton Wiley frequently makes use of the aorist in his work, Christian Theology.[14] Olive M. Winchester’s book, Crisis Experiences in the Greek New Testament, is a careful and scholarly treatise of the bearing of the Greek tense system on the doctrine of entire sanctification.[15]
In the opening pages of Chapter 8 of his Milestone Papers, Steele states the purpose of the chapter:
. . . we have applied the same instrument to the New Testament, in the aid of exegesis . . . . The chief peculiarity lies in the aorist. We have in the English no tense like it. Except in the indicative, it is timeless, and in all the moods indicates what Krueger styles “singleness of act.” This idea our translators could not express without a circumlocution in words having no representatives in the Greek.[16]
The basic consideration relative to the Greek verb is that, originally, there were no tenses. The function of the verb consisted in its fundamental root-idea. The tenses were devised as a way of making the root-idea explicit. Originally, there were only two verb-types to indicate the verb-action: the linear (durative) and the momentary (punctiliar). The idea of perfected action is a later development.[17]
Some verbs have two roots: one for linear action and one for punctiliar action. For other verbs, the root may be used in either way. In this latter case, it is difficult to determine the respect in which the root is used. For this reason, the tense system was devised.
The early proponents of the doctrine of holiness, realizing that there is this ambiguity in the verbs to which they called attention, thus resorted to the tense system – and correctly so – to support the punctiliar, momentary, character of entire sanctification.
The chief function of the Greek tense is to denote, not the time of the action, but the kind of action that the verb represents. There are here three possibilities: the action may be continuous, or completed, or indefinite. These three possibilities give the present tense, the perfect tense, and the aorist tense.
Yet there is a more basic fact with respect to the action of the verb. It is that the present and aorist are the basic tenses in Greek. Thus Dana and Mantey observe:
There are really two fundamental ways of viewing action. It may be contemplated in a single perspective, as a point, which we may call punctiliar action . . . ; or it may be regarded as in progress, as a line, and this we may call linear action . . . . The perfect tense is a combination of these two ideas: it looks in perspective at the action, and regards the results of the action as continuing to exist; that is, in progress at a given point. Hence the perfect has both elements, linear and punctiliar. The aorist may be represented by a dot (×), the present by a line (—–), and the perfect by a combination of the two (×—-).[18]
The term aorist is from the Greek word _όριστoς, which means unlimited. The term is a compound of the privitive particle α (a – not) and the verb _ρίζω (horiz_ – to divide or separate one part from another. The term is thus a negation of any such division or separation of elements. The Attic writers indicate that the term signifies holistic, indivisible verb action. The New Testament writers of the Koiné Greek understood the significance of the term as designating verb tense and used it with remarkable understanding. Thus, for reason of its etymology, the term denotes action as a single whole. Since the connotation is that there is in this verb action no dividing of part by part, which is a matter of process, the tense thus signifies action as simply occurring, without reference to its progress. For this reason, it registers instantaneous action, rather than action as a temporal process. It is sometimes called the “lightning speed” tense.[19]
The tense may be regarded from three different perspectives: To quote Dana and Manty:
While the aorist views an action as a single whole, it may contemplate it from different angles. It may regard the action in its entirety, which we call the constative aorist; e.g., _ζησεv [ez_sen], he lived. We might represent the constative aorist in a graph thus: <×>, The action may be regarded from a view point of its initiation, which we call the ingressive aorist; e.g., _πέθvεv [apethnen], he died. The ingressive aorist might be graphically represented thus: ×>—-. When the aorist is viewed in its results, we call it the cumulative aorist; e.g., _πέκτειvεv [apekteinen], he killed. It may be indicated in the graph: —–<×.[20]
The essential significance of the aorist is best seen in its contrast with the present tense. “The play is entirely upon whether the action is punctiliar–viewed as a single whole–or whether it is the opposite, continued or repeated.”[21] A forceful example of this play and interplay between the two tenses is found in John 10:38. Jesus says: “. . . that ye may know, and believe, that the Father is in me, and I in him.” The passage in the Greek is: _vα γv_τε κα_ γιvώσκητε _τι _v _μo_ _ πατ_ρ κ_γ_ _v τ_ πατρί (hina gn_te kai gin_sk_te hoti en emoi ho pat_r kag_ en t_ patri). The verb know is used in two places (in the Greek believe is know). The first use of the verb is the aorist, while the second use is the present tense. Thus the reading is: that you may come to know and continue knowing that the Father is in me and I in the Father.[22]
In this text the force of the aorist is that our knowledge of God is obtained as a single and “timeless” event. It is not, as it would be if the tense were the present, something that is originally brought about through a developing and continuous process.
There are many passages in the New Testament that employ the aorist tense of the verb sanctify. They all teach that the act producing holiness in the believer is simple and instantaneous, not a drawn-out process. Several passages will here be noted.[23]
Jesus prays in John 17:17: “Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.” Here the word sanctify (_γίασov, hagiason) is the first aorist imperative of the verb _γιάζω, hagiaz_. The wording clearly shows that the sanctification for which Jesus prayed for His followers is to be wrought instantaneously. Daniel Steele, in discussing this verse, quotes Winer:
In the New Testament the obvious distinction between the imperative — as sanctify, above — and the imperative present is uniformly maintained. The imperative aorist denotes an action that is either rapidly completed and transient, or viewed as occurring but once, The imperative present denotes an action already commenced and to be continued, or an action going on, or to be frequently repeated.[24]
Peter states, in Acts 15:9, that God “. . . put no difference between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith.” The term purifying is, in the original, καθαρίσας (katharisas). It is masculine nominative aorist participle of the verb καθαρίζω (kathariz_), purify. Here, again, purifying or cleansing, is regarded as instantaneous.
In Romans 8:2 Paul writes, “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.” “Hath made me free” is _λευθέρωσέv σε (_leuther_sen se).[25] The verb is the first aorist indicative of the old verb _λεύθερoω (eleuthero_), to set at liberty, to make free. Here, again, is the aorist and the view that spiritual liberty is simply and instantaneously granted.
In Hebrews 13:12 the writer says:
Wherefore Jesus also, that
he might sanctify the people
with his own blood, suffered
without the gate.
The original text reads: _vα _γιάσ_ (hina hagias_), in order that he might sanctify. Hina requires that the verb be in the subjunctive mood. Hence the verb, sanctify, is in the subjunctive. Further, it is in the first active aorist, which denotes instantaneous action. Sanctification is effected instantaneously, as a second work of grace.
There is one passage in Hebrews that merits some detailed attention.
The passage is Hebrews 12:10:
For they verily for a few
days chastened us after their
own pleasure; but he for our
profit, that we might be
partakers of his holiness.
This passage has been interpreted by some people to mean that chastening itself is productive of holiness in the believer. The verb chastened is in the past tense. The past tense is in reality a sort of auxiliary to the present tense. It functions to refer the continuous action of the present to the past. A rather lengthy quotation from Dana and Mantey is helpful here:
The imperfect may be regarded as a sort of auxiliary to the present tense, functioning for it in the indicative to refer its significance of continuous action to past time. This fact is exhibited even in the form of the imperfect, for it is built on the present stem. The imperfect is “a sort of moving panorama, a ‘moving picture show.’ . . . The aorist tells the simple story. The imperfect draws the picture. It helps you to see the course of the act. It passes before the eye the flowing stream of history” (R, 883). That is, “it dwells on the course of an event instead of merely stating its occurrence” (Goodwin: Greek Moods and Tenses, p. 12). The time element is more prominent in the imperfect than in the present, owing to the fact that it is exclusively in the indicative tense. Since its essential force is identical with that of the present, it follows that its uses should be practically parallel.
Webster quotes from Donaldson the following definition of the imperfect: “The imperfect denotes an incomplete action, one that is in its course, and is not yet brought to its intended accomplishment. It implies that a certain thing was going on at a specified time, but excludes the assertion that the end of the action was attained” (Syntax and Synon. of the Gr. Test., p. 87).[26]
Now, if the incomplete process of chastening is itself productive of holiness, that process of production must itself reflect the character of the chastening, i.e., be temporally prolonged and temporally incomplete and unfinished. On this interpretation, holiness is finally realized only at the time of death or in some condition after death.
However, in what follows the reference to chastening there is a twofold, radical break. It is a break, or a disruption, that prohibits the conclusion that holiness is but a temporal, incomplete process.
First there is the appearance of the aorist. Against the continuousness of the imperfect, the aorist brings in a totally new dimension, the dimension of crisis, singleness and completion. The English term partakers is, in the Greek, the articular second aorist active infinitive (τ_ μεταλαμβε_v, to metalambein) of the verb μεταλαμβάvω (metalamban_), to partake of. The aorist disrupts the continuousness of the imperfect tense. The partaking is not something prolonged and incomplete; rather, it is something attained singly, wholly, and instantaneously. Salvation is now full salvation.
Second, the writer of the Epistle employs a distinctive, and not usual, method of expressing purpose. Purpose is expressed by a purpose clause. The clause expresses the aim of the action denoted by the main verb of the sentence. In the Greek the purpose clause can be constructed in several ways. The usual method employs the conjunction, _vα (hina, in order that) with the verb of the purpose clause in the subjunctive mood. An instance of the use of this method is found in John 1:7: _λθεv . . . _vα μαρτυρήσ_ περ_ τo_ φωτός (_lthen . . . hina martur_s_ peri tou photos), he came . . . that he might bear witness concerning the light. The aim of the main verb, came, is that of bearing witness. Bearing witness is the direct result of the action of the main verb, came.
A purpose clause formed in this manner signifies that the aim of the action of the main verb is directly achieved by that action. If this method were employed in the verse under consideration, we might well conclude that the action of the verb, chastise, produces as its resultant the believer’s partaking of holiness. This would mean that believers become partakers of holiness in and by means of chastisement. A purpose clause may also be formed by the accusative of the articular infinitive with the preposition, ε_ς (eis), into. The Greek infinitive is a verbal noun, and like any other noun, may have the article. It is regarded as a neuter noun and so has the neuter article. The proper translation of an infinitive without the article merely prefixes the verbal with the preposition, to. Thus, for example, the aorist active infinitive λ_σαι (lusai) means to loose. But when the neuter article is prefixed to the infinitive, τ_ λ_σαι (to lusai) now means the act of loosing. Further, when the articular infinitive is used after the preposition ε_ς (eis, into), the expression ε_ς τ_ λ_σαι (eis to lusai), becomes a purpose clause and means, literally, into the act of loosing.
This is the form of the purpose clause in Hebrews 12:10: ε_ς τ_ μεταλαβε_v τ_ς _γιότητoς α_τo_ (eis to metalabein t_s hagiot_tos autou). The literal translation is: into the act of partaking of his holiness.
Now, it is difficult, if not impossible, to give an adequate idiomatic translation of this particular purpose clause. But what the writer of the verse wishes to express is that the aim of God’s chastening is that of providing the circumstance that facilitates the act of our partaking of His holiness. There is a certain discontinuity between the chastisement and the state of our partaking of God’s holiness. Intervening between the two states is an “act,” in which the partaking is effected. It is this act that brings sanctity of character, and not the chastisement itself. And the act is designated, we have seen, as an act in the aorist tense, an act that occurs in the timeless and holistic sense. The text does not give any further analysis or description of the act in which God’s holiness is shared with the believer. Perhaps it may be viewed, without violence to the tenor of scripture, from our side and God’s side. From our side, it is entire consecration; from God’s, it is entire sanctification – the ultimate bestowal of saving grace.
The New Testament also employs tenses that register consequence with respect to sanctification. In the first place, there are two places, but only two places, where the verb _γιάζω (hagiaz_) occurs in the present tense.
The first is Hebrews 2:11: “for both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one . . .”. The other place is Hebrews 10:14: “For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified.”
The expression in Hebrews 2:11, them that are sanctified, is a present passive articular participle, i.e., a present participle with the definite article (o_ _γιαζόμεvoι – hoi hagiazomenoi). Hebrews 10:14 likewise uses a present passive participle with the definite article, albeit here in the accusative case: τo_ς _γιαζoμέvoυς (tous hagiazomenous – them that are sanctified).
Does this usage of the present tense indicate that sanctification is a process and not a “timeless,” instantaneous event? Therefore, it has been argued, notably by Canon Westcott, that these texts show that sanctification is “‘the continuous process by which the divine gift is slowly realized from stage to stage in the individual life.’”[27]
If we look carefully at these two texts, we see that the sanctified ones are referred to in terms of their innumerable numbers. Those who become sanctified constitute a great host. In and for that great host the experience of sanctification is repeated over and over again. In this respect, but only in this respect, sanctification is a continuing process. Through the ongoing ages the divine gift is repeatedly conferred upon the believers.
Two considerations serve to support this interpretation:
(1) The other uses in the New Testament of the verb sanctify are either in the aorist or perfect tenses. Normally, the aorist is employed. It is therefore clear that the New Testament writers, who were sensitive to the power of the Greek language, held to the view that sanctification is not achieved as a process, but rather is obtained as a single and unitary act.
(2) The present can be used to describe that which occurs as successive intervals or in successive periods. This is the “Iterative Present.” “It is sometimes called,” Dana and Mantey write, “the present of repeated action.”[28] This is the import of the present tense in the two scriptures from Hebrews. In commenting on Hebrews 10:14, A. T. Robertson, who certainly is not writing to support explicitly the doctrine of entire sanctification, suggests that the present tense is used “. . . because of the repetition of so many persons as in 2:ll.”[29]
There are in the New Testament two verbs related to the verb sanctify. They are καθαρίζω (kathariz_) and _γvίζω (hagniz_), meaning to purify. They are almost always used in either the aorist or the perfect. They signify that “entire sanctification, however long the preparation, is put forth at a stroke by a momentary act.”[30]
There is, however, the use of the verb kathariz_ in the present tense. It is found in 1 John 1:7:
But if we walk in the light,
as he is in the light, we have
fellowship one with another, and
the blood of Jesus Christ his
Son cleanseth us from all sin.
It is a mistake, however, to argue that this particular use of the verb teaches that sanctification is a process and not a momentary act. The first clause in the verse, “But if we walk in the light,” is a conditional one, with the present active subjunctive. It means, literally, “But if we keep on walking [the force of the present tense] in the light.” Now, the remaining verbs in the verse reflect, are, as it were “colored” by, the force of the conditional that introduces them. They are therefore in the present tense. Thus, “If we keep on walking in the light, . . . the blood . . . keeps on cleansing us from all sin.” That is precisely what the Apostle is telling us; he is not thereby telling us that our cleansing is initially but a continuing process and not a definite momentary act. In short, we have no argument from this verse for the view that sanctification is but progressive.
Adam Clarke, without question, supports this interpretation:
Verse 7. But if we walk in the light] If, having received the principle of holiness from him, we live a holy and righteous life, deriving continual light, power, and life from him, then we have fellowship one with another . . . .
The blood of Jesus Christ] The meritorious efficacy of his passion and death has purged our consciences from dead works, and cleanses us, καθαριζει _μας [katharizei h_mas], continues to cleanse us, i.e., to keep clean what it has made clean, (for it requires the same merit and energy to preserve holiness in the soul of man, as to produce it,) or, as several MSS. and some versions read, kathoiei and katharisei, will cleanse; speaking of those who are already justified, and are expecting full redemption in his blood.[31]
It may also be that the verb cleanse is an instance of the iterative present. This is Daniel Steele’s view:
The present tense “cleanseth” here denotes continuousness, not on one individual, but on the human family, one after another being wholly purified, as in Rom. iii. 24, one after another is instantaneously justified. When one leper is cleansed as in Matt. viii. 3, the aorist tense is used, but when many in succession are to be cleansed as in Matt. x. 8, the present tense is used.[32]
In the second place, the New Testament sometimes employs the verb, sanctify, in the perfect tense. It registers the fact that sanctification as crisis experience is, in consequence of the crisis element, also a continuing experience in the believer. Hebrews 10:10 is a case in point:
By the which will we are
sanctified through the offering
of the body of Jesus Christ once
for all.
The Greek reads: _γιασμvoι _σμ_v (h_giasmenoi esmen, we have been sanctified. The verb is the periphrastic (i.e., used with a form of the verb to be) perfect passive indicative of _γιάζω (hagiaz_), sanctify. In keeping with the basic import of the perfect tense, it is here employed to denote a completed state, i.e., that our sanctification is completed. This is another method, along with the aorist tense, of denoting that sanctification is not obtained as merely and only an ongoing, never-finished process.
Acts 26:18 also uses the perfect tense. In his defense before Agrippa, Paul recounts his Damascus-meeting with Jesus, who tells him: “. . . that they may receive forgiveness of sins, and inheritance among them which are sanctified . . . .” The phrase, among them which are sanctified, is, in the Greek text, _v τo_ς _γιασμέvoις (en tois h_giasmenois). It is the perfect passive articular participle of _γιάζω (hagiaz_), sanctify. With the article, the participle becomes, in effect, a substantive: the having been [as completed] sanctified ones.” The language points up the completed fact and reality of sanctification. Thus, again, it is not, and cannot be, but a developing, essentially incomplete, process. Rather, it is full and complete salvation.
It has been pointed in the foregoing that Pope approaches the subject of entire sanctification from three perspectives: purification from sin, perfect love, and evangelical perfection. They are inter-related aspects of a whole: “each implies the other.” He gives, however, a certain priority to the first aspect. It becomes, as it were, the determining energy infusing the other phases of the complex:
The virtue of the atonement, administered by the Holy Spirit, is set forth in Scripture as effecting the entire destruction of sin. This is everywhere declared to be the design of redemption: and it is promised to the believer as his necessary preparation for the future life. The entire removal of sin from the nature is nowhere connected with any other means than the word of God received in faith and proved in experience.[33]
Of perfect love, or entire consecration, he writes:
The Spirit is imparted in His fulness for the entire consecration of the soul to the Triune God: the love of God, having its perfect work in us, is the instrument of our deliverance from indwelling sin; and the return of our love made perfect also is the strength of our obedience unto entire holiness.[34]
Near the close of his life, Wesley gave a last testimony concerning his view of Christian perfection. It is the “Plain Account of Christian Perfection as believed and taught by the Rev. Mr. John Wesley, from the year 1725 to the year 1777.” In this account, he ascribes the priority to purification from sin. Perfect love obtains as dependent upon purification. Thus Pope’s analysis is in complete harmony with the view of Wesley. Wesley writes:
Pure love reigning alone in the heart and life,–this is the whole of Scriptural perfection. . . .
When may a person judge himself to have attained this?
When, after having been convinced of inbred sin, by a far deeper and clearer conviction than he experienced before justification, and after having experienced a gradual mortification of it, he experiences a total death to sin, and an entire renewal in the love and image of God, so as to rejoice evermore, to pray without ceasing, and in everything give thanks. Not that ‘to feel all love and no sin’ is a sufficient proof. Several have experienced this for a time before their souls were fully renewed. None, therefore, ought to believe that the work is done, till there is added the testimony of the Spirit, witnessing his entire sanctification, as clearly as justification.[35]
The central idea of Wesleyanism is not the conscious intentionality of love, but the cleansing from the sin that pervades the spirit beyond the level of intentionality.
Some concern has recently been expressed as to the legitimacy of the resort to the syntax of Greek grammar in connection with the articulation of the doctrine of Christian perfection. This concern is expressed in terms of two considerations.
The first consideration is that the exegesis of the doctrine of entire sanctification by those who accept the doctrine is inimical to objective (so-called) textual exposition.[36] The manner in which the question is put is really quite patently irrelevant. It makes no difference whether or not one’s concern with the syntactical intricacies of the language is motivated by the impulsions of one’s belief and attitude. The language, with its norms and demands, stands, as it were, on its own feet. In particular, the aorist tense has an independent, linguistic objectivity regardless of anybody’s condition of subjectivity. If one believes in the doctrine of sanctification, or if one doesn’t believe, the tense makes certain irrefutable claims. And it is not only legitimate, it is necessary, to recognize and respect those claims. This the writers of the New Testament did, and this the early modern proponents of the doctrine emulated.[37]
A second concern has also been recently expressed. It may be, or it may not be, directly related to the dissatisfaction with the use of the aorist tense. Be that as it may, the concern is that emphasis on cleansing and purification as definitive of Christian holiness entails the element of magic and cult.[38]
Now, the concern that religion, in particular the Wesleyan view of spirituality, should not be reduced to magic and the cultic practices of magic is a legitimate concern. No objection can legitimately be offered at this point. But a legitimate objection can, and must, be raised as to whether the defining emphasis on sanctification is tantamount to magic and cult.
If one reads Wesley carefully, he will find that Wesley uses profusely the language of cleansing and purification. There is nothing in that language that smacks of magic and cult. Nor is there anything in the language of the holiness theologians that connotes magic and its cultic practices. The fact that the ancient Hebrews viewed and practiced cleansing in ritualistic and cultic manner does not signify that the New Testament idealizing and spiritualizing of the idiom of purification and cleansing carries magical and cultic connotations. In no sense can the sanctifying energy of the Holy Spirit be considered magical or cultic. The energizing agency of divine intervention in the human spirit is not, even tacitly, a form of magic. Supernaturalism is not the same thing as magic. Even to suggest this, is to misread the nature of magic and cult and the grounds that differentiate magic and cult from religion.
The essential ingredient in magic is that the mythic construct, or formation, that is regarded as endowed with energy is bound to the image-world of the sensuous present. It is restricted to the existent. The essential factor differentiating religion from myth and its plethora of cult and ritual is that the formations drawn from the image-world of the sensuous present are cut loose from their binding to the existent and are taken as having meaning or signification. It is thus that the material drawn from the image-world is idealized and spiritualized. The difference between existence and signification: that is the difference between myth and religion!
We read in Hebrews 9:22 that “without shedding of blood is no remission.” And we read in 1 John 1:7 that “the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin.” Here we have language whose denotation may be referred back to ancient ritual and cult.
The ancient Hebrews slew the sacred animal, sprinkled its blood upon the people and ate of the roasted flesh. Before them, the ancient Semites slew the animal, drank of the blood, even stood in the pit while the blood of the animal placed above them flowed over them. Here, in both cases, the cultic practice is wedded to the existent object. For the Semites, it is in and through the very blood itself that sharing in the life of the divinity is achieved.
As we follow the New Testament narrative of the man, Jesus, that depicts his final earthly days, his death, and his resurrection-appearances, we find a remarkable lessening of bondage to the givenness of the content of the sensible world. In this lessening, new vistas of signification, of meaning and import, are opened. From within the shadow of his cross, he spoke to his little band of followers: “It is expedient . . . that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you.”[39] His visible presence in his several resurrection-appearances is always tenuous and fleeting. It was to Mary that he spoke: “Touch me not: for I am not ascended to my Father . . . .” Those whom he met on the Emmaus-Road and with whom he tarried suddenly “. . . knew him: and he vanished out of their sight.”[40] When on the evening of that Sunday he appeared to his disciples, locked within the safety of shut doors, “. . . he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost.”[41] Then came his last earthly appearance:
And it came to pass, while
he blessed them, he was parted
from them, and carried up into
heaven.[42]
Then came Pentecost: “And they were all filled with the Holy Ghost . . . .”[43] The earlier promise of the Master had been fulfilled: albeit now absent from earthly view, he is yet present in the gift of the Spirit, the Comforter. In a way that escapes the conceptions of logical system, this sharing in the life of the Supreme Spirit in sanctification is brought through the agency of Jesus’s death, through the shedding of blood on Calvary’s Cross. He kept himself true to the will of the Father, kept himself true to his commission to bring God into the affairs of world and time, even to the extreme point of his own death. Thus the Writer of Hebrews can leave aside all positive reference to the ancient practices of cult and ritual and affirm that “. . . by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us.”[44]
Having served its occasioning function, the strict bondage to the ancient ritualist and ceremonial cleansing has been broken and has yielded to the new: an inward spiritual cleansing of the waters at the fountain head. Here, and here alone, lies the power of a transformed life evinced in outward holiness.
We have reached the mystery of redemption. Yet, as we in faith trench upon the borders of that mystery, there is afforded us a new vision. It is a vision that is now free from the materially perceptive content of earth. It is a vision that achieves a transcendent level of signification no longer bound to the ancient cultic rites. Here, in the fullest sense, signification has replaced existence. We now have “. . . the evidence of things not seen.”[45] Caught up in the vision of the Sacred, we may now sing, without any implication of sense and materiality, that marvelous hymn of redemption:
There is a fountain filled with blood
Drawn from Immanuel’s veins;
And sinners, plunged beneath that flood,
Lose all their guilty stains.
If we are to excise the language of purification and cleansing, as regards sanctification, on the ground that it connotes the mythos of magic, ritual, and cult, ought we not, in the interest of consistency, excise the language of purification and cleansing through the blood of Christ as likewise illicit in that it is fraught with that very same mythos?[46]
The irony is that the dissatisfaction with the language of cleansing and purification appears to be made from within the context of the very condition from which the escape is sought: that is, the binding to the image-world of the sensuously given – the very world to which objection is allegedly made.
If one will free himself from the binding to the image-world and regard the images drawn from the existent in their transformed signification as metaphors of the spiritual, he may then, with no allusion to the mythic formations of magic and cult, be enabled to rejoice with the Great Apostle:
Knowing this, that our old
man is crucified with him, that
the body of sin might be destroyed,
that henceforth we should not serve sin.[47]
I am crucified with Christ:
nevertheless I live; yet not I
but Christ liveth in me: and the
life which I now live in the
flesh I live by the faith of the
Son of God, who loved me, and
gave himself for me.[48]
“Dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ.”
He walks in glorious liberty,
To sin entirely dead:
The Truth, the Son, hath made him free,
And he is free indeed.
Throughout his soul thy glories shine,
His soul is all renewed,
And deck’d in righteousness divine,
And clothed and filled with God.[49]
[1]The Wesleyan Theological Journal, 37:2 (Fall) 2002.
[2]All scriptural references are from the Authorized Version.
[3]John Wesley, Plain Account of Christian Perfection (Chicago: The Christian Witness Co.) P. 40.
[4]John Wesley, The Journal, in The Works of John Wesley, 14 vols. (Kansas City: Nazarene Publishing House), I, 478-79.
[5]Olin Alfred Curtis, The Christian Faith (Grand Rapids: Kegel Publications, 1956), p. 376.
[6]Richard Watson, Theological Institutes, 2 vols. (New York: Carlton & Porter, 1850), II, 455.
[7]William Burton Pope, A Compendium of Christian Theology, 3 vols., 2nd ed. (New York: Phillips & Hunt, 1881), III, 36.
[8]Ibid., p. 45.
[9]Ibid.
[10]Randolph S. Foster, Christian Purity, p. 46 . In J. A. Wood, Perfect Love (Chicago: Christian Witness Co., 1880), p. 89.
[11]Minor Raymond, Systematic Theology, 3 vols. (New York: Eaton & Mains, 1887), II, 393.
[12]Daniel Steele, Milestone Papers (Kaifeng, Honan, China: Kaifeng Bible School), p. 39, in the Digital Edition, Duane V. Maxey, Holiness Data Ministry.
[13]Beverly Carradine, Sanctification (Chicago: The Christian Witness Co., 1909), p. 131.
[14]H. Orton Wiley, Christian Theology, 3 vols. (Kansas City: Nazarene Publishing House, 1940), II, 440-517.)
[15]Olive M. Winchester, Crisis Experiences in the Greek New Testament (Kansas City: Beacon Hill Press, 1953).
[16]Steele, op. cit., pp. 26-27.
[17]See A, T. Robertson, A Grammar of the Greek New Testament in the Light of Historical Research (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1934), p. 823. Note: Maddox’s use of the passage he quotes from Robertson is in error: Robertson is not discussing tense, but the “‘Aktionsart’ [kind of action] of the Verb-Stem.” Immediately following the passage quoted, Robertson says: “The distinction between punctiliar and perfected action is not clearly drawn in the verb-root itself. That is a later refinement of tense.” See Randy Maddox, “The Use of the Aorist Tense in Holiness Exegesis,” Wesleyan Theological Journal, Digital ed., 16:2 (Fall, 1981), 2.
[18]Dana, H. E. and Julius R. Mantey, A Manual Grammar of the Greek New Testament (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1948), p. 179.
[19]“There were originally two verb-types, the one denoting durative or linear action, the other momentary or punctiliar action. . . . The aorist stem presents action in its simplest form (_-oριστoς, ‘undefined’). This action is simply presented as a point by this tense. This action is timeless.” Robertson, op cit., pp. 823-24.
[20]Dana and Maney, op. cit., p. 195.
[21]Ibid.
[22]Both the aorist and the present tenses are here “ingressive.” This form of the tenses alludes to the action of the verbs in their beginning, that is, it denotes the entrance into the condition indicated by the verbs.
[23]Randy Maddox has asserted that “The assumption that the writers of the New Testament used a grammatical device like the aorist tense in such a specialized sense . . . is absurd.” He points out, and correctly so, that the assessment of the significance of the aorist requires more than reference to the verb itself. This is not in any sense a new discovery. Early in the last century A. T. Robertson, for example, said the same thing: “Various modifications arise, due to the verb itself, the context, the imagination of the user of the tense” (op. cit., p. 830). In an immediately preceding passage, he remarks: “In general one may say that in normal Greek when a certain tense occurs, that tense was used rather than some other because it best expressed the idea of the speaker or writer” (Ibid.). Perhaps the New Testament writers did understand just why they used the aorist in reference to sanctification.
The aorist does indeed have modifications, which, incidentally, is something that both Daniel Steele, notwithstanding the unfair and unjustified charge of simplicity brought against him for his use of Goodwin’s Grammar, and Olive M. Winchester, following Steele, well-understood: the constative, ingressive, and culminative aorist. But these do not in any sense contravene or seriously modify the root meaning of the tense, which is punctiliar, or momentary, action.
With respect to the interpretation of the context as a factor in understanding the particular import of the tense, the matter is quite complex and by no means one of unequivocal determination. Among Greek scholars, there are differences, for example, as to which tense variant the context justifies or requires.
Maddox admits that there are places in the New Testament where the reference to the baptism with the Holy Spirit is crisis action. But he maintains that the reference to crisis action is not uniform. Just what such a difference in the character of divine action means as regards the element of consistency, he does not tell us.
A careful reading of Steele and Winchester discloses the fact that, contrary to what Maddox asserts or infers, they do not rely abstractly on the verb alone, but take into account the context in which the verb is used in their interpretation of its significance.
Finally, Maddox argues that the misuse of the aorist, as supporting the crisis nature of entire sanctification, results from equating the manner of speaking of an aorist with the manner of reality. In particular, he contends that Winchester mishandles a point made by Robertson. The passage in question is one where Robertson discusses the effective (his name for the culminative) aorist. It reads: “So then in the case of each aorist the point to note is whether it is merely punctiliar (constative) or whether the verb-idea has deflected it to one side or the other (ingresive or effective). It needs to be repeated that there is at bottom only one kind of aorist (punctiliar in fact or statement). The tense of itself always means point-action. The tense, like the mode, has nothing to do with the fact of the action, but only with the way it is stated. Sometimes it will not be clear from the context what the Aktionsart is” (p. 835).
Maddox appears to take the expression “nothing to do with the fact of the action, but only with the way it is stated” to mean that the tense bears no reference to the reality, the fact, of sanctification as denoted by the verb. But that is not what Robertson means: he means that the fact of the action is the function of the verb-idea, while the function of the tense is to state, or govern, the precise significance of the verb-idea. Thus, in stating, or governing, the precise significance of the verb-idea as it bears upon fact, the tense, here the aorist, is so associated with the verb-idea as to bear upon the fact of the action. Finally, the tense cannot be relegated to some sphere of subjectivity, i.e., “manner of speaking,” while the verb-idea is given some kind of objective ontic status, i.e, “manner of reality.” Indeed, the very distinction is itself suspect, if it asserts or implies a radical separation between language and reality. But that is another issue. What must be insisted upon here is that both the verb-idea and the tense have the same status as to their “reality.” They are both ideal, normative objectivities and enjoy a common situs. One cannot legitimately be given an “objective” status and the other a merely “subjective” status.
That this is the proper interpretation may be seen by Robertson’s reference, a few pages earlier, to Moulton: “ But Moulton [Prol. P. 116] also makes a distinction between ‘constative’ and ‘punctiliar,’ using ‘punctiliar’ for real point-action and ‘constative’ for what is merely treated as point-action. That is a true distinction for the verb-root, but the growing number of constative aorists was in harmony with the simple idea of the tense” (832). What decisively supports Robertsons’s conclusion is the fact that Moulton, discussing the aorist as point action and the constative as action in perspective, does not, on page 109 of his work, make that distinction. See John Hope Moulton, A Grammar of the New Testament Greek, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clarke, 38 George Street, 1908), I, 108-18).
See Maddox, op. cit., 2, 3, 6, 9.
[24]Steele, op. cit., p. 32.
[25]Se is you. Tischendorf accepts this reading; others, as in the King James Version, read me.
[26]Dana and Mantey, op. cit., pp. 186-87.
[27]This quote is taken from Steele, op. cit., p. 47.
[28]Dana and Mantey, op. cit., p. 184.
[29]Archibald Thomas Robertson, Word Pictures in the New Testament, 6 vols. (New York and London: Harper and Brothers, c1930), V, 409.
[30]Steele, op. cit., p. 46.
[31]Adam Clarke, The Holy Bible, 6 vols. (New York: Carlton & Porter, 1857), VI, 904. The reading that speaks of “those who are justified, and are expecting full redemption in his blood” again calls to mind the use of the present to denote repetition in those who will be sanctified. It is this type of continuation, and not the merely developmental nature of sanctification in the believer’s experience, that is indicated.
[32]Daniel Steele, Half-Hours with John’s Epistles (Chicago: The Christian Witness Co., c1901), p. 12.
[33]Pope, op. cit., III, 45.
[34]Ibid., p. 50.
[35]Wesley, Plain Account of Christian Perfection, pp. 50-51.
[36]Thus H. Ray Dunning writes: “Biblical texts were often treated out of context and what biblical exegesis that was employed depended largely on ‘types’ and allegory, along with an ill-advised appeal to the aorist tense of the Greek. The latter has been authoritatively [?] called into question by contemporary holiness scholars of the original language. Stephen Lennox, in his doctrinal dissertation on the exegesis of the early holiness movement, pointed out that the defense for such a use of scripture was a so-called ‘spiritual hermeneutic.’ The point was that, if one were ‘filled with the Spirit,’ one could see entire sanctification in these passages, whereas the unsanctified were blind to the biblical truth.” “Christian Perfection: Toward a New Paradigm” in Heart of the Heritage, eds. Barry L. Callen & William C. Kostlevy (Salem, Ohio: Schmul Publishing Co., c2001), p. 153.
[37]The objection that the doctrine of Christian perfection is compromised by the concern, motivated by belief in the doctrine, to support the doctrine by appeal to the Greek tense system implicates a very serious philosophical question. That question is the relation between understanding, or knowledge, and valuation. It is often supposed, for example, that physical science is a pure knowledge that obtains independently of valuational preference. Responsible scientists and philosophers realize that such is not the case. Underlying the activity of scientific pursuit are preferential assumptions and value judgments upon which that pursuit rests. There is the assumption of a reality existing independently of the scientific construct. There are no scientific, cognitive grounds upon which the assumption can be supported or proved. There is the valuational, non-cognitive, decision to adopt as the criterion of meaning the deliverances of the senses, to delimit and restrict meaning to sense meaning. There is no cognitive support for this decision. (See the remarkable work by the American conceptual pragmatist, C. I. Lewis: An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation.) Nobody in his right mind impugns physical science for this reason. Why, therefore, should one impugn the concern with the Greek tense system on the grounds that the concern is underpinned by valuational attitude?
[38]To refer again to Dunning: “Language that speaks of ‘cleansing’ and ‘purity,’ while biblical in origin, is also cultic in origin and became the dominant idiom among American holiness theologians. This can be seen clearly by reading H. Orton Wiley’s section on ‘entire sanctification’ where the near exclusive use of ‘cleansing’ language appears. The problem here is that the use of this language does not necessarily retain the empirically ethical element . . . .” Again: “The emphasis on ‘choice’ resists the reduction of the moral to the magical and addresses the concern in an insightful quote from Mildred Wynkoop: ‘. . . if salvation is ‘applied’ to man by a supernatural alteration . . . then . . . ‘’personal relationship’‘ is a fiction, biblical salvation is a myth.’” op. cit., pp. 155-56; 158.
[39]John 16:7.
[40]Luke 24:31.
[41]John 20:22.
[42]Luke 24:51.
[43]Acts 2:4.
[44]Heb. 9:12.
[45]Heb. 11:l.
[46]It should be observed here that, if the language of purification and cleansing as regards Christian experience should be excised, then in all consistency the language referring to, and even the practice of observing, the sacraments should be excised and renounced. For both the language of sacramental observance and of Christian experience carry a sensuous and ritualist basis on which spiritual and metaphorical significance rest.
[47]Rom. 6:6
[48]Gal. 2:20.
[49]Quoted from Daniel Steele, Love Enthroned, rev. ed. (New York: Eaton & Mains, c1908), p. 369.