“Right Conceptions”

In his book A Century of Holiness Theology Quanstrom writes that according to Reinhold Niebuhr “while sin wasn’t necessary, it was inevitable,” and that the real essence of sin was the “attempt to escape the limitations of human finitude.” There were a number of historical events that had dissipated the heady optimism of the early Nazarenes. Quanstrom writes, “The Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 had created an atheistic communistic state undermining hope in a relatively quick world evangelization. The stock market crash in 1929, which plunged the nation into a severe depression, called into question the ability of man to effectively orchestrate market forces and thus his economic well-being. The repeal of prohibition in 1933 effectively quenched any hope for massive moral social change. The Treaty at Versailles, which had promised world peace, had proven itself instrumental in involving the world in a Second World War, culminating in the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.” Quanstrom goes onto say that, “When Niebuhr’s face appeared on the March 8, 1948, issue of Time magazine and when the general superintendents of the Church of the Nazarene were acknowledging the ‘storms of the peril-filled seas,’ in June of 1948, the United States was one of the principal adversaries in a nascent ‘cold war’ that threatened the destruction of the entire world.” In the midst of all of this, however, the Nazarenes voted to create the Nazarene Theological Seminary. The primary purpose of Nazarene Theological Seminary was to “conserve, maintain, advocate and promulgate the great Bible doctrine of ‘Entire Sanctification’ as a second distinct work of divine grace wrought in the heart of the believer subsequent to regeneration.” The important distinction that Brockett made regarding entire sanctification was that he “distinguished between being blameless and faultless.” He believed that those who had been entirely sanctified would still have at least some sin or infirmities in their lives. According to Taylor, what happened to the disciples on the day of Pentecost was that they were filled with the Holy Spirit and that this brought about a change within them, delivering them completely from sin. He was very much against Calvin’s idea of the “sinning saint.” Taylor believed that there were two conditions for sin to actually be sin. True sin included “the knowledge of sin accompanied by an intention to sin. If either knowledge or consent were lacking, there was no sin.” Quanstrom writes that Taylor distinguished “between infirmity, which was a permanent human condition due to the Fall, and inbred sin, which was not a permanent condition of the Fall. The former compelled Christians to contend with their deficiencies their entire lives while the latter could be completely destroyed in entire sanctification, enabling Christians to live sinlessly deficient.” Corlette brought a new idea to the conversation, writing, “This vital experience of entire sanctification or fullness of the Spirit is not the ultimate purpose of God for human life, it is not the final work of the Spirit of holiness for man in this world. It is a high point in human experience, it is the completion of the initial work of salvation; but the purpose of God for man in this world is saintliness of life and Christlikeness in character….As wonderful as is this experience of heart holiness it does not of itself bring the sanctified person immediately to that goal of saintliness of life or perfect Christian character.” S.S. White listed five cardinal elements concerning entire sanctification. Quanstrom writes, “The first was that entire sanctification was a second work of grace….The second cardinal element of sanctification was that it was instantaneous….The third and perhaps most important cardinal element of entire sanctification for White was that entire sanctification freed the believer from inbred sin….The fourth cardinal element of entire sanctification mentioned…concerned its attainability in this life. It obviously was….The fifth concerned its identification with the baptism with the Holy Spirit. Pentecost was the occasion of the disciples’ entire sanctification and so the baptism with the Holy Spirit was the occasion of entire sanctification.” The two movements in the Church of the Nazarene in the fourth and fifth decades of the twentieth century were “both a consequence of the changing historical circumstances. The unavoidable reality of the apparently inherent sinfulness of humanity resulted in clinical qualifications of the doctrine of entire sanctification that defined more of man’s ‘fallen-ness’ as infirmity instead of sin. At the same time, the threat of this ‘theological realism’ compelled the denomination to a greater attention to ‘conserving, maintaining, advocating and promulgating’ the precious doctrine with which it had been entrusted. Entire sanctification eradicated sin in its entirety, but sin in its entirety was understood quite particularly.”