THE WESLEYAN QUADRILATERAL IN THE AMERICAN HOLINESS TRADITION

Leon Hynson

I. Introduction

The task at hand is the assessment of the place of Scripture, reason, experience and tradition in the American Holiness tradition.

That movement represents the societies and sects which emerged from Methodism in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. For this particular study, limited attention is given to the National Association for the Promotion of Holiness. The focus turns more toward the popular preaching of some of the early spokesmen for the Pilgrim Holiness Church and the Church of the Nazarene, (c.1900-1920). A brief analysis of systematic theology takes place at the close of the paper. You will note that some subjective elements are found in the analysis.

In researching this essay, the preliminary assumption has been that Scripture possesses a normative place in the movement, and that experience, reason, and tradition possess relative weight. It is assumed that Scripture brings experience, for example, under its regulative influence; while experience replicates the Biblical standards of spirituality and ethics. What of reason and tradition? Were they servants of the scriptural message? Did they bring any balance to what was often a limited hermeneutic? Does reason play any significant part in the movement, since a sturdy strand of anti intellectualism existed in its formative stages?

The Holiness tradition would achieve a self-conscious autonomy in the holiness revival in Methodism following the Civil War. It did not surrender the classical foundations of Wesleyanism, but its specialized intentions seem to have led it to shape Wesley's perspective toward a more experiential focus. This is apparent, I believe, in the manner in which Pentecost was interpreted, stressing the personal experience of Pentecost to the neglect of the corporate (or community) dimension of the event.

II. In Search of Authority in the Holiness Movement

What may we hypothesize regarding the quadrilateral in the American Holiness tradition? First. it is claimed that the essential ingredients of the quadrilateral may be found in the theology and preaching of the tradition, but lacking the balance of Wesley, especially in its preaching. Preaching, more than systematic theology, would dominate the movement and set forth the lines of its authority. The preaching would build squarely upon Biblical grounds, developing an experiential accent. Scripture would be assumed as the revelatory norm by which experience is authenticated. Even when experience was regarded as so important, it was acknowledged that experience must square with revelation. Because the interpretive center was consistently the doctrine of holiness, the experiential focus was the experience of entire sanctification.

Second, Scripture questions are developed less in terms of its full authority than by the hermeneutic of holiness. Thus, Jesse T. Peck's classic The Central Idea of Christianity became one of its key sources. (As Luther developed a hermeneutic of justification1, the Holiness people developed a hermeneutic of holiness.)

Thirdly, experience was to assume powerful proportions. Although the theology of the movement developed some years later never raised experience above Scripture, in practice this sometimes took place in earlier days. Experience was largely defined and informed by pneumatological emphases. Pentecost, the inauguration of the Christian church, became the norm for measuring the authenticity and completeness of the Christian life. The apostolic question to the disciples of Ephesus, "Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?" (Acts 19:2), was interpreted as the description of a two stage reception of God's grace. It would be a personal, identifiable experience: "Your Pentecost," "My Pentecost." In the experience of regeneration, the Spirit is "with you" and in Pentecostal experience "in you." This Pentecostal dimension was to take the holiness tradition beyond Wesley's position on Pentecost, as seen in his Notes on the New Testament.2

Fourth, tradition was embodied in an ethos of separation and the experience of the pilgrim, remnant community. In the early years of my life, we perceived ourselves as strangers and pilgrims in the world. We sang the Lord's songs in a strange land, songs like:

I'm going through, I 'm going through,
I'll pay the price whatever others do,
I'll take the way with the Lord 's despised few,
I'm going through, Jesus, I 'm going through.

Our consciousness raising led us to transvaluate "despised few" to "chosen few," but still there were "few."

Tradition was perpetuated through the specialized ritual of conversion and the baptism of the Spirit, which involved "praying through," and achieving certainty through the Spirit's witness. The matrix was revival, a regular schedule in spring and fall, with summer camp meetings. There were class meetings for hearing the testimonies of the saints. Even though these differed from Wesley's classes, the function of witness and mutual support remained. Those whose spiritual life was flagging might feel a certain persuasion to "lift up the hands that hang down." At times, the testimonies were perfunctory, and the class leader a spiritual whip (as in the Congress,) but the witnesses were seldom insincere.

Their traditions were formed by a reading of the history of Israel; from Sinai and Zion, the Red Sea and the Jordan River, wilderness and promised land, Egypt and Canaan. As these spoke of great moments in the past, they also described present experiences of believers. The Red Sea was the way from bondage, but not the full deliverance. First there was the wilderness, then the passage into Canaan. The holiness movement would develop this pattern or typology into a fine art. What saved it from serious aberration was the restraint imposed upon it by the larger scriptural teaching. The call to holiness was simply and beautifully illustrated by the stories, events, and places of Scripture. The typological motif is evident in many of the hymns, songs, and sermons.

H. J. Zelley wrote "He Rolled the Sea A way " reflecting the crossing of the Red Sea as the analogy of deliverance from sin, sorrow, and as a prayer for grace to die:

When Israel out of bondage came,

A sea before them lay;

The Lord reached down His mighty hand

And rolled the sea away.

And when I reach the sea of death,

For needed grace I'll pray;

I know the Lord will quickly come

And roll the sea away.
Or, M. J. Harris (c. 1908)

I long ago left Egypt, for the promised land,

I trusted in my Savior, and to his guiding hand,

He led me out to victory, through the great red sea

I sang a song of triumph, and shouted I am free.
The next stanzas show the progress from Egypt to Canaan to heaven, and the chorus follows:

You need not look for me, down in Egypt's sand

For I have pitched my tent, far up in Beulah land.
Fifth, the Scripture's call to maturity, to fullness and wholeness was developed by a consistent logic of faith. The holiness people reasoned from Scripture and experience. Their logic was similar to the "practical syllogism" which asserts the validity of personal faith on the evidence of a manifestly changed life, or the fruits of faith. So, if the "rushing, mighty wind" is the stuff of my personal experience, it might be reasoned that my experience corresponds to Scripture. But this is a rational argument, an inference which builds upon Scripture and experience but which was not simply Scripture or experience. Theirs was a reasoned faith, as logical to them as the inerrancy argument was to fundamentalism.

A. Scripture in the Holiness Tradition

When we consider the living witness of this segment of the Wesleyan heritage we recognize the authority and inspiration of Scripture to be an unquestioned assumption. The hermeneutical issue in preaching and teaching is of central importance. The hermeneutic of holiness becomes the rule for interpreting Scripture. What does the Bible teach about holiness of heart and life? To discover this, the Scriptures were frequently typologized. Geography, topography, ethos, nations, societies, and cities acquired a significance sometimes hidden beneath the surface of the obvious meaning. Some in the movement displayed an affinity for allegorism. In a sermon preached at my parish thirty-three years ago, an evangelist turned the wedding feast at Cana of Galilee into the festivities of Christian experience. The best wine kept until the last was descriptive of the exhilarating wine of spiritual vitality, the second grace of sanctification. Dr. W. B. Godbey, on the other hand, developed the message through more careful study of the Greek text, with a steadfast interest in the holiness message.

The diversity of the hermeneutic of holiness almost defies categorization. Much was anecdotal with Scripture developed according to a view of the chronological priority of regeneration, and the soteriological priority of sanctification. Scripture passages which gave content to the sequence of salvation were cited. Matthew 11:28-30 is an example of two kinds of rest: rest for the weary; rest for those yoked to Christ. Holiness was found in the "whole tenor of scripture." As Harold Greenlee pointed out in 1963, the truth rested on the "whole message of the Bible.''3

The contrasts between the lifestyles in Egypt and Canaan became important. The Exodus was a departure from the old ways, hence salvation, while crossing the Jordan was an entrance, the life of victory in holiness. Holiness is a highway through the wilderness (Isaiah 35).

No one gave voice to the centrality of holiness in Scripture more than Martin Wells Knapp, a founder of the Pilgrim Holiness Church. His Pearls From Patmos 4 interprets the book of Revelation consistently as a book about holiness. The "silence in heaven" passage, e.g., (Rev. 8:1) is heaven's watch of the outcome of holiness in the world. Holiness for Knapp is not simply the center of Scripture, it is the circumference.

Holiness is more likely to be interpreted in terms of categories of the Spirit and Pentecost, than of the Son and Calvary or the resurrection.

Phineas Bresee, founder of the Church of the Nazarene, eloquently pursued this track. Pentecost Sunday, May 31, 1903 was the occasion for affirming the coming of the Spirit:

We celebrate the date when the Incarnation dawned . . . We remember with holy reverence the day He suffered. We live it over on Good Friday, amid shadows and tears. The Easter Day that marks His coming forth from the grave is . . . beyond expression.

But all of these go before and pave the way for the Pentecost . . . But for the coming of the Holy Ghost, all else were lost. Jesus came, suffered, died, and rose from the dead that the Holy Ghost might come, and He makes effective and glorious Christ's coming and ministry. But for the coming of the Holy Ghost, all that went before would have disappeared.5

In a sermon based on Philippians 3, Bresee affirms that "The power of the resurrection of Jesus is the baptism of the Holy Ghost . . . The Evidence, the manifest power of the Resurrection, is the baptism with the Holy Ghost."6

E. A. Girvin, biographer of Bresee, and friend for more than twenty-five years, drew upon his close association with Bresee. Speaking of his love for the Bible, Girvin wrote:

He realized that in the holy Scriptures are contained and presented the vital, inspired truths, . . . that these living truths are absolutely needful to every degree of spiritual life, growth, and activity; . . . And yet he insisted that the truth was like the wire which is the conduit of the mysterious and mighty electric current and that as the wire without the current was dead, the truth without the very life and personality of God was inert and powerless . . . He declared that it was possible to proclaim the truth . . . entirely disassociated from the Holy Spirit, and utterly valueless as a means of grace; [or] . . . overflowing with the divine nature and energy . . .7

Girvin here is making the point so clearly spelled out later by Wiley concerning the internal testimony of the Spirit. Bresee felt his "especial divine call was to experience, preach, and push holiness in life and doctrine . . . He was in favor of every belief that would melt into holiness . . ."8

B. Reason

The place of reason in the holiness tradition may be discerned by following the line of criticism in which the reasoned approach to faith is muted. Attention is placed on "heart" religion while the sharpening of reason through the educational process received a qualified endorsement: "Important, but." "But" not the answer to spiritual hunger. "But" not adequate to achieve the ends of faith. Occasionally, the line of critique achieves the deepest suspicion of reason and the processes enhancing careful analysis of Christian faith. The theological "cemeteries," the educated fools, or the ridicule of academic degrees, all represent this line of attack. While this describes an earlier polemic in the movement, the fear of intellectual pursuits does not die easily.

More gently, others placed the priority of faith over reason by the proper reminder that reason may never bring the certitude which experienced faith provides. George B. Kulp, a General Superintendent of the Pilgrim Holiness Church (in which I was reared and found faith) wrote:

Only as I stand before the Word of God can I understand the mysteries that come into our lives. Reason fails me; rationalism explains nothing to the satisfaction of my soul. But I look over the past and I see the Second Person of the Godhead [this as you know is a formula built from the rational reflections of the church at Nicaea and Constantinople]-the Jehovah-step out of the Council chambers of eternity and declare, 'Lo, I come . . . to do thy will, O God.9

Nevertheless, Kulp also allowed for natural revelation: "You can see God not only in nature, in history, and in His providences, but . . . in His Word. I believe that an unsaved man with ordinary common sense, and intelligence can see God in His Word."10 Kulp affirmed the importance of "apostolic practice, prayer, faith, staying on your knees until KNEEOLOGY, rather than so much theology."11

Martin Wells Knapp, a Methodist Episcopal pastor who became a founder (with Seth Cook Rees) of the Pilgrim Holiness Church (actually of the International Holiness Union and Prayer League-1897) spoke of a "head sanctification" or a "theological sanctification" which creates zealots. Deeper down, there is a sanctification of the knees. A genuine, full-fledged case of entire sanctification clarifies the head, purifies and fills the heart, controls the pocket [wallet] and fully consecrates the knees."12 That's holistic sanctification!

C. Experience

In developing the focus on experience in the essay, one may recognize a diversity of streams. In the commentary of George Hughes regarding the National Camp meetings, the experiential focus is strong. Sometimes Scripture virtually takes a secondary place in practice although certain Scriptural emphases are woven compellingly into the experiential focus. The epoch of Pentecost, set forth in Acts 2, is central. Pentecost becomes the central scriptural event of the movement; the central focus of the tradition.

Reason is subordinated to pneumatological counsels. In essence, there is a tendency toward the subjectivity which prevails in overbalanced pneumatology13 When this imbalance occurs, the objectivity of Christology—incarnation, death, resurrection—is submerged in the subjectivity of the wind of God. Daniel Steele's view that "An experience is worth a thousand theories"14 is the central thesis of his chapter on "testimony" in Love Enthroned As the patient who has been healed best authenticates that healing, se the person cleansed from sin is the best witness to Christian perfection. "Experience is one of the chief elements of evangelical power."15 Steele, the self designated "coolest and least demonstrative man in the Methodist Episcopal Church"16 set forth his experience in terms of freedom and joy in the Holy Spirit.

Charles Fowler describes an (his own?) experience of a ministerial student, who sought to convince a skeptical roommate that Christianity is proved by experience. When the Christian learned about the promise of Pentecost, he was hesitant to accept it. The skeptic stated: "Charlie, is it not to be tested by experience? Is not this a matter of knowledge?"17

The focus on experience is so evident in some of the literature as to be overwhelming. It is illustrated in George Hughes' commentary on the second National Camp Meeting at Manheim, Pennsylvania (1868):

Rev. Alfred Cookman . . . had purposed preaching on a certain text; but it had vanished, and he was left without text or sermon. The Master had him in hand and knew what to do with him. He moved out on the line of testimony . . . He dwelt upon the work of the Holy Ghost the definite work of entire sanctification, and related how he had been led into the holiest.

Hughes described the Pentecostal content of the experience and the occasion:

Nothing short of a PENTECOST was commensurate with the occasion. It came! Oh, how the glory waves swept over the ground. It was as if the flood-gates had been suddenly uplifted and down rolled the ocean surges.18

The motif of dynamism, crisis, unleashed and uncontrolled power, prevailed in much of the early days of the holiness movement, especially in the work at Cincinnati under Martin Wells Knapp, and God's Bible School, and the weekly paper God 's Revivalist, which advertised "God, Whom we serve" as its proprietor and M. W. Knapp as editor. It was Pentecostal through and through, with the focus on getting the experience, and getting it "shockingly" so as to leave no question.

Knapp and others authored the series Electric Shocks from Pentecostal Batteries. Knapp's book Lightning Bolts from Pentecostal Skies contained thirteen chapters: The Pentecostal Baptism, Pentecostal Sanctification, Pentecostal Homes, Pentecostal Giving, Pentecostal Revivals, and more. Among the so-called "striking illustrations" was one titled "Struck by Lightning." Another book was Revival Tornadoes. A. M. Hills wrote Pentecostal Light and Seth C. Rees, The Pentecostal Church. Wm. B. Godbey's prayer opening the 1901 camp meeting at Salvation Park (Cincinnati), invoked the deity generally, and the Holy Spirit particularly, but did not name the name of Jesus as a specific source of divine help. In his sermon, the balance was better. Godbey declares, "The Holy Ghost crowns Jesus in your hearts."19 One long time observer of the movement describes another veteran's response to the Christological focus of his preaching: "Anyone can preach about Jesus. We need preaching about the Holy Ghost."20

D. Tradition

The influences which shaped the movement: the Scriptures accepted confidently; the special concern for experiences; the focus on Pentecost and the sanctifying Spirit; the hermeneutic of holiness, were reflected in a tradition of revivalism and an ethos of separation. In the early stages of the Pilgrim Holiness Church, the work of Knapp, Godbey, Rees, and others at Cincinnati, was characterized by a search for a better past. Some were convinced even then that the former years were more glorious, and that their fervor was diminished and often lost.22 This was Charles Fowler's position. President of the National Association for the Promotion of Holiness, Fowler's book Back to Pentecost queried: "Why back? Because we have gotten away from Pentecost . . . We mean by Pentecost what the New Testament means by it-what Methodism has always meant by it . . . ENTIRE SANCTIFICATION."23

That zeal for former glory continued to shape much of the movement through the years of World War I and the Great Depression. The quest for past glories was elusive as it always is. The Pilgrims evidently perceived the problems in terms of cultural intrusion. The answer was a decisive separation from the world expressed through an ethos which incorporated modesty of dress, avoidance of the world in such areas as movies or jewelry, and a sense of alienation and even persecution.24 Sometimes the structured symbols of separation became the substance. The core of their faith could become law and letter rather than love. Love, for a minority of these folk, could be scorned as the expression of tolerance or compromise. Extremes of course only illustrate the contrasts between good sense and fanaticism.

It is wrong to deny the validity of the movement's quest for an authentic world-denying piety. The symbols of that piety were acquired through sacrifice. It is never easy to reject one's own culture. Nevertheless, these symbols, honestly raised as the objective expression of these Christians' integrity, at times became the reality.

Revivalism became the dominant note or mark of the holiness movement. In camp meetings across the country (Denton, Maryland camp began in 1898) and in regular revival meetings, the word was hurled forth to win the sinners, to lead the saved into sanctification, and generally to revive the saints. The Psalmist's plea: "Will you not revive us again?" (Psalm 85:6) was repeated in the gospel song "Revive Us Again":

We praise Thee, O God, for the Son of Thy Love
For Jesus who died and is now gone above

Hallelujah, Thine the Glory
Hallelujah, Amen!
Hallelujah, Thine the Glory

Revive Us Again! We praise Thee, O God, for Thy Spirit of Light
Who has shown us our Savior and scattered our night.

The revival was a structured event. The pattern of revival was the planned gathering, which would be surrounded and saturated by prayer and fasting, until the meeting reached a crescendo, a "break." Then sinners would surrender. The psychology of revival might evoke the stand off. Who would prevail? The preacher as God's representative, or the souls who were resisting Christ?

In time the revival became tradition, planned as part of the church year, but sometimes only a meeting, not a revival.

III. The Systematic Analysis

It may be claimed that the systematic theologians of the church reflect (even as they correct) the faith and life of the collective experience of the people of God. Of course, systems makers influence the thought and life of the church and at best, they express the Church's witness. If not, they serve themselves and not the Church. Having reviewed aspects of the Church's life of witnessing in preaching, singing, and testimony, we need to assess the subsequent perspective of theologians in the holiness movement. How did the theologies sum up the Church's experience?

H. Orton Wiley, a Nazarene and the movement's prime theologian, draws upon Samuel Harris Dwight, Professor of Systematic Theology at Yale, 1871-96, a Reformed theologian to develop the quadrilateral. Initially, he developed a trilateral. Three elements are perceived to contribute to our knowledge of God, the experiential, the historical, and the rational. Wiley states, "Each of these must test, correct, and restrain the others, and at the same time clarify, verify, and supplement them." This may result in a synthesis. However, the synthesis "can be attained only through the medium of historical revelation."25 The objective testimony of Scripture is vitalized by the inner witness of the Spirit. Wiley has thus stated the essentially Wesleyan quadrilateral. Elsewhere, Wiley spells out the relationship of faith and reason by placing faith in the primary place and reason, secondary.26

Wiley further directs attention to the credentials of revelation miracles, prophecy, the unique personality of Christ, and the witness of the Holy Spirit.27 In Willie's view of Scripture, concern is expressed for both the written and living word. The same Spirit who indwell Christ the Living Word, inspires the written word, so that the Word is continually enlivened and fresh.

The Reformers themselves strove earnestly to maintain the balance between the formal and the material principles of salvation, the Word and faith, but gradually . . . men began unconsciously to substitute the written Word for Christ the Living Word. They divorced the written word from the Personal Word. . . . No longer was it the fresh utterance of Christ, the outflow of the Spirit's presence but merely a recorded utterance which bound men by legal rather than spiritual bonds.28

The focus of Nazarene theologian, W. T. Purchaser's Exploring Our Christian Faith seems to express a more scholastic view of Scripture:

The importance of the inner testimony of the Spirit to the truth of Scripture must not be obscured. But it must be balanced by a recognition of the inherent authority of the Bible.29

Once stated, however, the rest of Purchaser's analysis centers on the formal issue of authority. His special interest rests in the "Christological analogy" of Scripture, that is, the balance of divine and human elements in Scripture. This union of the transcendent and the incarnation deserves our appreciation.

Nazarene, A. M. Hills' position represents a different trend. Born and raised in a Congregational home, educated at Overlain and Yale, Hills states that his earliest reading of theology came from "strongly Calvinistic" sources. He encountered Wesleyan thought after some years of ministry in his first pastorate. In reading his Fundamental Christian Theology (1931, abridged in 1932), his debt to Reformed thought, especially Charles Hedge's Systematic Theology emerged. He evinces substantial dependence on John Miley's mediating theology; and draws from Richard Watson, the British systematician whose theology shaped the lines of much Wesleyan theology in the nineteenth century. Both Miley and Watson are criticized by Robert Chiles who claims that they

ground the authority of the Christian faith in its relation to a rationally verified reality external to itself; methodologically, they are more concerned with the evidence for revelation than they are with revelation itself.30

Hodge was the gifted representative of the Princeton theology, "a highly intellectualized tradition that understood faith in a largely doctrinal sense," writes Donald Dayton.31

Hills insists initially that "Reason is not an Independent and Adequate source of theology," but develops guidelines by which to judge the credibility of revelation. Reason must judge the evidence of a revelation, he suggests, leading us to the impression that criteria separate from revelation may be used to evaluate Scripture, and to declare Scripture to be deficient (or incredible).32

Paul Bassett's assessment of Hills' view of Scripture in his W.T.S. paper given in 1977, traces the fundamentalist lines of Hill's theology of revelation. Bassett writes:

There is not one word of the continuing work of the Holy Spirit in revelation, i.e., the testimonium Spiritus sancti, nor one word of Jesus Christ . . . in the 65 pages Hills expends on the topic of revelation.33

Hills' position depends primarily upon Charles Hodge34 and Richard Watson. He makes these points:

1. Reason is presupposed in revelation, which is only communicated to the thinking mind. (The affective domain as receiver of revelation is not indicated.)
2. Reason must judge the credibility of a revelation. Only the impossible is incredible. Reason must decide whether something is impossible. It is, for example, impossible for God to do anything morally wrong. (Is this a normative theological judgment based on revelation, not reason?)
3. Reason must judge of the evidence of a revelation. "Faith without evidence is either irrational or impossible." "Faith is an intelligent reception of truth on adequate grounds."
4. Reason affirms that the highest certainty of religious truth is profoundly important. Human speculation cannot meet the needs of man. On the a priori ground of a personal God (for Hills the existence of God is "an immediate datum or intuitive truth of the reason.") "reason decides that revelation is rationally probable."
5. Reason decides that the truth the world needs cannot be had apart from revelation. "Human thought shows that apart from the Bible, there has never been certain knowledge about God Therefore revelation is a rational probability."
6. Reason declares that God's revelation must be attested by miracles, the "proof that a declared revelation is really from God."35

In summary, Hill's position represents a tilt to rationalism in several ways.

First, the evidential aspect of miracle. Does miracle become another standard of authority? Second, reason has a role in determining whether a revelation is credible. What constraints are placed upon reason to ensure that it will recognize, and not reject, revelation?

Hills also claims more for reason than he delivers, when he suggests on rational grounds what is really a revelational conclusion. That God cannot approve the morally wrong must be a revelational, not a rational claim.

W. T. Purkiser makes the suggestion that "faith and reason, belief and understanding are two halves of a complete whole."36 Reason assembles evidence, from which are derived inferences and understanding to undergird faith. In the absence of such evidence, faith may be judged as mere imagination.

Purkiser is impressed with the discoveries of reason. Hear his comment of the relation between faith and understanding:

Faith is the pioneer explorer; understanding is the homesteader and settler. Belief is the necessary early stage of knowledge. Knowledge is belief for which objective evidence has accumulated to a sufficient degree to bring about general acceptance.37

Purkiser stresses the inspiration of the record of Scripture:

The Holy Spirit has provided an accurate and true record and interpretation of His redemptive act in Christ set down in documentary form by "holy men of God! "38

That is standard evangelicalism. Compared to Hills and Wiley, Purchaser's position seems to be moderating, but Willie's emphasis is less scholastic, more dynamic. I

V. The Quadrilateral in Practice

In the Holiness movement, does Scripture represent the center of authority, with experience, reason, and tradition on the circumference? What is the actual relationship between these criteria of religious knowledge and authority?

The conclusion here is that the movement's central affirmations are clearly scriptural, while experience assumes major import. At the heart of the heritage, in its earlier years, especially, the story of Pentecost assumes powerful influence. Pentecost is a Biblical event with significant experiential implications. However, for the movement to interpret Pentecost mainly (but not solely, I must add), in terms of personal experience, is to reshape the witness of Luke and Paul. Lacking the understanding of the Church as koinonia, the churches developed a more individualist view of church life. May this partly explain the struggle to achieve unity in the movement?

Did the movement develop its understanding of the normative place of Scripture, with a thorough hermeneutic for testing experience? It is my opinion that Scripture was too narrowly focused by the hermeneutic of holiness to test experience, tradition, reason. In some early preaching, experience became virtually self-authenticating. Occasionally, this meant some exotic forms of expressing the joy and enthusiasm some of the people experienced. However, that was the exception. The larger development of the ethical dimensions of holiness led to a general balance here.

Sometimes the early movement was tilted toward sanctification at the expense of justification. Immediacy was stressed over development. The experience orientation could lead some in the movement away from a clear emphasis on trusting faith to a focus on emotion. (Emotion of course, is an aspect of experience.) In the strong introspection fostered by the revivals and teaching, the movement could be more Catholic than Protestant.

The place of tradition in the movement represents an attempt to legitimate the promise of Scripture and the experiential dimension, through a formal matrix. The movement focused on crisis experience and sought forms for realizing such experience. One recognizes crisis language ("Pentecostal lightning"), crisis rituals like altar calls, praying through, "dying out," and more.

Attempts to accredit reason in the whole mix were often weak. Heart religion was superior to head religion. In the earlier work of Martin Wells Knapp, On Impressions, there is some corrective. In this important book written in 1892 before his more radical days at Cincinnati, he sought to demonstrate the danger of untested impressions. He stated:

All impressions which are from above bear the four following distinguishing features. They are:


1. Scriptural. In harmony with God's will as revealed in His Word.
2. Right. In harmony with God's will as revealed in man's moral nature.
3. Providential. In harmony with God's will as revealed in His providential dealings.
4. Reasonable. In harmony with God's will as revealed to a spiritually enlightened judgment."39

As Knapp's arguments are developed, a specific Protestant position emerges: Spiritual illumination is not superior to Scripture, but it is confirming and complementary. Moral convictions, when right, are in accord with Scripture. "The voices of Scripture and of right always agree.40

Knapp cites George D. Watson on the place of providence: "The Holy Ghost never guides us contrary to the Word. The Word never guides us contrary to Providence, and Providence does not guide us contrary to the Word or Spirit."41

Reason, or "spiritually enlightened judgment," must bow down before the Word.42

Knapp concludes his statement of the criteria of judgment by emphasizing that God's guidance: is persuasive, not characterized by clamor; allows time for testing; is open to the light, not afraid of testing. When the tests are thoroughly made, the believer presses ahead to do God's will, even if "Feelings may weep, perverted Scripture protest, . . . prejudices and preconceived notions be abandoned . . ."43

Helpful as these tests are, it is my tentative judgment that Knapp, in the years to come, did not hold steadfastly to the tests of Scripture, but allowed Pentecostal tornadoes, and floods of experience to become dominant.

The most worthy perspective comes from Wiley, who reflects the proper place of Scripture, inspired by, and continually attended by the Spirit's inner authenticating testimony, with the balancing of experience, reason and tradition. The larger movement seems to treat reason as of lesser significance than the other facets of the quadrilateral.
Finally, I may suggest the need for the movement to continue strengthening its trinitarian theology and its use of Scripture by a return to the Church Fathers, and by developing its hermeneutic broadly enough to incorporate the vast concerns of Biblical faith. I am at an end. Since prophecy is not my gift, I may here express the hope and expectation that these tasks will be carried on. I believe they will! Gott Hilf uns.

Notes
1 Paul Althaus, The Ethics of Martin Luther (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1972), pp. 3-24.

2 See Notes (Acts 2:1f).

3 Professor Harold Greenlee addresses the issue properly by asserting that "holiness is not a matter of mere proof texts but of the whole message of the Bible." Just as the outcropping of ore reveals potential underground strata, so texts point to a larger sub-stratum of holiness. See his "The Greek New Testament and the Message of Holiness," Further Insights Into Holiness, ed. Kenneth Geiger, (Kansas City: Beacon Hill Press, 1963), pp. 82-83.

4 Martin Wells Knapp, Holiness Triumphant; or, Pearls From Patmos: Being the Secret of Revelation Revealed (Cincinnati: M. W. Knapp, 1900).

5 Phineas Bresee, The Certainties of Faith (Kansas City: Nazarene Publishing House, 1958), pp. 37-38.

6 Ibid, pp. 86-87.

7 E. A. Girvin, Phineas F. Bresee: A Prince in Israel (Kansas City: Pentecostal Nazarene Publishing Co., 1916), pp. 386-387. Bresee loved Isaiah and Paul, considering the truths of the Gospel to be found in Isaiah.

8 Ibid, p. 388.

9 George B. Kulp, Truths that Transfigure: Faith Tonics (Cincinnati: God's Revivalist Press, 1927), pp. 22-23.

10 Ibid, p. 60.

11 Ibid, p. 197. On "Apostolic practice," Kulp, following Wesley, argued that the new relation between Church and State, wrought by Constantine and Licinius, and later, Theodosius, brought about the loss of apostolic power.

12 A. M. Hills, A Hero of Faith and Prayer; or, Life of Martin Wells Knapp (Cincinnati: Mrs. M. W. Knapp, 1902), pp. 149-150.

13 H. Richard Niebuhr, "Theological Unitarianisms," Theology Today (July, 1983), pp. 150-157, for comment on the over-emphasis on pneumatology.

14 See Steele, Love Enthroned, pp. 268-302. The quote is from an editorial in Zion 's Herald, written by Gilbert Haven.

15 Love Enthroned, p. 269.

16 Ibid., p. 276. In Milestone Papers (New York: Phillips and Hunt 1878), pp. 253-256, Steele described himself as a descendant of David Brainerd, and as one whose temperament was "naturally melancholic, an introspective self-anatomizing and self accusing style of piety characteristic of my ancestry."

17 Charles J. Fowler, Back to Pentecost (Philadelphia: Christian Standard Co., 1900), pp. 73-74.

18 George Hughes, Days of Power in the Forest Temple (Boston: John Bent and Co., 1873; reprint Salem, Ohio: The Allegheny Wesleyan Methodist Connection, 1975), p. 113. The camp meeting movement was declared by Hughes to be "pentecostal in character." Ibid., p. 422. Hughes stressed the removal of experimental standards in Methodism, i.e., the class meeting as reason for the camp meetings. Ibid, p. 10.

19 M. W. Knapp, Electric Shocks From Pentecostal Batteries, III (Cincinnati: M. W. Knapp, 1901), pp. 6-7, 16. Seth C. Rees described the occasional visits of the Father to this world, and the sending of His Son. Then Jesus sent the Spirit to abide forever. "So the Father and the Son came and went, and the Holy Ghost came to stay." Ibid, pp. 23-24. See M. W. Knapp, Holiness Triumphant; or Pearls From Patmos: Being the Secret of Revelation Revealed, pp.100-101 for both a Christological and a pneumatological emphasis. Knapp, in this study of the Book of Revelation employs the hermeneutic of holiness and Pentecost to interpret Revelation. Concerning Rev. 5:14, "And the four living creatures said 'Amen,' " Knapp writes: "This model holiness meeting in heaven was also characterized by demonstrations . . . Holiness meetings are demonstrative meetings." Throughout the book, holiness is the central theme and goal. "Our object . . . is to proclaim and magnify holiness as revealed in this 'Revelation,' " wrote Knapp.

20 Author's conversation with J. R. Mitchell, June 29, 1984, Wilmore, Kentucky.

21 See Electric Shocks, No. III, pp. 23-24, for Seth Rees' sermons which described "things that always go with the Holy Ghost or a Holy Ghost experience." (my emphasis).

22 See Electric Shocks From Pentecostal Batteries, I, II, III, IV, V.

23 Charles J. Fowler, Back to Pentecost (Philadelphia: Christian Standard Co.,1900), p. 7. Fowler was a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

24 Ibid, pp. 56-61, for Rees' sermon on the trials of the believers, and pp. 72-74 for the trial of Knapp for disorderly behavior, i.e., noisy demonstration, at the camp. See Electric Shocks No. V (Cincinnati: 1903), p. 25.

25 Wiley, Christian Theology, I, (Kansas City: Beacon Hill Press, 1940), pp. 146.

26 Wiley, I, pp. 143-46. Wiley here echoes Daniel Steele's distinction between the immediateness of religious consciousness and the mediateness of the objective world. See Steele, Love Enthroned (New York: Nelson and Nelson, 1875), p. 233. Wiley cites Steele at length in his discussion of reason. See Wiley, I, p. 145.

27 See Paul Bassett, "The Fundamentalist Leavening of the Holiness Movement," Wesleyan Theological Journal (Spring, 1978), pp. 81-85.

28 Wiley, I, p. 140.

29 W. T. Purkiser, ed., Exploring Our Christian Faith (Kansas City: Beacon Hill, 1960), p. 77

30 Robert E. Chiles, Theological Transition in American Methodism: 1790-1935 (New York: Abingdon,1965), pp.95-104. Hills cites Miley at least thirty-three times in his first 300 pages.

31 Donald W. Dayton, Discovering An Evangelical Heritage (New York: Harper, 1976), pp. 130-131.

32 Chiles' argument regarding Miley and Watson seems to apply here to Hills. See Chiles, p. 103.

33 Bassett, "The Fundamentalist Leavening of the Holiness Movement," p. 81.

34 Hodge insisted that "while the theology of reason derives aid from the impulses of emotion, it maintains its ascendancy over them. In all investigations for truth the intellect must be the authoritative power employing the sensibilities as indices of right doctrine, but . . . superintending them from its commanding elevation." Charles Hodge, "The Theology of the Intellect and That of the Feelings," in Mark A. Noll, ed., The Princeton Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1983), p. 194.

35 A. M. Hills, Fundamental Christian Theology (Pasadena: C. J. Kinne, 1931), pp. 16-20.

36 Purkiser, op. cit., p. 28.

37 Ibid, p. 30.

38 Ibid, pp. 68-69.

39 M. W. Knapp, Impressions (Cincinnati: Revivalist Publishing Co., 1892), pp. 52.

40 Ibid, p. 55.

41 bid, p. 59. Watson's work is not noted by Knapp.

42 Ibid, p. 63. Wesley is quoted by Knapp.

43 Ibid, pp. 64-68.

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