REIFICATION OF THE EXPERIENCE
OF
ENTIRE SANCTIFICATION
IN THE
AMERICAN HOLINESS MOVEMENT
by
Al Truesdale
The most distinguishing characteristic of the nineteenth century American holiness movement, and the denominations born out of the holiness revival, was and continues to be the teaching that entire sanctification ("the second blessing") can be obtained by grace through faith as a distinct second work of grace. The doctrine and experience of entire sanctification, its proponents believe, is as normative for Christian faith as regeneration.
Because holiness-movement proponents of entire sanctification typically have taught that it occurs instantaneously, and that the Holy Spirit witnesses to the event in the consciousness of the entirely sanctified person (if not immediately, then eventually),1 religious experience has played a pivotal role in the doctrine's formation and propagation. Indeed, experience has been at the center of the movement's exegesis, apologetic, and witness.
In light of the importance of experience in the holiness movement, one might expect that the existential diversity of human and religious life - the real and complex contexts of experience - would have received careful and sustained attention. One would think that proclamation of entire sanctification would be accompanied by sustained sensitivity to the psychical, social, religious, and domestic histories of those to whom the promise was addressed. The religious substance of the grace of entire sanctification, not the accidental existential forms of experience, should have provided the movement's determinative center.
To be existentially faithful, as it would have to be in order to authenticate and replicate itself, the idea of entire sanctification would have had to safeguard the doctrine's salvific intent, its decisiveness with regard to experience the existential realities of the persons to whom the promise of perfect love was addressed.
Reification as a Fallacy in the Holiness Movement
While in notable instances holiness proponents attempted to ground experience existentially, their efforts did not characterize the movement. Predominantly, the leaders of the holiness revival produced what Melvin Dieter describes as a new blend of "the American mind, prevailing revivalism, and Wesleyan perfectionism" (Dieter 3). They characteristically stated the doctrine of entire sanctification in forms that fostered a reification of experience, rather than an existential fidelity to it.
I am using the term "reification" in the same way that Alfred North Whitehead used "the fallacy of misplaced concreteness" in Process and Reality (1978, 18) and Science and the Modern World (1927, 64, 70).2 The fallacy of reification and the fallacy of misplaced concreteness are the same. The fallacy consists of treating an abstraction as a substantive. Whitehead resisted the reification of scientific and philosophical categories.
Characteristically, the doctrine and experience of entire sanctification as it has been presented by the American holiness movement constitutes a reification in the formal sense. Popularly and predominantly, a particular form for experiencing entire sanctification has been made synonymous with the doctrine itself. Experience as reified, not experience as existentially faithful and diverse, became the norm by which the promise of entire sanctification was offered, and by which one's personal appropriation of the promise was judged.3
No doubt many persons who sought entire sanctification under the influence of the holiness movement approximated the reification in their own experience without encountering existential dissonance. But this was not the case at all for many others; not only did the reification fall far short of existence, its imposition on existence was religiously harmful.
Whitehead's observation regarding the avoidability of reification in philosophy is equally true of theology: "It is not necessary for the intellect to fall into the trap [of reification], though...there has been a very general tendency to do so" (1927, 64). Predominantly, as can be amply demonstrated, the holiness movement did fall into this trap. In fact, Phoebe Palmer's paradigm for obtaining entire sanctification is best understood as an effort to overcome the discrepancy she experienced between the reification of sanctification to which she had been introduced and her own repeated failures to replicate the reification in her own religious experience (see Phoebe Palmer below).4
When describing the reification that occurred in the scientific scheme of the seventeenth century, and the "confusion" it fostered, Whitehead said that the error was "unintended." The same must be said of those who led the nineteenth century holiness revival and contributed to the reification it fostered. While I do not know precisely why the reification occurred, I think it is partly attributable to the polemical situation which either characterized the ecclesiastical context in which the holiness revival occurred or which its leaders believed characterized the context. The reification of experience is also attributable to the desire in the movement to safeguard "definiteness," to its commitment to unsophisticated biblical exegesis, and to its inadequate understanding of human psychology.5
Whatever the explanation(s), ironically, while the holiness movement staked its reason for being on the veracity of entire sanctification and on the doctrine's confirmation in human experience, the movement actually appealed not to experience in the concrete, but to experience as reified. Characteristically, the holiness movement was not existentially faithful.
If John Peters is correct, the holiness movement's reification of experience not only betrayed experience in many instances, but also departed significantly from what John Wesley thought regarding "experience" in the grace of "perfect love." "There is," Wesley said, "an irreconcilable variability in the operations of the Holy Spirit on the souls of men" (Wesley 298). Wesley was referring particularly to the manner of justification, but his counsel applies equally to the experience of perfect love. Although he thought there was a certain sequence associated with being made perfect in love, and that certain means were helpful, the pattern was always open to revision on the basis of experience.
Wesley insisted that "God is tied down to no rules."6 He understood the danger of and stoutly rejected reification. As early as 1745 he advised, "Have this [perfect] love, and it is enough" (Peters 56). Peters says that,
while Wesley was insistent on the pursuit of a definite goal - "holiness of heart and life"-he held no brief for orthodoxy of method. He found that the great majority of those claiming perfect love reported its reception as an instantaneous event. And so he preached it after that fashion. But if it could be realized in some alternative way, he had no intention of discounting it (Peters 56).
Peters concludes that for Wesley the nature and length of being made perfect in love "might well vary with the differences which are inescapable in human personality." The experience of perfect love was no "Procrustean bed into which all believers must be forced" (Peters 57).
Although the holiness movement relied in part on John Wesley, in clearly identifiable ways additional influences were expressed in this child, even though spokespersons for the holiness movement insisted that it had only one parent-John Wesley. Students of the movement now know better. We have already noted Melvin Dieter's description of the holiness movement as a "new blend" (Dieter, 3). Relying on that phrase, William Greathouse observes that
in being transplanted to America and growing up on American soil, the Methodist doctrine [of Christian perfection] has undergone certain modifications. Nineteenth-century revivalism sharpened the emphasis on "the second blessing" and stressed the urgency and possibility of being fully sanctified now. American pragmatism simplified the doctrine, stressing what "works" in Christian experience, sometimes at the expense of a more balanced scriptural presentation. Finally, theological concepts were introduced and incorporated that were not part of the original Wesleyan formulation. The resulting holiness message, while true to Wesley's teaching at most essential points, nevertheless has its own character and shape (Greathouse 292).
Americanization of the Wesleyan doctrine of Christian perfection did not lead necessarily to its reification, however, as Methodist theologian Randolph Foster demonstrated.
Randolph S. Foster: A Shunned Alternative to Reification
Randolph S. Foster (1820-1903) was a staunch Methodist exponent of the doctrine of entire sanctification. Timothy L. Smith identified him as "a pronounced friend of holiness" (Smith 19). Foster served as professor of systematic theology and president at Garrett Biblical Institute, and later at Drew Theological Seminary as its second president. He was elected bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, in 1872.
According to Harold Raser, Foster's influence on the American holiness movement was probably greater than that of Nathan Bangs. Although the influence of neither was determinative, Foster's writings fed more directly, and for a longer period of time, into the movement's formation. Raser describes the influence of Bangs and Foster as a "shadow presence" at best (Raser, 1995).
Foster's most complete statement regarding entire sanctification is The Nature and Blessedness of Christian Purity. After becoming a bishop, he also treated the subject rather extensively in Philosophy of Christian Experience, a series of eight lectures delivered at Ohio Wesleyan University. Christian Purity is a responsible and sustained apology for the doctrine of entire sanctification. Foster clearly embraces the doctrine as a second definite work of God's grace. He says it is the Christian's "duty and privilege" (Foster 1891, 160). But his thought on the subject is characterized by catholicity and moderation. It is wholly lacking in polemicism and defensiveness.
According to Foster, sanctification begins in regeneration and progresses toward entire sanctification, which is "an immediate or instantaneous, and distinct work, to be attained by the agency of the Holy Spirit through faith, at any time when the requisite faith is exercised, and to be enjoyed during life" (Foster 1851, 46). The doctrine, he insisted, "must be so taught as not to reflect discredit on regeneration on the one hand, or excite fanaticism on the other" (Foster 1891, 160).
In both books, Foster passionately urges Christians to seek the grace of entire sanctification. Without naming Phoebe Palmer, he strongly opposes the "altar theology" she developed. "What a misfortune," he said "that so great, so dangerous an error" as teaching people to believe they are sanctified, and they will be sanctified, "should be taught, in connection with so important a subject!" Palmer's altar theology leads to "spurious though sincere professions" (Foster, 1851, 132-133, 207).7 Contrary to Palmer's "altar theology," a Christian who hungers for "the perfecting of the soul in love" must not rest until the Holy Spirit witnesses that "the work is done" (Foster 1851, 132-133). "Let no one, at his peril, conclude that he has made [a] surrender [of all to God], and is consequently sanctified, without the requisite witness: he will only deceive himself, and receive no benefit" (Foster 1851, 130).
Before stating his position on entire sanctification, Foster systematically presents other Protestant understandings of sanctification. In each case he is fair and respectful, and attempts to show the continuities between his and contrasting understandings. He exhibits the disposition John Peters ascribed to John Wesley: "...that rare soul who could combine intensity of conviction with liberality of spirit" (Peters 56).
While urging Christians to enter the experience of Christian purity and not rest until the work has been done, Foster seems to avoid the fallacy of reification. In Philosophy of Christian Experience, regarding experience in general, he remarks that
every experience is colored by the subject of the experience. I mean by this that precisely the same experience reports itself differently in minds of dissimilar temperaments, degrees of intelligence, antecedent habits, prejudices, preconceptions, education, and ruling ideas. This fact must be taken account of in dealing with Christian experience (Foster 1891, 17).
As if contemplating the reification of experience that occurred in the holiness movement, Foster urges:
Let us beware that we fall not into the error of depending on forms and means. There is no doing without them, but in themselves they are nothing. They are to be received only as aids to saving, to sanctifying faith; as scaffolding about the firm wall of confiding trust. But our only help is in God, who gives efficiency to means (Foster 1891, 139).
Foster applied his rule to the experience of conviction, faith, repentance, pardon, regeneration, and entire sanctification (Foster 1891, 17). Further, even while urging Christians not to relent in their pursuit of "the higher grace," and after having given "advices" for seeking entire sanctification, Foster refuses to infringe on God's freedom to effect sanctifying grace in a manner most consonant with the seeker's dispositions. "The preceding advices," he says, "are only prescribed as means of assisting - as cooperating with the grace of God to bring the mind up to the point of faith - to prepare for this saving exercise.... With diligent application, and by Divine assistance, the work may soon be accomplished" (Foster 1851, 131).
Although the influence of a Methodist theologian such as Foster on the holiness movement should not be understated, the dominant understanding of entire sanctification advanced within the movement owed its origin much more to the holiness popularizers than to Methodism's systematic theologians. When one moves from Foster to the holiness popularizers, one notices that the existential sensitivity that marked John Wesley and Randolph Foster largely disappears. Characteristically, though not without significant exceptions, "the Procrustean bed" about which John Peters warned replaces the existential faithfulness that Wesley, Foster, and others exhibited. Instead, a constriction of experience replaces it. The word "characteristically" is an important qualifier. To indicate that reification was a monolithic phenomenon in the holiness movement would be erroneous. But reification, through the writings and preaching of many of the movement's spokespersons, did come to dominate the popular understanding of entire sanctification.
In the interest of "instantaneousness," the dynamic qualities of human life and religious experience retreated to the margins. Harold Raser offers insight regarding some of the changes that might have allowed this fallacy to occur. He observes that, while some of the "holiness partisans" retained a strong sense of connection with Methodist theologians such as Foster, Miley, and Curtis, most did not. Those who did not became more influential in shaping the holiness movement than those who did. The "Methodist connection" was joined more to popular Methodist religious writers than to the established theologians. Predominantly, the framers of the holiness movement developed their own distinctive forms for understanding and articulating the doctrine of entire sanctification (Raser 1995).
Major Exemplars of Reification
Let us examine some of the major voices in the holiness movement who both fostered and exemplified the reification of experience in the doctrine of entire sanctification. Melvin Dieter's (1980) and Timothy Smith's (1962) surveys of the leaders of the movement identify many formative voices. At the risk of omitting one person more strategic than another, and with the advice of Stan Ingersol (archivist for the Church of the Nazarene) and Harold Raser, I have chosen five leaders who played major roles in shaping the popular understanding of entire sanctification. They are representative, not exhaustive. Their articulation of entire sanctification reveals a contrast to the way Randolph Foster framed the doctrine. The dynamic and existential fidelity Foster evidenced largely disappears and is replaced by a preoccupation with "the blessing" or "the experience."
Quite unlike Foster, in notable instances the apologetic for entire sanctification rests on a depreciation of the doctrine of regeneration. One also notices the frequent omission of the careful theological balance and catholicity that mark Foster's writings. The published sermons and other writings of our figures evidence a polemical atmosphere in which constriction and reification thrive.
1. Henry Clay Morrison (1857-1942). Henry Clay Morrison of Kentucky was among those leaders in the holiness movement who refused to withdraw from the Methodist Church (in his case, the Methodist Episcopal Church, South) and opposed the formation of new holiness denominations. Morrison founded Asbury Theological Seminary and was twice president of Asbury College. He founded (1888) and edited the Pentecostal Herald. To provide identity for the holiness movement without separation from Methodism, Morrison led in establishing the Holiness Union (1904) which sought to unite the movement below the Mason-Dixon line.8
Morrison's Open Letters to the bishops, ministers and members of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, voice strong opposition to what he believed to be a betrayal of Methodist doctrine by the denomination. Polemical in tone, Morrison addressed the letters to "a backsliding church" which he hoped would repent of its apostasy and return with fervor to the doctrine of entire sanctification. By failing to support the doctrine as he believed the church should, the M. E. C., South, had abandoned the "old Methodist doctrine and experience" (Morrison [no date] Open, 32). Without qualification, Morrison identified the doctrine of entire sanctification as taught in the holiness movement with what John Wesley taught regarding perfect love. It involves "entire consecration" and "a definite baptism with the Holy Spirit." It is nothing less than "the sanctifying power of the Holy Ghost," salvation "from all sin." Entire sanctification is "a great heart experience of the perfect love of God," "full salvation from indwelling sin" and "the canaan experience" (Morrison Open 32, 45, 49, 86).
All of these themes continue in Baptism with the Holy Ghost. As at Pentecost, in the experience of entire sanctification the Holy Spirit "purifies believer's hearts and empowers them for service" (Morrison 1900, 4). The Spirit comes "suddenly upon...every humble, believing heart. ...tarry at the mercy seat in faithful prayer until you receive the gift of the Holy Spirit" (p. 18). The experience of entire sanctification comes as a "decisive, vivid, and clearly marked experience of the Spirit's enduement" (Morrison 1900, 18, 37).
In none of the Morrison material I have examined does he give attention to the impact one's psychical composition might have on how one receives entire sanctification. His own experience seems to be the governing paradigm for all seekers: "At that instant the Holy Ghost fell upon me.... I received my pentecost" (Morrison 1903, 40-41).
Morrison thought that he had once lost the experience of entire sanctification because he had failed to testify immediately to its occurrence. So he insisted that those who receive the grace of entire sanctification testify immediately, lest they too lose "the experience of full salvation" (Morrison 1903, 44-45). Consequently, there is an absence of any appreciation for the diverse existential factors that would rightfully condition the modes in which entire sanctification might occur, or that might affect the readiness of one to testify to perfect love. If what I have read from Morrison is representative, then in him the process of reification had a strong exponent. In his writings the "experience" of entire sanctification seems to be characteristically stereotypical.
2. Beverly Carradine (1848-1919). Beverly Carradine, "a man of a singularly sweet disposition" (Harmon 416), was one of the most prominent Methodist holiness evangelists. His labors in the holiness revival ranged from coast to coast and border to border. Under his ministry, J. O. McClurkan, who figured prominently in the holiness movement in Tennessee, sought and found entire sanctification (Smith 181). Carradine, like Morrison, opposed forming new denominations out of the holiness movement: "No greater calamity could befall the holiness movement" (Carradine 1897, 20).
One of the more striking aspects of Carradine's teaching about entire sanctification is his depreciation of the doctrine of regeneration. He characteristically predicated the need for entire sanctification on what he judged to be a deficiency in justification. This is spelled out in his The Better Way (1896). In contrast to justification, entire sanctification is "distinct from the first, and [is] unquestionably profounder and more radical in its nature" (Carradine 1896, 3). For Carradine, entire sanctification is "a special salvation" that should be distinguished from mere salvation: "...to a great multitude, [Jesus] is a Savior, and, farther still, a special Savior to them that believe. The sanctified understand this special salvation" (1896, 11).
Carradine's understanding of entire sanctification lacks any substantial appreciation for the Wesleyan doctrine of initial sanctification, or of the organic relationship between the two so evident in Foster's Christian Purity. Carradine seemed to miss completely the Protestant insistence that "justification by grace through faith alone" continues in Christian life as the sole warrant for acceptance before God. He was by no means alone among the holiness popularizers who departed from the Reformation on this score.
Carradine's depreciation of regeneration became a target of criticism in the 1896 Pickett-Smith debate that occurred in Terrell, Texas (both ministers were members of the M. E. Church, South). M. A. Smith saw Carradine's depreciation of regeneration as one good reason to question the theological foundations of entire sanctification. Smith provided withering documentation for what amounts to a charge of heresy against some of the holiness movement's advocates. He included Carradine (The Smith-Pickett Debate).
Also, the biblical exegesis Carradine uses to support entire sanctification often exhibited a carelessness that too often has plagued the holiness movement. For example, Carradine forces a distinction between "peace with God" (Rom. 5:1) and "the peace of God" (Rom. 4:7). The former, he said, describes justification and regeneration, while the latter describes and establishes entire sanctification (Carradine 1896, 30).
Astonishingly, Carradine associates justification with "the old covenant" and sanctification with "the new covenant" (1896, 24). Pardon can come through the writings of David, the prophets, and John the Baptist. "But a blessing called 'perfection,' a completing, perfecting work of grace in the soul, is brought to the church by the Savior." Christ brought to his people "the better covenant." Carradine even calls entire sanctification "the second covenant experience" (Carradine 1896, 17, 27). The "second covenant" experience is necessary because the old covenant could not make the worshipper perfect. "All of this is well understood by the regenerated man, who feels that, child of God as he is, yet regeneration is not the blessing of Christian perfection; that the 'old man' is not yet purged or burned out with the baptism of fire..." (Carradine 1896, 24).
In Carradine one finds reification running almost unbridled. His description of entire sanctification is largely a high and harmful abstraction from the plane of ordinary human existence. While he voices sensitivity to how "moods, affinities and impressions" affect those who are entirely sanctified, his sensitivity evaporates in the heat of zealous abstractions. As he describes it, life in "this blessed experience" (1896, 27) lacks any reference to the "wear and tear" of ordinary human life. According to him, those who are in the experience of entire sanctification should never fret, doubt, or fear. If sanctification does anything, it "delivers us from fear" (1896, 188, 189). And when inbred sin is "burned out...we cease of course to worry" (1897, 184-199). Further, "in the better covenant of sanctification...there is a constant, conscious stream of life, strength, and health in the Spirit; a welling-up joy in the heart; freshness in the experience; hallelujahs in the soul and on the lip; and Christ and heaven everywhere." "Nothing," he says, "can disturb" the peace of one who is entirely sanctified (1896, 27-28, 30).
Though no doubt well intended, Carradine's description of the life of Christian holiness reveals a lamentable misunderstanding of both life and the grace of God. It is all too characteristic of the profiles of Christian holiness that came to dominate the holiness movement. Tragically, the misunderstanding led to widespread frustration over failure to reconcile psychological diversity and the complexities of human existence with the reification emphasis the movement generated.
3. Martin Wells Knapp (1835-1901). The name of Methodist minister Martin Wells Knapp figures prominently in the history of the holiness movement. He, along with Seth Rees, was co-founder of the Pilgrim Holiness Church. Perhaps he is best known as the founder of God's Bible School in Cincinnati. He was a strong advocate for the place of women in ministry and a principal supporter of the General Holiness League (1891). As was characteristic of most of the holiness movement, Knapp equated entire sanctification with the baptism with the Holy Spirit. Entire sanctification is the event of the "incoming and indwelling, and cleansing and filling of the Holy Ghost." The purifying fire of the Holy Ghost "eliminates all the dross of inbred sin, expels the seed of sin's disease, ejects the 'old man' of indwelling evil, and fully [and instantaneously] sanctifies the soul" (Knapp 1898, 16-17).
As was often true of holiness proponents, Knapp uncritically mixed insistence on the internal witness of the Holy Spirit as an unfailing concomitant of entire sanctification (Knapp 1898, 27)9 with Phoebe Palmer's altar theology. Palmer did not customarily associate entire sanctification with baptism with the Holy Spirit, and, contrary to Knapp, she did not believe that the witness of the Spirit is a direct and internal witness to the believer's consciousness (Knapp, The Double Cure, 74-75). But according to Knapp's mixture, seekers after holiness should "claim the double cure" on the basis of altar theology, and then anticipate with confidence the Spirit's internal witness at a later time (Knapp 1898, 16-17).
Like W. B. Godbey, Knapp completely missed the conflict between Wesley and Palmer regarding the witness of the Spirit in entire sanctification. Apparently they, like many others, uncritically identified Wesley's idea of the witness of the Spirit with Palmer's notion of assurance which, for her, was completely incidental to entire sanctification.
To confuse matters even more, Knapp, along with Beverly Carradine, taught that there is a sharp distinction between entire consecration and entire sanctification. He tells us that "men can be perfectly consecrated all their lives and never know the blessing of sanctification." Only in the latter is faith operative; apparently the former is purely a human accomplishment. More pointedly, as Knapp describes faith, it too seems to be a human effort. In any case, both "the battle of consecration" and "the battle of faith" must precede "the perfect victory of sanctification" (Knapp, The Double Cure, 75).10
Knapp shows some appreciation for the existential diversity among those seeking the grace of entire sanctification, for it is "preceded and followed by gradual unfoldings and enlightenments." But there are limits to diversity in experience, for entire sanctification is, in the very nature of the case, "wrought in an instant." Finally, after granting some place to dynamic, reification reigns. "Experience" means one thing, and one thing only: momentary, immediate and instantaneous, "always instantaneous" (Knapp 1898, 27). I have found no more unqualified expression of the reification of experience than the following: "...the experience of all believers in all ages, of all names and ranks, which have verified its reality [the baptism with the Holy Spirit, entire sanctification], like a mighty Niagara, unitedly and overwhelmingly testify to [its instantaneousness]" (Knapp 1898, 27).
4. L. L. Pickett (1859-1928). L. L. Pickett founded one of the more influential publishing companies in the holiness movement-the Pentecostal Publishing Company-and moved it from South Carolina to Louisville, Kentucky, around the turn of the century. In addition to his influence as a publisher, Pickett was also a prominent holiness evangelist in the South. Next to his reputation as a publisher of holiness literature, he is probably best known for the debate, referred to earlier, between himself and M. A. Smith in Terrell, Texas, August 31-September 3, 1896. They debated the following proposition: "The Scriptures teach that entire sanctification is a work of cleansing wrought in the soul subsequent to regeneration" (Pickett 1897).
The debate provides excellent insight into the controversy over entire sanctification then occurring in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. Smith's objection to "the second blessing movement" derives as much from his belief that the holiness proponents lacked theological balance as it does from his direct disagreement with the idea of entire sanctification. His attack goes straight to the exegesis he believes the "second blessing" proponents use to establish their position. He accuses them of establishing the doctrine (he says they have a "theory," not a "doctrine") of entire sanctification as a second definite work of grace on highly questionable exegetical deductions (Pickett 1897, 25ff).11
In the debate, Smith also excoriates Pickett and his peers for forcing regeneration to pay the price for entire sanctification: "The whole system of second blessingism," Smith charged, "is built upon the idea that the regenerate soul is unclean, impure, and unprepared for heaven: hence it needs this second work of cleansing" (Pickett 1897, 28). To establish his charge, Smith cites eighteen instances from the writings of Pickett, Carradine, and Godbey, all of whom display a clear departure from John Wesley and the Protestant Reformation by treating the new birth as inherently flawed or deficient. To the extent that Smith's attack is justifiable, the apologetic for entire sanctification rested on unstable foundations, foundations on which confusion and frustration in Christian life would predictably build.
Characteristic of the holiness proponents, for Pickett decisiveness with regard to entire sanctification (and justification) meant just one thing: momentary instantaneousness. The temporal factor was unambiguously constitutive of the doctrine's sine qua non: "Reader, do you know by happy experience what this entire sanctification is? If so, glory be to God for it! But if not, thank God it is your privilege this very moment" (Pickett, St. Paul, 26, 47).
In his description of "the sanctified heart," Pickett flirts with angelic perfection and marries reification: "The sanctified heart, being holy, is in perfect love and harmony with the perfectly holy law of the absolutely perfect and holy law giver. ...praise does not flatter, persecution does not discourage or deject" (Pickett, Holiness, 38).
5. William Baxter Godbey (1833-1920). No one in the American Holiness Movement was a more prolific writer (200+ titles), and few evangelists had more influence in the last quarter of the nineteenth century (Melvin E. Dieter, 117), than W. B. Godbey. Timothy Smith called Godbey "the quaint but scholarly evangelist of the holiness movement in the South" (Smith 156). Godbey was born in Pulaski County, Kentucky, then converted and called to preach while still a child.
In 1868, after having graduated from Georgetown College (KY), while serving as president of Harmonia College in Perryville, KY, and after having been ordained in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, Godbey professed the experience of entire sanctification. It came during a revival as an instantaneous "crisis" event (Hamilton 14). Thereafter, Godbey had no doubt about the doctrine of entire sanctification as an instantaneous, second definite work of grace, or about its biblical warrant: "Every New Testament writer is a perfectionist. The Bible is perfectionism" (Godbey 1886, 109).
For his teaching regarding entire sanctification, Godbey was chiefly dependent on Adam Clarke, Phoebe Palmer, and John A. Wood, whose selective treatment of Wesley regarding entire sanctification suited Godbey's dogmatic interests. According to Godbey's biographer, Barry Hamilton, Godbey caricatured Wesley's understanding of entire sanctification by developing a dogmatism regarding the doctrine that almost completely lacked dynamic (Hamilton 71).
Godbey's Commentary on the New Testament and his Translation of the New Testament provided widespread exegetical support for advocates of the doctrine of entire sanctification. Quoting him was considered by many an unquestionably sufficient biblical warrant for the doctrine. Hamilton says that providing an exegetical foundation "was his most important contribution to the theological resources of the Holiness Movement." Godbey's biblical exegesis in support of entire sanctification, Hamilton judges, was largely a combination of "Greek jargonizing and Methodist theologizing." Godbey was not a theologian, but "a preacher with an oversimplified approach to biblical and theological studies" (Hamilton 75-77).
Godbey employed Palmer's "altar theology" as the method for obtaining entire sanctification. As soon as a Christian completely consecrates to God, then, on the basis of God's promises, that Christian can then testify that entire sanctification has occurred (Hamilton 73). After stating Palmer's altar formula, Godbey concludes: "As your faith is, so be it unto you. If you have faith to be sanctified, you are sanctified" (Godbey 1886, 15).
Probably no one in the holiness movement surpassed Godbey in devaluing regeneration to make room for entire sanctification. Although he seemed to have some appreciation for initial sanctification, saying that entire sanctification completes God's work begun in regeneration (Godbey 1886, 71), his view of entire sanctification was constructed on an emaciated estimate of regeneration. He insisted, for instance, that regeneration is an insufficient basis for entrance into heaven (Godbey 1899). He introduced hierarchical distinctions among Christians: "The Bible addresses three classes-i.e., the guilty, the justified, and the sanctified. The first [are] altogether evil, the third [are] altogether pure, and the middle class [is] in a mixed state" (Godbey 1886, 9). In the merely regenerated Christian there resides a mixture of fear and love (Godbey 1886, 11-12).
In Godbey's view of consecration and entire consecration, Pelagianism and voluntarism run free. He advises that you get the "old man out of your heart, and the Holy Spirit will fill you in a hurry. ...be sure you are emptied of sin, and the Holy Spirit will do the filling" (Godbey 1886, 44). Even faith seems to be the result of human effort: "The Holy Spirit [sanctifies] through your [italics mine] faith" (Godbey 1899, 106). Godbey sends mixed messages regarding the relationship of Christ to entire sanctification. On the one hand, he indicates that Christ is unrelated: God established three distinct soteriological dispensations-Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Christ should be identified with justification and the Holy Spirit with entire sanctification (Godbey 1886, 9). On the other hand, Godbey is certain that Christ is the sanctifier (Godbey 1899, 106).
In Godbey's teaching regarding entire sanctification, reification is well developed. It is present as well-intended, but sterile dogmatism. Even though he gives notice that sanctified folk are not impeccable, not infallible, and can lose "the blessing," they nevertheless have a "complete Christian character." Once sanctified, Christians are to be like the apostles and disciples of Jesus after their Pentecost experience. In them there was never afterward "a trace of ambition, unbelief, or cowardice" (Godbey 1886, 19-20). Moreover, the "hallelujahs" of the sanctified have their "moorings so deep down in the soul that tempests may haul, thunders roar, cyclones sweep, and volcanoes blaze, but these hallelujahs just ring on" (Godbey 1886, 26). At no time since his entire sanctification seventeen years earlier, he says in commending his experience to others, has he undergone any "downs" (Godbey 1886, 82). The entirely sanctified will encounter "no doubt [and] nothing ambiguous or negative" (Godbey 1886, 26). Pushing reification even further, Godbey assures us that for sanctified folk "even disappointment, insults and all sorts of calamities" will give them "no sorrow" and they will "care nothing" about what people say about them (Godbey 1899, 110).
Throughout Christian Perfection and Holiness or Hell? Godbey offers as authentic only one experiential pattern by which to receive entire sanctification. Reification is never questioned (see especially Christian Perfection 26).
6. Elmer Ellsworth Shelhamer (1869-1947). Before turning to consideration of Phoebe Palmer, I take note of an influential holiness evangelist in the generation immediately following Morrison, Knapp, and Godbey. E. E. Shelhamer was a Free Methodist evangelist who was influential not only because of his preaching, but also because of his numerous books, a number of which are plentifully supplied with previously published sermons. Shelhamer appears here because his treatment of the experience of entire sanctification represents a noticeable departure from the reification of experience we have observed in Godbey, et. al. The departure is appreciable, but by no means complete. When Shelhamer discusses the normative dispositional and behavioral characteristics of those who are entirely sanctified, elements of reification are still obvious (Shelhamer, 1932, 155-56).
Shelhamer is also important because he points toward an alternative to Palmer's way of managing the existential frustration that reification breeds. He stoutly criticizes what he thinks are the errors associated with "altar theology," although he doesn't call Palmer by name.12 "Altar theology," he charges, promotes a "cheap holiness" plagued by a faulty understanding of faith. It fails to confront fully the damage done to one's relationship with God by the "carnal nature." It prematurely terminates the process of dying to one's self-sovereignty. Perhaps most importantly, it does away with the need to wait patiently until there is unquestionable certainty that "the infilling of the Holy Ghost," "the fiery baptism," has occurred (Shelhamer 1932, 72).
Unlike the five holiness leaders we have observed so far, Shelhamer manifested appreciable caution and existential sensitivity when urging believers to seek the grace of entire sanctification In Pointed Preaching for Practical People, Shelhamer sounds a note that would have seemed strange to Godbey. "No one," he says, "should seek holiness of heart simply because there is such a grace." Nor should one seek entire sanctification simply because "others profess it," one's denomination teaches it, or an evangelist urges it. Prematurely urging a person to seek and profess entire sanctification will result in confusion and shallowness (Shelhamer 1932, 65-66).
Shelhamer was aware of and alarmed over, "certain tests" that some preachers use to help persons deduce that they have been truly sanctified. Pursuit of and testimony to entire sanctification apart from an internally compelling conviction usually leads to cycles of frustration. After the "hurrah" dies down it leaves in its wake "a dissatisfied soul. Then he concludes [that] he has lost the blessing, or goes against his inward feelings and professes more loudly than before." Persons who become frustrated because they cannot approximate the reification should never be censured. Instead, he says to those who perpetuate the reification, "censure yourself" (Shelhamer 1932, 65-66, 71).13
Phoebe Palmer (1807-1874): A Creative Detour
Without Phoebe Palmer's influence, the American holiness movement would not have achieved the significance it did as an American religious movement. As a theological formulator, and directly through her teaching, she was indeed one of the more important-perhaps the most important-figures.
In the mid-1840s,14 Palmer began to teach what came to be known as the "altar theology," what Harold Raser calls a "theology of holiness." It was narrow in focus rather than comprehensive, but "systematically arrived at, and systematically communicated" (Raser 1987, 151). According to Raser, Palmer's "altar theology" was the development of two basic convictions: (1) "it is absolutely necessary that you should be holy if you would see God"; and (2) "holiness is a blessing which it is now your privilege and also your duty to enjoy" (Raser 1987, 151, 171-175).
Greathouse summarizes this way Palmer's "altar theology:" it began by "...using Paul's figure of placing oneself as a 'living sacrifice' on God's altar [Rom 12:1] to represent consecration. The altar, she believed, was Christ the Sanctifier himself. The New Testament declares that 'the altar sanctifieth the gift.' The Christian who is consciously 'all on the altar' may at that moment claim the blessing of entire sanctification" (Greathouse 299).
Palmer bore witness that, by "the most unequivocal Scriptural testimony," she "laid herself under the most sacred obligation to believe that the sacrifice became 'holy and acceptable,' and virtually the Lord's property, even by virtue of the sanctity of the altar upon which it was laid..." (Palmer 1848, 45, 87). She then concluded: "Tis done! Thou has promised to receive me! Thou canst not be unfaithful! Thou dost receive me now! From this time henceforth I am thine - wholly thine!" Palmer's certainty rested on her confidence in the promises of the New Testament, not on any consciousness of the Holy Spirit's having sanctified her.
According to Raser, Palmer is not always clear regarding the witness of the Spirit.15 At least predominantly, her witness refers to unflinching confidence in the promises of the New Testament regarding entire sanctification. Rob Staples and Ivan Howard have pinpointed the important distinction between John Wesley and Phoebe Palmer in this regard. For Wesley, the witness of the Word cannot be separated from the inner testimony of the Holy Spirit; the Word has no "witness" apart from the Spirit. "There is," Staples says of Wesley, "no power or profit in reading or hearing the Scripture apart from the accompanying witness of the Spirit of God" (Staples 99). By contrast, in Palmer's altar theology the balance between Word and Spirit disappears:
Whereas Wesley had taught that entire sanctification is evidenced by the witness of the Spirit, Phoebe Palmer taught that it evidenced by the witness of the Word (the Word meaning, in her case, a written statement found in the Scriptures...). The Word says "the altar sanctifies the gift," therefore when we have brought the gift of ourselves to the altar we know that we are sanctified, without the need for any other evidence, either sensible or supernatural (Staples, 105).16
In the act of believing in the written Word of God, one "has the witness." The witness of the Spirit is "the internal consciousness that we do believe" the "communication of the Holy Spirit through the written word" (Palmer 1854, 242). Palmer thought that a feeling of assurance might come later, but it is not at all essential for entire sanctification, and it should not be identified as the witness of the Holy Spirit (Raser 1995).17
Palmer's theology of holiness may or may not be exegetically and theologically defensible. But this much Palmer does make clear in The Way of Holiness: the "altar theology" resolved the lengthy and intense frustrations of a diligent seeker after entire sanctification who had been unable to conform her own experience to the popularized "Wesleyan perfectionism" to which she had been exposed (Palmer 1848, 57).18
The "Wesleyan perfectionism" in which Palmer had been nurtured was influenced to some extent by the formal theological tradition of John Wesley, John Fletcher, and Adam Clarke. But she was shaped mostly by an informal popularization of Wesleyanism that appeared in the teachings of Hester Ann Rogers (1756-1794), whom Raser credits as being the source of Palmer's "altar" principle (Raser 1987, 247), and William Carvosso (1750-1834), among others.
Raser's treatment of Rogers and Carvosso is most revealing. For prototypes of the holiness movement's reification of experience, one need look no further than to them (Raser 1987, 245-254). All of the primary and secondary constitutive elements are there: (1) a rigidity with regard to the temporal form for experiencing entire sanctification; (2) faith as an act of the human will, graciously aided by God to be sure, but in its very essence more a human response to the grace of God than a gift from God; (3) faith as belief in rational propositions (the reasonability of faith) from which predictable and contractual conclusions can be drawn; (4) absence of any sense of growth in sanctification leading up to entire sanctification; (5) a sense of urgency that takes no account of the seeker's religious and psychical biography; (6) unsophisticated biblical exegesis; (7) contrary to John Wesley, the insistence that one give immediate witness to entire sanctification lest it be lost; and (8) the absence of theological comprehensiveness (a reductionism with regard to theological interests).
Taken together, these eight elements largely formed the religious and theological atmosphere in which Phoebe Palmer struggled to gain certainty regarding her own entire sanctification (Palmer's religious struggle began before her marriage to Walter and endured "with intermittent intensity for over a decade," Raser 1987, 34). By following the path popular Wesleyanism then offered, Palmer could not gain the certainty others professed and told her she should have. A few years before the end of her struggle (1835), a frustrated Palmer wrote: "I am sure I would not knowingly keep back anything from God. But alas! There must be some hindrance..." (Raser 1987, 38).19
Palmer's anguished failure sent her in search of a "shorter" and more obtainable way. Only then was she able to see "her error regarding holiness as an attainment beyond her reach..." (Palmer 1848, 25). Happily, beyond her failure to appropriate the reified form of entire sanctification that she had inherited, there lay peace:
It was not until [I] was enabled, through grace, to resolve on ceasing to have [my] mind influenced in its decisions by a reference to the experience of others, and determined, with a resoluteness not to be shaken, to take the Bible as [my] Counselor, that [I] was enabled to make much progress in the divine life (Palmer 1848, 57).
Palmer did not simply correct popular Wesleyanism. In important respects she replaced it by setting aside its reification of experience and inserting a predictable theological formula that minimized (if not negated) experience and could not fail to deliver certainty. In the replacement there were no experiential patterns to approximate and no hurdles to overcome. Her "shorter way" arose out of existential frustration and she eagerly offered it to other weary travelers.
Ironically, predominantly in the subsequent holiness movement, Palmer's "victory" over reification and the prevalent "reification" were often uncritically mixed. Most of the leading holiness popularizers seemed not to recognize any conflict between Wesley and Palmer over the doctrine of entire sanctification.
Conclusion
Stewards of a religious or theological tradition who believe that there were justifiable reasons for the tradition's emergence, and who believe that it can have a viable future, cannot afford the fatal luxury of embracing the tradition uncritically. The life of a good steward over a theological tradition will be marked by both immediacy and distance, both sic et non.
The American holiness movement arose out of an authentic hunger for holy living, in the church and in the world. As an expression of that hunger and confidence, the holiness movement was magnanimous. But in significant ways its foundations were not sufficient for the edifice that needed to be constructed.
For the doctrine of entire sanctification to have a healthy future, its friends will have to cast it in much larger terms-existentially, theologically, ethically, and ecumenically - than did most of the early shapers of the holiness movement.
Endnotes
1. As we shall see, for Phoebe Palmer the internal witness of the Holy Spirit was not a component of entire sanctification.
2. Whitehead said that the fallacy represents a failure by philosophy (or theology) "to base...thought upon the most concrete elements of our experience." A reification, he notes, is devoid of subjective immediacy. It exhibits "the accidental error of mistaking the abstract for the concrete" (Science and the Modern World, 64, 70). When practiced, the fallacy attributes objective substantiality to an idea or abstraction. It is the practical equivalent of "hypostatize."
3. Although the reification of experience had numerous contributing elements, its center had principally to do with temporality, and secondarily with dispositional and behavioral considerations.
4. An important effort in the holiness movement to correct the fallacy of reification, and to establish existential fidelity while maintaining theological substance, was made by another woman, Mildred Bangs Wynkoop in A Theology of Love: The Dynamic of Wesleyanism (Wynkoop 1972), a work praised by some, and condemned by others as an attack on the doctrine of entire sanctification.
5. An investigation into the epistemology of experience that marked the Holiness movement would also provide some answers.
6. As quoted by John L. Peters (1956, 56). Peters does not cite his Wesley source. Peters' discussion of Wesley's breadth regarding experience is highly instructive (55-57).
7. See Ivan Howard's discussion of Foster's assessment of altar theology, "Wesley Versus Phoebe Palmer: An Extended Controversy," Wesleyan Theological Journal 6:1 (Spring 1971), 31-40.
8. In 1896 Morrison was briefly expelled from the Methodist Church for conducting a meeting at Dublin, Texas, in spite of protests from the presiding elder and the local pastor (Smith 1962, 42).
9. Knapp assured seekers that entire sanctification should not be separated from a clear and immediate witness to the purifying fire of the Holy Ghost (Lightening Bolts, 16-17). Ivan Howard makes note of the uncritical mixture of Wesley and Palmer in the holiness movement: "Wesley's and Mrs. Palmer's views are combined at times in preaching in such a way that the seeker is assured of the immediate witness of the Spirit if he comes and seeks, and after a rather brief season of seeking is told to take it by faith. Wesley never did this" (Howard 37).
10. Perhaps all this could be consistently reconciled in Knapp's mind, but surely an anxious and frustrated seeker after entire sanctification could be forgiven if he or she were to lapse into confused resignation.
11. An example of what Smith objects to is located in Pickett's St. Paul on Holiness where he uses 1 Thess. 2:10 to teach entire sanctification. In that verse, according to Pickett, Paul unambiguously professed the experience of entire sanctification, just as Pickett taught it (Pickett, no date, St Paul on Holiness, 15).
12. According to Stan Ingersol, the perspective of Robert Lee Harris, founder of the New Testament Church of Christ, was very similar to Shelhamer's perspective. There was the same blend of legalism on the one hand, and opposition to altar theology, on the other. "Harris published a handful of issues of The Guide, his paper, in which he copied plentifully from The Free Methodist and The Earnest Christian (the latter was edited as a privately published paper by B. T. Roberts, the Free Methodist founder). Among the Free Methodist sources reprinted by Harris in The Guide is a critique of 'altar theology'" (quoted from a letter to me from Stan Ingersol, August 1, 1995.)
13. I find Shelhamer's sensitivity somewhat surprising, and perhaps I should not. My reason is that Shelhamer was quite "legalistic" in his expectations regarding behavior and ethics. Bruce Taylor, retired district superintendent in the Church of the Nazarene, told me of his close observations of Shelhamer when Taylor was a student at God's Bible School. Taylor remembers Shelhamer as "rigid and legalistic" with regard to how "sanctified folk" should behave. On one occasion Taylor was serving food in the president's dinning room. Upon offering coffee to Shelhamer, the evangelist answered rather gruffly, "No thank you, I'm sanctified." Seated next to Shelhamer was another well-known holiness evangelist, C. W. Ruth. No sooner had Shelhamer announced his reason for rejecting coffee than Ruth responded loudly, "Give it to me!"
14. According to Harold Raser, Phoebe Palmer's "altar theology" was present in "seed form" as early as 1841. It was "clearly in hand" by the mid-1840s (Raser interview, 1995). The Way of Holiness was first published in 1842, and Entire Devotion to God in 1845.
15. Raser says that later in life (1850s), Palmer, in response to her critics, began to use Spirit baptism language. In the 1860s she spoke extensively of the baptism with the Holy Spirit. But Spirit baptism language refers neither to the "witness of the Spirit" in entire sanctification, nor to the incidental "assurance" of entire sanctification (Raser 1987, 186-191, 197-198, 271-274, 296-297). Raser suggests that, without Palmer's intending it, the baptism of the Holy Spirit began to sound like a third work of grace. Raser thinks that this development helped lay the groundwork for "the third work of grace" in the Pentecostal wing of the holiness movement (1995 interview).
Donald Dayton also makes note of Palmer's importance for the emergence of Pentecostalism. He remarks that in The Guide to Holiness, Pentecostal imagery, and even the identification of entire sanctification with Pentecost, occurs (The Roots of Pentecostalism, Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1987, 75).
16. Staples concludes his judgment: "Thus with one bold stroke Phoebe Palmer had cut through the prolonged search and struggle which often characterized the early Methodists as they traversed the path toward perfection. She had shortened to 'nothing flat' the time one must wait for the assurance of his/her sanctification. No supernatural evidence, no 'inward impression on the soul,' no empirical fruit of the Spirit, lay across the threshold which one must cross to enter in to a state of entire sanctification. One only needed the Scriptural promise..." (105). Without using the language of "reification," Staples concludes that, among other consequences, Palmer's departure from Wesley "opened the way for the structure of the doctrine of holiness (or what Wesley called its "circumstance") to become prominent [in the Holiness movement], almost overshadowing the substance" (106).
17. Ivan Howard has traced the confusion in Methodism that followed Palmer's introduction of altar theology. Theologians John Miley, Daniel Steele, S. A. Keen and Hannah Smith agreed with Palmer. Randolph Foster, Nathan Bangs, and Miner Raymond thought "altar theology" to be spurious (Howard, 36-37). Bangs cited Wesley and Fletcher in support of his teaching that the believer must have the internal evidence of the Holy Spirit that the work of sanctification has been done (Raser 1987, 272).
18. This is an underlying thesis in Raser's biography of Phoebe Palmer, a thesis more explicitly set forth in my conversations with him (Raser 1995). Raser notes that as a child Palmer had been unable to gain certainty regarding regeneration. The absence of such certainty contributed significantly to her struggles regarding entire sanctification (Raser 1987, 34ff).
19. Raser (1987, 38) quotes Rev. Richard Wheatly (who is quoting Palmer), The Life and Letters of Mrs. Phoebe Palmer (New York: Palmer and Hughes, 1876. No page given).
WORKS CITED
Books
Bassett, Paul and Greathouse, William. 1985. Exploring Christian Holiness, Vol. 2. Kansas City, MO: Beacon Hill Press.
Carradine, Beverly. 1896. The Better Way. Cincinnati, OH: Martin Wells Knapp, Publisher of Gospel Literature.
________. 1897. The Sanctified Life. Cincinnati, OH: Martin Wells Knapp, Pentecostal Publishing Co.
Dieter, Melvin E. 1980. The Holiness Revival of the Nineteenth Century. Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press.
Foster, Randolph. 1851. The Nature and Blessedness of Christian Purity. New York: Lane and Scott.
________. 1891. Philosophy of Christian Experience. New York: Hunt and Eaton.
Godbey, William Baxter. 1886. Christian Perfection. Louisville, KY: Pentecostal Publishing Co.
________. 1899. Holiness or Hell?. Louisville, KY: Pentecostal Publishing Co.
Hamilton, Barry W. 1994. William Baxter Godbey: Pioneer of the American Holiness Movement. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Dissertation Services. Ph.D. Dissertation, Drew University.
Harmon, Nolan B., ed. 1974. The Encyclopedia Of World Methodism. 1:416. Nashville: The United Methodist Publishing Company. "Carradine, Beverly."
Knapp, Martin Wells. 1898. Lightening Bolts from the Sky. Cincinnati, OH: The Revivalist.
________. No Date. The Double Cure. Cincinnati, OH: God's Revivalist Office.
________. 1897. The Sanctified Life. Cincinnati, OH: Martin Wells Knapp, Pentecostal Publishers.
Morrison, Henry Clay. 1900. Baptism With the Holy Ghost. Louisville, KY: Pentecostal Publishing Co.
________. 1903. Life Sketches and Sermons. Louisville, KY: Pentecostal Publishing Co.
________. No Date. Open Letters to the Bishops, Ministers, and Members of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. Louisville, KY: Pentecostal Publishing Company.
Palmer, Phoebe. [1848] 1854. Faith and its effects: Fragments from my Portfolio. New York: Published for the Author [1848] 1854.
________. 1848. The Way of Holiness: Notes by the Way. Salem, OH: Schmul Publishing Co., Inc. First published 1848, the 1867 edition.
Peters, John L. 1956. Christian Perfection and American Methodism. Nashville: Abingdon Press.
Pickett, L. L., ed. 1897. The Pickett-Smith Debate on Entire Sanctification. Louisville, KY: Pickett Publishing Company.
________. No Date. St. Paul on Holiness. Louisville: Pentecostal Publishing Company.
________. No Date. Holiness: The Doctrine, the Experience, the Practice. Louisville, KY: Pickett Publishing Co.
Raser, Harold E. Raser. 1987. Phoebe Palmer: Her Life and Thought. Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press.
Shelhamer, Elmer Ellsworth. 1932. Pointed Preaching for Practical People. Cincinnati, OH: God's Bible School and Revivalist.
Smith, Timothy L. 1962. Called Unto Holiness: The Story of the Nazarenes: The Formative Years. Kansas City, MO: Nazarene Publishing House.
Wesley, John. 1931. The Letters of the Reverend John Wesley, VII, ed., John Telford. London: The Epworth Press.
Wheatly, Richard. 1876. The Life and Letters of Mrs. Phoebe Palmer. New York: Palmer and Hughes. As quoted by Raser, 1987, 38.
Whitehead, Alfred N. 1978. Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology. Corrected edition. New York: Macmillan Pub. Co.
________. 1927. Science and the Modern World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wynkoop, Mildred Bangs. 1972. A Theology of Love: The Dynamic of Wesleyanism. Kansas City, MO: Beacon Hill Press of Kansas City.
Articles
Howard, Ivan. 1971. "Wesley Versus Phoebe Palmer: An Extended Controversy." Wesleyan Theological Journal. 6:1 (Spring 1971), 31-40.
Staples, Rob L. 1986. "John Wesley's Doctrine of the Holy Spirit." Wesleyan Theological Journal. 21:1, 2 (Spring-Fall 1986), 91-115.
Interview
Raser, Harold. 1995. Interview with Harold Raser, Professor of American Christianity, Nazarene Theological Seminary. Interviewed by Al Truesdale.
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