7
believer is a necessity.
38
Rather than seeking for entire sanctification, Pentecostals seek
for baptism in the Spirit.
39
The result of this Spirit baptism is empowerment for service
(rather than the Wesleyan concept of perfection in love).
40
Stanley Horton summarizes
Pentecostal sanctification teaching by explaining that baptism in the Spirit is an event
subsequent to and distinct from justification; it empowers the individual for various types
of Christian service; and it is a blessing that should be sought by all believers.
41
Again, we see the necessity for a post-conversion experience. We also note that
the link between justification and sanctification is only a possibility based upon a
believer's decision to seek baptism in the Spirit.
Keswick Sanctification
Like Pentecostal sanctification Keswick theology shares many similarities with
the Wesleyan holiness movement.
42
One example of this similarity is that it views
sanctification and justification as two distinct gifts from God to be received in separate
acts of faith. Believers receive the gift of sanctification through a "crisis" decision.
43
Before this "crisis" decision takes place, believers find themselves in the position of the
"carnal Christian." After this decision they enjoy the "victorious life" in which the
believers' spiritual nature is able to counteract the sinful nature so that they can live on
the plane of victory and receive the "fullness of the Spirit."
44
Thus, the result of this post-
conversion experience of "crisis" is that believers can enjoy "consistent success in
resisting temptation to violate deliberately the known will of God."
45
Keswick shares similarities with both the Wesleyan and Pentecostal models in its
emphasis on a post-conversion experience as a necessity for "victorious" living. The
obedience one would expect to see in the life of the sanctified believer is only a
38
Charles Edwin Jones, Perfectionist Persuasion: The Holiness Movement and American
Methodism, 1867-1936, ATLA Monograph Series, vol. 5 (Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 1974),
4-5.
39
Timothy L. Smith, "The Doctrine of the Sanctifying Spirit: Charles G. Finney's Synthesis of
Wesleyan and Covenant Theology," Wesleyan Theological Journal 13 (Spring 1978): 100-103, and
Frederick Dale Bruner, A Theology of the Holy Spirit: The Pentecostal Experience and the New Testament
Witness (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1970), 38.
40
Stanley M. Horton, "The Pentecostal Perspective," in Five Views of Sanctification (Grand
Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1987), 130. Although he was not a Pentecostal, R. A. Torrey, The
Baptism with the Holy Spirit, 6
th
ed. (London: James Nisbet & Co., Limited, 1905), 13, also argued for this
meaning of Spirit baptism. This was a common theme among most American revivalists at the turn of the
century. Also see Douglas Robinson, "The `Ordo Salutis' and Charismatic Movement," Churchman 97
(1983): 233.
41
Horton, 128-34. Howard M. Ervin, Conversion-Initiation and the Baptism in the Holy Spirit. A
Critique of James D. G. Dunn's Baptism in the Holy Spirit (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, Inc.,
1984), vii, confirms the first two of these points.
42
W. Ralph Thompson, "An Appraisal of the Keswick and Wesleyan Contemporary Positions,"
Wesleyan Theological Journal 1 (Spring 1966): 11-20; and Everett L. Cattell, "An Appraisal of the
Keswick and Wesleyan Contemporary Positions," in Insights into Holiness, ed. Kenneth Geiger (Kansas
City, MO: Beacon Hill Press, 1962), 264-65.
43
Steven Barabas, So Great Salvation (Westwood, NJ: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1952), 84-86,
115; and J. Robertson McQuilkin, "The Keswick Perspective," in Five Views on Sanctification (Grand
Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1987), 178.
44
W. H. Griffith Thomas, "The Victorious Life [II.]," BSac 76 (October 1919), 464; McQuilkin,
153, 175-78.
45
McQuilkin, 155.