From Sampler to Sower

Dr. Mark Quanstrom, Professor of Theology, Olivet Nazarene University

Our first full day of the Holiness Summit at Olivet Nazarene University began Monday morning in the sanctuary of College Church of the Nazarene in Bourbonnais, IL.  ONU’s chaplain, Rev. Michael Benson opened the service with a quote from James Allen’s classic As A Man Thinketh.

And you, too, youthful reader, will realize the Vision (not the idle wish) of your heart, be it base or beautiful, or a mixture of both, for you will always gravitate toward that which you secretly most love. Into your hands will be placed the exact results of your own thoughts; you will receive that which you earn, no more, no less. Whatever your present environment may be, you will fall, remain, or rise with your thoughts, your Vision, your Ideal. You will become as small as your controlling desire; as great as your dominant aspiration.

This is not just some new-agey thought inspired by The Secret.  It is an affirmation of a Wesleyan holistic psychology which affirms our actions and our achievements are shaped and driven by our affections.  And it was a good reminder that what we think about these things really matters.

The other highlight of worship for me was when Martha Dalton, a coloratura soprano and vocal professor at Olivet, sang the old holiness classic “Deeper than the Stain Has Gone.”  It helped purge the lyrical inanity of “I am a friend of God” which for some perverse reason was still running through my mind that morning.  There’s a little more meat on these words:

Praise the Lord for full salvation,
God still reigns upon His throne.
And I know the blood still reaches
Deep-er than the stain has gone.

The speaker of the morning was Dr. Mark Quanstrom, author of A Century of Holiness Theology, a historical look at how the doctrine of holiness has been preached in the Church of the Nazarene.  I loved his book and was looking forward to his sermon.  In the end, I wasn’t disappointed.

Quanstrom began by talking about having been invited to participate in the centennial celebration of a Nazarene church in Illinois which had been founded before 1910.  They still meet in the same, now century old, building.  Carved into the stonework of the building is  the name of the church.  And anyone who is familiar with the history of our denomination knows, a pre-1910 Nazarene church had as part of it’s name, an extra word.  Back then we were the “Pentecostal Church of the Nazarene.”

(In 1910 the denomination voted to take that adjective out of our name, as the word pentecostal was increasingly associated with an emphasis on the extraordinary gifts of the Spirit rather than the ordinary (though no less spectacular) fruit of the Spirit.)

This particular church had a dilemma.  There, carved in stone, was a word that was no longer part of their official name.  It’s one thing to strike the word “pentecostal” from the books, and another thing to wipe it from the stone facade.  And so for many years this church had hung up a curtain to hide the word “pentecostal” from their identity.

But with the recent centennial celebrations of our denomination’s history and the increased appreciation for our heritage, the church had decided to take down the curtain and celebrate, rather than hide, their pentecostal heritage.

Quanstrom then asked the question “What did we as a denomination lose when we hung the curtain over ‘Pentecostal’?”

From that, he moved to a second question, one inspired by Scripture itself “When did you receive the Holy Spirit?”

Anecdotally, Quanstrom provided evidence that many in our theological tradition do not know how to answer that question, even with our distinctive emphasis on the work of the Spirit in the lives of believers.  This should not be.  If you asked the 120 disciples who had been in the upper room that Pentecost, argued Quanstrom, they could answer that question.  Likewise if you asked the 3,000 plus women and children who were saved as a result of their preaching, they could answer the question, as could the Samaritans converted under Philip’s preaching, the Gentiles saved at Cornelius’ house under the teaching of Peter, and the Ephesians to whom Paul asked the question that inspired this line of inquiry in the first place.  Anyone at any one of these “four Pentecosts” of the book of Acts could have clearly answered the question.

So why do we, who used to call ourselves the Pentecostal Church of the Nazarene, have so many problems with that question?  “Is it one more symptom,” asked Quanstrom, “of the generic Christianity that has infected our churches?”

Quanstrom then speculated how some in our tradition would have answered the question in years past.  We in the American Holiness movement have tended to so emphasize God’s second work of grace in the life of the believer that there are some who might have answered that question with “When I was entirely sanctified.”  Quanstrom wonders if we haven’t made a caricature of the completeness with which our tradition has associated Entire Sanctification with the Baptism of the Holy Spirit.  But regardless of the accuracy (or inaccuracy) of such a perception, the biblical answer is very different.

Scripture is clear.  The answer to the question “When did you receive the Holy Spirit?” is “When I first believed.”

That is the truth that our pentecostal heritage emphasized – the gift of the Holy Spirit is the privilege of every believer.  This heritage has three important implications, according to Quanstrom:

First, this salvation and sanctification is the work of God and not of humanity. It is after all a work of grace. Here he pointed to Romans 8:3, which emphasized what the law was powerless to do God did by sending his Son. Salvation and sanctification is something that God does.  Quanstrom challenged us to get away from our the moralism and legalism that characterized our past and reclaim our Protestant heritage.  Not our Anglican, nor our Othrodox heritage, as helpful as those might be, emphasized Quanstrom, but our Protestant heritage that rejects the legalism that makes holiness a human achievement.

Secondly, our pentecostal heritage strongly affirms that we are responsible for the grace we have received. Here Quanstrom pointed out that while legalism was perhaps the greatest danger for the holiness movement of the past, the greatest danger for holiness churches today is Anti-nomianism, which is every bit as harmful to the work of God in us.  Again, Quanstrom sent us back to Romans 8:3, which goes on to affirm that in doing what the law couldn’t God condemned sin in sinful man. Grace does not make sin permissible, it leaves it without excuse.

Here Quanstrom asked how our behavior would change if we were fully convinced of God’s indwelling Presence with us.  Would you expose the indwelling Presence of God to crude entertainments that you wouldn’t let your children watch?  Would you expose the indwelling Presence of God to obscene language you wouldn’t want your children to hear?  “I am convinced we would profane the name of Christ and grieve his Spirit less if we were fully convinced of His indwelling Presence,”  Quanstrom argued.  And while he acknowledged that such an argument may be crudely put, it is exactly the argument of the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 6:

Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body. (verses 19-20)

Finally, if we knew that God was gracing us with his presence, we would know better the possibility of full salvation. I lovedthat turn of phrase “God is gracing us with his presence.”  We get the impression that we will never be fully free from the tyranny of sin in this life.  But if we knew that God was truly with us, surely we would realize that nothing, not even our freedom, is too hard for God.  Here he pointed us to Romans 8:4 which acknowledges the fact that we no longer live according to the sinful nature, but according to God’s Spirit.

So, when did you receive the Holy Spirit?  Or perhaps, said Quanstrom, the better question might be “Don’t you realize the Holy Spirit is living in you who have believed?”

In conclusion, while fully acknowledging the valid concerns that led the denomination to change it’s name, Quanstrom wondered if maybe it wasn’t time the Holiness movement removed the curtain from over the name “Pentecostal.”

This was a masterful sermon.  I can’t really convey how well it was delivered in this summary.  He did a great job not only of developing the question “When did you receive the Holy Spirit?” but also of prolonging it.  It became something you were eager for him to answer – or at least I was.

He scared a lot of us, because it sounded like by asking “Do you remember when you received the Holy Spirit?” he was actually asking “Do you remember when you were entirely sanctified?”  And in my understanding those aren’t the same two questions.

I was worried that I was going to find myself disagreeing with someone I whose work I respected.  I thought I understood how he would answer the question, but the way he drew us into the question really had me wondering.

I’ve heard some wonder if maybe he didn’t do too good a job drawing people into the question – that those who did associate entire sanctification with the baptism of the Holy Spirit were so certain Quanstrom was “in their camp” that they never heard his real answer. I don’t know if that’s accurate or not, but it is at least one response to his message.

I also wonder just how much the perception that Holiness Revivalism associated entire sanctification with the baptism of the Holy Spirit is caricature and not reality.  In my exposure to holiness revivalism, that association is most certainly made.  But Quanstrom has spent far longer studying the movement than I. Unfortunately, I never had the opportunity to ask because the “response time” advertised in the schedule was code for “altar call” and not “question and answer.”  Not a problem, just not what I expected.

I also found the way Quanstrom developed his three implications of Pentecostalism very well.  Listening to the first point, I was very uncomfortable.  Not so much with the emphasis that sanctification is a work of grace, but with the line about recovering our Protestantism and the warnings against legalism.

In many ways, I find the middle way of Elizabethan Anglicanism much more helpful than the extremes of European Protestantism and Roman Catholicism.  What’s more, I think that the challenge facing the modern holiness movement is much more anti-nomianism than legalism. But when he added his second point to his first, I began to see that he was preserving the vital tension between the two extremes.