6 – The Protestant Model

      As used in the popular press today the word ‘Protestant’ has a negative image.  It points to a hard-line right-wing opponent of Roman Catholicism and reasonable religion.  Such a meaning is much in contrast to its original meaning as used in the sixteenth century.  From 1529 at the Second Diet of Spires in Germany, it referred to those who made this declaration: ‘We are determined by God’s grace and aid to abide by God’s Word alone, the Holy Gospel contained in the biblical books of the Old and New Testaments.  This Word alone should be preached, and nothing contrary to it.  It is the only Truth.  It is the sure rule of all Christian doctrine and conduct.  It can never fail or deceive us.’  Thus it is not a protest against but rather a protest for.  It is a declaration of faithfulness to the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ and devotion to his person.  Thus the word is used in this chapter in its original meaning of ‘one who protests for the Gospel’.

      In the early sixteenth century, there was a tremendous shake-up of the Christian Church in Western Europe.  The one medieval Catholic Church, under the ultimate authority of the Pope in Rome, found itself losing the allegiance of national and provincial churches.  These claimed to be undergoing a reformation and renewal according to the Gospel and Word of God: they became Protestant Churches.  This movement for change was led by such men as Martin Luther, John Calvin and Thomas Cranmer, to name three of the best known of a large group of reformers.

      We turn our attention in this chapter to the teaching of Luther, Calvin and Cranmer, which despite differences in emphasis, belongs to the same general framework.  In the medieval Church the word conversion (Latin, conversio), had been used to describe the act of taking up the celibate life to become a monk or nun.  As we shall see, the Protestant Reformers used the word to describe the internal action of God upon and in the soul of man, leading to a life of dedication to Jesus Christ.  Their teaching on conversion applied to all people (not merely a select few) and was worked out in the context of the practice of universal infant baptism.

      The Reformers did not hesitate in their continuation of the practice of baptising babies because they believed that they were doing the equivalent in the new covenant of what the Jews did in the old covenant in the practice of circumcising infant boys.  Instead of the original apostolic practice of baptism following repentance and faith, they sought to interpret the Gospel within a structure which began with the act of baptism.  They taught baptism followed by or growing into repentance and faith.  Conversion could occur in childhood or adulthood.

Martin Luther (1485–1546)

      Martin Luther was baptised as a baby and later entered a monastery before becoming a teacher of theology in the new University of Wittenburg, Germany.  He took the calling to be a Christian and a monk most seriously and, in doing so, found the teaching he received from within the Church unsatisfactory with respect to his own personal search for salvation from God.  Not that he did not try to fulfill all the religious duties imposed upon and recommended to him!  He was over-diligent!  Through them, however, he could find no peace in his heart and no sense of being forgiven by God and delivered from fear of divine wrath.  Deliverance came to him as he paid more and more attention to the New Testament and especially to the teaching of the apostle Paul in Romans and Galatians.

      Here is how he described his attainment of an assurance of salvation and of being in a right relationship with God-in-Christ.  In the preface to the complete edition of his Latin writings published in 1545 he looked back to his experience over twenty-five years earlier:

I greatly longed to understand Paul’s Epistle to the Romans and nothing stood in the way but one expression, ‘the justice of God,’ because I took it to mean that justice whereby God is just and deals justly in punishing the unjust.  My situation was that, although an impeccable monk, I stood before God as a sinner troubled in conscience, and I had no confidence that my merit would assuage him.  Therefore I did not love a just and angry God, but rather hated and murmured against him.  Yet I clung to the dear Paul and had a great yearning to know what he meant.

      Night and day I pondered until I saw the connection between the justice of God and the statement that ‘the just shall live by his faith.’  Then I grasped that the justice of God is that righteousness by which through grace and sheer mercy God justifies us through faith.  Thereupon I felt myself to be reborn and to have gone through open doors into paradise.  The whole of Scripture took on a new meaning, and whereas before the justice of God had filled me with hate, now it became to me inexpressibly sweet in great love.  This passage of Paul became to me a gate to heaven.

True to this powerful experience of the God of all grace, Luther passionately taught for the rest of his life the need to believe the Gospel and be placed in a right relationship with God (justification by faith).  He believed that where the Gospel was clearly proclaimed people would come to genuine faith more quickly and with less difficulty than had been his own way to peace with God.

      Luther had a very high view of baptism as a sacrament instituted by Christ and he had no hesitation in seeing the baptism of infants as wholly in accord with the mind of Christ.  He makes this clear in his The Large Catechism (1529), which contains a lengthy exposition of baptism.  ‘To be baptised in God’s name is to be baptised not by men but by God himself.  Although it is performed by men’s hands, it is nevertheless truly God’s own act.’  God’s faithful and true Word is joined to the water so that he who believes and is baptised receives most surely God’s salvation, including the gift of the indwelling Spirit.

      Luther held that baptism, once administered, was valid for all time and thus whenever faith arose in the heart then the efficacy of baptism came into effect.  He believed that some infants were able, in a mysterious but real way, to trust in Christ at their baptism and receive there and then the gift of the indwelling Spirit and be placed in a right relationship with God.  He also held that some infants only believed vicariously through their sponsors (godparents) and exercised true personal faith later in life.  Luther was not, it seems, too bothered at what precise moment a baptised child began to trust in God as the God of all grace; what interested him more was living a life in the strength and meaning of holy baptism.  This is how he expressed it in The Large Catechism:

We must know what Baptism signifies and why God ordained just this sign and external observance for the sacrament by which we are first received into the Christian Church.  This act or observance consists in being dipped into the water, which covers us completely, and being drawn out again.  These two parts, being dipped under the water and emerging from it, indicate the power and effect of Baptism, which is simply the slaying of the old Adam and the resurrection of the new man, both of which actions must continue in us our whole life long.  Thus a Christian life is nothing else than a daily Baptism, once begun and ever continued.  For we must keep at it incessantly, always purging out whatever pertains to the old Adam, so that whatever belongs to the new man may come forth.  What is the old man?  He is what is born in us from Adam, irascible, spiteful, envious, unchaste, greedy, lazy, proud, yes and unbelieving: he is beset with all vices and by nature has nothing good in him.  Now, when we enter Christ’s kingdom, this corruption must daily decrease so that the longer we live the more gentle, patient, and meek we become, and the more free from greed, hatred, envy and pride.

Therefore each day the Christian, in the strength of the Holy Spirit, is to believe afresh the promises of the Gospel and follow Christ and, at the same time, he is to set aside and reject what he knows, through the Law and by the Gospel to be unacceptable and unpleasing to God.  Thus, while the internal renewal by God’s action and presence occurs in relation to water baptism, the living daily in the knowledge that ‘I have been baptised’ is the secret of true Christian faith, hope and love.

      The internal action of God in the soul, affecting heart, mind and will, was called conversion by Luther.  Conversion meant the inner illumination of the mind, the bending of the will towards God and the infusion of the love of God in the heart.  This is clear in certain theological debates within the German Evangelical (Lutheran) Church both during and after Luther’s lifetime.  One debate was concerning how, if at all, a sinner cooperates with God in this conversion.  Now Luther and every Lutheran held that a believer cooperates with God in the sense that he makes use of God’s help in his daily attempt to live as a baptised Christian.  But is there cooperation in the initial act of internal conversion/renewal/regeneration which normally takes place in relation to holy baptism?  To this Luther and orthodox Lutherans gave a clearly negative answer.  Perhaps in no Lutheran document is this ‘No’ made clearer than in the Formula of Concord (1577).  Here are two brief extracts:

Just as little as a person who is physically dead can by his own powers prepare or accommodate himself to regain temporal life, so little can a man who is spiritually dead, in sin, prepare or address himself by his own power to obtain spiritual and heavenly righteousness and life, unless the Son of God has liberated him from the death of sin and made him alive.

      In his own conversion or regeneration he can as little begin, effect, or cooperate in anything as a stone, a block, or a lump of clay could.  Although he can direct the members of his body, can hear the Gospel and meditate on it to a certain degree, and can even talk about is ... yet he considers it folly and cannot believe it.

Therefore there is no cooperation with God in conversion/regeneration/inner renewal.  It is a divine work and a divine work only.  However,

after God, through the Holy Spirit in Baptism, has kindled and wrought a beginning of true knowledge of God and faith, we ought to petition him incessantly that by the same Spirit and grace, through daily exercise in reading his Word and putting it into practice, he would preserve faith and his heavenly gifts in us and strengthen us daily until our end.

      Lutherans were well aware that not all the baptised lived as the baptised ought to live.  ‘If those who have been baptised act contrary to their conscience and permit sin to rule in themselves and thus grieve the Holy Spirit within them and lose him, they dare not be baptised again, though they must certainly be converted again.’  In other words the Holy Spirit must return to a baptised person for that person to be turned towards God in true conversion.  For

in true conversion there must be a change, there must be new activities and emotions in the intellect, will and heart, so that the heart learns to know sin, to fear the wrath of God, to turn from sin, to understand and accept the promise of grace in Christ, to have good spiritual thoughts, Christian intentions, and diligence, and to fight against the flesh, etc.  For if none of these things takes place, there is no true conversion.

      Thus the Lutheran scheme is baptism (including internal conversion) leading to a life of repentance and faith, which may be interrupted by backsliding thus requiring conversion again.  The quality of Christian living is, of course, not only related to the divine initiative and human response but also to the quality of the teaching and church life into which the child is baptised.  True penitence and living faith are more likely to be the fruit of baptism in a church where the Gospel is faithfully preached than one where in is dimly or half-heartedly proclaimed.  So the authentic Lutheran emphasis is on the preaching of the Gospel and the response of faith, leading to a Christian life which is an outworking of the grace and meaning of holy baptism.

      Luther, himself, never produced a service of confirmation to complement his revised service of baptism (1526).  He believed that young people should be well instructed in the faith (hence his Small and Large Catechisms) and then examined by their pastor before being admitted to Holy Communion.  After his death, however, the rite of confirmation was introduced within the Lutheran churches primarily for young people.  It came at the end of a period of preparation and was seen as a formal way of personally confessing that faith, originally confessed for them by their godparents in infant baptism.

John Calvin (1509–64)

      Calvin was a Frenchman who revealed little of his inner life and who would have preferred the life of a scholarly recluse to that of a public pastor, preacher and reformer.  In a rare glimpse into his own spiritual pilgrimage, he wrote this in his preface to the Commentary on the Psalms (1557):

      My father intended me as a young boy for theology.  But when he saw that the science of law made those who cultivate it wealthy, he was led to change his mind by the hope of material gain for me.  So it happened that I was called back from the study of philosophy to learn law.  I followed my father’s wish and attempted to do faithful work in this field; but God, by the secret leading of his providence, turned my course another way.

      First, when I was too firmly addicted to the papal superstitions to be drawn easily out of such a deep mire, by a sudden conversion God brought my mind (already more rigid than suited my age) to submission to him.  I was so inspired by a taste of true religion and I burned with such a desire to carry my study further, that although I did not drop other subjects, I had no zeal for them.  In less than a year, all who were looking for a purer doctrine began to come to learn from me, although I was a novice and a beginner.

      Here Calvin tells how as a young man, a devout Roman Catholic, he experienced an inner change which brought an illumination of mind and a thirst for more knowledge of God and experience of his grace.  Conversion, here as elsewhere in Calvin’s writings, is the work of God in bringing new life to the soul and beginning the task of renewing the image of God there.

      Like Luther, Calvin had been baptised as an infant, but what he judged to be his authentic Christian experience only began when he was a student.  However, Calvin (like Luther) did not make his own experience to be that which others ought to follow.  His whole thinking about turning to God-in-Christ began from his insights into the doctrine of election in Christ unto salvation.  His teaching is clearly presented in his Institutes.  Thus, while all were to be baptised as infants the divine work of regeneration/conversion/renewal of the divine image would only begin and continue in the elect (whose identity God alone knew).  Pastorally Calvin treated all as potentially the elect of God and so in baptismal preparation and services of baptism, as well as in preaching and counselling, he urged people to repent of their sins and to believe in and follow Christ.

      While Luther and Lutherans gave the impression that divine regeneration was likely to occur at baptism, Calvin and the Calvinists were less certain of the new birth/internal conversion occurring at infant baptism, even where the sponsors and parents were wholehearted believers.   In Article 20 of the Consensus Tigurinus (the Zurich Agreement) written by Calvin before 1551, we read the following:

The benefit which we receive from the sacraments should by no means be restricted to the time in which they are administered to us; just as if the visible sign, when brought forward into view, did at the same moment bring God’s grace with itself.  For those who are baptised in early infancy, God regenerates in boyhood, in budding youth and sometimes even in old age.  So the benefit of baptism lies open to the whole course of life; for the promise that it contains is perpetually valid.

      Calvin did not envisage that anyone truly regenerated/converted by God would ever need to be reconverted and re-renewed.  Certainly he took the possibility of backsliding into account; but for him inner conversion was God’s work in the elect, and in the elect only, and thus once regenerate, always regenerate.  As a result of this internal, secret work of the Spirit, the individual is united to Christ in faith and love and desires to know God and to do his will.  Thus inner conversion leads to a practical turning to God, in a life of repentance, faith, hope and love.

      Calvin held that in the context of the worship and preaching of the Church the elect were united by the Holy Spirit to the exalted Lord Jesus Christ and as a result of that spiritual/heavenly union faith arose in their hearts and they looked to Christ for salvation, while, at the same time, the work of inner renewal of the soul (mind, heart and will) began.  Conversion was the word Calvin used particularly of the bending or directing of the human will to will what God desires and commends.

      Though Calvin believed in instantaneous spiritual union with Christ, leading to the impartation of divine life into the soul, he did not teach that the result of this internal, spiritual and non-experiential activity would be known and felt at once.  The turning to God, initiated by the secret work of the Holy Spirit, could occur slowly or quickly and at any age from childhood to old age.  What was important for him was living the Christian life as a result of inner renewal and conversion; this is the life of repentance, the life of mortifying sin and living in Christ unto God, and the life of imitating Christ in the strength of the Spirit.  This life is the life of faith, looking unto Christ and trusting in the promises of God concerning Christ and salvation.

      This teaching of Calvin is faithfully reproduced – howbeit in a controversial situation – by the Reformed or Calvinist divines who met at the Synod of Dort in 1618.  They had the following to say about conversion or regeneration as the work of God within the elect, in Chapter 3 of their Statement:

Article 11

How God Brings About Conversion

      When God, moreover, carries out His good pleasure in the elect, or works in them true conversion, He not only sees to it that the gospel is outwardly preached to them, powerfully enlightening their minds by the Holy Spirit so that they may rightly understand and discern the things of the Spirit of God, but by the effectual working of that same regenerating Spirit He also penetrates into the innermost recesses of man, opens the closed and softens the hard heart, circumcises that which was uncircumcised, and pours new qualities into the will.  He makes the will which was dead alive, which was bad good, which was unwilling willing, which was stubborn obedient, and moves and strengthens it so that, like a good tree, it may be able to produce the fruits of good works.

Article 12

The Supernatural Character of Regeneration

      And this is that regeneration, that new creation, that resurrection from the dead, that making alive, so highly spoken of in the Scriptures, which God works in us without our help.  But this regeneration is by no means brought about only by outward teaching or preaching, by moral persuasion, or by such a method of working that after God has done His work, it remains in the power of man to be regenerated or not regenerated, converted or not converted.  It is, however, clearly a supernatural, most powerful and at the same time most delightful, marvelous, secret, and inexpressible work which, according to the Scriptures inspired by the Author of regeneration, is not inferior in power to creation or the resurrection of the dead.  Hence all those in whose hearts God works in this amazing way are certainly, unfailingly, and effectually regenerated and do actually believe.  Therefore the will so renewed is not only acted upon and moved by God but, acted upon by God, the will itself, also acts.  Hence also man himself, through the grace he has received, is rightly said to believe and repent.

      In this important and influential Statement we encounter the clear doctrine that only those who are the elect of God will actually be inwardly (as well as outwardly) called by God and thus truly converted and actually genuinely repent and believe.  Since would-be communicants were examined by the pastor before admission to Holy Communion, only the converted were expected to participate fully in the life of the Church.

Thomas Cranmer (1489–1556)

      Thomas Cranmer, who became Archbishop of Canterbury, is less well known than either Martin Luther or John Calvin.  No school of theology and no denomination is named after him, but his role as the major architect of the reformed liturgy of the Church of England and of its confession of faith (the Thirty-Nine Articles) does bear comparison with the work of either Luther or Calvin, especially when it is borne in mind that the Anglican Communion of Churches, like Lutheranism and Presbyterianism (Calvinism), is a universal denomination.

      If Cranmer had a crisis experience in terms of his growth into the full freedom of being justified by faith, we do not know of it.  What we do know is that in the 1520s, while at Cambridge University as a Fellow of Jesus College, he made a serious study of the New Testament and carefully examined the new ‘Lutheran’ doctrines that were beginning to be known in England.  He came to reject the traditional, medieval doctrine that justification is a process of being made just/righteous in favour of the teaching of Luther that justification is an act of God pardoning and accepting the believing sinner.  This principle of justification by faith is to be found within all the major texts, liturgical and doctrinal, that he produced for the reformed catholicity which the Church of England sought to embody when he was the archbishop.  Cranmer was the one primarily responsible for the Book of Common Prayer (1549; revised 1552), containing all the services of the Church, together with a catechism; and for the Articles of Religion (1553); as well as a book of sermons to be read in parish churches known as the First Book of Homilies (1547).

      Before looking at the concept of conversion in the Formularies of the Church of England, it will perhaps be useful to note the use of the noun, ‘conversion’, and the verb ‘to convert’.  In the Book of Common Prayer of 1552 we find that the noun is used to describe one of the ‘holy’ days, ‘The Conversion of St Paul’.  In the collect for this day we find the petition to God: ‘Grant, we beseech thee, that we, having his wonderful conversion in remembrance, may chew forth our thankfulness unto thee for the same, by following the holy doctrine which he taught ...’  Further, the verb appears in the third collect for Good Friday.  ‘O merciful God, who hast made all men, and hatest nothing that thou hast made, nor wouldest the death of a sinner, but rather that he should be converted and live; have mercy upon all Jews, Turks, Infidels, and Heretics, and take from them all ignorance, hardness of heart, and contempt of thy Word ...’  In both these cases, which are the only examples, the intention is probably that God is the agent of conversion.  There was a minor revision of this Prayer Book in 1661/2, leading to what has become the definitive edition of 1662.  In the new preface of this edition we find that an explanation is offered for the additional service entitled, ‘The ministration of Baptism to such as are of riper years and able to answer for themselves’.  In this explanation the verb ‘to convert’ is used.  This rite will not only be useful for those who, because of the spread of Anabaptist views, have not been baptised as infants, but also for ‘the baptising of natives – in our plantations, and others converted to the faith’.

      Apart from these three examples, the only other place where the noun or verb occurs in the official Church of England Formularies is in the Homily of Repentance, found in the Second Book of Homilies (1563).  Here Christ is presented as the only one ‘by whom we may be able to convert’ to God; repentance is described as ‘the conversion or turning again of the whole man unto God’ and also as ‘a full conversion to God in a new life, to glorify his name’.  Bishop John Jewel was responsible for the editing of this Second Book, just as Cranmer had been responsible for the First Book.  In this Homily of Repentance conversion is used not in the passive but in the active sense of what sinners do in response to the Gospel and with the help of God.  This active usage of ‘convert’ anticipates the later English Puritan use of conversion as the turning to God in repentance and faith.  This Homily was, of course, addressed to people sitting in parish churches who had been baptised as infants and it is a serious call to all, whether committed or nominal believers, to see repentance – a wholehearted turning to God and forsaking of sin – as at the heart of the Christian life and indissolubly linked to faith.

      But to return now to Cranmer and the services for which he was responsible.  The structure he created in which he believed that God’s converting the sinner and the sinner’s converting to God could take place was quite simple.  It was infant baptism, supported and followed by Christian nurture, leading to confirmation, where a public confession of faith and commitment to Christ was made.  Then as young people (teenagers) those confirmed were to hear the Word of God preached and to receive the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.  This structure allowed for God’s act of regeneration/conversion to occur with or after baptism, and the human response to be gradual or sudden.  Thus Cranmer committed the Church of England to a Catholic doctrine of baptism and a Protestant doctrine of justification by faith.

      After the baptism of the infant the minister was required to offer this prayer of thanksgiving to God:

We yield thee hearty thanks, most merciful Father, that it hath pleased thee to regenerate this Infant with thy holy Spirit, to receive him for thine own Child by adoption, and to incorporate him into thy holy Church.  And humbly we beseech thee to grant, that he, being dead unto sin, and living unto righteousness, and being buried with Christ in his death, may crucify the old man, and utterly abolish the whole body of sin; and that, as he is made partaker of the death of thy Son, he may also be partaker of his resurrection ...

      Having completed the prayer, the minister then gave this exhortation to the godparents:

Forasmuch as this Child hath promised by you his sureties to renounce the devil and all his works, to believe in God, and to serve him; ye must remember, that it is your parts and duties to see that this Infant be taught, so soon as he shall be able to learn, what a solemn vow, promise, and profession, he hath here made by you.  And that he may know these things the better, ye shall call upon him to hear Sermons; and chiefly ye shall provide, that he may learn the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Ten Commandments, in the vulgar tongue, and all other things which a Christian ought to know and believe to his soul’s health; and that this Child may be virtuously brought up to lead a godly and a christian life; remembering always, that Baptism doth represent unto us our profession; which is, to follow the example of our Saviour Christ, and to be made like unto him; that, as he died, and rose again for us, so should we, who are baptized, die from sin, and rise again unto righteousness; continually mortifying all our evil and corrupt affections, and daily proceeding in all virtue and godliness of living.

      When we move on to the Order of Confirmation we find that it has two parts: the first is a personal confession of faith by the one to be confirmed and the second is the act of confirmation performed by the bishop.  Thus confirmation was administered only to those who were old enough to be able to understand the basic teaching of the Apostles’ Creed and to dedicate themselves to God.  The actual confirming by the bishop consisted of two prayers, the second one said by him as he laid his hands upon the head of the candidate.

      The first prayer recalls the infant baptism and prays that the candidates may be strengthened by the Holy Spirit:

Almighty and everliving God, who hast vouchsafed to regenerate these thy servants by Water and the holy Ghost, and hast given unto them forgiveness of all their sins; Strengthen them, we beseech thee, O Lord, with the Holy Ghost the Comforter, and daily increase in them thy manifold gifts of grace; the spirit of wisdom and understanding; the spirit of counsel and ghostly strength; the spirit of knowledge and true godliness; and fill them, O Lord, with the spirit of thy holy fear, now and for ever.  Amen.

The second prayer, offered while the candidate kneels in front of the bishop, is the climax not only of the Order of Confirmation but also of the earlier rite of infant baptism.

Defend, O Lord, this thy Child [or this thy Servant] with thy heavenly grace, that he may continue thine for ever; and daily increase in thy holy Spirit more and more, until he come unto thy everlasting kingdom.  Amen.

According to Cranmer’s desire and structure, each confirmed young person should be a converted person, a true believer in the Lord Jesus.

Comments

      Over the centuries thousands of people have come to full commitment to Jesus Christ through the experience of preparation for confirmation (or full church membership).  Not all perhaps realised at the time that this was the case, but, looking back, they saw that there was a genuine change in their attitude and direction of life from that period.  What their sponsors had promised on their behalf in infant baptism, they were now readily and gladly seeking to put into practice in daily life.  Whether or not they used the word conversion (let us remember that choice of words depends upon the type of language used in the church fellowship to which one belongs), they were now converted.  We need not speculate as to the precise time of their internal conversion (regeneration, inner renewal by the Spirit), but we can accept that the gift of the Spirit is related to baptism and that the two events need not occur simultaneously.  In fact no one can definitely state when he or she was internally born again by the Spirit, because this internal divine action is secret and invisible.  All that a person can testify to is his/her change of life in obedience to Jesus Christ.

      We may now ask, ‘Does this Protestant model provide for the apostolic strands or elements of genuine conversion?’  Certainly Luther, Calvin and Cranmer would reply in the affirmative.  Further they would say that a sense of conviction of sin, repentance, faith in Jesus, baptism and church membership, need not occur in any particular order.  Where infants are concerned they are baptised into Christ before they can possibly be aware of sin, repent and actively trust in Jesus as Saviour and Lord.  As we have seen, when a person is brought to confirmation he or she ought at this stage to be truly converted.  If they are not then the Church has failed in its work of nurture and teaching.

      One final comment.  There is a tendency today to claim that ‘Christian initiation is completed in baptism’.  So in some Anglican parishes, for example, small children are given Holy Communion for they are seen as members of Christ and of his Church.  It is possible, of course, that by the grace of God, such children will be converted – perhaps in a gradual way over the years of infancy and youth.  On the other hand, the great value of confirmation from the human standpoint is that it provides not only for a period of intense instruction and examination but also for a public confession of faith.  Psychologically the latter is very important for those who are baptised as infants.

7 – The Puritan Model

      As the name suggests, a Puritan was a person who wanted to purify the English Church of what he believed to be the remaining popish rites and ceremonies in order to fashion the national Church after the pattern provided in the sacred Scriptures.  Further, he wanted to see each member sanctified so that the congregation in the parish was a company of visible saints, together with others desiring to be genuinely converted to God.

      As a movement, Puritanism flourished in England from the end of the sixteenth through to the end of the seventeenth century (though from 1662 it was pushed outside the national Church to create Protestant Nonconformity); it also crossed the Atlantic into New England in America, where it was influential for at least a century.

      Puritan theologians, parish ministers and parish lecturers (preachers who were not the legally instituted pastors), led by such men as William Perkins (1558–1602), William Ames (1576–1633), Robert Bolton (1572–1631), Thomas Hooker (1586–1647), John Preston (1587–1628) and Richard Sibbes (1577–1635), carefully set out and chartered the experience of conversion (meaning the total response of the repentant and believing sinner to the Gospel).  No school of theology or movement for renewal/reformation has given so much attention to the workings of the Spirit in the soul and the human response to the call of God.  In fact, the attempts to itemise the route from indifference to commitment, or from opposition to obedience, became too rigid.  This meant that some genuine seekers had great worries because they could not fit their experience into the ‘approved’ scheme.  The Puritan preachers and pastors not only preached concerning the way of conversion but they also visited their flocks and enquired into the state of their souls, acting as doctors of the soul.  Like the Reformers, they administered infant baptism.

      The word ‘conversion’ as generally used by Puritans, referred primarily to the active response of the soul to the Gospel.  Certainly they held that this could only occur because of the passive experience of regeneration.  However, unlike the first Protestant Reformers who tended to equate conversion with internal regeneration (in which the soul is passive) the Puritans saw conversion as the active response of the soul (in heart, mind and will) to the work of the Holy Spirit in and upon the soul in regeneration.

The general pattern

      From a perusal of Puritan writings, autobiographical and sermonic, it is possible to see seven stages, or seven steps, overlapping but yet distinct, through which a person must normally pass in order to be sure that he has truly been converted.  The period of time could be anything from a few weeks to a few years for the whole process to occur.

      1.  A person is indifferent, perhaps hostile, to the preaching of the Gospel and the idea of conversion.  (This is a later evaluation: at the time the person probably saw himself as a decent person who feared God.)

      2.  This person begins to feel a sense of dissatisfaction with his religious state, and becomes aware of his failures to do what God commands.  An internal struggle begins.  The Law of God makes him aware of his sin and sinfulness.

      3.  Through the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit and the teaching of the Bible, he begins to gain spiritual understanding and to take seriously the duty of prayer, reading the Bible, attending worship and engaging in self-examination.  Yet the Law of God still works upon his conscience.

      4.  His attitude, habits and actions are changed, but he is still experiencing an internal struggle and still at least half-believing that his own activity, good works and decency are acceptable to God.  He may appear to others as converted, but he knows that he is not yet converted.  He does not have the internal peace of knowing he is right with God and accepted by him.

      5.  Quite suddenly he has a deep, spiritual experience (which could take place anywhere at any time) in which he sees his sinfulness before God, his inability to save himself and the glorious provision of grace in Jesus Christ.  He finds himself trusting in Christ and in Christ alone for salvation and peace and joy flooding his heart.

      6.  As a result of this crisis, he feels like a new person since the old struggle, insecurities and terrors (of the Law) have gone.  He wants to praise God and serve him in his Church.

      7.  The life of sanctification, mortifying sin and living in the new life of the resurrected Christ, begins and thus a new struggle begins – that of a child of God resisting the devil and not giving in to the world, the flesh and the devil.

      We may observe that internal regeneration or new birth (John 3:3) was held to occur during or near stage five.

      It will be obvious that Puritan accounts of conversion cannot, by their very nature be short!  A classic account is Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners (1666), John Bunyan’s dramatic tale of his conversion and Christian experience.  Fascinating accounts are provided by Samuel Clarke in his A General Matyrologie ... whereunto are added the laves of sundry modem divines (1651) and his The Lives of Sundry Eminent Persons in the Later Age (1683).  Here, however, is the recorded experience of David Brainerd (1718–47) who was a pioneer missionary to the Red Indians and who had a ‘Puritan conversion’ right at the end of the American Puritan period.  What follows is related to stages 4, 5 and 6 as given above; it is found in his Diary:

      I continued, as I remember, in this state of mind, from Friday morning till the Sabbath evening following, (July 12, 1739,) when I was walking again in the same solitary place, where I was brought to see myself lost and helpless, as before mentioned.  Here, in a mournful melancholy state, I was attempting to pray; but found no heart to engage in that or any other duty; my former concern, exercise, and religious affections were now gone.  I thought that the Spirit of God had quite left me; but still was not distressed; yet disconsolate, as if there was nothing in heaven or earth could make me happy.  Having been thus endeavouring to pray – though, as I thought, very stupid and senseless – for near half an hour; then, as I was walking in a dark thick grove, unspeakable glory seemed to open to the view and apprehension of my soul.  I do not mean any external brightness, for I saw no such thing; nor do I intend any imagination of a body of light, some where in the third heavens, or any thing of that nature; but it was a new inward apprehension or view that I had of God, such as I never had before, nor any thing which had the least resemblance of it.  I stood still; wondered; and admired!  I knew that I never had seen before any thing comparable to it for excellency and beauty; it was widely different from all the conceptions that ever I had of God, or things divine.  I had no particular apprehension of any one person in the Trinity, either the Father, the Son, or the Holy Ghost; but it appeared to be Divine glory.  My soul rejoiced with joy unspeakable, to see such a God, such a glorious divine Being; and I was inwardly pleased and satisfied, that he should be God over all for ever and ever.  My soul was so captivated and delighted with the excellency, loveliness, greatness, and other perfections of God, that I was even swallowed up in him; at least to that degree, that I had no thought (as I remember) at first, about my own salvation, and scarce reflected that there was such a creature as myself.

      Thus God, I trust, brought me to a hearty disposition to exalt him, and set him on the throne, and principally and ultimately to aim at his honour and glory, as King of the universe.  I continued in this state of inward joy, peace, and astonishment, till near dark, without any sensible abatement; and then began to think and examine what I had seen; and felt sweetly composed in my mind all the evening following.  I felt myself in a new world, and every thing about me appeared with a different aspect from what it was wont to do.  At this time, the way of salvation opened to me with such infinite wisdom, suitableness, and excellency, that I wondered I should ever think of any other way of salvation; was amazed that I had not dropped my own contrivances, and complied with this lovely, blessed, and excellent way before.  If I could have been saved by my own duties, or any other way that I had formerly contrived, my whole soul would now have refused it.  I wondered that all the world did not see and comply with this way of salvation, entirely by the righteousness of Christ.

      The sweet relish of what I then felt, continued with me for several days, almost constantly, in a greater or less degree. – I could not but sweetly rejoice in God, lying down and rising up.  The next Lord’s day I felt something of the same kind, though not so powerful as before.  But not long after I was again involved in thick darkness, and under great distress; yet not of the same kind with my distress under convictions.  I was guilty, afraid, and ashamed to come before God; was exceedingly pressed with a sense of guilt: but it was not long before I felt, I trust, true repentance and joy in God. – About the latter end of August, I again fell under great darkness; it seemed as if the presence of God was clean gone for ever; though I was not so much distressed about my spiritual state, as I was at my being shut out from God’s presence, as I then sensibly was.  But it pleased the Lord to return graciously to me not long after.

      It has been well said that David Brainerd was as a candle that burned brilliantly but briefly.  He died before his thirtieth birthday, but through his Diary he influenced thousands, achieving more fame and spiritual influence in death than in life.

      We remarked above that not all those who believed that they had experienced a genuine work of God in their souls could trace their pilgrimage through every stage.  For example, Jonathan Edwards, the great New England theologian, who so wanted to be converted to God in a full and right way, wrote in his Diary when aged 19:

The chief thing, that now makes me in any measure to question my good estate (before God), is my not having experienced conversion in those particular steps, wherein the people of New England, and anciently the Dissenters of Old England, used to experience it.  Wherefore, now resolved, never to leave searching, till I have satisfyingly found out the very bottom and foundation, the real reason, why they used to be converted in those steps.

      This quest for understanding concerning the way conversion to God occurs led him to write not a few books, of which the most important was A Treatise concerning Religious Affections (1746).  What Edwards had not wholly experienced was what Puritans had called ‘the work of humiliation’, the deep conviction that he was wholly emptied of all self and totally persuaded that he had no goodness of any kind to offer to God.  He had come straight: from a sense of need and of sin to an internal delight in God and his glory.  He described that delight in this way:

The first instance, that I remember, of that sort of inward, sweet delight in God and divine things, that I have lived much in since, was on reading those words, 1 Tim. i. 17.  Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honour and glory for ever and ever, Amen.  As I read the words, there came into my soul, and was as it were diffused through it,, a sense of the glory of the Divine Being; a new sense, quite different from any thing I ever experienced before.  Never any words of Scripture seemed to me these words did.  I thought with myself, how excellent a Being that was, and how happy I should be, if I might enjoy that God, and be rapt up to him in heaven, and be as it were swallowed up in him for ever!  I kept saying, and as it were singing, over these words of scripture to myself; and went to pray to Cod that I might enjoy him, and prayed in a manner quite different from what I used to do; with a new sort of affection.  But it never came into my thought, that there was any thing spiritual, or of a saving nature in this.

      From about that time, I began to have a new kind of apprehensions and ideas of Christ, and the work of redemption, and the glorious way of salvation by him.  An inward, sweet sense of these things, at times, came into my heart; and my soul was led away in pleasant views and contemplations of them.  And my mind was greatly engaged to spend my time in reading and meditating on Christ, on the beauty and excellency of his person, and the lovely way of salvation by free grace in him.

Such intellectual delight in God was a constant experience for Edwards throughout his life.

Richard Baxter

      Baxter is one of the best-known and most widely read of English Puritan theologians of the seventeenth century.  He was the minister of Kidderminster and his often reprinted The Reformed Pastor reveals his great care as a parish minister.  Like Jonathan Edwards, Baxter also wanted to be able to record an experience of conversion which fitted into the established pattern.  This did not happen and he recorded in his Autobiography how he had had doubts concerning his salvation, and that one of the chief causes of this was: ‘Because I could not distinctly trace the workings of the Spirit upon my heart in that method which Mr Bolton, Mr Hooker, Mr Rogers and other divines prescribe ...’

      However, his own difficulties helped him the better to be a faithful pastor and preacher.  He often taught his people the meaning of conversion and then gave them directions how to turn to God-in-Christ.  His teaching is recorded in his A Treatise of Conversion (1657), A Call 1o the Unconverted (1657), Now or Never (1658) and Directions and Persuasions to a sound Conversion (1658).  All these were written during his period at Kidderminster.  We shall follow particularly the Directions in order to set out Baxter’s teaching on conversion, addressed to ordinary churchgoers, baptised as infants.

      He urged his parishioners to do the following (not all at the same time!).

      1.  Seek after a right understanding of the Gospel of God concerning Jesus Christ as well as why conversion is necessary.  ‘Ignorance is your disease,’ he explained, ‘and knowledge must be your cure.’

      2.  Carefully read the Bible every day, searching for understanding.  ‘Come to the Word in meekness and humility, with a teachable frame of spirit, a willingness to know the truth, a resolution to stand to it, and yield to what shall be revealed to you; beg of God to show you his will, to lead you into the truth, and you will find that he will be found of them that seek him.’

      3.  Seriously consider the great truths concerning God, Christ and yourself.  ‘Consideration opens the ear that was stopped, and the heart that was shut up; it sets the powers of the soul to work, and awakens it from the sleep of indifference and security.’

      4.  Ensure that God’s work of humiliation within you is allowed to reach its conclusion.  ‘When your hearts begin to be afflicted for sin, go not among foolish and mere companions to drink or laugh it away; drive it not out of your minds, as unkindly, as if it came to do you hurt; but get alone, and consider of the matter, and on your knees in secret, beseech the Lord to follow it home, and break your hearts, and make you meet for his healing consolations; and not to leave you in this red sea, but to bring you through and put the songs of praise into your mouths.’

      5.  Submit to Jesus Christ as Lord as he is offered to you in the Gospel.  ‘In this your Christianity consists, upon this your justification and salvation lie.  This is the sum of your conversion, and the very heart of the new creature.  The rest is all but the preparatives to this, or the fruit of it.’

      6.  Put to death your sinful nature and tear your heart away from affection for the world and its pleasures, for you cannot have God and mammon.  ‘Take yourselves as strangers here; and look on the world as a desolate wilderness, through which, in the communion of the militant saints, you may safely travel on to heaven; do not make it your home, nor take it for the smallest part of your felicity.  To be sanctified without mortification is a palpable contradiction.’

      7.  Give yourself and all that you have to God.  ‘To be truly converted is to be called from things common and unclean, and separated to God; it is to be brought nigh to him, as the children of his household, that are themselves and all that they have, in his hands: it is to be taken off yourselves and your own, and to lose yourselves and all you have in God, by the most gainful loss.’

      8.  Be careful not to confuse a mere change in your opinions, outward profession and behaviour for true conversion.  ‘O what abundance of our poor neighbours would go to heaven, who are now on the way to hell, if an opinion that godliness is the wisest course, would serve the turn.  If instead of conversion, God would take up with an opinion that they ought to turn; and if instead of a holy, heavenly life, God would accept of an opinion, that such are the happiest men that live such a life; and if instead of temperance, meekness, self-denial, and forgiving wrongs, God would accept of an opinion and confession that they should be temperate, meek and self-denying, and should forbear others and forgive them; then O what abundance would be saved, that are now in little hope of salvation.’

      9.  Fully acquaint yourself with the glory of the everlasting kingdom of heaven and make sure that you live in the light of your membership of that kingdom and your place in it.  ‘He that takes this world for his portion, and makes the felicity of it his end, is a carnal, worldly, unsanctified man, whatever good and godly actions may come in upon his mind.  It is he, and only he, that is a sanctified believer, who looks on heaven as his only portion, and his sailing through the troublesome seas of this world, on purpose to come to that desired harbour; not loving those seas better than the land of rest, which he is sailing to; but patiently and painfully passing through them, because there is no other way to glory.’

      10.  Do not be satisfied that you are a true convert until God and his holy ways are your very love, desire and delight.  ‘Whom else can you love, if he [God] that is love itself seem not lovely to you?  All loveliness is in him and from him, the creature hath none of it itself, nor for itself.’

      11.  To prevent the miscarriage of God’s saving work within you, turn immediately to God in response to the Gospel.  ‘I beseech you, yea, as his messenger I charge you in his name, that you delay not an hour longer, but presently be resolved and make an unchangeable covenant with God; and as ever you would have favour in that day of your distress, delay not now to accept his favour, in the day of your visitation.’

      12.  Let your turning to God be without hesitation or reserve, well-grounded and of deliberate resolution.  ‘The resolution and vow of cleaving unto God in faith and holy obedience and of renouncing the flesh, the world and the devil; this is for all, and must be made and kept by all that will be saved.’

      It would seem that Baxter did not expect people to seek to follow all of these directions at one and the same time.  He well knew that to follow but three or four of them would be sufficient to ensure that a person was seriously seeking after God and wanting to experience his liberating and pardoning grace.  Further, since the Puritans rejected the rite of confirmation, Baxter advocated that there be some opportunity for those who believed themselves to have been converted and who had satisfied their pastor of this fact, to make a public confession of faith and commitment before the whole congregation before entering into full church membership and partaking of the Lord’s Supper.

      Over in the free air of New England where Puritans were able to implement what they believed to be the right ordering of the Church of God, conversion (that is of those baptised as infants and already within the congregation but not the membership of the church) was made the door into receiving Holy Communion and full membership.  This state of affairs helped, of course, to make people examine themselves and seek after the right experiences in order to ensure that they were truly converted and could persuade the pastor of this.  Further, it led to the strange position of the infants born to the baptised who were not ‘converted’ members.  There was much debate as to whether such children could be baptised – did they come within the promise of Acts 2:39 (‘the promise is for you and your children...’)?

Comments

      The Puritan model of conversion was fully integrated into the life and witness of the local church.  Its great strength was that it reflected the biblical concept that turning to God is the most important thing that can happen to a human being as he lives in God’s world.  It was closely related to a ministry of preaching, catechising in the home, family prayers and serious piety.  However, in its more rigid form this model claimed too much in its delineation of the right (the only) process of conversion.  It lacked flexibility in terms of its description of the way God chooses to bring a sinner to the life of holiness.  It confused strands/elements with stages.  In admitting this, we also have to recognise that those who were converted to God according to this model seem to have deeply and thoroughly converted, so that their lives were dominated by the passion to know, love and serve the Lord.

      In the modern, Western world, where there is apparently little sense of sinning against God (because the sense of God as holy and as judge is very weak) there seem to be few people converted in a way that can be said to fit into the Puritan model.  Especially missing from testimonies to conversion (even in ‘Calvin’ and ‘Reformed’ churches) is the deep and profound sense of being a sinner under the wrath of God and of feeling totally condemned by the holy Law of God.  Perhaps this may be traced not only to the general ethos of our culture but also to the different styles and content of sermons today.  This said – as I can sincerely testify – there is much to be gained by the study of Puritan literature on conversion and spirituality.  I made great use of Richard Baxter’s ideas in my Longing for the Heavenly Realm (Hodder, 1986), which shows that meditating upon Christ in glory is a spiritual duty and joy.

8 – The Evangelistic Model

      Mass evangelism in the modern era began when George Whitefield (1714–70) and John Wesley (l703–91) left the parish churches to preach to the crowds in churchyards, market-squares, grass fields and empty quarries.  Then, in the early nineteenth century, through the example and teaching of Charles Finney (1792–1875), mass evangelism was given its distinctive form, the ‘evangelistic model’ of conversion was developed, and the Protestant and Puritan models of conversion laid aside.  Most of us have encountered the evangelistic model by participating in or watching a Billy Graham evangelistic rally.

      What the Puritans had expected would occur over a longish period – from weeks to months – Whitefield and Wesley came to believe could and did occur in minutes.  These two English evangelists came to expect that not only instant regeneration/new birth but also instant conversion would occur if the Holy Spirit accompanied the preaching of the Gospel.  Yet it took them some time to accept that the instantaneous conversion was as valid as that longer one, according to the Puritan or Protestant models (both of which taught instant yet invisible inner, spiritual regeneration).

Whitefield and the Wesleys

      Obviously Whitefield reflected on this matter as this extract from one of his published sermons, ‘The Conversion of Zacchaeus’ (Luke 19:9–10), reveals.  After having explained that apart from the call of Jesus (an ‘external’ call) Zacchaeus also experienced the call of/by the Spirit (an ‘internal’ call), and in response he had received Jesus and believed the Gospel, Whitefield made this observation about the time needed for conversion.

It should seem that Zacchaeus was under soul distress but a little while ... perhaps not so long as a quarter of an hour ... for sometimes the Lord Jesus delights to deliver speedily.  God is a sovereign agent, and works upon his children in their effectual calling, according to the counsel of his eternal will.  It is with the spiritual, as the natural birth.  All women have not like pangs: all Christians have not the like degree of conviction.  But all agree in this, that all [converts] have Jesus Christ formed in their hearts: and those who have not so many trials at first may be visited with the great conflicts hereafter; though they never come into bondage again, after they have once received the spirit of adoption [Romans 8:14–15].

Here, of course, Whitefield is revising the Puritan model of conversion and saying that it is possible to have conflicts after rather than before genuine turning to God.  And he suggested that Zacchaeus could have had such conflicts before he died.

      For both Whitefield and Wesley, the embarking on evangelistic ministry which involved preaching to baptised (and often confirmed) people as if they were not already in some sense Christians meant also a rejection of the widely-held Anglican model of conversion through infant baptism and confirmation later in life.  This rejection, often expressed more by default than by deliberate statement, led to much criticism from bishops and priests of the Church of England.

      And it is easy to appreciate such criticism!  It appeared that these itinerant evangelists put all their emphasis on the crisis experience of conversion followed by membership of religious societies (from which eventually grew the Methodist Church).  Wesley, in particular, was a great organiser and he set up an elaborate system of fellowship groups for those who claimed to have been converted.  However, had parish priests been more spiritually minded and diligent in duty, there would have been little need for all this.

      From Charles Wesley, who was a great help to George Whitefield as he struggled to find true faith, came a tremendous volume of hymns which captured the theology and ethos of the evangelism and revival led by his brother, John, and Whitefield.  Here is a hymn about conversion which illustrates its nature and the possibility that it may happen quickly.

Luke 14:16–24

1          Come, sinners, to the gospel feast,

            Let every soul be Jesu’s guest;

            Ye need not one be left behind,

            For God hath bidden all mankind.

2          Sent by my Lord, on you I call,

            The invitation is to ALL:

            Come, all the world; come, sinner, thou!

            All things in Christ are ready now.

3          Come, all ye souls by sin opprest,

            Ye restless wanderers after rest,

            Ye poor, and maimed, and halt, and blind,

            In Christ a hearty welcome find.

4          Come, and partake the gospel feast;

            Be saved from sin; in Jesus rest;

            O taste the goodness of your God,

            And eat his flesh, and drink his, blood!

5          Ye vagrant souls, on you I call;

            (O that my voice could reach you all!)

            Ye all may now be justified,

            Ye all may live, for Christ hath died.

6          My message as from God receive,

            Ye all may come to Christ, and live;

            O let his love your hearts constrain,

             Nor suffer him to die in vain!

7          His love is mighty to compel;

            His conquering love consent to feel,

            Yield to his love’s resistless power,

            And fight against your God no more.

8          See him set forth before your eyes,

            That precious, bleeding sacrifice!

            His offered benefits embrace,

            And freely now be saved by grace.

9          This is the time; no more delay!

            This is the acceptable day,

            Come in, this moment, at his call,

            And live for him who died for all.

      It is perhaps important to recognise that while Whitefield belonged to the Reformed/Calvinistic and the Wesleys to the Arminian/Laudian schools of theology, they did not differ as such on the doctrine of conversion.  Their differences arose over the doctrines of predestination and entire sanctification.

      One interesting fact about both the Wesleys and Whitefield is that their own, never-to-be-forgotten crisis experiences of gaining inward peace and joy and of beginning a harmonious and right relationship with God in commitment to Christ came at the end of a long period of dedicated, wholehearted searching.  And though they were baptised and confirmed (even, in the case of the Wesleys, ordained) they did not see themselves as truly regenerated and converted persons until after these experiences.

      Whitefield was the first to come to the great spiritual experience.  As a member of Pembroke College, Oxford, he became a very serious-minded, religious young man, wholly involved in the so-called Oxford ‘holy club’, in which the Wesley brothers were prominent.  As his hunger for right religion increased, so he found that despite all his efforts he could not find it.  Reading the Life of God in the Soul of Man by Henry Scougal had a profound effect upon him.

God showed me that I must be born again, or be damned!  I learned that a man may go to church, say his prayers, receive the sacrament, and yet not be a Christian.  How did my heart rise and shudder, like a poor man that is afraid to look into his account-books, lest he should find himself a bankrupt.

      ‘Shall I burn this book?  Shall I throw it down?  Or shall I search it?’  I did search it; and, holding the book in my hand, thus addressed the God of heaven and earth: ‘Lord, if I am not a Christian, or if I am not a real one, for Jesus Christ’s sake, show me what Christianity is that I may not be damned at last!’

      God soon showed me, for in reading a few lines further, that, ‘true religion is a union of the soul with God, and Christ formed within us’, a ray of Divine light was instantaneously darted in upon my soul, and from that moment, but not till then, did I know that I must become a new creature.

      Thus began further intense searching, which involved physical illness and near exhaustion.  Here is how Whitefield described the last part of this painful process in his journal:

Soon after this, the holy season of Lent came on, which our friends kept very strictly, eating no flesh during the six weeks, except on Saturdays also, and ate nothing on the other days, except on Sunday, but sage-tea without sugar, and coarse bread.  I constantly walked out in the cold mornings till part of one of my hands was quite black.  This, with my continued abstinence, and inward conflicts, at length so emaciated my body, that, at Passion-week, finding I could scarce creep upstairs, I was obliged to inform my kind tutor of my condition, who immediately sent for a physician to me.

      This caused no small triumph amongst the collegians, who began to cry out, ‘What is his fasting come to now?’  But I rejoiced in this reproach, knowing that, though I had been imprudent, and lost much of my flesh, yet, I had nevertheless increased in the Spirit.

      This fit of sickness continued upon me for seven weeks, and a glorious visitation it was.  The blessed Spirit was all this time purifying my soul.  All my former gross and notorious, and even my heart sins also, were now set home upon me, of which I wrote down some remembrance immediately, and confessed them before God morning and evening.  Though weak, I often spent two hours in my evening retirements, and prayed over my Greek Testament and Bishop Hall’s most excellent Contemplations, every hour that my health would permit.  About the end of the seven weeks, and after I had been groaning under an unspeakable pressure both of body and mind for about a twelve-month, God was pleased to set me free in the following manner.  One day, perceiving an uncommon drought and a disagreeable clamminess in my mouth and using things to allay my thirst, but in vain, it was suggested to me, that when Jesus Christ cried out, ‘I thirst,’ His sufferings were near at an end.  Upon which I cast myself down on the bed, crying out, ‘I thirst!  I thirst!’  Soon after this, I found and felt in myself that I was delivered from the burden that had so heavily oppressed me.  The spirit of mourning was taken from me, and I knew what it was truly to rejoice in God my Saviour; and, for some time, could not avoid singing psalms wherever I was; but my joy gradually became more settled, and, blessed be God, has abode and increased in my soul, saving a few casual intermissions, ever since.

      Thus were the days of my mourning ended.  After a long night of desertion and temptation, the Star, which I had seen at a distance before, began to appear again, and the Day Star arose in my heart.  Now did the Spirit of God take possession of my soul, and, as I humbly hope, seal me unto the day of redemption.

Later, he would happily point out to friends the very place where, he believed, God gave him new birth into ever-lasting life.

      John Wesley was baptised, confirmed and ordained and a foreign missionary before he found that peace of mind and joy of heart which ended his search for a right relationship with God and set him on the route to being an evangelist.  It happened in a meeting of Moravians in the city of London, after Wesley had made their acquaintance on the ship that brought him back from America and his failed mission there.  He had written in his Journal: ‘I went to America to convert the Indians; but, oh, who shall convert me?’  The answer was God working through the Moravians.  Wesley has left a carefully prepared report of the day, May 24th, 1738, that God did this.

      Early in the morning John opened his Greek New Testament where 2 Peter 1:4 seemed to stand out of the page: ‘Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises ...’ (AV).  A little later, before he left his room, the text (‘You are not far from the kingdom of God’) was impressed upon his heart.  Later that day, he attended evensong at St Paul’s Cathedral where the words of the anthem from Psalm 130:7 also deeply moved him: ‘Let Israel hope in the Lord; for with the Lord there is mercy ...’ (AV).  The climax came in the evening; he wrote in his Journal:

In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans.  About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed.  I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation; and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.

      I began to pray with all my might for those who had, in a more especial manner despitefully used me and persecuted me.  I then testified openly to all there what I now first felt in my heart.  But it was not long before the enemy suggested, ‘This cannot be faith; for where is thy joy?’  Then was I taught that peace and victory over sin are essential to faith in the Captain of our salvation; but that, as to the transports of joy that usually attend the beginning of it, especially in those who have mourned deeply, God sometimes giveth, sometimes withholdeth them.

      After my return home, I was much buffetted with temptations; but cried out, and they fled away.  They returned again and again.  I as often lifted up my eyes, and he ‘sent me help from his holy place.’  And herein I found the difference between this and my former state.  I was striving, with all my might under the law, as well as under grace.  But then I was sometimes, if not often, conquered; now, I was always conqueror.

The priest was now set to become the evangelist who would labour for nearly fifty years and travel around 250,000 miles, mostly on horseback.

      Charles Wesley had had a similar experience a couple of days before, while lying in his bed with a sickness.  John visited him late on the 24th, as Charles recorded: ‘Towards ten my brother was brought in triumph by a troop of friends, and declared, “I believe!”  We sang a hymn with great joy, and parted with prayer.’  The hymn which they sang had been written by Charles to celebrate his own experience two days earlier and it was:

1          Where shall my wondering soul begin?

            How shall I all to heaven aspire?

            A slave redeemed from death and sin,

            A brand plucked from eternal fire,

            How shall I equal triumphs raise,

            Or sing my great Deliverer’s praise?

2          O how shall I the goodness tell,

            Father, which thou to me hast showed?

            That I, a child of wrath and hell,

            I should be called a child of God,

            Should know, should feel my sins forgiven,

            Blest with this antepast of heaven!

3          And shall I slight my Father’s love?

            Or basely fear his gifts to own?

            Unmindful of his favours prove?

            Shall I, the hallowed cross to shun,

            Refuse his righteousness to impart,

             By hiding it within my heart?

4          No! though the ancient dragon rage,

            And call forth all his host to war,

            Though earth’s self-righteous sons engage,

            Them and their god alike I dare;

            Jesus, the sinner’s friend, proclaim;

            Jesus, to sinners still the same.

5          Outcasts of men, to you I call,

            Harlots, and publicans, and thieves!

            He spreads his arms to embrace you all;

            Sinners alone his grace receives;

            No need of him the righteous have;

            He came the lost to seek and save.

6          Come, O my guilty brethren, come,

            Groaning beneath your load of sin,

            His bleeding heart shall make you room,

            His open side shall take you in;

            He calls you now, invites you home;

            Come; O my guilty brethren, come!

7          For you the purple current flowed

            In pardons from his wounded side,

            Languished for you the eternal God,

            For you the Prince of glory died:

            Believe, and all your sin’s forgiven;

            Only believe, and yours is heaven!

Already in this hymn the theme of evangelism is present and it is clear that for Whitefield and the Wesleys these crisis experiences of the grace of God in Jesus Christ served both to bring joy and peace to their hearts and a vision for evangelism to their minds.

      Each of them later recorded various further powerful experiences of the presence of God and the outpouring of the Spirit.  As soon as they began to preach, be it in cathedral, parish church, public place or churchyard, their preaching was effective and so blessed by God that people were deeply moved and began to profess deep and sincere conversion to God-in-Christ.  They became the leaders of a revival movement in Britain and (especially in the case of Whitefield) important preachers in the revivals in the eastern part of America.

      What was the basic content of their evangelistic message?  It was (in summary):

God has provided salvation in and by Jesus Christ, who is the incarnate Son of God.  He died in your place to bear the punishment due from God for your sins and he rose from the dead in order to gain for you a right relationship with God and eternal life with him.  He is now enthroned at the right hand of the Father in heaven from where he rules his Church and pours out his Spirit upon his people.  He also sends forth evangelists to preach the Gospel so that people may hear of what God commands them to do and to be.  This Gospel is the good news that God has provided salvation from sin and eternal life.  He calls upon people to repent of their sins, to forsake them and to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation.  God offers to all who repent and believe the privilege of being made his children by adoption and also citizens of his heavenly kingdom.

This message was preached with great clarity and power and the hearers were urged, often dramatically so by Whitefield, who was a born actor, to act immediately in response to God’s command and invitation.  No long preparation was necessary!  Here is a typical extract from Whitefield’s Journal.  The place is Philadelphia in America, the date is April 17th, 1740, and the preacher is still only 25 years of age.

I preached to upwards of ten thousand people, upon the woman who was cured of her bloody issue.  Hundreds were graciously melted; and many, I hope, not only thronged around but also touched the Lord Jesus Christ by faith.  About ten came to me after the sermon, under deep convictions, and told me the time when, and the manner how, the Lord Jesus made himself manifest to their souls.  What gives me greater hope that this work is of God, is, because these convictions have remained on many since I was here last.  Blessed be God, there is a most glorious work begun in this province.  The Word of God everyday mightily prevails, and Satan loses ground.  Lord Jesus, stretch out thy arm, and let not this work be stopped till we see that new Heaven and new Earth wherein dwelleth righteousness.

In America Whitefield left it to the local pastor(s) to care for the converts; but in Britain many were organised into fellowships (societies), first of all loosely connected with parish churches but later quite distinct (forming Methodism).  Only those with a genuine conversion experience to share were invited to join these societies.

      So we see that the evangelical/evangelistic model of conversion that emerges in what are called the British Evangelical Revival and the Great Awakening in America, is that of a crisis experience, normally connected directly or indirectly with informed enthusiastic preaching.  The event of conversion, which may be instant or extended, includes conviction for sin, repentance for sin and a turning to God so as to embrace Jesus Christ in faith and in commitment.  There is no obvious connection between this event of conversion and the baptism and/or confirmation of the convert.  And no preparation for the event was necessary.

      As we now turn to examine the teaching and practice of Charles Finney and others of the modern period, we shall note that the instantaneous nature of conversion is much emphasised while the relationship with baptism is either denied or deliberately not mentioned.  The third characteristic of the evangelical/evangelistic model, as it emerges in this period, is its lack of theological clarity, with the confusion of passive regeneration and active conversion.

From Charles Grandison Finney (1792–1875) to

William Franklin [Billy] Graham (b. 1918)

      As a young man Finney was a nominal Christian.  It was when he was learning the nature of law and reading the Law of Moses in preparation for his chosen career as a lawyer that he gained an interest in the Bible.  This led on to his search for God and personal salvation.  He lived at this time in Adams, New York, and what he came to believe was his experience of regeneration or conversion began – as he characteristically put it – in this way: ‘On a Sabbath. evening in the autumn of 1821, I made up my mind that I would settle the question of my soul’s salvation at once, that if it were possible I would make my peace with God.’  He wanted immediate action but found that he could not settle this weighty matter as quickly as he intended.  After much searching from Sunday through to Wednesday he felt compelled on the Wednesday morning to go into the nearby woods to pray.

      His record of what happened has become part of American religious folklore.  This is how he described his experience in his Autobiography.

Finally I found myself verging fast to despair.  I said to myself, ‘I cannot pray.  My heart is dead to God, and will not pray.’  I then reproached myself for having promised to give my heart to God before I left the woods.  When I came to try, I found I could not give my heart to God.  My inward soul hung back, and there was no going out of my heart to God.  I began to feel deeply that it was too late; that it must be that I was given up of God and was past hope.

      The thought was pressing me of the rashness of my promise, that I would give my heart to God that day or die in the attempt.  It seemed to me as if that was binding upon my soul; and yet I was going to break my vow.  A great sinking and discouragement came over me, and I felt almost too weak to stand upon my knees.

      Just at this moment I again thought I heard some one approach me, and I opened my eyes to see whether it were so.  But right there the revelation of my pride of heart, as the great difficulty that stood in the way, was distinctly shown to me.  An overwhelming sense of my wickedness in being ashamed to have a human being see me on my knees before God, took such powerful possession of me, that I cried at the top of my voice, and exclaimed that I would not leave that place if all the men on earth and all the devils in hell surrounded me.  ‘What!’ I said, ‘such a degraded sinner as I am, on my knees confessing my sins to the great and holy God; and ashamed to have any human being, and a sinner like myself, find me on my knees endeavouring to make my peace with my offended God!’  The sin appeared awful, infinite.  It broke me down before the Lord.

      Just at that point this passage of Scripture seemed to drop into my mind with a flood of light: ‘Then shall ye go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you.  Then shall ye seek me and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart.’  I instantly seized hold of this with my heart.  I had intellectually believed the Bible before; but never had the truth been in my mind that faith was a voluntary trust instead of an intellectual state.  I was as conscious as I was of my existence, of trusting at that moment in God’s veracity.  Somehow I knew that that was a passage of Scripture, though I do not think I had ever read it.  I knew that it was God’s word, and God’s voice, as it were, that spoke to me.  I cried to Him, ‘Lord, I take thee at thy word.  Now thou knowest that I do search for thee with all my heart, and that I have come here to pray to thee; and thou hast promised to hear me.’

      That seemed to settle the question that I could then, that day, perform my vow.  The Spirit seemed to lay stress upon that idea in the text, ‘When you search for me with all your heart.’  The question of when, that is of the present time, seemed to fall heavily into my heart.  I told the Lord that I should take him at his word; that he could not lie; and that therefore I was sure that he heard my prayer, and that he would be found of me.

      He then gave me many other promises, both from the Old and the New Testament, especially some most precious promises respecting our Lord Jesus Christ.  I never can, in words, make any human being understand how precious and true those promises appeared to me.  I took them one after the other as infallible truth, the assertions of God who could not lie.  They did not seem so much to fall into my intellect as into my heart, to be put within the grasp of the voluntary powers of my mind; and I seized hold of them, appropriated them, and fastened upon them with the grasp of a drowning man.

      I continued thus to pray, and to receive and appropriate promises for a long time, I know not how long.  I prayed till my mind became so full that, before I was aware of it, I was on my feet and tripping up the ascent towards the road.  The question of my being converted had not so much as arisen to my thought; but as I went up, brushing through the leaves and bushes, I recollect saying with great emphasis, ‘If I am ever converted, I will preach the Gospel.’

His lack of guilt feelings and inner conflict, along with the possession of a quiet mind worried him at this stage.  He thought maybe he was not really converted but had driven away the Spirit from his heart.

      However, it was not long afterwards that he remained one evening in his office in order to pray.  He tells how.

There was no fire, and no light, in the room; nevertheless it appeared to me as if it were perfectly light.  As I went in and shut the door after me, it seemed as if I met the Lord Jesus Christ face to face.  It did not occur to me then, nor did it for some time afterwards, that it was wholly a mental state.  On the contrary it seemed to me that I saw him as I would see any other man.  He said nothing, but looked at me in such a manner as to break me right down at his feet.  I have always since regarded this as a most remarkable state of mind; for it seemed to me a reality, that he stood before me, and I fell down at his feet and poured out my soul to him.  I wept aloud like a child, and made such confessions as I could with my choked utterance.  It seemed to me that I bathed his feet with my tears; and yet I had no distinct impression that I touched him, that I recollect.

      I must have continued in this state for a good while; but my mind was too much absorbed with the interview to recollect anything that I said.  But I know, as soon as my mind became calm enough to break off from the interview, I returned to the front office, and found that the fire that I had made of large wood was nearly burned out.  But as I turned and was about to take a seat by the fire, I received a mighty baptism of the Holy Ghost.  Without any expectation of it, without ever having the thought in my mind that there was any such thing for me, without any recollection that I had ever heard the thing mentioned by any person in the world, the Holy Spirit descended upon me in a manner that seemed to go through me, body and soul.  I could feel the impression, like a wave of electricity, going through and through me.  Indeed it seemed to come in waves and waves of liquid love; for I could not express it in any other way.  It seemed like the very breath of God.  I can recollect distinctly that it seemed to fan me, like immense wings.  No words can express the wonderful love that was shed abroad in my heart.  I wept aloud with joy and love.

So within a very short time Finney had not only been (in his terms) regenerated and converted, but he had also received the baptism of the Holy Spirit – an endowment from on high in order to have power to witness effectively for Christ.  Finney was thus the first of a series of evangelists and missionaries in the nineteenth century who claimed to have had such an experience and to call it by this name of ‘Baptism in/by/with the Spirit’.  Further, we may observe that though Finney’s own path to a sense of peace with God and power to do his will took several days of concentrated activity, he came to believe that under his preaching the whole process could occur in a few minutes.

      When he became. a preacher Finney employed the techniques he had witnessed, as well as used, in the courts.  He adapted to the evangelistic task the methods employed by attorneys as they pleaded their case at the bar.  Thus he pressed for immediate decision, a decision of mind and will.  Further, his reading of the Scriptures and his creation of theology was very much affected by what may be called legal reasoning.  He saw conversion as a decision to submit to God’s moral government; it was an act of the will, informed by the mind.

      He ran into much opposition from his fellow Presbyterians for his apparent rejection of such basic Reformed doctrines as the total depravity of the human person before God, the inability of a sinner to save himself, the bondage of the will to sin, the absolute need for the inner working of the Spirit in the soul to create desire for salvation and genuine repentance with faith, and the careful distinction between what God does within the sinner (regeneration) and what the sinner, as enabled by God, does (convert, turn in repentance and faith).

      Finney argued in sermons and books that regeneration and conversion are basically identical in meaning and that both terms imply the simultaneous exercise of both human and divine agency.  That is, God presents the truth of the Gospel through the Bible or the preacher and in response, by an act of will, the sinner makes himself a new heart (regeneration) or turns to God in repentance and faith (conversion).  He is passive in hearing and receiving the Gospel truth; but he is active in acting upon it.  So God cannot regenerate or convert a sinner without his full cooperation.

      Therefore, in his revival meetings, Finney presented the Gospel to the people as if he were in a court of law arguing the case of one of his clients before judge and jury, and arguing it in order to get the decision he required.  Further, to facilitate the process of conversion, Finney began the custom of having people who felt they wanted to convert to sit in special seats at the end of his service for further counselling.  Thus began, with these special seats, the custom of evangelists making their appeal to people to come to the front and make their decision for Christ as they did so.  Certainly Finney’s novel methods seemed to make sense to many Americans in this period of both urbanisation in the East and expansion on the frontier in the West.  Further, and this is important, he was by all accounts a holy man, filled with the Holy Spirit, and that Spirit was present in his ministry.  Seemingly, his methods and doctrine were hallowed also!

      Billy Graham, the best known of modern evangelists, followed in the steps of Finney and all those other evangelists (D. L. Moody, Billy Sunday, R. A. Torrey, etc.) whose methods were similar to those of Finney.  However, his own conversion occurred far away from any evangelistic meeting.  He was all alone, feeling abandoned to a love affair, when he decided to submit to the Lord Jesus.

      After being an evangelist for the Youth for Christ movement, Graham set up his own organisation, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and after the Greater London Crusade in 1954 he became internationally known.  All admit that his Crusades are (in the best sense) professionally promoted and organised and that he is a most sincere Christian minister.  The climax of all his public; evangelistic meetings is the call for those present who want to make a decision for Christ, or to receive Jesus into their hearts, or to be born again by the Spirit, to stand up in their seats and then to walk down to the front of the auditorium, so that they can be led away for counselling.

      A study of his preaching, writing and films reveals that he places great emphasis on the act of deciding for Christ (which he calls by a variety of phrases) immediately, without any delay.  There is no doubt that he and all his organisation and helpers are wholly committed to the possibility and reality of instantaneous new birth/conversion, decision for Christ.  Here is his own much-repeated direction to people as to how they may immediately become Christians.

      First, you must recognize that God loved you so much that He gave His Son to die on the cross.  ‘For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life’ (John 3:16).  ‘The Son of God ... loved me, and gave himself for me’ (Gal. 2:20).

      Second, you must repent of your sins.  Jesus said: ‘Except ye repent ye shall ... perish’ (Luke 13:3).  He said: ‘Repent ... and believe’ (Mark 1:15) ... Repentance does not mean simply that you are: to be sorry for the past.  To be sorry is not enough; you must repent.  This means that you must turn your back on sins.

      Third, you must receive Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord.  ‘But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name’ (John 1:12).  This means that you accept God’s offer of love, mercy, and forgiveness.  This means that you accept Jesus Christ as your only Lord and your only Saviour.  This means that you cease struggling and trying to save yourself.  You trust Him completely, without reservation, as your Lord and Saviour.

      Fourth, you must confess Christ publicly.  Jesus said: ‘Whosoever therefore shall confess me before men, him will I confess also before my Father which is in heaven’ (Matt. 10:32).  This confession carries with it the idea of a life so lived in front of your fellow men that they will see a difference.  It means also that you acknowledge with your mouth the Lord Jesus.  ‘If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved’ (Rom. 10:9).  It is extremely important that when you receive Christ you tell someone else about it just as soon as possible.  This gives you strength and courage to witness.

      It is important that you make your decision and your commitment to Christ now.  ‘Now is the accepted time ... now is the day of salvation’ (II Cor. 6:2).  If you are willing to repent of your sins and to receive Jesus Christ as your Saviour, you can do it now.  At this moment you can either bow your head or get on your knees and say this little prayer that I have used with thousands of persons on every continent:

      O God, I acknowledge that I have sinned against Thee.  I am sorry for my sins.  I am willing to turn from my sins.  I openly receive and acknowledge Jesus Christ as my Saviour.  I confess Him as Lord.  From this moment on I want to live for Him and serve Him.  In Jesus’ name, Amen.

      If you are willing to make this decision, if you have to the best of your knowledge received Jesus Christ, God’s Son, as your own Saviour, then according to the preceding statements of Scripture, you have become a child of God in whom Jesus Christ dwells.  Altogether too many people make the mistake of measuring the certainty of their salvation by their feelings.  Don’t make this serious mistake.  Believe God.  Take Him at His word.

The kind of direction offered here can be found in much the same form in hundreds of different tracts and booklets produced by modern evangelistic groups.

      Following such exhortation or advice, it may be interesting to note the kind of things which are said to those who have come forward in the meeting for counselling.  In the Greater London Crusade of 1954 each counsellor was given a leaflet entitled Lead them to Christ (published by Team Publications, of London).  This is exceptionally well written and presented and, within this form of evangelism, reveals a wisdom not always heard.  The first part deals with the character and skills needed by a counsellor who is truly to serve his Lord.  The second part is advice on how to deal with the person in the ‘Inquiry Room’. Here we learn that ‘the inquirer must be allowed to express his need in his own way’ and the counsellor must listen carefully.  At the appropriate time the counsellor is to make sure that the enquirer knows a minimum of sound Gospel doctrine and is made aware of his genuine need before God of forgiveness and new life.  Finally, when the counsellor is convinced that the enquirer really desires to forsake sin and serve the Lord they are ‘immediately to kneel down together’ and he is ‘to lead the soul to Christ as the One who receiveth sinners’.  This often involves the enquirer’s framing a prayer of confession as provided by Billy Graham in the above quotation.  After this the enquirer has become the convert and he is born again.  He can now be shown from the Scriptures the many promises that relate to the life of a Christian.  ‘In this way faith is confirmed by linking his new experience with the Word of God, showing that every step of the journey is dependent upon the living Christ.’

Comments

      Modern, large-scale evangelism certainly normally seeks to gain the cooperation of as many congregations as possible in the area where a Crusade is held.  It is from these churches that workers are recruited to do much of the preparatory work and then assist in and after the Crusade.  Further, those who ‘make a decision’ are also encouraged to return to the church with which they have a connection or go to the nearest evangelical church.  Follow-up meetings for enquirers/converts are also often held after the Crusade.

      Despite the involvement of the churches, however, this modern approach to conversion makes no serious attempt to relate the ‘crisis’ experience of those who are genuinely touched by the grace of God to the life of the Church of God.  Take for example the directions given by Billy Graham and cited above.  He calls upon people to confess Christ, but in the New Testament the primary way of doing this is by baptism.  And baptism tends to be a taboo subject in Crusades these days – unlike earlier Moody-Sankey meetings when people were forcibly told that their baptism and/or confirmation could never save them.  Thus the impression is given that what is important – indeed of chief importance – is not, as Luther insisted, ‘I have been baptised. ...’, but ‘I have had an experience I call conversion ...’  So there is an inbuilt and unexpressed tendency to devalue the sacraments and the life of the average congregation.

      Further, one cannot but be worried that the meaning of repentance and faith are given but a minimal and introductory content in and by this model.  This is, perhaps, inevitable given the circumstances of Crusade-evangelism.

      In criticising this evangelistic model of conversion, I want also to remember that, had it not been for the work of evangelists like Billy Graham, the flame of evangelism and the call to turn to God-in-Christ would have become very dim in the Western Church.  They are dim now, but they would have been even dimmer.  Further, it is salutary to recall that evangelists from Whitefield to Graham came on to the scene and flourished there because the churches, in general, were not themselves involved in that evangelism to which their heavenly, exalted Lord calls them.  If the doctrine of conversion is weak in terms of content and application, at least modern evangelists do keep before the whole Church the need always to have the making of disciples/converts high on the agenda.

      Finally, a word concerning modern evangelicals who practise believers’ baptism.  Let us first note the official teaching of the large and influential Southern Baptist Convention of America in its Statement of Baptist Faith and Message (1925):

Christian baptism is the immersion of a believer in water in the name of the Father, and Son and the Holy Spirit.  The act is a symbol of our faith in a crucified, buried and risen Saviour.  It is prerequisite to the privileges of a church relation and to the Lord’s Supper...

Earlier in this Statement internal regeneration and repentance and faith had been explained in such a manner as to make clear that they have occurred, and that the sinner is forgiven, justified and converted before he is actually baptised.  Baptism is thus a symbol and sign of something God has already done.  In contrast, as we saw in Chapter 5 on the catechumenate model, baptism in the early Church was seen as the event, climax and fulfillment of conversion.  Modern Baptists, as far as I know, do not speak of conversion in relation to baptism.  Rather, for them, baptism is what follows conversion.

Part  3: Making Converts

9 – Convertedness

      The making of converts for Jesus Christ needs to be motivated by the love of Jesus and controlled by a sound doctrine of conversion to God.  We have seen that the authentic elements or strands of conversion are conviction of sin, repentance, faith, baptism.  In using the words ‘strands’ and ‘elements’ I have followed the suggestion of Paul Heim in his The Beginnings: Word and Spirit in Conversion (1986).  He rejects the word ‘stages’ as implying that there is a logical or experimental progression through conviction, repentance and faith.  In reality, as we have seen, they both overlap and mix into each other.  Like Heim, we have also insisted that there are two sides to the coin we call conversion: there is the divine side via the Word and the Spirit and there is the human response via repentance and faith.

      But, in the light of the undoubted success of the evangelistic model must we include baptism (with incorporation into church fellowship) as an element of conversion?  Does not doing so not only exclude the vast membership of the Salvation Army but also many other fine, holy Christians who place little or no value on baptism?  Will the unbaptised or those who effectively deny their baptism by saying it is unimportant be excluded from the kingdom of God of the age to come?

      What we have to say is that it is God who has revealed to us the elements or strands of conversion.  They are his requirements addressed to those in whose hearts, minds and wills the Holy Spirit is working.  While it is our duty to fulfill those requirements, it is his right and prerogative to cancel one or more of them in terms of his conditions for entry into the kingdom of God and the blessings of eternal life.  It would seem to be the case that, because of the way the Church has failed to administer holy baptism, God has made it possible for people to enter into union with himself through Jesus without baptism.  To say this does not allow us also to say that we should neglect baptism.  It is to say that God is kind and good and sometimes chooses to bless us, despite our failures!

      What was important in the Church in New Testament times and has always been paramount is that church members be truly in a state of convertedness.  The event of conversion – however it occurs – is decisive, but it must be followed by a life of commitment, dedication and devotion to Jesus Christ.  Each of us needs to ask whether or not we are conscious of our sins, trusting in the grace of God revealed in Jesus, following in the way taught by our Lord, and seeking to serve him in the fellowship of the people of God (Church) and in his world.

Convertedness and imperfection

      A lot of people who sincerely believe themselves to be Christians and genuinely want to be committed Christians are worried because they seem to be achieving more failure than success.  Here are some principles to help you, if you or others you know, are in this state.

      1.  Convertedness does not mean that you are holy through and through

      Jesus himself was truly holy, for he was wholly consecrated to the service of the heavenly Father.  He faced strong temptations to think and act in ways contrary to the will of God, but he resisted them and always faithfully obeyed the heavenly requirement.  However, he did not possess, as we do, a sinful human nature.  His human nature was without any inherent bias towards evil and thus, though he faced powerful testing and temptation, he did not have the same inner battle as we do.  This is not to say that his temptations were less than ours: as Messiah he faced extraordinarily powerful testing and temptation.  Rather, it is to say that Christians within whom is the seed of eternal life and the presence of the Holy Spirit have not only to resist temptations from without but also to overcome evil impulses from within.  Until you die you will have your present human nature and body and thus the ever-present possibility of sinful thoughts and intentions arising within your heart.

      The Christian life is always a battle against the world, the, flesh (sinful human nature) and the devil (Satan).  Holiness is being conformed to the will of God, not the accepted standards of secular society: it is overcoming evil and sinful impulses and thoughts and thinking pure, wholesome and true thoughts; and it is resisting the temptations of the devil to act contrary to the known will of God.  It is because holiness is always a goal to aim for that the New Testament contains many exhortations to disciples of Jesus to set that goal before you.  Here are several of these exhortations: ‘Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect’ (Matt. 5:48); ‘Be holy, because I am holy’ (1 Pet. 1:16); and ‘Be imitators of God ... and be [continually] filled with the Spirit’ (Eph. 5:1, 18).

      The real point is not ‘are you holy now?’; but, ‘are you desirous from the bottom of your heart to be wholly consecrated to the service of Christ and the will of God?’  Are you wanting and trying to live as a baptised believer who in Christ has already died to sin and been raised to new life and hope?  Do you recognise your failures and weaknesses and confess them with a penitent heart to your heavenly Father, asking for his forgiveness?  Convertedness means that you desire to be holy and want God to make you holy.

      2.  Convertedness does not mean that your life as a professing Christian will always be smooth and without accident, tragedy and problems

      Jesus himself was not exempt from pain, suffering and horrible death.  The apostles also faced all kinds of difficulties from persecution to shipwreck and from hunger to imprisonment (2 Cor. 6:3ff.).  We do not know why this or that happens to us: you do not know why you develop cancer, why you were in a major accident, why you were made bankrupt, why you lost a loved one in tragic circumstances, or why you were made redundant.  We live in a world which has much sorrow, pain and distress and, as a Christian believer, you are not exempt from these things.  Further, as a Christian, it is possible that God may ask you to suffer for your commitment to Jesus Christ.  Thus, on top of the problems and difficulties that come your way as a human being living in human society, you may also face further pain because you identify with Jesus Christ.  Thousands of Christians have faced persecution joyfully because they bear the name of Jesus.

      If convertedness does not exempt you from suffering it does mean, however, that you have the potentiality of facing the suffering in a noble and dignified way.  Because you are following Jesus, who suffered, you have the supreme example to follow.  Further, you have a multitude of promises within the books of the New Testament promising special help and succour to those who suffer as Christians (e.g. Romans 8:22ff.; 1 Peter 1:3ff.).  To suffer nobly, and as Christ suffered, is not easy; but as a Christian you face problems, hardships and difficulties knowing that your heavenly Father knows all about your condition, and that the Holy Spirit within you is there to strengthen and help you.  God’s will is always to cause you to grow in wisdom and love through such experiences even if you cannot, either within them or after them, see why they occurred.

      3.  Convertedness does not mean that, of necessity, you enjoy the distinct, inner testimony of the Holy Spirit

      Writing to the Romans, Paul spoke of a special, inner conviction of being a child of God – a conviction caused directly by the Holy Spirit himself.  After insisting that the Spirit dwells in the hearts of all genuine believers (8:9ff.) so that with his prompting each believer may truly address God as ‘dear Father’, he adds this significant information.  ‘The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children’ (v. 16).

      Such testimony is over and above self-consciousness and the inner sense of belonging to God through Christ by the Spirit.  It is a distinct, special testimony and witness that is probably to be equated with what is elsewhere called ‘the seal’ of the Spirit (2 Cor. 1:22; Eph. 1:13; 4:30; John 6:27).  Some Christians are certainly given this inner testimony and by it they know, without a shadow of doubt, that God, is truly there, that Christ is their Lord and Saviour and that they are safely in his care and keeping.  Other Christians seem not to have it, for they are plagued with doubt and uncertainty as to whether or not they really and truly belong to God-in-Christ.

      Not a few books have been written, sermons preached and talks given in order to explain to Christians that, while this special testimony of the Spirit is part of God’s full provision for believers, it is not a necessary part of being a Christian.  Some believers seem to have this wonderful assurance from their first believing while others gain it later.  It seems to be especially evident in times of revival and renewal of the Church, and those who possess it usually have a great desire to witness for their Lord and Saviour, telling others of what he offers them in his great and everlasting salvation.  Yet it is a gift for which we ought to long and pray.

      4.  Convertedness does not necessarily mean that you are baptised with the Holy Spirit and exercise one or more of the special gifts of the Spirit

      The apostle Paul made it clear that it is only by the inspiration of the Spirit that a repenting person can truly confess that Jesus is Lord (1 Cor. 12:3).  Further he taught that by the action of the Spirit, that is by the personal agency of the Spirit, you are placed in the body of Christ: the Spirit as the baptiser actually introduces you to, and places you within, the body of Christ (1 Cor. 12:13).  And he held that the Christian is a person in whom the Spirit actually dwells (Rom. 8:9–11).  Therefore, convertedness means that the Spirit of God dwells in your heart whether or not you ‘feel’ his presence and power.

      It has been the experience of many Christians, from the time of the apostles to the present, that God actually seems to pour out his Spirit upon them.  This experience has been called ‘baptism with the Spirit’ and ‘being filled with the Spirit’ and it is felt as a divine visitation from outside coming upon and entering in.  There are several descriptions of this experience in the Acts of the Apostles (2:4ff.; 8:14–18; 10:45, etc.) which Luke appears to understand as fulfillments of the promise made by John the Baptist.  He said of Jesus that ‘he ... will baptise with the Holy Spirit’ (John 1:33).  Accompanying the heavenly visitation, as recorded by Luke, were all kinds of phenomena – not only speaking in tongues but also physical events like the shaking of a house.

      In times of revival and renewal Christians have believed that the powerful, spiritual experiences they enjoyed were nothing less than visitations by the Holy Spirit.  And the most common result of such experiences has been that the recipients have felt an overwhelming love for God (Rom. 5:5, ‘God has poured out his love into our hearts’) and a desire to tell others of that love (see no. 3 above).  In the modern Pentecostal and Charismatic movements, too, much was made, especially in the early days, of speaking in tongues as being the universal proof of the baptism with the Spirit.  This teaching was a mistake, for when the Spirit descends upon a believer, the gifts he brings are in the royal bounty of Christ, the Lord, and vary from person to person, as also does the nature of the ways the visitation of the Spirit is felt and known.

      This heavenly baptism with the Spirit is repeatable and is not a once-for-all event.  Christ the Lord is able to send the Spirit wherever and whenever he will.  And he sends him to penitent, humble and seeking people, often unexpectedly.

      Therefore, while it is true that each Christian is indwelt by the Holy Spirit, it is also true that from time to time, here and there, the exalted Lord Jesus Christ pours out the Spirit upon Christians in order to make them more effective as his disciples, messengers and ambassadors in this world.  It would seem that when the Church of God is functioning within the will and purpose of God it is a people who are baptised with the Spirit.  It would seem also that the Letters within the New Testament were written by their apostolic authors on the supposition that the local churches knew experientially the baptism with the Holy Spirit (e.g., Gal. 3:5; 5:13ff.).  Today, the norm of the churches in the West does not appear to be ‘being filled with the Spirit’: this is regrettable but it does not mean that the churches are not composed of converted souls!

      5.  Convertedness does not mean, of necessity, that you know the contents of the Bible well and are proficient in prayer and meditation

      You may have heard the Gospel, received and believed it, without actually reading the Bible.  Before the invention of printing, thousands of Christians never read the Bible: they heard it read and taught and committed to memory as much as they were able.  It takes a long time to master the basic contents of the New Testament, let alone the Old Testament.  What matters is not so much whether you have read and understood, but whether or not you have a sincere desire to read, study, learn and inwardly digest the contents of the Scriptures.  As one old prayer expresses it: ‘Blessed Lord, who hast caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning; grant that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn and inwardly digest them, that by patience, and comfort of thy holy Word, we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which thou hast given us in our Saviour, Jesus Christ.’

      There is a sense in which a converted soul must pray for ‘prayer is the soul’s sincere desire, uttered or unexpressed’.  However, desire and commitment have to be complemented by discipline and method both in prayer and in meditation.  Prayer includes adoration, praise, thanksgiving, confession of sins, intercession for others and petitions for self.  Meditation involves a technique and has to be learned by determination as well as trial and error.  It is one of the ways God has designed to help his children take the truth and grace of God from their minds to their hearts and into action. (See further my recent book, Longing for the Heavenly Realm, which has several chapters on contemplation/meditation.)

      6.  Convertedness is certainly to be turned, in discipleship of Jesus, towards the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, being attracted by him and longing to enter fully into his presence in the heavenly kingdom

      In union with Jesus through the Holy Spirit, a disciple is enjoying already God’s salvation in terms of forgiveness and the gift of eternal life.  However, that for which the disciple longs is not yet available, for the fullness of communion, fellowship, joy and peace will be a reality only in the sphere where Christ is and will be.  Convertedness is not a static situation and experience: it is like being within the magnetic field of a magnet of love as you are drawn into deeper experience of the love of God.  It is movement towards the vision of God through growing, following, learning, obeying, trusting and sojourning.  Further, it is not an individual journey and pilgrimage, for it is made with others who are heading for the same destination.  It is a walking together, led by the Spirit, in faith, hope and love.  There will be stumbling and losing of the way; there will be retreat as well as advance; there will be the rough and the smooth; and there will be pain and disappointment.  Yet the pure in heart shall see God and this vision of God in his absolute perfection and purity will, through Christ and by the Holy Spirit, draw believers towards itself via that last enemy, death itself.

      Conversion to God consists, as we have seen, in conviction of sin, repentance, faith, baptism and incorporation into the living Church.  Convertedness does not cancel these elements, but consists of them and other elements – e.g. faithfulness, hope, love, joy and peace.  The Christian life always includes conviction of sin, repentance for sin, turning to God in faith, obeying the will of God and looking to him for salvation.  The big difference in these elements before and after conversion is that they are offered to God from a different status.  In the original turning to God in conversion, repentance and faith are offered as from a lost orphan, longing to be saved and placed within the family of God; the repentance and faith of the converted person are offered as from an adopted child in the family, who already knows experientially the love of God.

10 – Regaining the Vision

      We face a situation in the West wherein major churches/denominations are losing membership and becoming peripheral to, and marginalised in, the society they seek to serve.  In order to become ‘relevant’ and to be seen to be useful, ecclesiastical leaders, at both national and local level, apparently feel that they need to address contemporary social, political and economic matters, making ‘Christian’ comment in sermons or by way of a resolution in synod.  And as they address these issues they have less and less to say about what may be called the individual’s relationship to God-in-Christ and the need of society for the good news of salvation from sin and into the kingdom of God (of the age to come).

      Therefore, it is not surprising that the Churches (at least on the evidence of official pronouncements) have moved so far from the state of being normally committed to making converts to Christ that such expressions as ‘conversion’, ‘new birth’ and ‘deciding for Christ’ are seen as the special vocabulary of the enthusiasts – the ‘born again’ crowd or the ‘Charismatics’.  Occasionally, as much to show their wide sympathies as anything else, denominational leaders will appear on the same platform as leading evangelists such as Billy Graham; though lip-service, and maybe occasional involvement, are made to evangelistic enterprises, however, the general state of affairs within the churches is neither conducive to, nor expectant of, numerical growth through conversions.  And this is true whether we think of conversion as the return to full Christian commitment of those who were baptised as babies and have left the congregation, or as the bringing into the Christian fellowship of those who never had a place in it.

Needing revival

      Various reasons may be offered for this strange state of affairs wherein a diminishing Church is preaching a basically this-worldly salvation to fewer people.  We can adduce the failure of the Church, the increasingly secularist nature of Western society, and the absence of the presence and power of the Holy Spirit.  And, when we reflect upon these three, we realise that they are interrelated.  The secularisation of Western society has gone on apace, in part because of the spiritual weakness of the Church, which has been unsure of the presence of the power of the Holy Spirit.  And, when in motion, the secularist spirit has been harmful to the search for the realm of the Spirit.  So much so that salvation can now be presented wholly in this-worldly terms by those who claim to be religious teachers and leaders.

      Secularisation may be defined in various ways.  First of all, it may point to the obvious way in which various social institutions have been removed from either specifically ecclesiastical or general religious control.  Here we may think of schools, colleges, universities, along with social welfare agencies.  Christianity/religion is seen as that which is the preserve of the Church.  Thus the Church and her faith is one part of a complex society.  Then, in the second place, it may point to the way in which religious imagery, symbolism and rituals become less common and influential in society (e.g. christenings, church weddings and funerals) and at the same time Christian interpretations of life, death and morality become less well known and passed on.  Thus to practise religion becomes a private option, open to those who incline to that way of believing and living within the pluralist society.  In an extreme form, this development leaves people – at least the majority – unable to make sense of talk of divine revelation, the supernatural, the Holy Trinity and so on.

      It is certainly true that among younger people there is much less knowledge of the contents of the Bible and of classic Christian literature today than there was a century ago.  This means that effective and genuine Christian evangelism has first of all to provide basic teaching about God as Creator and judge, before it can specifically present the good news concerning Jesus Christ and make the call to repentance and faith.  Further, since religious education in schools often is now no more than the provision of minimal information about the religions of the whole world, along with selective material on differing systems of morality, evangelism has also to justify both the exclusive uniqueness of Christ as Incarnate Son of God and of Christian morality as flowing from commitment to him.

      The evangelist who holds that all religions are ways to God’s salvation or that sincere religious people of all types are baptised into Christ with a baptism of sincerity (even though they do not know this to be the case!) will hardly have a compelling conviction to proclaim the good news.  Unless he truly holds that turning to the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ brings salvation qualitatively different from that found in the practice of Judaism, Islam and other religions, and unless he believes that decent, affluent ‘half-believers in their casual creeds’ are called by God to repentance and faith, then his job specification will need totally rewriting.

      If I were asked to isolate one reason for the general lack of confidence in the Gospel of God and the power of the Holy Spirit to make the Gospel effective, it would be that we have not had a major revival in the West for a very long time.  Where there is an outpouring of the Spirit, there is no failure of nerve within the Church with respect to the Gospel.  Let us be clear.  The desire to evangelise, the desire to make converts and the desire to see the body of Christ grow in holiness and commitment to mission is a God-given desire.  It is strongest, and more quickly turns into effective action, when people are filled with the Holy Spirit.

      In a revival the congregations of Christians are quite sure that God is the living Lord, that their sins are offensive to him, that Christ died for their sins and rose for their forgiveness and justification, and that, in and through Christ, God offers and gives them pardon of sin and his Holy Spirit to indwell them.  When a Christian is filled with the Spirit he/she looks upon other people in the love of Christ and sees them as needing God’s grace, as potential members of the family and household of God.  He/she cares not whether the person is of this or that persuasion for his/ her great care is that this person is encountered by Christ.

      We have not had the Spirit of God visiting our churches as a mighty wind: true, in such movements as the Charismatic movement, we have sensed his presence and power as that of a gentle breeze and the results have been many – from the renewal of whole congregations through healing of the sick to individual conversions.  However, if the Church at large, in the context of the increasing secularisation of society and pluralism within it, is to recover its nerve and vision for the Gospel then only a revival will suffice.  I fully recognise that such a divine event is controlled from heaven not earth and to state the need does not bring the event into being.

      There would seem to be some kind of correlation between the sincere desiring, longing and yearning of the faithful people of God on earth and the response from heaven.  And revival when it comes begins in the churches but quickly sends forth the renewed people in God with the Gospel into the world around them.  To say this is not to say that the Church should sit back and wait for revival: of course the people of God are to act as the people of God now, praying for strength to do so and expressing the deep longing for greater manifestations of the divine presence and power.

      It is perhaps appropriate at this point to provide a sketch of the type of heavenly confidence that a church needs to be a centre for evangelism, that is evangelism as a constant commitment and activity within the context of its worship, fellowship and service.  Evangelism is at the very centre of the mission of the Church in society: evangelism is the very core of that which the Church does as she crosses the frontiers into the world.  It is not the proclamation in an objective way of a series of truths concerning God and Jesus and salvation.  It is proclamation of God’s saving action in Jesus Christ by people who are involved with those whom they wish to hear, receive and obey the Gospel.

      Those who actually bear the Gospel and witness to and for Jesus Christ are essentially related to the message they present: its effects are to be seen in their lives and relationship to their hearers.  In this sense true evangelism: is incarnational, being proclamation and teaching along with involvement with and commitment to people, wherever they may be.  True evangelism can never merely be the quick visit to declare the Gospel and then the hasty retreat into the safety of home or church building.

Confidence

      Fundamental to genuine confidence is confidence in God as the living, reigning, loving and active Lord.  This is a deep inner conviction that God truly exists and is in dynamic and gracious contact with his people in his world.  In its profoundest sense this confidence is the experience of the Spirit testifying with our spirits that we are God’s children, creating, within us a joy that is beyond description.

      All who read the eighth chapter of Paul’s Letter to the Romans must be impressed with his humble yet unbounded confidence in God.  After expressing his confidence in God’s providence in daily life (8:28), he moves on to express his confidence in the eternal, electing love of God in Christ and of the eternal validity of the saving action of God in the death, resurrection and exaltation of Jesus.  With such a God, he cries out, what have we to fear or to want?  And he concludes: ‘I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord’ (8:37–9).

      It is probably true to say that many sincere Christians do believe in God as the sacred Scriptures present him, but they lack any real, unmistakable sense of his power and glory.  They do not have that witness of the Holy Spirit with their hearts that God is truly and really their heavenly Father.  And, of course, the kind of view of the natural world that we pick up from popular science – in school or on TV – does not help us to have sensitivity to the realm of the supernatural, above, beyond and through the natural world.  But when the Spirit of God comes upon a group of people they know in their hearts beyond all doubt that God is everything that the New Testament tells us he is.  They become humbly confident in him and everything he has revealed and said.

      Arising from experience of the living God and, at the same time, feeding into that experience, is confidence in the Scriptures as trustworthy records of what God wants people to know and to receive.  As a collection of documents from different centuries, the Bible is a fascinating book, and, as such, provides interesting reading and study material.  But the person who has confidence in God and in his self-revelation recorded in Scripture can never be content with such study.  He or she will read the Bible on bended knee – that is, in a state of humble receptivity and expectancy – waiting for a word from the Lord, for an insight into his will, and for a warming of the heart.  He or she will listen to the public reading of the Bible and its exposition within worship as a further opportunity to learn from heaven.  And because of this confidence in the Bible as the book of revelation and of the Holy Spirit he or she receives as true what is taught therein concerning the nature and the destiny of mankind.

      He or she accepts that human beings are created by God to enjoy him and all his blessings while also devoting their whole lives to glorifying their Creator.  He or she accepts that there is something fundamentally wrong with the position of mankind before God and because of this mankind needs to be redeemed, restored to what God originally planned, and so blessed as never again to fall into the delusion of sin.  And he or she accepts that to redeem, restore and save mankind God took the costly step of becoming incarnate as Jesus of Nazareth and as the man for others doing for mankind what it could not do for itself by his life, teaching, example and compassion, and particularly by his sacrificial, atoning death and glorious resurrection and ascension.  So he or she wholeheartedly believes that Jesus Christ, the man for others, is the one in, by and through whom we come to God and receive salvation.

      In the contemporary Church there are so many hindrances to possession of a confidence in the Scriptures as the faithful record of God’s will and words.  So much study of the Scriptures is dominated by the ‘critical’ methods used in the study of ancient literature that Christian people appear never to have been taught (or to have perhaps lost) the habit of reading and hearing the Bible as living words from God in heaven.  In fact, to state it in this way would invite criticism from the majority of clergy and church leaders.  Yet in times of revival when the Spirit of the Lord falls upon the people who are believers, such people adopt or revert to a simple (a profoundly simple) approach to the Bible.  They do not read it looking for problems and inconsistencies, for pre-modern views of mankind and of the divine character, and for ancient, out-of-date concepts of salvation and redemption.

      Rather, they read it humbly, eagerly, expectantly and faithfully as children wanting to hear from their Father, as beggars wanting to be fed, and as soldiers waiting for their marching orders.  Of course there is a place for biblical scholarship of a reverent and believing kind: of course there is a place for careful exegesis and interpretation of the contents of the various books of the Bible.  These activities ought to go alongside the reading, studying and meditating upon the Scriptures in the manner in which we have been describing.  But the usual methods of biblical scholarship employed in the secular university will never, if brought into the Church directly and without adaptation, create a sense of confidence in the Scriptures as the faithful words of God.

      Confidence in God and in his Word naturally leads to confidence in his mission to his world, into which he invites the Church to enter.  God sent forth his Son into the world in order to save the world.  The Son, having done all that was necessary to save the world, returned in his humanity to heaven and sent the Holy Spirit to empower and guide his disciples in their involvement in God’s mission in the world.  This mission is to create in and by Jesus Christ (the exalted, Incarnate Son of God) a new people to become the people of the new cosmos (new heaven and earth) of the kingdom of God of the age to come.  The Church is intended to be the fellowship of people in whom God has created the beginnings of the new life of the kingdom of God, and that, as such, it is to be a society of men and women who share what they have been given and witness to the love and grace of God.

      When the Spirit of God is poured out upon the Church, the society of Christians are sure that they belong primarily to the heavenly realm where Christ is enthroned as Lord at the right hand of the Father, and that in union with him they sit there with him.  Thus they set their minds on this heavenly realm and being identified with the exalted Christ seek to see the world through his eyes and with his love.  They see their calling on earth as bearing witness in attitude, word and deed to the one to whom they belong and the new creation arising around him in the heavenly realm.  In fellowship and worship they celebrate their union with Christ and the salvation into which they have entered; in proclaiming and teaching the good news of the resurrected and exalted Lord Jesus they invite people to enter the new creation and by particular concern for the poor, outcasts and needy they testify to the love that is supreme in the kingdom of God.

      When the Church loses its confidence in its union with the exalted Lord Jesus and the longing for that heavenly realm becomes weak or extinct, then the sense of involvement in God’s mission takes a different emphasis.  Celebration is of the good things in this world only and mission is improving the lot of people in this world with a vague sense that God plans to bring in the kingdom into the present world and age.  The sense of being a pilgrim people who are sojourners in this world and who have set their hearts upon the realm where Christ is, is lost and the emphasis is upon the Church as the servant – serving the perceived needs of society from the perspective of love of the neighbour for this world and age.  And confidence is placed in political and social change.

      Confidence in God as Lord, his revealed Word and will and in his mission in his world leads to confidence in the-Christ who is the centre of the proclamation and teaching.  The New Testament and the Church over the centuries clearly teach that Jesus is unique.  He is so, not only because he is perfect man but also because he is the eternal Son of God made man.  In confessing that he is truly God and truly man, that is God become man, Christians are expressing a truth that they cannot wholly understand, but which they believe to be the case.  They recognise that all the claims they make about his identity and his achievement on behalf of mankind have their origin in the fact of Incarnation.  Were he not the Incarnate God, how could he be the true and only mediator between God and mankind?  As man he brings mankind to God and as God he brings God to mankind.  Having offered himself as a sacrificial atonement for the sins of the world and having overcome death, he is as God-made-man able to unite deity and humanity for everlasting salvation.

      So salvation is only in union with Jesus, who is the way, truth and the life, for no one comes to the Father except in and through him.  With this estimate of Jesus, the Church is impelled to proclaim the good news to the world, for the world is seen as in need of him and he is seen as more than ready to meet the true and real need of the world.  When the Holy Spirit comes upon a society of Christians, they see very clearly that they (and all mankind) are sinners and that Jesus is the perfect Saviour, who is ever ready to enter into communion with those who receive him.

      When the Church looks at Jesus through the spectacles provided by a secularist culture, then he becomes a Saviour acceptable to the modern mind.  His virginal conception and bodily resurrection are explained in such a way as to lose their literal, physical meaning: appearances of Jesus to the disciples are explained as objective or subjective visions and the exaltation into heaven is taken as a myth based on the idea of a three-tier universe.  He emerges as an interesting, perhaps fascinating, person who is an important symbol of all that is good and noble in this world and whose life and words give us important clues as to what the invisible God is like.  However, he is not the person whose deity is so clearly affirmed in the Catholic creeds and in the historic, traditional liturgies.  He is hardly the kind of person in whose name a mission to the world would be mounted.

      So it is not surprising that as the commitment to the orthodox doctrine of Jesus as God-made-man has weakened within theological scholarship and ecclesiastical leadership, so views of other religions (in the context of a shrinking world in a jet age) have also changed.  While the Church once said that Christ is the exclusive Saviour – in him alone is the only pathway to God – voices within are now saying loudly and clearly that if Jesus is Saviour it is in an inclusive sense.  By such a claim is meant that sincere people in all religions are groping after truth and Jesus is truth: thus all religions can be ways to God’s salvation.  Of course the concept of Jesus as an inclusive Saviour comes in a variety of forms and there is talk of ‘inclusivism from above’ and ‘from below’; but all forms see Christ as the apex of the triangle.  Though this approach preserves to a certain extent the uniqueness of Jesus it does so by taking away the urgency and need for evangelisation by the Church of God.  Rather it encourages serious dialogue and cooperation only.

      The development of inclusivist doctrines of the uniqueness of Jesus are now, however, under criticism within the Church because they are said to be essentially paternalistic or colonialist.  The commitment to tolerance/toleration has the effect, in these circumstances, of causing Christians to adopt pluralism in the sense of seeing Christ as one, but by no means the only one, of the ways/persons who reveal God to us and give us a pattern of life to follow.  When we get to this stage then evangelism is a word for the archives, not for contemporary vocabulary!  When a Church is filled with the Holy Spirit in a time of revival it tends towards an exclusivist view of Christ, but does so without in any way denying the dignity of all mankind, made in the image and likeness of God.

      No doubt there are many possible ways of describing the nature of the major religions of the world and their relationship to Christ: no doubt also the relationship posited between Judaism and Christ will not be the same as that between Hinduism or Islam and Christ.  This said, where the Church is filled with the Spirit and holds to the received, orthodox view of Jesus as the Incarnate Son of God then it will have confidence in the proclamation of him as the sole mediator between God and mankind.

In this world but not of it

      We have looked at confidence in God as Lord, in the Scriptures, in the mission of God and in Christ as the centre of the Gospel: we could, of course, add to these and speak of confidence in the promises that tell of life after death with Christ in God’s new heaven and earth and in those that speak of God’s ultimate control of history and human destiny.  However, enough has been written to indicate the type of humble and spiritual confidence produced in Christians when they are filled with the Spirit – which is the ‘normal’ state in which God wishes his Church to be.  In reading this account some will probably express fear that such confidence as has been described causes people to have a debased view of this world and not to see the genuine good and joy within it as God’s creation.  To help those with such fears here are some thoughts from Dr E. L. Mascall:

What is our attitude to this world to be?  Treat it as if it is all that there is and as if all that you need is to be found in it, and it will dangle its gifts before your eyes, decoy you, tantalize you, and finally mock and desert you, leaving you empty handed and with ashes in your mouth.

      But treat it as the creation of God, as truly good because it is God’s handiwork and yet not the highest good because it is not God himself, live in this world as one who knows that the world is God’s and yet as one who knows that his true home is not here but in eternity, and the world itself will yield up to you joys and splendours of whose very existence the mere worldling is utterly ignorant.  Then you will see the world’s transience and fragility, its finitude and its powerlessness to satisfy, not as signs that life is a bad joke with man as the helpless victim, but as pale and splintered reflections of the splendour and beauty of the eternal God – that beauty ever old and ever new – in whom alone man can find lasting peace and joy.

      It has been a surprise to many who have experienced conversion to God in Christ that they have not only perceived the grace of God in Jesus Christ but also seen God revealed in and through nature.  The grass has become greener, the skies bluer and the whole world of nature more welcoming and full of blessings.  Yet this world only offers partial, broken and fleeting glimpses of perfection which come and go, wither and die: perfection that lasts and satisfies is to be found only in union with God through Jesus Christ in everlasting love in heaven.  Conversion is a turning from seeing this world in categories within this world to a seeing of this world in the light of that other supernatural world where Christ is enthroned as Lord.

Appendix 1

Conversion in the Old Testament

      In the Greek translation (Septuagint) of the Hebrew Bible (our Old Testament) the verb epistrephein (along with apostrephein) translates the Hebrew verb, Shubh, in the places where the latter has a specifically theological meaning of converting to, turning to or returning to God.

      In all the verb Shubh occurs around 1,050 times in the Hebrew Bible and in most cases the meaning is that of literal and physical turning.  However, in around 120 cases the meaning is theological, indicating a different attitude towards God and a new pattern of behaviour.  It is thus used in the religious sense to point to the return to the covenant relationship that God originally brought into being between himself and the people of Israel.  That relationship was one which required worship, trust, love and obedience with a rejection of all other forms of religion.

      Here are some examples of the use of Shubh in this theological sense:

1.   2 Chronicles 30:6–9.  The revival of pure religion under King Hezekiah, who sent out this letter to his people:

People of Israel, return to the LORD, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Israel, that he may return to you who are left, who have escaped from the hand of the kings of Assyria ... If you return to the LORD, then your brothers and your children will be shown compassion by their captors and will come back to this land, for the LORD your God is gracious and compassionate.  He will not turn his face from you if you return to him.

2.   Isaiah 55:5–7.  A call to the Jewish exiles.

Seek the LORD while he may be found; call upon him while he is near.  Let the wicked forsake his way and the evil man his thoughts.  Let him turn to the LORD, and he will have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will freely pardon.

3.   Ezekiel 18:21–3.  A message to the individual Jew.

But if a wicked man turns away from all the sins he has committed and keeps all my decrees and does what is just and right, he will surely live; he will not die ... Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked? declares the Sovereign LORD.  Rather, am I not pleased when they turn from their ways and live?

4.   Joel 2:12–13.  Israel ought to repent.

‘Even now,’ declares the LORD, ‘return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning.’

Rend your heart and not your garments.  Return to the LORD your God, for he is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love, and he relents from sending calamity.

5.   Psalm 80:3, 7, 19.  Only with God’s help can Israel return to him.  He must restore (cause to turn).

Restore us, O God Almighty; make your face shine upon us, that we may be saved.

Therefore it may be seen how Jesus, following John the Baptist, took up this prophetic call to God’s covenant people to ‘turn/return/be restored’.  The verb which is used in the Gospels and Acts to convey the idea of turning from sin is metanoiein usually translated as ‘to repent’.  This verb is not, however, used in the Septuagint to translate Shubh.  So, while it is in the message of John the Baptist, Jesus and his apostles the dynamic equivalent of Shubh, it is not so in the Greek Old Testament for there the verb epistrephein has that function.  But for metanoiein to gain the full meaning of Shubh, and thus of epistrephein, it is complemented by the verb pisteuein, to believe.  Jesus preached, ‘Repent and believe ...’ which is the same as ‘Turn/return/convert ...’

      Commenting on the verb Shubh in its religious/theological usage, Professor Walter Eichrodt wrote:

The metaphor [of turning] was an especially suitable one, for not only did it describe the required behaviour as a real act – ‘to make a turn’ – and so preserve the strong, personal impact; is also included both the negative element of turning away from the direction taken hitherto and the positive element of turning towards, and so, when combined with prepositions, allowed the rich content of all the many other idioms to be reproduced tersely yet unmistakably (Theology of the O.T., vol. 2, London, S.C.M. Press, 1967, pp. 465–6).

Appendix  2

The Context of ‘to convert’

      In the New Testament we are faced with a variety of verbs setting forth (a) human duty to God because of his Gospel, and (b) that which God, in grace, does for sinners responding to his Gospel.  These verbs often overlap in meaning even though each has its own particular emphasis.  The word ‘conversion’ can be used as an umbrella kind of term to cover the result of all that is indicated by these verbs.  Such usage is, however, not to be recommended!  In the lists below the most common English form of the verb is given, followed by the Greek original.  Full references to texts are not supplied for the reader can find them all by the use of a Concordance to either the NIV or the RSV (or the use of The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible).

1.  What God requires of a person who hears the Gospel: He or she is,

      (a) To believe it (pisteuein); Acts 2:44; 4:4; 4:32.

      (b) To repent of sin (metanoiein); Acts 2:38; 3:19; 8:22.

      (c) To obey it (hypakouein); Rom. 6:16; Heb. 5:9; 2 Thess. 1:8.

      (d) To receive it (lambanein); John 1:12, 16; 5:43; 13:20.

      (e) To convert to God (epistrephein); Acts 9:35; 11:21; 26:18.

      (f) To confess Christ (homologein); Rom. 10:9–10; 1 John 2:23; 4:15.

2.  What God does for a person who receives the Gospel:

      (a)  He (effectually) calls him (kalein); Mark 1:20; Rom. 8:30; 9:24; 1 Cor. 1:9.

      (b)  He begets new life in him (gennan); John 3:3, 5, 6; 1 John 2:29; 3:9.

      (c)  He forgives/pardons him (aphienai); Mark 2:5; 1 John 1:9; Jas. 5:15.

      (d)  He justifies him (dikaioun); Luke 18:14; Rom. 3:24, 26; 5:1; 8:33.

      (e)  He sanctifies him (hagiazein); John 17:17; Acts 20:32; 1 Cor. 1:2.

      (f)  He adopts him as his child (lambanein huiothesia); Rom. 8:15; Gal. 4:5.

      (g)  He baptises him in water and in the Spirit (baptizein); Mark 1:8; Acts 1:5; 11:16; Gal. 3:27.

      It is a mistake to try to put either what the sinner ought to do or what God graciously does into some kind of chronological – or even logical – order.  A person does not simply repent and then having repented believe: the two movements of heart, mind and will are fused and occur simultaneously.  Likewise, God’s actions are both within the individual and within (as it were) the court of heaven for as he regenerates he also declares a person to be accounted righteous for Christ’s sake (to justify).  Further, to sanctify implies both this inner action of making holy and the act of setting this sinner apart to belong to the body of Christ and the kingdom of God.

      These verbs are probably best seen as a cluster which belong together and which as a whole cluster convey the nature of the human response as well as the richness of the divine initiative and action.  We could of course add other verbs to these clusters – e.g. to the first the verbs ‘to watch and to pray’ and to the second ‘to reconcile and to redeem and to save’.  And we must remember that the verbs in each cluster always point to what God has done in Jesus Christ, in his life, sacrificial death and glorious exaltation into heaven.

Appendix  3

Extra Perspectives

      Obviously conversion can be examined and/or interpreted from a variety of perspectives.  Those employed in this book have been theological and historical, concentrating on information taken from the Bible and a variety of written Christian sources.  But working within these valid and important perspectives, we need to be aware that the phenomenon we call conversion has been, and remains (especially in North America), a frequent research topic for professionals in the behavioural sciences.  The published material in learned articles and books covers a very wide spectrum: e.g. the adoption of Christianity or Islam by whole tribes in Africa or Asia, the ‘born-again’ experiences of white American teenagers, conversion to Islam of black Americans, and entry into one or another of the weird cults that seem to flourish in California.

      It is probably fair to claim that there are very few, if any, assured results in all these studies: however, there are all kinds of suggestive hints and insights.  What follows are some points or observations that seem to me to be important, especially for someone who looks at conversion primarily from a biblical, theological or historical perspective.

      1. Conversion that is experienced as a crisis has also a process built into it.  When recounting how they were converted, many people will emphasise a particular moment for that is what stands out in their memory and feelings.  Further, this is often the way in which they believe they ought to understand what has happened to them.

      Psychologists who have studied the testimonies of converts to committed Christianity have found that before the crisis experience called conversion the converts were prepared for the possibility of the experience by other preparatory experiences.  In teenagers these are usually such things as (a) a sense of dissatisfaction with life; (b) partial involvement with a Christian group/sub-culture – e.g. on a campus of a college; (c) a deeply emotional experience creating a sense of crisis or failure – e.g. through failing examinations or a love-affair going wrong; (d) a hope or belief that religion can solve one’s problems; (e) interaction and involvement with people who have strong belief and commitment; and (f) a home background involving church affiliation.

      Following the actual ‘crisis’ or ‘encounter’, conversion is consolidated through the incorporation into a group, society, or church and this usually includes some form of initiation – e.g. adult baptism or the receiving into membership by the giving of the right hand of fellowship.  Thus conversion is a process with a crisis and would not occur without both constituents.

      Other psychologists have noted that in those who claim an experience of conversion there was a definite sense of deficiency – that is, something lacking in life, which could be supplied through joining the group or church.  The sense of deficit or deficiency can take one of several forms.  There is the deficit of social rewards, the experience of not feeling rightly valued or esteemed by the society in which one moves.  There is, also, the deficit of consistency of life, the experience of living in a crisis caused by events seemingly outside one’s control.  Further, there is the deficit of religious solidarity, the experience of being confused about, and lacking clarity, concerning moral and religious values.  Finally, there is the deficit of personal influence, the experience of lacking a close, effective bond with people of strong religious ties.  Where a person has two or more of these deficits it seems that she or he is more prepared for religious commitment than others who only have one deficit or none.

      It is possible, say other psychologists, to describe conversion as having. three parts to it.  The first is a period of growing awareness (which will be developing through the experience of a sense of deficit, feelings of dissatisfaction and so on) leading to the realisation that the Christian faith is probably the answer.  The second is a period of consideration in which the role of a witness or advocate for the faith is usually important: this could be in person-to-person encounter in an evangelistic meeting or in a small group meeting.  Consideration leads to acceptance of the new faith and commitment to it, which itself requires the third stage of incorporation into the society which represents this new faith.  Of course, people can drop out at any point in this progression and the time taken, as well as the contributing factors, will be different in each individual case.  It is impossible to prove that each person must go through specific preparation: what seems clear is that there is always some form of preparation (which the convert may or may not recognise as such) before genuine commitment in religion: and, further, commitment leads to incorporation into the society of the people of the new faith.

      2. Conversion is from one faith to another faith or from one way of relating to a faith to another way of relating to that same faith.  Thus conversion to the committed practice of Christian faith can take place from any of the religions of the world (Islam, Hinduism, and so on), from any of the ideologies of the world (atheism, agnosticism, and so on) and from the various forms of secularist materialism and half-belief which are found in the Western world.  It always includes accepting new beliefs and values or seeing old beliefs and values in a new perspective.  The important point is that everyone has some kind of faith which is either left behind or newly interpreted through conversion.

      3. Conversion appears to take place more often during teenage than at any other time in life.  This has been noted by many researchers.  For example, in his famous study, The Varieties of Religious Experience, based on his Gifford Lectures in Scotland of 1901–2, William James wrote:

In his recent work on the Psychology of Religion, Professor E. D. Starbuck of California has shown by a statistical inquiry how closely parallel in its manifestations the ordinary ‘conversion’ which occurs in young people brought up in evangelical circles is to that growth into a larger spiritual life which is a normal phase of adolescence in every class of human beings.  The age is the same, falling usually between fourteen and seventeen.  The symptoms are the same – sense of incompleteness and imperfection; brooding, depression, morbid introspection, and sense of sin.  And the result is the, same – a happy relief and objectivity, as the confidence in self gets greater through the adjustment of the faculties to the wider outlook.

He concluded that `Starbuck's conclusion ... would seem to be the only sound one', and added, 'Conversion is in its essence a normal, adolescent phenomenon, incidental to the passage from the child's small universe to the wider, intel­lectual and spiritual life of maturity.'

      If Starbuck and James are followed then conversion is only the resolution of such conflicts as come to the fore during adolescence.  This is, of course, to claim too much.  What is probably true is that adolescent conversion is an answer to and resolution of identity and sexual conflicts in some – but not all – cases.  We need to remember that conversion may also be related to other periods of change or stress in life – e.g., the so-called mid-life crisis.  If all this is admitted, it is still possible to assert that conversion is actually more than the solution to the crisis, and that in some cases conversion is not actually specifically related to the major crises of adolescence.

      4. Certain personality types are not predisposed to particular types or forms of conversion.  Further, the change which is involved in conversion is not a change of personality.  We are all aware that it is not easy to define personality for it is not directly observable; its existence is established by inference from variation in a person’s behaviour, and it points to that which gives a person consistency from situation to situation through time.  Personality refers to those internal qualities which define individual personhood and which make individual differences evident.

      William James spent a lot of time in his Gifford Lectures dealing with the personality traits of those whom he called the ‘once-born’ and the ‘twice-born’ and he believed that only certain types of personality (the ‘sick souls’, with, for example, a psychopathic temperament) needed an experience of conversion.  Others, following in his footsteps, have claimed that people who need to undergo a deep conversion experience are usually from the less-intelligent members of the population and also more subject to hysteria.  But more recent study appears to show that it is impossible to prove either that the form that conversion takes is directly related to particular personality types or that, specifically, the neurotic and anxious person needs a ‘sudden conversion’!

      In Psychology of Christian Conversion (1969), Robert O. Ferm claims that conversion does cause a radical change in personality.  This book has a preface by Billy Graham and its whole orientation is towards the idea that conversion is a crisis experience resulting in a great change, wherein a ‘new creature’ is formed.  If true, this would be a great boost to the claims made on behalf of evangelistic crusades and instantaneous, marvellous conversion.  But Ferm’s claims have not been verified by serious research: rather conversion is seen to be more about a change in direction of life, together with changes in values and ideas, rather than in the essence of personality.

      5. The changes achieved through psychotherapy are not to be confused with conversion.  It is well known that various positive changes can be gained through psychotherapy.  These include mental health and stability, better interpersonal relationships and self-realisation/self-actualisation (which involves having meaningful and worth-while goals).  However, it is possible to become a changed person who denies the need for conversion in the religious sense since psychotherapy can be merely related to living meaningfully in terms of totally secularist values.  Yet, in some cases, it is possible that psychotherapy paves the way for the felt need for conversion.  On the other hand, it is quite possible that a person just converted actually needs psychotherapy since conversion does not imply wholeness but the beginnings of a journey of sanctification towards wholeness!

      6. The testimony of the convert, expressed in spoken or written word, is not usually the raw report of his/her experience, but is a report which combines personal experience with the theology, symbolism and particular religious language of the group which the person has joined.  To claim this is in no way to accuse converts of being deceitful; but it is to state that most people interpret what has happened to them in terms compatible with the views of members of the group to which they belong.  They do this without particularly thinking about it.  I have particularly noticed this phenomenon when visiting the USA from England.  Usually I go to various types of evangelical churches and colleges as well as Anglican churches of a traditional as well as Charismatic type.  The Lutherans tend to be dominated by language based on the distinction between ‘Law and Gospel’, while the Calvinists tend to be dominated by ‘effectual and sovereign grace’ and the revivalistic fundamentalists by ‘following, talking to and listening to Jesus’.  Anglican talk is much more sacramentalist and, except where it is Charismatic, hesitant to speak openly of personal, religious experience.  Conversion seems to occur for Lutherans in a Lutheran way, for Calvinists in a Calvinist way and for revivalists in a revivalist way!  The Calvinist is much more likely to speak of ‘the Lord opening my eyes’ and the revivalist to speak of ‘I realised that ...’ than the other way round.  And where Calvinists and revivalists are prone to say ‘Christ’ or ‘Lord’ the Lutherans will say ‘Gospel’ – e.g. ‘commitment to the Gospel’.

      7. Life-changing conversions to other faiths than Christianity occur.  There are, for example, many Black Muslims in the USA who testify to a real change in their lives when they became Muslims.  Not a few robbers, drug-addicts, murderers and rapists have been changed into law-abiding and God-fearing citizens.  Then there are many who have become Mormons or Jehovah’s Witnesses whose life style and belief systems have dramatically changed.  Books could be filled with testimonies to the changes brought about through conversion to a major religion (e.g. Islam and Buddhism) or a sect/cult (e.g. Mormonism and the Unification Church).

      Keen evangelical Christians are prone to explain such conversions as the work of Satan, who seeks to simulate or imitate everything that Christ does.  Such a claim is debatable.  What is much clearer is that at both the social and psychological level people are definitely changed when they leave the Westernised half-belief in God for a definite belief offered by a major religion or cult.  Socially, they change their behaviour, gain new friends and fellowship and pursue different activities and goals.  At the inner level they testify to new contentment, peace, purpose and commitment.  They speak of a new relationship with God which gives them a sense of identity and purpose.

      A lot of the interesting work in research into religious conversion has been done with respect to the turning of young Americans to the cults of Eastern and Western origin.  Whatever else this research has revealed it has shown that genuine conversions – in terms of life-changing experiences – do occur.

      8. What distinguishes and differentiates one conversion from another is not the psychosocial process but the actual content.  For example, the turning of a person from half-belief (in God and secularism) to orthodox Christianity or to join the Moonies or to become a Mormon is much the same in terms of sociological and psychological observation and investigation.  What distinguishes the one from the other are the different beliefs and values adopted, and societies joined.

      This point has been made very clearly and forcibly by J. Harold Ellens.  He builds upon the teaching of James W. Fowler in his influential Stages of Faith (1981), and sees the phenomenon of conversion in this manner:

When a person experiences a significant new life-shaping insight, relationship or trauma, that event-experience cuts down through all the structures and defence processes of the personality structure or developmental formation and reaches all the way down to the characterological level.  There, at that level, the cognitive, psychosocial and moral-spiritual content of the ‘significant emotional event’ produces a paradigm shift in the value and belief system.  The assumptions, commitments, ‘loves’, values or beliefs which have here-to-fore constituted the ground of being and integrating perspective are now all illumined in a new way with the new light of the ‘new, significant event of the psyche’.

To illustrate what he has in mind, Ellens refers to the shift in the visual pattern in a kaleidoscope as you turn the barrel two or more degrees.  So also at the level of the psyche, the shift or turn in experience produces an alteration in the internal system of believing and valuing.  As there is no change in the basic nature of the crystals in the kaleidoscope, so also there is no basic change in personality.  Yet everything seems to have become different.

      Here is how Ellens describes Christian conversion as a ‘significant, emotional event’.

It involves a new personal relationship with God in Christ, a new insight regarding the truth about God and self, and a new trauma as one is confronted with an entirely new world of moral claim, ontological reality, and vocational destiny.  Frequently Christian. conversion involves all three kinds of events in conjunction.  Sometimes the conversion starts in trauma; moral, physical or psychical; and then moves through new insight to a new relationship.  At other times it starts with a new relationship, often mediated through a new quality of human relationship, and moves on, therefore, to new insight and the new trauma of personality reintegration.  At still other times it starts in new insights and grows to include the other two factors.  Sometimes it takes place mainly on only one of the three levels.

      However, he holds that conversion to Judaism or Islam or a cult happens in much the same way: psychodynamically and sociodynamically there is no difference – or at least no major difference.  Whether or not this apparent fact requires us to state the following with Ellens is another question: ‘The work of the Holy Spirit, the phenomena of Christian conversion, and the dynamics of our transforming moments are no more supernatural than the formation of coal under the physicochemical laws of hydrocarbons under pressure.’

      What orthodox Christians normally claim is that Christian conversion is a turning to God in response to his call, which may be heard, felt and received in a variety of ways and means.  The responding person is a thinking person and so there will be changes of mind concerning God, self and sin in the act or process of turning.  He or she is a feeling person and so there will be mild or, intense feelings of grief, guilt and conflict; also he or she is a deciding person and so there will be a definite exercise of will to follow Christ and submit to God’s will.  Observation of the cognitive, affective and decision-making processes can be made, we have seen, by behavioural scientists.  What they cannot predict or describe is the secret, inward and invisible divine action and intervention.  However, if the results of this. inward, divine activity are instantaneously obvious in the attitude and actions of the responding person then their observations will include those results.

      The discussion of conversion in this appendix has been of that type which occurs in adolescence or later and includes a definite crisis as part of a longer process of turning from one faith to another.

      Further, a disadvantage – perhaps a major one – in the findings into the psychosocial process of conversion is that they do not cover observation of conversion in a genuine revival.  Unlike Jonathan Edwards, the philosopher-theologian of New England in the eighteenth century, who observed and reflected upon the phenomenon of conversion during a period of intense religious awakening and revival (see his Treatise on the Religious Affections), modern behavioural scientists have not been able to be present in such a revival.

      In times of revival there is not only an abundance of scripturally-based preaching and teaching but also a great stirring of the emotions.  People do not merely feel a sense of failure and lacking a purpose in life, they also have very intense feelings about their relationship to God.  They feel guilty as sinners because they have personally offended Almighty God, the judge: they feel that their sins are so immense as to be beyond forgiveness: they see the sacrificial atonement of Christ as their only plea before God for grace and pardon: they know that without Christ as their Saviour they face the prospect of the divine wrath and the punishment of hell.  They feel that only a visitation by the divine Spirit into their hearts will enable them to repent and believe as God requires.

      And after they have been drawn into true faith, they feel that a massive burden has been lifted from their hearts: they know that the cloud that blocked their communion with God has been removed in and by Christ their mediator and their hearts are filled with new and powerful emotions – love of God and his excellence, joy in the eternal salvation in which they share, a sense of peace within and a great desire to tell others that God has forgiven, accepted and blessed them.

      Certainly studies have been made by psychologists of the written testimonies of people converted in revivals; but, studying accounts is not the same as being present in a revival and studying living people.  Further, since very few modern-day converts appear to feel an overwhelming sense of the holiness of God and their own sin, it is difficult (if not impossible) to study anything like the revival phenomenon of conversion today.  Thus the intriguing question as to whether a pre-conversion experience of a great weight and guilt of sin is only a phenomenon of a period of revival (and, perhaps, of earlier centuries in the West) remains open.

Bibliography

A.  Anthropology

      Costas, Orlando E., ‘Conversion as a complex experience’, Gospel in Context, 1 (1978), pp. 14ff.

      Hesselgrave, D. J., Communicating Christ Cross-Culturally (Zondervan, Grand Rapids, 1978).

      Horton, R., ‘On the rationality of conversion’, Africa, 45 (1975), pp. 219ff., 373ff.

      Kraft, C. H., Christianity in Culture (Orbis, Maryknoll, New York, 1979).

      Mayers, M. K., Christianity confronts culture (Zondervan, Grand Rapids, 1974).

      Tippett, A. R., ‘Conversion as a dynamic process in Christian mission’, Missiology, 2 (1977), pp. 203ff.

      Wallace, A. F. C., ‘Revitalization Movements’, American Anthropologist, 58 (1956), pp. 264ff.

B.  Biblical Theology

      Barclay, William, Turning to God: a study of conversion in the Book of Acts (Westminster Press, Philadelphia, 1964).

      Goppelt, Leonhard, Theology of the New Testament, vol. 1 (Wm. B. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 1981).

      Guthrie, Donald, New Testament Theology (Inter-Varsity Press, Leicester, 1981).

      Jeremias, Joachim, New Testament Theology, vol. 1 (S.C.M. Press, London, 1971).

      Kümmel, W. G., The Theology of the New Testament (Abingdon Press, Nashville, 1973).

      Manson, T. W., The Teaching of Jesus (Cambridge University Press, 1963).

      New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, 3 vols. ed. Colin Brown (Paternoster Press, Exeter, 1975–8).  Articles on ‘conversion’ and ‘repentance’.

      Smalley, S. S., ‘Conversion in the New Testament’, The Churchman, vol. 78 (1964), pp. 193ff.

C.  Historical Theology

(i) primary texts

      Augustine, Confessions, trans. E. M. Blaiklock (Thomas Nelson, Nashville, 1983).

      Baxter, Richard, Practical Works (Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, 1981).  In this volume are various books on conversion.

      Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, trans. T. G. Tapper (Fortress Press, Philadelphia, 1959).  This contains the Catechisms of Luther and the Formula of Concord.

      Book of Common Prayer (1549, 1552, 1662).

      Calvin, John, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. J. T. McNeill, trans. F. L. Battles, 2 vols.  (Westminster Press, Philadelphia, 1960).

      Conversions: the Christian Experience, eds H. T. Kerr and J. M. Mulder (Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1984).  This contains the accounts of the conversions of Augustine, Calvin, Wesley, Whitefield, Edwards, Brainerd, Finney and others: each account is taken from the original source.

      Cyprian, Ad Donatum (Letter to Donatus), in his Letters, 2 vols. (Edinburgh, 1869).

      Documents of the Baptismal Liturgy, ed. E. C. Whitaker (S.P.C.K., London, 1960).  This contains the Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus and other texts.

      Dort, Canons of, trans. A. A. Hoekema (Calvin Theological Journal, Grand Rapids, 1968).

      Finney, C. G., Lectures on Systematic Theology (E. J. Goodrich, Oberlin, 1878).

      Vatican II: the Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents, ed. Austin Flannery, O.P. (Fowler Wright Ltd, Leominster, 1981).  This contains the Decree on Missionary Activity.

      Wesley, John, Journal, ed. N. Curnock (Eaton & Mains, New York, 1909).

      Wesley, John, Forty-Four Sermons (Epworth Press, London, 1944).

      Whitefield, George, Journals (Banner of Truth, Edinburgh, 1960).

      Whitefield, George, Sermons, ed. John Gillies (Middletown, 1837).  This selection contains the sermon on Zacchaeus.

(ii) secondary texts

      Burnish, R., The Meaning of Baptism: a comparison of the teaching and practice of the Fourth Century with the present day (S.P.C.K., London, 1985).

      Brauer, J. C., ‘Conversion: from Puritanism to Revivalism’, Journal of Religion, 58, pp. 227ff.

      Green, Michael, Evangelism in the Early Church (Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1970).

      Nock, A. D., Conversion (Oxford University Press, 1933).

      Nock, A. D., ‘Conversion and Adolescence’, in Arthur Darby Nock: Essays, ed: Z. Stewart (Harvard University Press, 1972).

      Pettit, N., The Heart Prepared: Grace and Conversion in Puritan Spiritual Life (Yale University Press, 1966).

      Leclercq, Jean, The Love of Learning and the Desire for God: a study of monastic culture (S.P.C.K., London, 1978).

D.  Psychology

      Ellens, J. H., ‘The Psychodynamics of Christian Conversion’, in Journal of Psychology and Christianity, vol. 3, no. 4, pp. 29ff.

      Ferm, Robert O., Psychology of Christian Conversion (1969).

      Fowler, James W., Stages of Faith: the psychology of human development (Harper & Row, New York, 1981).

      Gillespie, V. B., Religious Conversion and Personal Identity (Religious Education Press, Birmingham, Al., 1979).

      James, W., The Varieties of Religious Experience (Longmans, Green & Co., London, 1928).

      Johnson, C. B., and Malony, H. N., Christian Conversion: biblical and psychological perspectives (Zondervan, Grand Rapids, 1982).

      Roberts, F. J., ‘Some psychological factors ; in religious conversion’, British Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 4 (1978), pp. 185ff.

E.  Sociology

      Beckford, J. A., ‘Accounting for Conversion’, British Journal of Sociology, 29, pp. 249ff.

      Heinrich, Max, ‘Change of Heart: A test of some widely held theories about religious conversion’, American Journal of Sociology, 83 (1977), pp. 653ff.

      Taylor, B., ‘Conversion and Cognition: an area for empirical study in the microsociology of religious knowledge’, Social Compass, 23 (1976), pp. 5ff.

      Taylor, B., ‘Recollection and Membership: converts’ talk and the ratiocination of commonality’, Sociology, 12 (1978), pp. 316ff.

      Wimberley, R. C., ‘Conversion in a Billy Graham Crusade: spontaneous event of ritual performance’, Sociological Quarterly, 16 (1975), pp. 162ff.

F.  Theology

      Barth, K., ‘The Awakening to Conversion’, in Church Dogmatics, vol. 4:2 (T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh, 1958).

      Conversion: perspectives on personal and social transformation (Alba House, New York, 1978).

      Graham, Billy, ‘The New Birth’, in Fundamentals of the Faith, ed. C. F. H. Henry (Zondervan, Grand Rapids, 1969).

      Helm, Paul, The Beginnings: Word and Spirit in Conversion (Banner of Truth Trust, Edinburgh, 1986).

      Newbigin, Leslie, The Finality of Christ (John Knox Press, Atlanta, 1969).

      Stott, J. R. W., Christian Mission in the Modern World (Kingsway Publications, Eastbourne, 1985).

      Wallis, Jim, The Call to Conversion (Harper & Row, New York, 1982).

      Weinandy, Thomas, Receiving the Promise: the Spirit’s work in conversion (The Word among us Press, Washington, D.C., 1985).

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