The Baptism with the Holy Spirit

QUESTION: Does the baptism with the Holy Ghost effect entire sanctification?

ANSWER: The word "baptism" implies purification.When the word "fire' is added, perfect cleansing is indicated, by the figure of hendiadys, one idea expressed by two words, cleansing and fire. This denotes the complete and final purification, while being born of water and the Spirit denotes [an] initial cleansing less radical. The Pentecostal gift was cleansing in Acts 15:8, 9.

— Steele's Answers pp. 85, 86.

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EDITOR'S NOTE: This was the standard view in the Holiness movement in the 19th and early 20th centuries: Baptism with the Holy Spirit is another name for Entire Sanctification. This reflects the influence of the teachings of John Fletcher, as I argue here: Spirit Baptism: Wesleyanism & Pentecostalism. 

However, Dr. Steele seems to me to backpedal a bit on this issue when challenged by James Mudge's book Growth in Holiness Toward Perfection. His reply to Mudge is here: Baptism With the Holy Ghost. In this response, Steele goes so far as to say: "Hence we conclude that the phrase, 'baptism or fullness of the Spirit,' may mean something less than entire sanctification." He distinguishes ecstatic (or charismatic) fullness from ethical fulness. The one does not necessarily imply the other.

And, further down the page, Steele says: "Our author's chapter on the baptism of the Spirit might have been included in his discussion of irrelevant texts, on none of which do our standard theologians ground the doctrine of Christian perfection."

So, while it is true that Baptism with the Holy Spirit and Entire Sanctification were often spoken of interchangeably in the Holiness movement, their view did not rest upon this identification. 

Freed From the Law?

QUESTION: In what sense are Christian believers freed from the Law?

ANSWER: (1.) It is true that all mankind are, by the atonement, forever freed from the necessity of pleading that we have perfectly kept the law, in order to acceptance with God. We are freed from the necessity of legal justification. Such a necessity would shut up a sinful race in eternal despair. We are freed from the law as the ground of justification. Our ground of justification is the blood of Christ shed for us.

(2.) Nor are true believers, who have received the Spirit of adoption, under the law as the impulse to service. They are not spurred on to activity by the threatened penalties of God's law. Love to the Law-giver has taken the place of fear of the law as a motive. This is specially true of those advanced believers, out of whom perfect love has cast all servile, tormenting fear. Before emerging into this experience, there is a blending of fear and love as motives to service. In this state the believer is not wholly delivered from legalism. But the law is put into the heart of the full believer, and its fulfillment is spontaneous and free. "I will run the way of Thy commandments when Thou shalt enlarge my heart." The Septuagint Version, used by our Lord Jesus, reads: "I have run .... Since," etc. "Without the law," says St. Paul, as an outward yoke laid upon the neck, "but under law to Christ." Love to Christ absorbs into itself all the principles of the moral law, and prompts to their glad performance. Hence, "Love is the fulfillment of the law." This is the meaning of Rom. vii. 6, as translated in the Revision which corrects the blunder of King James' version from a faulty MS., making the law of God die, instead of the believer's dying to it; that is, ceasing to be actuated by its terrors, and becoming obedient from the new principle of love. "But now we have been discharged from the law, having died to that wherein we were holden; so that WE SERVE IN NEWNESS OF THE SPIRIT, and not in the oldness of the letter."

The Antinomian Error

Theological errors move in cycles, some times of very long periods. They resemble those comets of unknown orbits which occasionally dash into our solar system; but they are not as harmless. Often they leave moral ruin in their track. Since all Christian truth is practical, and aims at the moral transformation of men, all negations of that truth are deleterious; they not only obscure the truth and obstruct its purifying effect, but they positively corrupt and destroy souls.

This is specially true of errors which release men from obligation to the law of God. After St. Paul had demonstrated the impossibility of justification by works compensative for sin, and had established the doctrine of justification through faith in Christ which works by love and purifies the heart, there started up a class of teachers who drew from Paul's teachings the fallacious inference that the law of God is abolished in the case of the believer, who is henceforth delivered from its authority as the rule of life. Hence they became, what Luther first styled, Antinomians (Greek anti, against, and nomos, law).

Fulfilling the Law of Love

Infirmities are failures to keep the law of perfect obedience given to Adam in Eden. This law no man on earth can keep, since sin has impaired the powers of universal humanity.

Sins are offenses against the law of love, the law of Christ, which is thus epitomized by John, "And this is His commandment, that we should believe on the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another" (I John iii. 23). Hence the Spirit convinces the world of sin, "because they believe not on Me." The sum total of God's commandments to men with the New Testament in their hands, is faith in Christ, attested by its proper fruits, good works. However dwarfed and shattered by sin that poor drunkard is, so long as he is this side of the gates of hell he is under the dispensation of the Holy Spirit, who imparts to him the gracious ability to repent of sin, and to trust, love, and obey the Lord Jesus. His refusal is sin. So long as he has any capacity for love, however small, that capacity is called his whole heart. The law of love says to him in tones of authority, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart." Hence every one is under obligation to be evangelically perfect. Refusal to love with the whole heart is the ground of condemnation, and not inevitable failures in keeping the law of Adamic perfection.

— Mile-Stone Papers, Part 1 Chapter 7.

Sin May Be Destroyed

QUESTION: What evidence does the Greek Testament afford that sin may be destroyed?

ANSWER: (1) The absence of all terms expressive of mere repression. (2) The use in Paul's epistles, crucify, cleanse, destroy (καταργέω, annihilate or abolish — Cremer and Thayer), circumcision without hands, and mortify or kill (Col. 3:5). (3) If this is not the doctrine of the New Testament, Christ's mission is a stupendous failure, because he does not destroy the works of the devil, and perfect holiness is impossible, either in this world or that to come.

— Steele's Answers p. 85. 

Eternal Misery

QUESTION: What texts prove the eternal misery of the impenitent?

ANSWER: Dan. 12:12: "And some to shame and everlasting contempt." Matt. 25:46: "All these shall go away into eternal punishment." Rev. 20:10: "The beast and the false prophet," terms representing human beings, "shall be tormented day and night forever and ever." He who believes only the promises in the Bible, and disbelieves its threatenings, is not a true believer in Jesus Christ.

— Steele's Answers p. 85.

The Fall and Death

QUESTION: Did the fall of man destroy the immortality of the soul?

ANSWER: Adam and Eve were forbidden to eat of a certain tree, lest they die. The death here threatened was not extinction of being or annihilation — a term not used in the Bible — but natural death, the separation of the spirit from the body, and spiritual death, the separation of the soul from God, the source of its well-being.

— Steele's Answers pp. 84, 85.

The Pope

QUESTION: When was the first Pope made in the Roman Catholic Church, and how was the papacy begun? 

The Roman Catholic contention is that Peter was designated by Christ as the earthly head of the universal church, and under Divine guidance Peter, accompanied by Paul, went to Rome, where he presided as bishop twenty-five years, from A. D. 41 to 67. But when we ask for the scriptural proof of events so fundamental to church history, to the question of the genuineness of modern Christianity, and of the way of salvation, we find not a particle of evidence that Peter was ever in Rome, or Italy, or Europe. The Acts of the Apostles begins with giving Peter prominence, but soon drops him as not specially important, and notes minutely the history and journeys of Paul till his death in Rome. The Papacy seems to have arisen on this wise: Rome was the dominant city in the world. The church in Rome came to be regarded as the most important and its bishop the highest in dignity. To sustain this dignity the legend of Peter as first bishop was concocted and repeated to subsequent generations of Romans ambitious for the greatness of their city, till it became an accredited tradition. To find a historical basis, fabulous histories were written and genuine annals were interpolated by putting "et Petrus" (and Peter) after the name of Paul in Rome. Thus a stupendous falsehood was foisted upon the church and the world. But it took several centuries, and the invention of the Isidorean Decretals, forged decrees of early Christian Ecumenical Councils, to make the bishop of Rome king of all other bishops and to make his diocese absorb all of their dioceses.

— Steele's Answers pp. 83, 84.

On the Temptation of Jesus

QUESTION: (1) Does temptation imply a desire on our part to do wrong? (2) If so, was Jesus tempted in that manner? (3) Had Jesus freedom of will, so that he could have fallen? 

ANSWER: Temptation is an appeal, not to any desire to do wrong, but to our wish for immediate happiness and for the avoidance of present suffering, as hunger in the case of Jesus in the wilderness. His desire for food was innocent and his gratification of it by miracle would not in itself have been sinful if it had not been in violation of his Father's purpose that his Son should exactly observe our human conditions of service and put forth no more power to shield himself from pain than we have. Hence he wrought no miracle for himself even on the cross, when he could have commanded to his rescue more angels than the Roman Emperor had soldiers. To deny perfect free agency  to Jesus would degrade him below the lowest man he came to save. It would divest him of all his moral attributes and make him a machine. His holiness while on the earth was certain, but not the result of necessity. He was holy not because he could not sin, but because he would not. God's holiness is the same. He is a free agent, always abstaining from wrongdoing. There is no risk to the universe in the perfect freedom of the Father and the Son to violate the moral law grounded not on the will of either, but in the very nature of things. When it is said, "god cannot lie," it is not a natural "cannot," but a moral one like that of Joseph when solicited by Mrs. Potiphar (Gen. 39:12). The distinction between a Calvinist and an Arminian lies in answer to this question, "Is a thing right because God does it, or does he do it because it is right?"

— Steele's Answers pp. 82, 83.

Bearing Fruit

QUESTION: What does Jesus mean by "fruit" in John 15:2: "Every branch that beareth fruit he cleanseth it that it may bear more fruit"? Bruce says, "the spread of the Gospel."

ANSWER: 1, holiness; 2, service. The two are inseparable, for the first is the preparation for the second, and the second without the first is a failure. Holiness implies love, and love must find expression in the spread of the good news. Verse 16 is a proof of the first, and John 4:36 is a proof that fruit includes service. Says Wesley in his note on bearing more fruit: "Purity and fruitfulness help each other. This is one of the noblest rewards God can bestow on former acts of obedience to make us yet more holy and fit for farther and more eminent service." A decline in the spirituality of the church is always attended by a decline in its aggressiveness and converting power.

— Steele's Answers pp. 81, 82.