R. Scott Clark hit the nail on the head here. We are not Wesleyans. But the Wesleyans only have a "bent" toward sinning and they get entirely sanctified later. Unfortunately they do so by lowering God's moral law so they can "appear" to meet it. To them sin isn't missing the mark or sinning in ignorance or leaving undone what they ought to have done. No, sin is merely willfully or deliberately violating a known moral law. It reminds me of the Pharisees who think they've done above and beyond the call of duty but really had not. (Matthew 5:17-21, 48; Luke Luke 17:10). I graduated from a Wesleyan holiness seminary so I know Wesleyan theology from the inside. Wesley himself never professed to have attained his theoretical state of entire sanctification. For him it was a goal to be pursued. When Phoebe Palmer advocated claiming the state of entire sanctification as an experience by faith, the door was opened to the modern Wesleyan and Keswick holiness movements. Unfortunately, it opened the door for the pelagianism of Charles Finney as well.
To read R. Scott Clark's confession of sin click on the link below:
To read R. Scott Clark's confession of sin click on the link below:
We Are Not Wesleyans « Heidelblog
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Clark's was a good post. While I've never had the pleasure of actual experience on the inside of Wesleyanism, I've known a moralistic Calminian Baptist minister who came pretty close, believing his beloved late preacher dad had achieved a sinless state, and affirming that theoretically, it was a goal to strive for, but he back-pedaled by using it more as a motivational tool, than a genuine theological position--but that's how popularist Baptist preachers roll--they're trained that the laity don't want real theology so they feel an obligation to so simplify it that they distort it not realizing that indeed they are writing a whole new theology, because they so regularly feed it to their people. And, timely as it is, this motivational theology was acted on by the typical assumption of the gospel while we "move beyond" it to the practical matters--"exercising the disciplines of 'Llove (his grammatical gimmick to point out that he's talking about living the great commandment, rather than the modern malleable concept we call love).'"
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