Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 63:2 (Jun 2020)
Article: Rethinking Finney: The Two Sides Of Charles Grandison Finney’s Doctrine Of Atonement
Author: Obbie Tyler Todd

JETS 63:2 (June 2020) p. 331

Rethinking Finney: The Two Sides Of Charles Grandison Finney’s Doctrine Of Atonement

Obbie Tyler Todd

Obbie Tyler Todd is Pastor at the Church at Haynes Creek, 1242 Mt. Zion Road, Oxford, GA 30054 and an adjunct professor of theology at Luther Rice College & Seminary, 3038 Evans Mill Road, Lithonia, GA 30038. He may be contacted at [email protected].

Abstract: Charles Grandison Finney remains America’s most controversial revivalist. However, despite a range of analysis in recent decades, his doctrine of atonement is still not completely understood in its entirety. Tailoring every facet of his thinking toward the goal of revivalism, Finney drew elements from different Protestant traditions in America in order to combine moral governmental and moral influence theories of atonement. It is the purpose of this article to articulate how Finney synthesized these two models, which occupied the more dominant space in his thinking, and why his view can best be described as a “governmental and influential substitution.”

Key words: Charles Finney, atonement, substitution, moral government, moral influence, revivalism, public justice

Charles Grandison Finney was a reformer. As an abolitionist, an advocate for women’s rights, and an early champion of the temperance movement, Finney has long been recognized as a pivotal figure in American culture.1 From anxious benches to protracted meetings to any one of his “new measures,” Finney also left his progressive mark upon American revivalism and evangelicalism at large. However, for all of his influence upon American religion, Finney’s theological legacy is by no means a settled debate. With the rise of the phenomenon known as “Finneyism,” many contemporary evangelicals now look upon Finney’s innovation with a degree of suspicion and even scorn. When Finney declared that a revival “is not a miracle,” so the narrative goes, he opened the door to gimmicky, prop-laden, means-oriented decisionism bereft of the simple and saving gospel.2 Labeling Finney a “wolf in sheep’s clothing,” Michael Horton opines, “No single man is more responsible for the distortion of Christian truth in our age than Charles Grandison Finney.”3 According to Horton, “Finney is not merely an Arminian, but a Pelagian. He is not only an enemy of evangelical Protestantism, but of historic Christianity of the broadest sort.”4 Finney undoubtedly remains America’s most controversial revivalist.

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