A Reader’s Guide to Charles G. Finney

Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. 2 TIMOTHY 2:15

Finney is easy to read and hard to read well. His style is plain, direct and argumentative, and his lectures were taken down in pencil as he spoke, so they read like a man talking — which is their charm. The difficulty is not the language but the judgement. Much of his practical counsel is wise, and much of his theology departs from historic teaching, often on the same page. Read him with the Bible open and your wits about you.

Begin here

Lectures on Revivals of Religion (1835). His most influential book: twenty-two Friday-evening lectures to his New York congregation on what a revival is, how to pray, how to deal with sinners, how to preach and how to keep young converts. The chapters on fallow ground and on prayer are the best entry point. In the Ochorus library.

Memoirs (1876). Written in his mid-seventies and published after his death, this is the story of his conversion and his revivals in his own words, frank and vivid and sometimes self-justifying. Read the first three chapters, on his early life, conversion and first days as a Christian, before anything else. In the Ochorus library. A fuller restored text, edited by Garth M. Rosell and Richard A. G. Dupuis, was published in 1989 and restores passages cut by the first editors.

Sermons

Several of his sermons are in the Ochorus library. Sinners Bound to Change Their Own Hearts is the clearest short statement of his view of regeneration and human ability, and the one to read alongside chapters ten and eleven of this book. God’s Love for a Sinning World is his warmest sermon on the cross. Breaking Up the Fallow Ground, Prevailing Prayer, The Spirit of Prayer, Be Filled with the Spirit and What a Revival of Religion Is correspond to lectures in the Lectures on Revivals, and are convenient to read one at a time.

Other works worth knowing

Lectures to Professing Christians (1837). Addresses to church members in the Broadway Tabernacle, searching and severe, on self-deception, true and false religion, and Christian perfection. Useful for self-examination; heavy on law. Not yet in the Ochorus library.

Power from On High. A short collection of late articles on the baptism of the Holy Spirit and the need for spiritual power in ministry. Read it with chapter nine of this book. Not yet in the Ochorus library.

Approach with care

Lectures on Systematic Theology (1846–1847). Finney’s full theological system, written for his Oberlin students. It sets out his moral government theology, his view of the will, his denial of inherited sin, his governmental atonement and his doctrine of entire sanctification. It is closely argued and repays study, but it is where his departures from Scripture and the historic faith are most explicit. Read it after, not before, his practical works, and alongside a sound account of the doctrines it rejects.

About Finney

G. Frederick Wright, Charles Grandison Finney (1891), is an early life by an Oberlin professor who had studied under him, warm and sympathetic. Keith J. Hardman, Charles Grandison Finney, 1792–1875: Revivalist and Reformer (1987), and Charles E. Hambrick-Stowe, Charles G. Finney and the Spirit of American Evangelicalism (1996), are fuller modern biographies. Whitney R. Cross, The Burned-over District (1950), is the classic study of the region where his revivals burned, and of what followed them. The Ochorus author page carries a shorter biography.

For critical assessments, Iain H. Murray’s Revival and Revivalism (1994) contrasts the older view of revival with the new measures, and B. B. Warfield’s studies of perfectionism include a searching critique of the Oberlin theology. Both are written from a Reformed standpoint, and both are worth reading after Finney himself.

Three counsels for reading him

Read him for his practice more than his theory. His counsel on prayer, confession, soul-winning and preaching is often better than the system he built to explain it.

Read him with his critics beside you. Where he dismisses a doctrine as a fiction, look up the texts and see whether he is right. He would have wanted you to test him by Scripture, not by his reputation.

And read him with a pen. Finney’s one question to every hearer was, Will you do it? Write down what you will do, and do it.

Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. 1 THESSALONIANS 5:21