Charles Grandison Finney

Charles Grandison Finney(August 29, 1792 – August 16, 1875) was an American
Presbyterian minister and leader in the Second Great Awakening in the United
Charles Grandison Finney
States. He has been called The Father of Modern Revivalism.[1] Finney was best
known as an innovative revivalist during the period 1825–1835 in upstate New York
and Manhattan, an opponent of Old School Presbyterian theology, an advocate of
Christian perfectionism, and a religious writer.

Together with several other evangelical leaders, his religious views led him to
promote social reforms, such as abolition of slavery and equal education for women
and African Americans. From 1835 he taught at Oberlin College of Ohio, which
accepted all genders and races. He served as its second president from 1851 to 1866,
during which its faculty and students were activists for abolition, the Underground
Railroad, and universal education.

2nd President of Oberlin College

In office
1851 – 1866
Contents
Preceded by Asa Mahan
Biography
Early life
Succeeded by James Fairchild
Revivals Personal details
Antislavery work and Oberlin College presidency
Born August 29, 1792
Personal life Warren,
Theology Connecticut, U.S.
In popular culture Died August 16, 1875
References (aged 82)
External links Oberlin, Ohio, U.S.
Spouse(s) Lydia Root
Andrews (m. 1824)
Biography Elizabeth Ford
Atkinson (m. 1848)
Rebecca Allen Rayl
Early life (m. 1865)
Born in Warren, Connecticut, in 1792,[2] Finney was the youngest of nine children. Profession Presbyterian
The son of farmers who moved to the upstate frontier ofJefferson County, New York minister;
after the American Revolutionary War, Finney never attended college. His evangelist;
leadership abilities, musical skill, six-foot three-inch stature, and piercing eyes revivalist; author
gained him recognition in his community.[3] He and his family attended the Baptist
church in Henderson, New York, where the preacher led emotional, revival-style meetings. Both the Baptists and Methodists
displayed fervor through the early nineteenth century.[4] He "read the law", studying as an apprentice to become a lawyer, but after a
dramatic conversion experience andbaptism into the Holy Spiritin Adams, he gave up legal practice to preach thegospel.[5][6]

In 1821, Finney started studies at age 29 under George Washington Gale, to become a licensed minister in the Presbyterian Church.
[7] He moved to New York City in 1832, where
He had many misgivings about the fundamental doctrines taught in that denomination.
he was minister of the Chatham Street Chapel and introduced some of the revivalist fervor of upstate to his urban congregations.[4]
He later founded and preached at theBroadway Tabernacle.

Revivals
Finney was active as a revivalist from 1825 to 1835, in Jefferson County and for a few years in Manhattan. In 1830-31, he led a
revival in Rochester, New York that has been noted as inspiring other revivals of the Second Great Awakening.[8] He was known for
his innovations in preaching and the conduct of religious meetings. These included having women pray out loud in public meetings
of mixed sexes; development of the "anxious seat", a place where those considering becoming Christians could sit to receive prayer;
[9] He was also known for hisextemporaneous preaching.
and public censure of individuals by name in sermons and prayers.

Antislavery work and Oberlin College presidency

In addition to becoming a popular Christian evangelist, Finney was involved with social reforms, particularly the abolitionist
movement. The movement was strongly supported by the Northern and Midwestern Baptists and Methodists with Finney frequently
denouncing slavery from the pulpit.

In 1835, he moved to the free state of Ohio, where he became a professor at Oberlin College. After more than a decade, he was
selected as its second president, serving from 1851 to 1866. (He had already served as acting President in 1849.)[10] Oberlin was the
first American college to accept women and blacks as students in addition to white men. From its early years, its faculty and students
were active in the abolitionist movement. They participated together with people of the town in biracial efforts to help fugitive slaves
on the Underground Railroad, as well as to resist theFugitive Slave Act.[11] Many slaves escaped to Ohio across the Ohio River from
Kentucky, making the state a critical area for their passage to freedom.

Personal life
Finney was twice a widower and married three times. In 1824, he married Lydia Root Andrews (1804–1847) while living in Jefferson
County. They had six children together. In 1848, a year after Lydia's death, he married Elizabeth Ford Atkinson (1799–1863) in Ohio.
In 1865 he married Rebecca Allen Rayl (1824–1907), also in Ohio. Each of Finney's three wives accompanied him on his revival
tours and joined him in his evangelistic efforts.

Finney's great-grandson, also namedCharles Grandison Finney, became a famous author.

Theology
As a young man Finney was a third-degree Master Mason, but after his conversion, he dropped the group as antithetical to
Christianity. He was active in Anti-Masonic movements.[12]

Finney was a primary influence on the "revival" style of evangelism which emerged in the 19th century. Though coming from a
Calvinistic background, Finney rejected tenets of "Old Divinity" Calvinism, which he felt were unbiblical and counter to evangelism
and Christian mission.

Finney's theology is difficult to classify. In his masterwork, Religious Revivals, he emphasizes the involvement of a person's will in
salvation.[13] He did not make clear whether he believed the will was free to repent or not repent, or whether he viewed God as
inclining the will irresistibly. (The latter is part of Calvinist doctrine, in which the will of an elect individual is changed by God so
that he or she desires to repent, thus repenting with his or her will and not against it, but the individual is not free in whether to
choose repentance as the choice must be what the will is inclined toward.) Finney, like most Protestants, affirmed salvation by grace
through faith alone, not by works or by obedience.[14][15] Finney affirmed that works were the evidence of faith. Acts of unrepentant
sin were signs that a person had not received salvation.

Writing in his Systematic Theology, Finney states: "I have felt greater hesitancy in forming and expressing my views upon this
."[16]
Perseverance of the saints, than upon almost any other question in theology
Quoting Finney: "The impression of many seems to be, that grace will pardon what it cannot prevent; in other words, that if the grace
of the Gospel fails to save people from the commission of sin in this life; it will nevertheless pardon them and save them in sin, if it
cannot save them from sin. Now, really, I understand the Gospel as teaching that men are saved from sin first, and as a consequence,
from hell; and not that they are saved from hell while they are not saved from sin. Christ sanctifies when he saves. And this is the
very first element or idea of salvation, saving from sin. 'Thou shall call his name Jesus," said the angel, 'for he shall save his people
from their sins.' 'Having raised up his Son Jesus,' says the apostle, 'he hath sent him to bless you in turning every one of you from his
[17]
iniquities.' Let no one expect to saved from hell, unless the grace of the Gospel saves him first from sin.' " –Charles Finney

Finney's understanding ofsubstitutionary atonementwas that it satisfied "public justice" and that it opened the way for God to pardon
people of their sins. This was part of the theology of the so-called New Divinity, which was popular at that time period. In this view,
Christ's death satisfied public justice rather than retributive justice. As Finney wrote, it was not a "commercial transaction." This view
of the atonement is typically known as thegovernmental view or government view.

Benjamin Warfield, a Calvinist professor of theology at Princeton Theological Seminaryclaimed that "God might be eliminated from
it [Finney's theology] entirely without essentially changing its character."[18] Albert Baldwin Dod, a colleague of Warfield's and
another "Old School" Presbyterian,[19] reviewed Finney's 1835 book Lectures on Revivals of Religion.[20] He rejected it as
theologically unsound.[21] Dod was a defender of Old School Calvinist orthodoxy (see Princeton Theology) and was especially
critical of Finney's view of the doctrine of total depravity.[22] Old School Princeton Theologians as Dod prosecuted even
[23]
"Conservative" evangelicals as Lyman Beecher who was twice acquitted by the general First Presbyterian synod.

In popular culture
In Charles W. Chesnutt's short story "The Passing of Grandison" (1899), published in the collection The Wife of His Youth and Other
[24]
Stories of the Color Line, the enslaved hero is named "Grandison", likely an allusion to the well-known abolitionist.

References
Notes

1. Hankins, Barry (2004),The Second Great Awakening and the Transcendentalists, Westport, CT: Greenwood Press,
p. 137, ISBN 0-313-31848-4.
2. Charles Grandison Finney-born place(http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/entry.php?rec=142), Ohio History Central,
retrieved October 2008Check date values in: |access-date= (help).
3. "I. Birth and Early Education",Memoirs of Charles G. Finney(http://www.gospeltruth.net/1868Memoirs/mem01.htm),
Gospel truth, 1868.
4. Perciaccante, Marianne (2005),Calling Down Fire: Charles Grandison Finney and Revivalism in Jefferson County
,
New York, 1800–1840, pp. 2–4.
5. "III. Beginning of His Work", Memoirs (http://www.gospeltruth.net/1868Memoirs/mem02.htm), Gospel truth, 1868.
6. "III. Beginning of His Work", Memoirs (http://www.gospeltruth.net/1868Memoirs/mem03.htm), Gospel truth, 1868.
7. "IV. His Doctrinal Education and Other Experiences at Adams", Memoirs (http://www.gospeltruth.net/1868Memoirs/m
em04.htm), Gospel truth, 1868.
8. William, Cossen. "Charle's Finney's Rochester Revival"(http://www.thearda.com/timeline/events/event_246.asp).
Retrieved 27 March 2017.
9. The various types of new measures are identified mostly by sources critical of Finney
, such as Bennet, Tyler (1996),
Bonar, Andrew, ed., Asahel Nettleton: Life and Labors, Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, pp. 342–55; Letters of Rev.
Dr. [Lyman] Beecher and the Rev. Mr. Nettleton on the New Measures in Conducting Rev ivals of Religion with a
Review of a Sermon by Novanglus, New York: G&C Carvill, 1828, pp. 83–96; and Hodge, Charles (July 1833),
"Dangerous Innovations",Biblical Repertory and Theological Review(http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=
moajrnl&idno=acf4325.1-05.003), 5 (3), University of Michigan, pp. 328–33, retrieved March 2008Check date values
in: |access-date= (help).
10. "Presidents of Oberlin College"(https://web.archive.org/web/20131021212656/http://www .oberlin.edu/archive/holdin
gs/finding/RG2/). Oberlin College Archives. Oberlin College. Archived fromthe original (http://www.oberlin.edu/archiv
e/holdings/finding/RG2/)on 21 October 2013. Retrieved 21 October 2013.
11. Charles E. Hambrick-Stowe,Charles G. Finney and the Spirit of American Evangelicalism(1996) p 199
12. Charles E. Hambrick-Stowe,Charles G. Finney and the Spirit of American Evangelicalism(1996), p. 112
13. "Charles Grandison Finney"(http://www.oberlin.edu/external/EOG/images/CharlesGrandisonFinney.html), Electronic
Oberlin Group, Oberlin College
14. "JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH by Charles G. Finney"(http://www.charlesgfinney.com/1837LTPC/lptc05_just_by_faith.h
tm). www.charlesgfinney.com.
15. Charles G. Finney, "Letters to Professing Christians Lecture VI: Sanctification By Faith"(http://www.gospeltruth.net/1
837LTPC/ltpc06_sanc_by_faith.htm), 1837.
16. "Finney's Systematic Theology--1851 Edition--Lecture LXXIX"(http://www.charlesgfinney.com/1851Sys_Theo/st79.ht
m). www.charlesgfinney.com.
17. "An OnLine site for the Complete WORKS of CHARLES G. FINNEY"(http://www.gospeltruth.net/cgfworks.htm).
www.gospeltruth.net.
18. B. B. Warfield, Perfectionism (2 vols.; New York: Oxford, 1931) 2. 193.
19. Old School–New School Controversy
20. "On Revivals of Religion"(http://scdc.library.ptsem.edu/mets/mets.aspx?src=BR183574&div=6)Archived (https://we
b.archive.org/web/20110720040259/http://scdc.library .ptsem.edu/mets/mets.aspx?src=BR183574&div=6)July 20,
2011, at the Wayback Machine.. Biblical Repertory and Theological ReviewVol. 7 No. 4 (1835) p.626-674
21. Charles E. Hambrick-Stowe,Charles G. Finney and the Spirit of American Evangelicalism(https://books.google.com/
books?id=oRNQamJnDuUC&pg=PA159&dq=Albert+Baldwin+Dod+), William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company,
1996. ISBN 0-8028-0129-3, p.159
22. Rev. Albert B. Dod, D.D., "On Revivals of Religion" (https://archive.org/details/essaystheologica00doda)
, in Essays,
Theological and Miscellaneous, Reprinted from the Princeton Review , Wiley and Putnam (1847) pp.76-151
23. Lyman Beecher
24. Cutter, Martha J. "Passing as Narrative and T
extual Strategy in Charles Chesnutt's 'The Passing of Grandison'",
Passing in the Works of Charles W. Chesnutt, Eds. Wright, Susan Prothro, and Ernestine Pickens Glass. Jackson,
MS: Mississippi UP, 2010, p. 43. ISBN 978-1-60473-416-4.

Bibliography

Essig, James David. "The Lord's Free Man: Charles G. Finney and His Abolitionism,"
Civil War History, March 1978,
Vol. 24 Issue 1, pp 25–45
Guelzo, Allen C. "An heir or a rebel? Charles Grandison Finney and the New England theology
," Journal of the Early
Republic, Spring 1997, Vol. 17 Issue 1, pp 60–94
Hambrick-Stowe, Charles E.Charles G. Finney and the Spirit of American Evangelicalism(1996), a major scholarly
biography
Hardman, Keith J. Charles Grandison Finney, 1792-1875: Revivalist and Reformer (1987), a major scholarly
biography
Johnson, James E. "Charles G. Finney and a Theology of Revivalism," Church History, September 1969, Vol. 38
Issue 3, pp 338–358 in JSTOR
Perciaccante, Marianne.Calling Down Fire: Charles Grandison Finney and Revivalism in Jefferson County , New
York, 1800-1840 (2005)

External links
The Theology of C. G. Finney explained and defended
"The COMPLETE WORKS of CHARLES G. FINNEY" , collected by Gospel Truth Ministries
A biography of Charles Finney by G. Frederick W right (Holiness perspective; supportive)
A Vindication of the Methods and Results of Charles Finney's Ministry(Revivalist perspective; supportive; answers
many traditional Old School Calvinist critiques)
Charles Grandison Finney: New York Revivalism in the 1820-1830sby John H. Martin, Crooked Lake Review
Articles on Finney (conservative Calvinist perspective; critical)
How Charles Finney's Theology Ravaged the Evangelical Movement(conservative Calvinist perspective; critical)
 "The Legacy of Charles Finney"by Dr. Michael S. Horton (conservative perspective; critical)
The Oberlin Heritage Center-Local history museum and historical society of Oberlin, OH, where Finney lived and
worked for decades.
Finney's Lectures on Theology by Charles Hodge(conservative Calvinist perspective; critical)
The Church in Crisis A critical look at Finney's revivalist methods and their impact on the modern church in America
"Oberlin Theology". Encyclopedia Americana. 1920.

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