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Rick Nelson
Asahel Nettelton - Reavivalismo Teocêntrico
Porque os homens são agentes morais livres, Finney cria que eles
podiam recusar a graça de Deus. E mesmo depois do arrependimento
e de professar a fé em Cristo, a salvação final da pessoa permanecia
sem definir-se esperando ser estabelecida através da obediência até a
morte. [16]
Horton faz uma grande pergunta para aqueles evangélicos que com
total desconhecimento e em nome do êxito evangelístico, têm colocado
a Finney no pedestal de herói: "Para qual evangelho nos inclinaremos?"
[24]
2Mark A. Noll, A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada (Grand Rapids, MI:
William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1992), 176-77.
3 Charles S. Kelley Jr., How Did They Do It: The Story of Southern Baptist Evangelism (n.p.:
Insight Press, 1993), 21.
4Bill J. Leonard, "Getting Saved in America: Conversion Event in a Pluralistic Culture," Review
and Expositor 82, no. 1 (Winter 1985): 123.
5 O material deste artigo foi extraído de minha dissertação, "A Relação da Sotereologia e a
Metologia Evangelística nos Ministérios de Asahel Nettleton e Charles G. Finney" (Ph.D. diss.,
Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1997).
6 Bennet Tyler, Memoir of the Life and Character of Rev. Asahel Nettleton, D.D., 2d ed.
(Hartford: Robins & Smith, 1848), 273.
7 Asahel Nettleton, Asahel Nettleton: Sermons from the Second Great Awakening, with an
introduction by Tom Nettles and a preface by Bennet Tyler (Ames, IA: International Outreach,
1995), 394-95.
8Ibid., 240.
9Ibid., 236.
10Ibid., 105. Nettleton pregava, "É certo que Cristo terminará a grande obra pela qual Ele Se
responsabilizou. Ninguém que Ele designou salvar, se perderá eternamente".
11 Ibid., 195.
12 Ibid., 60-73, veja o sermão de Nettleton intitulado, "Genuine Repentance Does Not Precede
Regeneration (O Arrependimento Genuíno Não Precede a Regeneração)."
13 Ibid., 89, onde Nettleton declara que "a única base de esperança no caso de pecadores
descansa na soberana misericórdia de Deus".
14 Muitos evangélicos se chocam ao ouvir isto sobre Finney, mas ouça suas próprias palavras:
"É verdade, que a expiação, de si mesma, não assegura a salvação de ninguém; mas a promessa e o
juramento de Deus, que Cristo terá uma semente para Lhe servir, provê tal segurança". Charles
G. Finney, Lectures on Systematic Theology, ed. James H. Fairchild (Oberlin, OH: E. J. Goodrich,
1878, reprint, Whittier, CA: Colporter Kemp, 1844), 281. Page references are to the reprint
edition. Itálico meu.
15Michael S. Horton, "O Legado de Charles Finney," Premise 2, no. 3, 27 March 1995 [journal
on-line], available from http://www.public.usit.net/capo/premise/95/march/horton-f.html.
Internet.
16 Finney, Lectures on Systematic Theology, 550, escreve, "Se a salvação final dos santos é certa, é
certa somente sob uma condição, que sua perseverança na obediência até o fim da vida seja
certa".
18Evangelism and Church Growth: A Practical Encyclopedia, s.v. "Charles Grandison Finney
(1792-1875)," by Alvin L. Reid, 235. Reid is far too pessimistic in his view of the Calvinism of
Finney's day. Bob Pyke states that "the leading Calvinistic ministers during the Second Great
Awakening were all men who agreed that evangelism needed to insist on immediate faith and
repentance, and that the older Calvinism had distorted accountability by emphasizing too much
the sinner's dependence on God." Bob Pyke, "Charles G. Finney and the Second Great
Awakening," Reformation & Revival Journal 6, no. 1 (Winter 1997): 47.
19 Benjamin Breckenridge Warfield, Perfectionism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1931),
2:23; Joseph I. Foot, "Influence of Pelagianism on the Theological Course of Rev. C. G. Finney,
Developed in His Sermons and Lectures,: Literary and Theological Review 5 (March 1838): 39,
wrote that "during ten years, hundreds, and perhaps thousands, were annually reported to be
converted on all hands; but now it is admitted, that his (Finney's) real converts are
comparatively few. It is declared, even by himself that 'the great body of them are a disgrace to
religion.' "
20 James E. Johnson, "The Life of Charles Grandison Finney" (Ph.D. diss., Syracuse University,
1959), 399-400.
21Quoted in Warfield, Perfectionism, 2:26. The letter is not in the Finney Papers.
22Asa Mahan, Autobiography: Intellectual, Moral, and Spiritual (London: T. Woolmer, 1882),
229.
24 Ibid. Pyke, 53, notes that Finney's theory of the atonement "was enough outside the pale of
orthodoxy to have been considered heretical in previous centuries."
25 Monte A. Wilson, "Charles Grandison Finney: The Aftermath," Reformation & Revival
Journal 6, no. 1 (Winter 1997): 97-99. Finney's statement is the title of one of his Lectures on
Revivals of Religion, 161-79.
26 Wilson, 100.
27 Robert H. Lescelius, "The Second Great Awakening: The Watershed Revival," Reformation &
Revival Journal 6, no. 1 (Winter 1997): 23. Pyke, 33 -34, writes, "By the end of the [nineteenth]
century, American evangelicalism bore little resemblance to that of 1800. The theology of
conversion was no longer theocentric, the focus in evangelism now being on man and his
responsibility, not on God, His holiness, and His saving mercy."
28 Wilson, 100.
29 MacArthur também vê Finney com suspeita e conclui que "o legado real de Finney é o
impacto desastroso que ele teve sobre a teologia evangélica e a metodologia evangelística
americana". John F. MacArthur Jr., Ashamed of the Gospel: When the Church Becomes Like the
World (Wheaton and Nottingham, England: Crossway Books, 1993), 235.
30 Pyke, 39, observes that "the rough, compel-them-to-come-in, results-oriented style which
marked Finney's ministry is evident from the outset. As was so characteristic of his career, after
initial enthusiasm and superficial success (abetted, it would seem, by human effort and
armtwisting), results invariably fell off."
31 "Robert A. Swanson, "Asahel Nettleton: The Voice of Revival," Fundamentalist Journal 5, no.
5 (May 1986): 51.
32 Lescelius, 29.
33Bennet Tyler, New England Revivals As They Existed at the Close of the Eighteenth and the
Beginning of the Nineteenth Centuries (Boston: Massachusetts Sabbath School Society, 1846;
reprint, Wheaton: Richard Owen Roberts, Publisher, 1980), 7 (page citations are to the reprint
edition).
34James Ehrhard, "Asahel Nettleton: The Forgotten Evangelist," Reformation & Revival Journal
6, no. 1 (Winter 1997): 85-86.
35 Finney, por outro lado, rejeitou doutrinas tais como o pecado original, porque ele as
considerava ofensivas à razão humana. John Stanley Mattson crê que Finney considerava a
Bíblia e a razão como sendo co-iguais, como fontes fundamentais de autoridade. John Stanley
Mattson, "Charles Grandison Finney and the Emerging Tradition of 'New Measure' Revivalism"
(Ph. D. diss., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1970), 197.
36 "J. I. Packer, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press,
1961), 18-22. O presidente do Seminário do Sul, R. Albert Mohler Jr., enfatizou que a soberania
divina e a responsabilidade humana "são verdades paralelas" em sua mensagem de convocação,
na primavera de 1997. James A. Smith Sr., "Mohler: God's Sovereignty & Human Responsibility
True," The Tie 65, no. 2 (Spring 1997): 27.
37Packer, 27-28. O observador sábio vê o padrão do evangelismo de Finney nesta ênfase. John F.
MacArthur Jr. acusa Finney de ser a origem do pragmatismo evangélico moderno: "Finney foi o
primeiro evangelista influente a sugerir que os fins justificam os meios". MacArthur, 233.
38Packer, 32-34.
39 Ibid., 35-36.
40Ibid., 90. Asahel Nettleton incorporou tal evangelismo balanceado porque ele afirmava a
soberania divina e a responsabilidade humana como igualmente bíblicas e realizou seu
ministério dentre da tensão da antinomia que elas representam. Finney escolheu a posição
extrema que favorece a liberdade humana, mas negligencia a soberania divina.