Scriptural Holiness

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Keswick Teaching Compared

CHAPTER 10

Unsound Philosophy About Self,

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The Nature Of The Flesh or Depravity

A.M. Hills

My attention was called to the unsound philosophy of some of the Keswick teachers about "self," by some thoughtful people, before I had read a single sermon preached from that platform. I was told, also, in the same conversation, of some who speak about dying to "self" and "the death of self," till it becomes little better than refined Buddhism. A careful reading of more than sixty of these addresses convinces me that the criticism, in some instances at least, is just. According to the lexicon, "self " means " one's own individual identity," "one's own person," "personality," "individuality," "personal identity." 

 In their discussions "self" is often substi­tuted for indwelling sin or depravity. I read this from a Keswick preacher: "The flesh is 'self' spelt backward. It is ‘me.'" Again, "Self is the pivot around which the natural man revolves. It is the essential principle of every sin, and has been ever since that first sin in which Adam preferred what was pleasant to the eyes and calculated to make him wise, to the will and word of God. Sin is the assertion of self."

 Another says : "Have you ever said to your sinful self—that self that cannot be improved, that self for which there is no healing medi­cine except death—have you ever said to that sinful self, ‘My sinful self, thou hateful thing, breaking out now in pride, and now in pas­sion, and now in jealousy, and now in indo­lence, and now in selfishness, breaking out in a thousand hateful forms; my sinful self, I put thee, where the sinless Christ put thee—on the Cross : hang there, for God put thee there’”? 

 Another quoting Matt.11.28 says: "The burden is self. And every human being in this tent at this moment is living a God-centered or a self-centered life; there is no other burden possible." 

 A preacher quotes Rom.7. 24: "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" and inter­prets it to mean, "Who shall deliver me from" myself? "Who shall save me from myself ?" 

 Another sentence reads: "Man made self the centre rather than God, and herein our race fell." 

 I could quote a half-dozen other passages of similar import, but these are quite suffi­cient. Now I do not believe this is either sound philosophy or the thought of Scripture. It is very confusing, and no ordinary audience would get any help from it. Indeed, it is doubtful if any audience would, for no natural meaning can be put to this language that will make it harmonize with either fact or Bible truth, as the following observations will make evident:- 

 (1) If the word "flesh," when used in the bad sense, as by Paul, means " me," then Jesus loved it ; for Paul says, "He loved me and gave Himself for me" (Gal. 2:20). 

 (2) If "the flesh is ‘self' spelt backwards," why did Paul write to Timothy: "Exercise thyself unto godliness. Take heed to thyself and to thy teaching. Continue in these things; for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself and them that hear thee." It seems that Paul thought “self”  was something to be saved, not something to be despised and destroyed. 

(3) If "flesh," used in the bad sense—that hateful thing that opposes all good—is self, why did the great apostle write to the Corinthians: "Let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God"? The word "flesh" here does not mean anything but our body, and "flesh and spirit" mean "self"—the whole of us. It is not "self” that we are to be saved from, but the "defilement," "fil­thiness" of self, that needs to be cleansed away. Then "self " would be holy. 

(4) If "flesh" is "self," "me," why did the apostle John write: "Every one that hath this hope set on Him (Jesus) purifieth himself, even as He is pure"? This apostle seemed to think that there was an abnormal condition from which the self only needed to be puri­fied, and then it (the self) would be pure as Jesus is pure. 

(5) If the flesh is "met" and that is what they mean by the "sinful self"—that self that cannot be improved, that self for which there is no healing medicine except death—then death itself would bring no relief, for death cannot save a man from himself. The self, whatever it is—character, record and all, passes right over into the next world, like a man moving from one house into another across the street. There would be nothing to offer any sinner, indeed any of us, accord­ing to Keswick teaching, but annihilation. So the Nirvana of Buddhism is the sole hope of us all! 

 Now if, on the other hand, we were to interpret their term "sinful self" to mean the "old man of indwelling sin," the "depra­vity of our nature," the "bias to evil," which must be, and may be, put to death now, and leave us pure and holy, we could understand it. But this is exactly what they all along deny—that the Holy Ghost can kill the "old man "of" indwelling sin.” But without this interpretation there is not a glimmer of sense in all this talk about "me" and "flesh" and "self" and "sinful self." 

(6) One asks, "Who shall save me from myself?" and represents that to be what St. Paul meant when he said, "Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" That is not within a million miles of what the apostle meant. He was, in vivid language, in the first person, representing not his own experi­ence at that time, but the experience of any-body struggling with carnality. What he wanted was not "deliverance from himself," but he wanted himself delivered from car­nality. When a man has an inflamed and pain-stricken eye, he does not want his eye dug out and annihilated. The eye, as God made it, is all right: it is the disease, the inflammation that needs to be removed. When a man has ear-ache, it is not the ear that he wishes to have destroyed, but the abnormal condition of the ear removed. When the magnificent arm of an athlete has blood-poison, he does not want his arm amputated; he wants the poison removed. So the cry of a depraved soul is: "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from this depravity?" The answer comes at once: "I thank God (I have deliverance) through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Rom. 7:25). 

 Bishop Ellicott says: "The ‘old man' is the personification of our whole sinful condition before regeneration," and we add "after it, too." Our nature, our "self," as God made it, is all right: but the sinful condition needs to be removed. There is an abnormal element in us injected by Satan, which is no essential part of our being. It is the sinful condition. When that is removed man's self is again an image of God. 

(7) One of these preachers says: "The self-life is not something that is to be improved, or repressed; the self-life is something that is to be terminated, brought to an end”. The "old man" is the "former self." Now let us see. The "former self" was composed of body, soul, and spirit plus sin, or body, intel­lect, sensibility, and will plus indwelling sin. And this former self, "self-life," he seems to say must be brought to an end. This is annihilation again! Why not use intelligible Bible language, and say that sin is to be cleansed out of us, leaving the self pure and holy, as God originally made it. 

(8) One says: "Self is the pivot around which the natural man revolves. It is the essential principle of every sin, and has been ever since that first sin. Sin is the assertion of self." This is not true either in morals or philosophy. Men have to assert themselves to resist tempters and temptations. "My son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not." "Resist the devil and he will flee from you." What is that but self-assertion? If Adam and Eve, while they were holy, had asserted themselves, they would not have gone down in shameful defeat. 

 Perhaps this preacher meant by " self," selfishness as "the essential element of sin.” But even that would not have been sound philosophy. Let us hear from a teacher of my young manhood, that lucid thinker, Prof. James A. Fairchild, who treats of this subject in his "Moral Philosophy" as follows :- 

 "Wrong, or sinful action, is the action which we morally condemn, and for which we pro­nounce the agent blameworthy. It is a refusal to meet the obligation or duty, a refusal to be benevolent, or to will the good of being as in itself valuable. It is, of course, un­reasonable action; for reason presents hap­piness, well-being, as good, and benevolence, or the choice of that good, as duty. 

 "Sinful action is opposed to reason and intelligence, and must find its motive else-where than among the facts and considera­tions which reason presents. Its sinfulness consists in the refusal to be benevolent—the duty ever present to the moral agent. But unreasonable action must have a motive—an inducement to refuse a choice so excellent and praiseworthy. The motive to wrong action is found in the impulse of the desires and passions. These have their seat in the sensibility, and, when aroused, solicit the will to seek their gratification, even at the sacri­fice of good and the claims of duty. The man, in the exercise of his freedom, has power to yield to these solicitations, neglecting the claim of duty, or to refuse to yield; and in this choice he determines his moral character. Yielding to desire or passion as his controlling motive, he becomes a sinner. The desire ter­minates on some object, some relative good which excites desire, and the attainment of which tends to gratification. The immediate aim of the action to which desire impels is the attainment of its object. But it cannot pro­perly be said that the object of desire is the motive. It is the motive only as it awakens desire: that desire itself is the immediate motive. The object may be really useful, a means of good, as contemplated by the intel­ligence, or it may be in the end harmful, pernicious, and known to be such: it matters not so long as desire fastens upon it. The inebriate, mad with the love of drink, quaffs the poison, even though he knows that at the last ‘it bites like a serpent and stings like an adder.' Desire is blind to the good or evil, on the whole, that there is in the object. It operates upon the will by its own blind force as an impulse, and not by con­siderations of interest or value. Thus motives to sin come through the desires and passions, while motives to virtue appeal to us through the intelligence and reason." 

 "In all forms of sinful action the sinful element is the same, the neglect of well-being, the refusal to be benevolent. Apart from this element there is no sin in gratifying desire. . . . The gratification of desire is to be accounted as good, to be held as a part of universal well-being subject to the claims of duty, the decisions of reason. Here was the failure of our first parents. When they ‘saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise,’ they took of the fruit, while duty, as indicated by the divine command, and their own reason as well, forbade the eating. This was the nature of the first sin in our world, and has been the characteristic of every sin from that day to this. Without such a command, and without any apprehension that the eating was im­proper, the gratification would have been indifferent or even a duty. There is no sin in mere pleasure or enjoyment; the sin is in the unbenevolent choice which is involved in the acceptance of the pleasure. 

 "We have seen that virtue involves obedience to reason and intelligence, and sin involves subjection to the desires and pas­sions" (pp.29-31). In the same vein, my theological teacher, Dr. Samuel Harris, of Yale, taught us that "Sin is the refusal to obey the dictate of right reason." 

President Fairchild continues his discussion on "Wrong Action or Sin," maintaining that "sin is not selfishness," as follows: — "It is still more common to represent selfishness as the fundamental sin ; probably because selfishness seems, in its nature, so directly opposed to benevolence, and benevo­lence is virtue. In this view selfishness is defined to mean the choice of our own good, as the supreme end, while benevolence is the choice of all good. This representation supposes two possible ultimate ends of action—the good of all, the choice of which is benevo­lence or virtue, and our own good, the choice of which is selfishness or sin. 

 "The evil-doer, on this view, is pursuing, as his supreme end, his own good. Pursuing this end, he must bring all his resources into service, and call upon his intelligence to devise ways and means to promote his own happi­ness, so far as calculation and wisdom can compass it He will not sacrifice a greater good in the future to a present indulgence; for this is opposed to his supreme end. He will not confine his attention to this life, if he has any evidence that there is another, because thus he would sacrifice his own interests. If he has reason to believe that the favor of God has more to do with his welfare than that of any other being, he will be most diligent to secure that favor. If he learns that honesty is the best policy, and that benevolence, virtue, is the truest source of satisfaction, he will give himself with all his soul, to an honest and virtuous life; and if he does not do this it will be because he is ignorant of the fact that blessedness comes with virtue. Thus, selfishness, in the sense of making one's own good supreme, must, in the end, annihilate itself. In fact, it is only from ignorance that it can ever exist. It is from the beginning only a blunder. The truly selfish man, in the sense above defined, a man seeking his own highest good, needs only to learn the good which comes from benevolence, and he becomes virtuous at once, because his well-being requires it. 

 "If it be said that he cannot become vir­tuous for such a reason, I answer, then he cannot seek his own highest good as his supreme end, because that end requires him to become benevolent; and, if he refuses, he relinquishes his end—ceases to pursue his highest good. 

 "We have reached the conclusion, then, that it is impossible for a finite moral being to pursue his own highest good, or his own good at all, as his supreme end. In such a pursuit he must take intelligence as his guide, otherwise he does not pursue the end pro-posed at all: and one of the first facts which reason offers to him is that benevolence is essential to his happiness, and benevolence is the choice of all good as the supreme end. 

 "Thus he ceases to pursue his own good as supreme, and relinquishes his end in obedience to that end itself—a contradiction which is inevitable upon the theory that sin is the pursuit of one's own good. 

 "The doctrine is equally at fault when viewed in the light of the evil-doer himself. That he is not pursuing his own good as his end is manifest on the slightest consideration. One of the most notorious facts of sin is that it is utterly opposed to the interests of the sinner. In its most promising and successful forms, it is confessedly a sacrifice of the greater interests to the less. The sinner, in his best estate, aims at some worldly advan­tage, and fails of the life to come. He seeks some temporary pleasure, and foregoes the higher joys of a virtuous and benevolent life. Even if we confine our attention to material, worldly good, the lower forms of satisfaction, we find few who have sufficient self-control to surrender an insignificant present enjoy­ment to a greater future good. ‘A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep,' is the cry of the sluggard, while ‘his poverty comes as a robber, and his want as an armed man.' 

 "We come no nearer the truth to say that the sinner thinks he is pursuing his own interest. He has no such thought. He sees, when he gives attention to his case, as those around him see, that he is his own worst enemy—laying snares for his own feet, plot­ting his own ruin. You would not insult the drunkard by asking him if he follows his best judgment in reference to his own welfare. Your hope of recovering him from the way of death is in the fact that his own judgment condemns his course as ruinous. He knows, as no other one can know, that the seeming good that he pursues is an illusion and a lie, and yet he is not persuaded to renounce his folly and accept substantial good. . . 

 "If it be said that sin is the choice of self-gratification as an end, the doctrine is not materially altered. . . The sinner sacrifices his own gratification, even as he apprehends it himself, to his appetites and passions. No one has ever doubted that a well-regulated life brings with it more gratification even of the bodily appetites than a course of unre­strained passion. If they pursued self-grati­fication as an end they would act more wisely. 

 "The only sense in which the sinner lives for himself is that he regards not his rational self but his physical self, the animal, or rather sentient, nature, made up of the desires and passions. Here he finds his motives to action, and thus lives a life of impulse and not of reason. The name by which St. Paul designates this state is not selfishness but carnal-mindedness—caring for the flesh, a term which expresses with philosophic accu­racy the nature of the action. By the term ‘flesh' he means not merely the bodily appetites, but the aggregate of the desires and passions, of which the bodily appetites are the most conspicuous. 

 "Let it not be forgotten that the sin is not in the desires and passions themselves, nor even in their gratification, but in the constant refusal to accept the good as the aim of life. The desires and passions are the motives which induce this refusal. The desires and passions are a part of our constitution, given us by the Creator, but given to be controlled and not to control. We are rational beings, and the truths and realities, in view of which we ought to act, are presented by the reason. 

 "If it be asked, Why are these impulses given us, since they furnish temptation to sin and are the sources of all evil? it may be replied that they are the condition or channel of all good as well as evil. Without them we should be as valueless as dead matter; our being would be nothing in itself, and useful only as there were other beings endowed with desires who could use us. It is through the sentient side of our nature that all precious things exist to us, and the broader and deeper and more various these susceptibilities and wants, the higher we stand in the scale of being. If the desires be eradicated as the occasion of sin, the possibility of virtue ceases at the same time. It is only required that we set the limit to our gratifications which duty enjoins, sacrificing no good to impulse or desire." (" Moral Philosophy," pp. 33-37.) 

 One can plainly see from the above very inexact and loose and faulty is the teach­ing of Keswick about "self." The flesh is not "self" or "me," but only a part of self, and, in the bad sense, it is the diseased condition of self. It is not true that self, or even selfishness, is the essential principle of sin, as the moral philosopher has shown. It is not true that it is a virtue to disregard self, or a sin to have concern for self. Jesus Himself made the proper love of self a duty and a virtue when He said: "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." We are a, sacred creation, made by God for His glory, with faculties like His own. Even our bodies are fearfully and wonderfully made, marvelously adapted to be the present home of the soul. They who speak lightly of it as the source of evil are in imminent danger of blaspheming its Maker — God. The body, erect and admirable, strong and beautiful, is the fit instrument of the spirit through which man operates upon the forces of nature around him, and becomes acquainted with his environ­ment. Through its eyes he sees the beautiful; through its ears he hears the varied voices of nature. He becomes acquainted with the qualities of things through its power of touch and taste and smell. More sacred than any Cathedral ever made, it even becomes the temple of the living God. Add to this body our intellectual and spiritual faculties and we become wonderful beings, only a little lower than the angels, and crowned with glory and honor. 

 All the powers and faculties of this being are sacred, and should be sacredly guarded and kept for holy uses. Mistaken teachers advocate a "death to self," and then to inten­sify it, add "a deeper death to self." We know of no people in the world so absolutely "dead to self " as the vilest sinners. They are even dead to the sacred laws of health of their own bodies; they pervert their appetites against the instincts and protests of nature. They violate all the laws of well-being by deliberate courses of profligacy and vice. Women are often dead to health and modesty in matters of dress. Sinners are dead to the voice of reason and the protests of conscience and the demands of self-interest. They are dead to their own deepest wants and highest hopes and holiest inspirations. They are dead to present welfare and future good; so dead that having eyes they see not, and having ears they hear not the things that make for their eternal peace. They see not the shame of their own moral nakedness, and see no beauty in personal holiness that they should desire it. They are so deaf that they hear no call of duty and no command of God. 

 Be dead to self! No, let us be evermore seriously, solemnly alive to the dignity of our being, and the nobility of our relationship as the sons and daughters of the Most High. Let us train our bodies and minds and hearts that we may be fitted for the noblest service for God and man and for the highest eternal destiny. Whether we eat or drink, or what­soever we do, let us do all to the glory of God. 

 Let us lay ourselves at Jesus' feet for the cleansing of our whole being, and then arise and shine in-the likeness of God.