The Rise of Pentecostalism Issue 58 | 1998 Purchase this issue

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In 1911 as William Durham denounced the "second blessing" doctrine of sanctification, a young woman attacked him with her hat pin to register her "pointed opposition." She was not alone in her contempt for his "demonic" views. The conflict over sanctification had burst forth a year earlier and had became the first full-blown controversy of the Pentecostal movement.

The early Pentecostal movement arose from the Holiness movement, and like its parent, shared John Wesley's views on sanctification: that it was an instantaneous experience of "entire sanctification" or "Christian perfection" and that it was a separate experience from conversion. Early Pentecostals called it a "second blessing" and regarded it as a necessary preparation for a third experience, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit (that is, the new Pentecostal experience).

In 1910, William H. Durham, pastor of the North Avenue Mission in Chicago, began making waves throughout Pentecostal circles when he denounced these views. "I began to write against the doctrine that it takes two works of grace to save and cleanse a man," he later wrote. "I denied and still deny that God does not deal with the nature of sin at conversion. I deny that a man who is converted or born again is outwardly washed and cleansed but that his heart is left unclean with enmity against God in it."

This wouldn't be salvation, he argued, because salvation "means that all the old man, or old nature, which was sinful and depraved and which was the very thing in us that was condemned, is crucified with Christ." He dubbed his position the "finished work at Calvary" because he believed the work of Christ on the cross was sufficient for both salvation and sanctification. Finished-work Pentecostals slowly ...