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Originally Published in The Encyclopedia of Protestantism

  

Sanctification

 

            Sanctification is the process of making something or someone holy.  (Biblical Greek and Hebrew have no separate words for sanctification and holiness.)  In Protestantism, the doctrine of sanctification refers to believers being made holy.  In Protestant theology, sanctification occurs subsequent to religious conversion (“justification”).  Entire sanctification is the distinguishing doctrine of the Protestant “holiness movement.”

            Martin Luther’s sixteenth century Protestant insight reversed the assumed order of justification and sanctification in Christian salvation.  In Luther’s understanding, Catholicism taught that sanctification preceded justification.  Believers had to make their lives holy (sanctify themselves) before God would declare them righteous (justify them).  Luther believed that placing sanctification before justification promoted righteousness by works and that justification by faith could only be preserved by placing justification before sanctification.

            For Luther, justification was a judicial process whereby God declared sinners righteous apart from any righteous of their own.  In justification, God imputed Christ’s righteous to sinners on the basis of faith.  Sanctification, the attainment of holiness, followed justification, but the believer’s holiness was always alien to the believer because justification was always God’s gift to sinners.  For Luther, therefore, sanctification could not result in moral transformation.  Believers were always sinners and could never possess holiness of their own.

            John Calvin accepted Luther’s understanding of imputed righteousness, but made holiness the goal of Christian life.  In the Calvinist tradition, therefore, a believer’s quest for holiness posed no threat to justification by faith.  The believer’s holiness, although always a gift of grace and incomplete before death, was not entirely alien.  Calvinism allowed for genuine moral transformation as Christians were sanctified.

            The eighteenth century Anglican cleric, John Wesley, taught the doctrine of Christian perfection, which optimistically asserted that Christians could experience perfect love toward God and human beings before death.  Among Wesley’s followers, this doctrine became identified as “entire sanctification.”  The qualifier “entire” distinguished Wesleyan sanctification from the less optimistic Calvinist sanctification.  For Wesleyans, to be “entirely sanctified” was to love God and neighbor perfectly.

            Although Wesley founded the Methodist Church in America and lead the Methodist movement in Britain, by the mid-nineteenth century entire sanctification was primarily taught in interdenominational North American settings under the auspices of the National Campmeeting Association for the Promotion of Holiness (later the Christian Holiness Association).  Most “holiness” denominations (e.g., Church of the Nazarene, Free Methodist Church, and Wesleyan Church) originated from this American holiness movement.

            Nineteenth century Evangelical preachers like Charles Finney and D. L. Moody also preached sanctification and equated sanctification with Spirit baptism ( e.g., Acts 2).  Such doctrines of sanctification emphasized the believer’s empowerment for witness and service without espousing perfectionist themes (“sanctification” rather than “entire sanctification”).  The charismatic tradition often follows this Evangelical doctrine of sanctification and emphasizes the gift of tongues as the evidence of one’s sanctification.

References and Further Reading

            Alexander, Donald, ed. Christian Spirituality: Five Views of Sanctification. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1988.

            Bassett, Paul M. and William M. Greathouse. Exploring Christian Holiness, vol. 2: The Historical Development. Kansas City: Beacon Hill Press, 1985.

           

Thomas E. Phillips, Colorado Christian University, USA

 

(500 words)