Ashael Nettleton, Part 2: The Sovereignty of God in Revivals

Last month, I wrote an article on the life and ministry of Asahel Nettleton. In it, I shared Nettleton’s biography, from his early life through his ministry. Nettleton is an important figure to know from church history because of his desire for the purity of the Gospel to be communicated, especially in evangelism. He combated the rise of emotionalism in revival services, and he maintained his position until his death in 1844. 

This month’s focus will be on Nettleton’s theological beliefs, specifically his soteriological convictions. I chose to focus my dissertation research on this theological belief because of its relationship to evangelism. As I mentioned last time, Nettleton compiled a hymn book for use in his services, so I examined Nettleton’s and Charles Finney’s soteriology and pneumatology, and then compared that to hymns used in their revival services. For the purpose of this article, I will share my research regarding Nettleton. Next month’s post will conclude this series, with an examination of specific hymns found in Village Hymns.

Nettleton and Finney held differing theological beliefs, which ultimately led them to practice opposing methodologies in their revival services. The Second Great Awakening, known as “one of the most significant turning-points in church history,” started in the 1790s and lasted until the 1840s (1). The Calvinistic revival leaders of the early Second Great Awakening focused on “the glory of God rather than their own personal benefit from salvation”(2). These leading preachers continued in the traditions of the First Great Awakening teachings, where the emphasis was on the Holy Spirit’s regenerating power upon a soul rather than the individual’s initiation in regeneration. In other words, “the entire salvation experience was God-centered”(3).

As the Second Great Awakening spread across America, certain revivalists, like Finney, employed new measures, or tactics, to instigate revivals. These schemes contrasted greatly with Johnathan Edwards’s belief that revivals were “surprising works of God”(4). New Measure Revivalists altered how Americans approached revivals and shifted how preachers led revivals. W. G. McGloughlin contrasted Edwards and Finney by writing, “One saw God as the center of the universe, the other saw man. One believed that revivals were ‘prayed down,’ the other that they were ‘worked up’”(5).

Nettleton’s Soteriology

Iain Murray summarizes the Calvinistic view that Nettleton maintained on revivals: “Revival is not something that men can plan or command as they will”(6). Murray continues, “The only explanation which they knew for the times of special blessing was that the Spirit of God, like the wind, ‘bloweth where it listeth’ (John 3:8)”(7). This reliance upon God for the eternity of a revival, from the Holy Spirit stirrings toward regeneration to the moment of salvation, is reflected in Nettleton’s doctrine of soteriology. His Calvinistic theology, “which stressed the role of God in salvation and revival, precipitated caution and restraint in the use of means”(8). His theology, therefore, does not have room for a man-centered focus in revival.

Nettleton’s view on the sovereignty of God steered him to teach that “a human was responsible for individual acts of sin and the unwillingness to turn toward the Lord for salvation”(9). This idea paralleled the Edwardsean view in modified Calvinism, which led to the belief that “man is in slavery and bondage to the strong habitual sin of moral inability”(10). Nettleton further placed strong emphasis upon total depravity, in which he believed “all men, by nature, are destitute of love to God…and that every imagination of the thoughts of their heart, is only evil continually”(11). Thus, Nettleton taught that because man was sinful and ignorant of God’s righteousness, he attempted to secure his own righteousness “as the most probable method of securing their salvation”(12).

The views that Nettleton held regarding the doctrines of total depravity and sin instilled in his doctrine of soteriology the belief that the “sinner primarily had to be regenerated by the grace of God”(13). Nettleton preached the order of “conviction, regeneration, repentance, faith, justification, and sanctification. Beyond time, glorification represents the final step of the transformation”(14). He believed that true repentance must follow regeneration, and he reminded his listeners that whatever they do, “for the purpose merely of escaping punishment, while they do not long for deliverance from sin, they are still guilty of neglecting the Savior”(15). Ricky Nelson summarizes this doctrine of Nettleton by stating, “salvation of any creature pointed to the glorious grace of a good and benevolent God in granting that even one sinner could be transformed and fit for heaven. The evangelist regarded Calvinistic soteriology as the highest possible tribute to the Creator”(16).

Nettleton’s sermons were saturated with his soteriological views, as will be shown below. Later revival preachers, including Finney, opposed the Calvinistic doctrine on the sovereignty of God in salvation, believing that men, “as moral agents, have the power to obey God, and are perfectly bound to obey, and the reason we do not is that we are unwilling”(17). Nettleton explicitly preached his doctrinal views on the sovereignty of God and free agency in his sermon, “The counsel and agency of God in the government of all things.” He began by rooting his instruction in God’s sovereignty across all time. Nettleton preached, “If God has not decreed the existence of future events, neither the existence, nor time, nor manner of such events could possibly be foreknown”(18). For Nettleton, nothing happened without God’s sovereign control, including every act of salvation. As the argument against God’s sovereignty in salvation usually included a reference to free moral agency, Nettleton stated, “Free agency does not consist in a power to act either without or against volition and choice.

Neither does it consist in a power to act independently of God; for if he should withdraw his agency we could neither choose nor act at all.” He continued later, “Free agency consists in voluntary action. At the same time, it is asserted that, God works in you both to will and to do…God has the hearts of all in his hand, and he can turn them whithersoever he pleases, without destroying free agency in the least”(19). Hence, Nettleton defended the Calvinistic doctrine of the sovereignty of God within his doctrine of soteriology. His teaching rested in the knowledge that “God may operate on the hearts of all men just as he pleases, and yet they be free”(20).

Nettleton’s Sermons

It is difficult to know exactly when Nettleton preached individual sermons, but International Outreach has recently published copies of Nettleton’s sermon transcriptions from his collection at Hartford Seminary. As would be appropriate, Nettleton’s sermons covered the topics of regeneration, repentance, and salvation, the same themes that will be seen in his hymnbook, Village Hymns. In his sermon “Genuine Repentance Does Not Precede Regeneration,” Nettleton remarks that the sinner cannot convert himself simply by “moral suasion;” but rather, “none but the God that made him can manage the sinner”(21). He further states that “genuine gospel repentance flows only from a heart melted into love to God,” and that regeneration cannot precede repentance because we cannot choose to love God while in our sinful state (22). This theme of “regeneration precedes faith” was another topic of controversy in the Second Great Awakening, so Nettleton often stressed that man cannot do what only the Almighty can do, as he did in this sermon.

In another sermon, “The Unclean Spirit,” Nettleton notes that many sinners “are alarmed and awakened to a sense of divine things,” and he cautions that “God has given his word that his Spirit shall not always strive with man”(23). The order of salvation, and the importance of articulating each step accurately, was vitally important to Nettleton. He believed the Spirit could awaken sinners, but the awakening was not salvific in itself. The sinner needed to repent before receiving salvation from God, and Nettleton made sure his hearers understood this message. He continued, “The only ground of hope in the case of sinners lies in the sovereign mercy of God. The only efficient cause of a sinner’s being brought to repentance is the influence of the Holy Spirit”(24). Here, Nettleton’s doctrine of pneumatology is reflected in his soteriology. He articulates that the Holy Spirit leads the sinner from awakening to repentance, but if the sinner resists the Spirit, “the Spirit withdraws and he becomes careless again”(25). At no point in this sermon did Nettleton mention the minister striving with the Spirit to move the soul to conversion. He solely laid that responsibility at the feet of God himself.

Regeneration was a topic that Nettleton covered in another sermon that he simply titled “Regeneration.” From the start, his Calvinistic doctrine of soteriology was revealed when he said, “The object of this text is to deny that our relation to God as his spiritual children is produced in any way, but by his own special and sovereign power”(26). This sermon is of great importance to because Nettleton explicitly mentions Arminian theological beliefs, stating that they are the same beliefs of Pelagius, who was “so universally condemned by the ancient Church,” but is now “newly dressed up, after the modern fashion, to secure a better reception”(27).  Nettleton mentions the Arminian belief of unlimited atonement, which he denies, and the principle of “moral suasion,” which he also rebuts. He plainly states that regeneration results in “an actual new creation” in which “a new spiritual taste or discernment, and principle is implanted by a sovereign creative operation, and not simply a new direction given to the old faculties”(28). These sermons reveal Nettleton’s adherence to Calvinistic doctrines and the sole reliance upon God to move a soul to conversion. In other words, Nettleton used the common means of grace, prayer, and preaching, in his sermons, and nothing else.

Conclusion

Through his preaching and methodology, Nettleton never emphasized the emotional urgency of response in his revival meetings, because he believed that the Spirit moved the soul to salvation, not the preacher. Bennet Tyler writes that Nettleton “was perfectly aware that all human means are utterly powerless, unless made effectual by the agency of the Holy Spirit. He did not rely on his own strength (29). Nettleton believed his role was to faithfully preach the entirety of the Word of God, and the Spirit would move as God commands. Thus, Nettleton’s revivals contained the truth that not all who hear the Spirit’s call would respond, but he did not rely upon means to entice sinners to reply. Nettleton fell in line with the ministers before him who taught “instant responsibility of sinners to obey the gospel in repentance and faith…but at the same time,...knew that the time when hearers of the gospel get grace to obey is not in the hands of men”(30). There simply was no room in his revival theology for human means.

References

Kim has been married to her college sweetheart, Jason, for 24 years and they have one son who is a high school senior. Most recently, Kim completed her Ph.D in Church Music and Worship from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. She has presented at Evangelical Theological Society and The Society of Christian Scholarship in Music, and her works have appeared in The Hymn, Artistic Theologian, and Baptist History and Heritage Journal.