Warning from P T Forsyth: “It is a dangerous thing to work at your own holiness…”

Living in Aberdeen it is incumbent to be aware of the theological minds that have graced this city. Two of them come together in 1970, in a wee book called P T Forsyth:Per Crucem ad Lucem, written by the Professor of New Testament and former Master of Christ's College, A M Hunter. What makes this brief study of Forsyth so good is the coincidence of minds and sympathy of spirit of two men who could be called liberal evangelicals. Separated by two or three generations they were theologians of the New Testament Gospel, and Hunter had clearly found a kindred heart in the writings of Forsyth.

At one point Hunter builds boldly on Forsyth's insistence that growth in holiness is God's work not ours. "The witness of the Spirit in our hearts is 'Christ's perpetual interpretation of his own work as gospel. The Spirit lights the Bible, leads the church, anoints the ministry, and all by a constant rejuvenation of the gospel and its power to create, criticize and create anew".

Hunter goes on: "Sanctification is not self-culture….Paul did not consecrate himself to his great work. He obeyed a call and found his sanctification – his growth in grace – in the pursuit of his ministry. So we too are sanctified when we are on our Saviour's business. Growth in grace comes not by working at it but by passing ever more deeply into self-forgetfulness – into the grace, the cross and the service of Christ."

And for added emphasis here is Forsyth again, sounding like one of the magisterial Puritans he admired, Thomas Goodwin: "Seek first for the Kingdom and sanctification will be added; care for Christ and he will take care of your soul; sail by the Cross and you will sail into holiness."

Aye, those Aberdeen theologians of the Gospel knew what, and Who, they were talking about. And they were way too wise as pastoral theologians, and shrewd as psychologists to tolerate the me, me, me self-help spirituality that is often implicated in our programmatic activism as we try to make happen what in the end, and the beginning, is grace, gift and mercy.