HOLY HERESY? A. B. SIMPSON, SANCTIFICATION, AND APPOLINARIANISM

Bernie A. Van De Walle

Albert Benjamin Simpson, noted preacher, publisher, and founder of the Christian and Missionary Alliance, lived and thrived in the theology and spirituality of the late nineteenth century Holiness Movement. He was both its benefactor and beneficiary. His teaching regarding sanctification in particular was widely disseminated through international, national, and regional conferences, through the students of his Missionary Training Institute, and through the periodicals and books that seemed to flow ceaselessly from his pen.

His complex doctrine of sanctification is founded upon the believer’s gaining of the mind of Christ. Apart from this acquisition, the pursuit of holiness is futile. It is the mind of Christ, resident in the believer, that empowers humanity to effectively complete its divine mandate and be all that God has created it to be.

When one investigates what Simpson meant by the “mind of Christ,” however, one may begin to legitimately ask whether Simpson’s understanding treads upon the ground of an historic heresy. When describing this “mind of Christ” that the believer is to gain, Simpson is clear to note that this mind is singular and is solely divine. As such, Simpson’s Christology may be Apollinarian, that Christological position directly anathematized at the First Council of Constantinople in 381 CE. Of particular practical consequence is that, if Simpson’s Christology is heretical, especially in relation to the nature of the mind of Christ, then his soteriology is also heretical and an inadequate model. This bears practical significance because Simpson’s soteriology and his doctrine of sanctification are peculiar neither to himself nor to the Christian and Missionary Alliance. They are shared by many, especially those associated with the historic Holiness Movement. This essay, however, will show that, while Simpson may have held an Apollinarian Christology, he may be saved from heresy by an uncommon anthropology that understands the proper spirit of all humanity to be essentially divine.