The Christocentric Core of Simpson’s Pneumatology
Rev. Christopher Smith
Albert Benjamin Simpson, founder of The Christian and Missionary Alliance, was known for many things, but perhaps none has been more enduring than a theological framework called the Fourfold Gospel which places Christ himself at the centre of all things in the Christian life. This paper is another attempt to penetrate Simpson’s thought at the heart of his theology, to examine why he has escaped easy categorization and definition over the years, and to untangle the confusing ways in which the contemporary expression of his movement may be at risk of de-centering Christ even while preaching his centrality.
For Simpson, Christ is not an abstract figure or concept to be studied, nor a doctrine to be mastered, or a force to be understood, but rather he is a person to know and to be known by. This subtle difference in approach to describing and relating to Christ is the very thing in Simpson’s Christology that resists systemization and logical analysis. Simpson is less concerned with avoiding contradiction and ambiguity and more concerned with demonstrating how every aspect of the Christian life flows out of a personal union with the Son of God. This paper is divided into three main sections: 1) the relationship of Christ to the Spirit (examining Simpson’s understanding of the incarnation and the effect of the union between flesh and divinity upon the Godhead), 2) the relationship between Christ and the Church, and 3) the confusion that surrounds Simpson’s teaching in regard to the role of the Holy Spirit as the facilitator of the relationship of the divine-human relationship, and how, lacking a robust and central Christology, the contemporary Alliance is at risk of elevating its pneumatology over and above Simpson’s explicit Christocentric understanding of the union between believer and God.
Christ and the Holy Spirit
Understanding what Simpson believed about the ontological relationship between Christ and the Holy Spirit is a difficult mystery to untangle. This is because every time one pulls on that thread of inquiry to try and understand the shape of his theology, one gets sidetracked by Simpson’s singular focus on the lived experience of the believer with regard to this relationship. This is another place where his failure to be sufficiently systematic makes classification challenging. What can be known, however, is that Simpson confessed that the ministries of Christ and the Holy Spirit were so interwoven that it is difficult to fully demarcate where one ends and the other begins.[1] “In the Old Testament age, the Holy Ghost came rather as the Spirit of the Father, in the glory and majesty of the Deity, while under the New Testament, He comes rather as the Spirit of the Son, to represent Jesus to us, and make him real in our experience and life.”[2] The Holy Spirit comes, therefore, not only from the Father but especially from the Son, and through the Son, and as the Spirit of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus derives “His person[3] and his incarnate life from the Holy Ghost”[4] and, in the strength of the Holy Spirit, Jesus “wrought his works, and spake his words, and accomplished his ministry.”[5] All of his teachings, works, and his miracles were directly attributed to the Holy Spirit,[6] for Jesus Christ did nothing in the incarnation of his own power, but entirely out of the power and guidance of the Holy Spirit. For Simpson, Christ’s dependence was also instructional; he lived not out of his own power but out of the power of the Holy Spirit for our sake. In that way, we could know the power that is available to us as a real gift and not as an impossible aspiration for “as surely as He overcame through the Holy Ghost, so may we.”[7]
Simpson understood this union between the Son and the Spirit to be so fully integrated that the Holy Spirit as a person in some mystical way subsumed his own identity into that of the Son.
The Holy Ghost is not to us now what He was under the Old Testament, purely the Spirit of Deity; but He is, if we can understand what it means, the Spirit that dwelt in the human and divine Christ; the Spirit that (if we may say it with reverence) was softened and in some sense humanized by union with Jesus.”[8]
What Simpson appears to be saying here is that the Holy Spirit was changed in some way by his union with the incarnate Christ. He uses the word “softened” to describe some sort of fundamental taking-on of humanness in his divinity. This sharing of natures between the two persons of the Trinity further muddies the waters when it comes to untangling how Simpson spoke of the two persons and their roles and identities yet at the same time there is a puzzling sort of internal logic to his way of describing the relationship, as much as it resists definition.
This change in relationship between Christ and the Holy Spirit begins with the incarnation; Simpson notes that the model of Christ’s birth by the seed implanted of the Holy Spirit within corrupted flesh becomes the very model for our rebirth as children of God. For Simpson, Christ’s incarnation was not a trick or some sort of accommodation of flesh; instead, it was the eternal Logos becoming truly human. The Son not only took on flesh as a layer upon his divinity like a cloak, but became one, integrated, divine-human being—fully God and still fully human.
This special, generative relationship, first manifest at the conception of Jesus, is revisited and realized in full at his baptism, where the Holy Spirit, in the form of a dove, rests upon and abides in union with the Son, while the Father speaks words of affirmation. “Henceforth there was another Personality united with Him, in all His teachings, acts and sufferings. It was the third Person of the Deity, so that all Christ’s public life was fulfilled in the power of the Spirit.”[9] Simpson emphasizes that Christ set aside his power when he became incarnate and worked his ministry exclusively out of the power of the indwelling Spirit.[10] For Simpson, this clearly explains why we have no record of public ministry before Jesus’ baptism and sets out the pattern that Christ himself not only operated under but that the church, in union with Christ, must similarly adopt.[11]
Simpson sees Christ, during his three years of public ministry, modelling all that a Spirit-filled believer can be. In places, Simpson may seem to confuse the other two persons of the Trinity when talking about this relationship of dependence. He states, for example, “Jesus, who walked this earth as our Example, was absolutely helpless to do an act or to think a thought of Himself. And He never tried to but He constantly hung on His Father’s life; he drew on His being from His Father, and just lived in Him all the time.”[12] Even though Simpson tends to sometimes speak of the Father being the source of his power in places like this, reading in context always reveals a more nuanced understanding: that this dependence upon the Father was through the filling of the Holy Spirit. It was by virtue of this abiding union that Christ was, in the incarnation, connected to the other persons of the Godhead. Not only is the Holy Spirit the power behind Jesus’ work, there is also a sense in which the metaphor is reversed: that Jesus is the power, the animator, the force driving the Spirit forward. This type of symbiotic relationship between the Son and the Spirit (and the Father) shows evidence of the imminent Trinity on display even in the incarnation.
Christ and the Church/Believer
The notion of the relationship between Christ and the Christian is at the heart of the gospel for Simpson as he is first and foremost a pastoral theologian. To that end, Simpson’s most well-known contribution to theology—the Fourfold Gospel—is concerned almost exclusively with the relationship between Christ and the individual believer rather than Christ and any other person. In this way it has been said that the Fourfold Gospel is not so much a systematic theology as it is a practical soteriology. We see this in the way that Simpson speaks about the purpose and benefits of union with Christ as outlined in the four elements of his most famous work.
“Salvation gives us grace to live day by day. A man may be pardoned and so get out of prison, and yet have no money to supply his needs. He is pardoned, yet he is starving. Salvation takes us out of prison, and provides for all our needs besides.”[13] This is how Simpson understood salvation: not as an achieved status that was merely won for the believer by Christ, nor simply as the removal of the guilt and sin that impeded the believer from being in the presence of a holy God, but rather for Simpson, salvation is union with Christ himself.[14] It is union with Christ that provides tangible positive benefits to the believer. If someone won’t have Jesus, they won’t have salvation for Jesus is salvation. Salvation is not about escaping punishment, but about receiving Jesus. “There must be next an apprehension of Jesus as our Saviour. The soul must see Him as both able and willing to save. It will not do merely to feel and confess your guilt. What is needed is to get the eye on Jesus.”[15]
The doctrine of sanctification, though central to Simpson’s theology, is often misunderstood as being a mechanical process of moral achievement rather than a facet of union with Christ. “Sanctification is not morality, nor any attainments of character.”[16] It is sometimes wrongly linked with the doctrine of regeneration, but for Simpson these two elements are distinct and separate things.
[R]egeneration is the beginning. It is the germ of the seed, but it is not the summer fullness of the plant. The heart has not yet gained entire victory over the old elements of sin. It is sometimes overcome by them. Regeneration is like building a house and having the work done well. Sanctification is having the owner come and dwell in it and fill it with gladness, and life, and beauty.[17]This aspect of indwelling is at the heart of what Simpson means when he speaks of sanctification. It is not about what Christ does for the believer, or even simply what Christ does in the believer, but it is the presence of Christ himself with the believer that is the essence of sanctification. “It comes through the personal indwelling of Jesus. He does not put righteousness into the heart simply, but He comes there personally Himself to live.”[18] Jesus does not make us able to be sanctified as though he leaves a deposit of holiness within us — even his own holiness — but rather he comes and abides with us and becomes our sanctification. As Simpson notes, “it is an obtainment, not an attainment.”[19] Sanctification, even with God’s help, is alien to us. It is foreign to our nature to be sanctified, but Jesus comes to us and abides within us, allowing us to be hidden in his nature. He is sanctified for us. It’s the difference between being given tools, instructions, and chemicals to clean your house and being told to keep it clean, versus hiring a housekeeper who comes and lives in the house and keeps it clean on your behalf. Without the housekeeper the place is a mess. This is the type of union with Christ that Simpson has in mind when he speaks of Christ as sanctifier.
Simpson’s justification for Christ as healer rests largely upon two texts: Isaiah 53 and Matthew’s appropriation of that prophecy in chapter 8 of his gospel. For Simpson, the root of this doctrine is not actually Christ (although he might argue with that characterization) but sin. For Simpson, sickness and disease were unnatural invaders into the good order of God’s creation brought about by the effects of sin,[20] and as such, Christ’s sacrificial offering on the cross and his defeat of death in the resurrection are sufficient actions to undo the curse and the effects of sin in the world.[21] This inclusion by Simpson of divine healing within the benefits of the atonement allows him to then go onto appropriate any and all scriptural references to Christ’s victory over sin and death as evidences to support his understanding of the promise of divine healing through union with Christ. And again, like the other aspects of the Fourfold Gospel, healing is not a gift or benefit to be attained simply because of Christ—as if it could be held separate from him—rather Christ, when united with the believer, is the Healer.
Salvation, sanctification, and healing were not however, for Simpson, the chief benefits of the union between Christ and believer. That place of preeminence was reserved for the fourth aspect of his central doctrine: Christ as the Coming King. Simpson believed that all the benefits of union with Christ were wasted if he could not in the end have Jesus himself.[22] As such, Simpson placed a priority on the doctrines of eschatology and the details of Christ’s premillennial return, which for him “fulfilled and shaped all of the other themes of the “Fourfold Gospel” and theology in general.”[23] When introducing his commentary on the books of the Thessalonians, Simpson boldly claims priority for this doctrine, stating that, “[t]he fact that [these] were Paul’s earliest epistles, and that this subject occupies so prominent a place in them, makes it very plain that the doctrine of the Lord’s coming…is one of the primary doctrines of the Gospel.”[24]
The particular shape of Simpson’s eschatology was not just a general hope in the return of Christ, but a distinctively premillennial return which Simpson believed was the believer’s hope. As a premillennialist, Simpson held that the world was in a state of decay and moral entropy, moving toward a tipping point where only Christ can rescue humanity from itself. “How vain and fruitless all our efforts to help humanity and reform society short of God’s plan…nothing else will help our ruined world but Christ, His cross and His coming.”[25] Efforts to make the world a better place apart from preaching the gospel and the immenent nature of Christ’s return were ultimately a foolish squandering of God’s resources. And it is this question of resources and stewardship of the mission that leads to the crux of Simpson’s theology of the intersection of union with Christ and Christ’s premillennial return.
Simpson, as a semi-dispensationalist, believed in human instrumentality with regard to the return of Christ.[26] In this way, he seems to present an idea that Christ is as contingent on people as they are on him.[27] While this notion at first seems strange since Christ, being fully God, needs for nothing, Simpson repeatedly speaks of union with Christ as though it were more symbiotic than many others would assume. This union between Christ and the believer and more broadly, Christ and the Church, is both the problem facing the world, and the solution for the world. On the one hand, Simpson had a dim view of the way the body of Christ has been crippled by sin, and as a consequence has in some real way limited Christ. “Christ has been hindered by the paralyzed, disjointed, diseased condition of many members of His body, and the work accomplished by the church has been limited by the fact that the body has been diseased and enfeebled in many of its parts;”[28] while on the other hand, Simpson was deeply convicted that it was the church’s sole responsibility to bring about the conditions for Christ to return. Specifically, there were three conditions that Simpson’s premillennial eschatology demanded be fulfilled before the King would return. 1) The church must be ready through a deepening of their relationship with Christ and their experience of sanctification, 2) the gospel message must be preached in all the world, and 3) the Jews must be restored to their ancestral homeleand in Palestine.[29] Only when these three conditions were met would the “imminent” return of Jesus become reality. The return of the Jews to Palestine was a geo-politcial issue that the church could watch and pray for, but ultimately had little agency to accomplish, but the other two conditions were the express domain of the two organizations that Simpson founded; the Christian Alliance and the Evangelical Missionary Alliance. Ten years after their founding, the two organizations would merge to become the Christian and Missionary Alliance—a denomination committed to doing the very things that Simpson believed were reqired to hasten Christ’s return.
The anatomy of union with Christ through the Holy Spirit
No examination of Simpson’s theology of union with Christ would be complete without addressing what is perhaps the most confusing and frustrating aspect of his writings: the seemingly indiscriminate way in which he speaks of Christ and the Holy Spirit as jointly responsible for the union which forms the basis for the Fourfold Gospel. “Although Simpson did make distinctions between the Son and the Spirit, the theological lines distinguishing between the Spirit’s ministry and that of the Son were thus quite vague when Simpson wrote about the indwelling of Christ in the believer.”[30] This confusion as a consequence of imbalanced emphasis and often indiscriminate usage of precise theological language[31] understandably muddies the waters with regard to how Simpson understands the economy of union with Christ, but a closer examination of his writings – even when held against those challenges – reveal a consistent Christological through-line with regards to how the union is brought about.
First, it can be said that Simpson understood the believer’s experience of God to be fully and unreservedly centred on the person of Jesus Christ. The basic premise of Simpson’s argument in his famous sermon, Himself, is that all of the benefits of a life in Christ come only, and fully, when the believer seeks Christ, “himself,” rather than the benefits he brings.[32] This prioritization of the person of Jesus Christ over all the benefits of union with him also spills over to Simpson’s means of experiencing this union. For if Christ himself, is the goal of the deeper life, then no other person can occupy an equal place with him. At this point it is salient to clarify that by no means is Simpson advocating for any type of hierarchy within the Trinity, but rather a deep reverence for the way that God has so chosen to reveal himself to humanity and the means by which the believer is brought up into fellowship with God. Simpson understood that the believer’s union was accomplished through the Spirit. Not that the union was with the Spirit, but that the Spirit makes possible, through his indwelling, the union of the believer with Christ. Simpson uses the language of “substitute” and “successor” to describe the Holy Spirit’s role in the believer’s life relative to Christ,[33] going so far as to claim that his presence is more precious to the believer than Christ’s presence was to his disciples. This is the sort of language that can certainly cause confusion with regard to how Simpson understood the indwelling of the Spirit and union with Christ, however, Simpson clarifies elsewhere that the Holy Spirit does not “displace” Christ, rather he comes to make Christ “more real than he has ever been”[34] in the life of the believer. The Spirit comes to the believer not as a distinct person (although he certainly is) but as the Spirit who has dwelled in Christ – changed in some way by the experience and bringing with him the abiding presence of Christ as a product of that union with Jesus in the incarnation.[35] In all ways therefore, the union to be sought by the believer is a union centred in, and wholly dependent upon Christ.
Second, the union is not simply centred on Christ in its structure, but it is sought by seeking Christ himself, and not (as some have wrongly concluded) by seeking the Holy Spirit. This confusion is largely due to Simpson’s abundance of teaching on the baptism of the Holy Spirit as instrumental in experiencing the deeper life. It is easy to see how being instructed to seek this baptism would lead someone to conclude that what they are looking for is a fuller experience of the Holy Spirit, but a more careful examination of what Simpson teaches here reveals that it is not the Spirit who is sought in baptism, but Christ. “He [Jesus] is able to clear it all away. Come to His blessed feet, come to His sprinkled blood, come to His throne of grace, come to the great Sacrifice, come to the cross of Calvary, come to the great High Priest, come to Jesus, and He will cleanse you by His blood, and baptize you with His Holy Spirit.”[36] What Simpson is saying here is that we do not get the Holy Spirit by seeking the Holy Spirit – we get the Holy Spirit by seeking Christ. “The greatest gift of the New Testament was Jesus; the greatest gift of Jesus was the Spirit. The Father sends the Son; the Son baptizes with the Spirit; and the Spirit brings both the Father and the Son into our heart and life.”[37] Christ is the material cause of our filling as well as the instrumental cause. A mistake that many people make (in Simpson’s view) is that they picture Christ as far away in the heavenlies at the right hand of God while the Spirit is intimately connected with them and thus favour the Spirit—however this is not the case, because the Spirit (which indwells closer than the physical Christ ever could) indwells us not with his own presence, but with the very presence of Christ.[38] The life to which the Holy Spirit brings the believer is the life of Christ—not the life of the Spirit, “to be filled with the Spirit, then, is to be filled with Christ, and so live that our constant experience and testimony will be, “I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me…””[39]
Third, it should be noted that Simpson was careful to warn against seeking the Spirit over and above Christ in the arena of prayer. It was not enough for Simpson to simply understand the right theology of the roles of Christ and the Holy Spirit in the life of the Christian, but the practices of faith must also align with that understanding. Simpson says plainly that we are not to pray to the Holy Spirit, but to Jesus alone. If we seek the Spirit, we go to Jesus.[40] For his own part, the Holy Spirit always defers to Christ. “Jesus is justified by the Spirit, who witnesses to Him as the Son of God, Savior of the world, and the faithful and true witness in all his promises and claims. Wherever the Holy Ghost still comes, He will always be found witnessing to Jesus and honouring the Son of God.”[41] And so it seems fitting within Simpson’s theological framework that all prayer should be rightly addressed to Christ, and it should likewise be understood that when the Holy Spirit speaks, that he speaks in the voice of Jesus. In this way we can be sure that the Holy Spirit is a trustworthy witness to the will of God because he always speaks to us of what Jesus has said, “the Holy Ghost has given us this Word, and he is not likely to ignore it in His own manifestation to our hearts.”[42] Simpson believed that through this union with Christ one was able in prayer to receive direct revelation from him, “[h]e lets us own Him and possess Him as our God, and use Him in His infinite resources for every need. Further, He promises that we shall know the Lord for ourselves and have His light and guidance, not being dependent upon others to teach, but receiving directly from His will and mind for us.”[43] This type of direct revelation was safe because in Simpsons understanding it was impossible for the Holy Spirit to violate the teachings of Holy Scripture, however, “they could often provide more specific direction to the believer in knowing God’s will. These inner leadings could provide authoritative direction to the believer because, Simpson argued, they came from Christ.”[44] These authoritative words were not the words of the Holy Spirit, but the very words of Jesus.
Conclusion
Is it possible, in light of Simpson’s explicit Christocentrism, that the current Pneumacentric emphasis of the Christian and Missionary Alliance risks becoming unfaithful to the very Spirit that it seeks to honour and glorify? In emphasizing the worship of the Holy Spirit and the seeking after the Holy Spirit is the denomination started under the auspice of Simpson’s Fourfold Gospel demonstrating that it has lost sight of just what its founder meant for it to be? Speaking from a Canadian context, the current vision prayer of the C&MA in Canada is that it is a movement of people who long for God, and ask to be transformed into Christ-centred, Sprit-empowerd, and Mission focused people.[45] On the face of the matter this seems to line up well with Simpson’s dual priorities of the Deeper Life in Christ, and hastening Christ’s return by proclaiming the Gospel to all peoples—Christ-centred and Mission-focused are the two pillars that the movement was built upon. But what about Spirit-empowered? In one sense, this statement of intention and identity is just a matter of stating an obvious truth that Simpson would have wholeheatedly agreed with, namely that the work and empowering of the Holy Spirit is the means by which the believer can be both Christ-centred and Mission-focused. The Holy Spirit is the connective tissue between the goal of spiritual union with Christ and the goal of physical reunion with Christ in his return.[46] But does the inclusion of the “Spirit-empowered” focus lead to an unhealthy focus on the work of the Spirit at the expense of attention to Christ himself? Frankly, it is impossible to prove one way or the other, but the C&MA (in Canada and beyond) would do well to pay attention to the signs of what an unhealthy, pneumacentric soteriology might look like. Considering the warnings given by Simpson himself, there is a high degree of likelihood that an over-emphasis on the work of the Holy Spirit (at the expense of a focus on Christ) would manifest in three key ways: 1) An emphasis on receiving power for holy service, rather than receiving power for holy living, 2) an emphasis on seeking physical healings rather than a focus on seeking the healer himself, and 3) a longing for the benefits and blessings of the coming kingdom, rather than the presence of the coming King. The first sign would be characteristic of a shift toward an emphasis on doing for Christ rather than being in Christ and it would constitute a departure from Simpson’s core emphasis on the deeper life. The second sign would appear in practice as a type of commodification of the gift of divine healing, as though the work of the Alliance was to act as the middleman for Christ in the dispensing of his blessings. On that last point it would appear that the C&MA in Canada is especially vulnerable to drift from Simpson’s theology as it has officially untethered itself from a doctrine of the premillennial return of Christ. Without Simpson’s resolute belief in the agency of the Church in bringing about the event which comes from his own unique spin on dispensational premillenialsm and Christ’s chosen contingency on certain things being accomplished before his return could occur, the goal of global missions must change. Without the sense of urgency related to Simpson’s specific flavour of eschatology the C&MA in Canada may be tempted to take a longer view of the project of mission and act with different priorities as a result. These points of divergence from Simpson may not be inherently bad things for the Alliance to consider, but they must be considered with the full knowledge of the ways that they differ from who they have been historically, and who they claim to still be today. Simpson’s theology was unashamedly focused on Christ, “himself.” He, and he alone, is the precious treasure of the Christian life. The C&MA needs to ask the question about whether they still see things the same way.
Bibliography
Glass, Clyde McLean. “Mysticism and Contemplation in the Life and Teaching of Albert Benjamin Simpson.” Dissertations (1962 – 2010) Access via Proquest Digital Dissertations, January 1, 1997, 1–428.
Simpson, A. B. Christ in the Bible Commentary NIV Text, 4 Volumes (1 Thessalonians-Revelation). New Edition. Vol. 4. 4 vols. Camp Hill, Pa: Wingspread Publishers, 2009.
———. Christ in the Bible Commentary NIV Text, 4 Volumes (Matthew-Acts). New Edition. Vol. 2. 4 vols. Camp Hill, Pa: Wingspread Publishers, 2009.
———. Christ in the Bible Commentary NIV Text, 4 Volumes (Romans-Colossians). New Edition. Vol. 3. 4 vols. Camp Hill, Pa: Wingspread Publishers, 2009.
———. Christ Life. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016.
———. “Himself.” The Word the Work and World, October 1885.
———. “How to Receive Divine Healing.” The Word, Work and World, August 1885.
———. The Coming One. New York: Christian Alliance Publishing Co, 1912.
———. The Fourfold Gospel. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2014.
———. “The Holy Spirit” or “Power from on High” All Volumes. Combined edition. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2017.
———. The Names of Jesus. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2014.
Van De Walle, Bernie A. The Heart of the Gospel: A. B. Simpson, the Fourfold Gospel, and Late Nineteenth-Century Evangelical Theology. Princeton Theological Monograph Series; 106. Eugene: Pickwick Publications, 2009.
[1] Clyde McLean Glass, “Mysticism and Contemplation in the Life and Teaching of Albert Benjamin Simpson,” Dissertations (1962 – 2010) Access via Proquest Digital Dissertations, January 1, 1997, 138.
[2] A. B. Simpson, “The Holy Spirit” or “Power from on High” All Volumes, Combined edition (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2017), 101.
[3] The reference to Christ’s “person” in this quote can only be referring to the physical human personality of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. It would be incongruous with Simpson’s broader teaching on the personhood of the members of the Trinity to assume that this is in reference in any way to his divine personhood. Simpson clearly expresses in many other places his belief about the eternality and unconditional nature of his existence.
[4] Simpson, “The Holy Spirit” or “Power from on High” All Volumes, 102.
[5] Simpson, 115.
[6] Simpson, 104.
[7] Simpson, 104.
[8] Simpson, 114.
[9] A. B. Simpson, Christ in the Bible Commentary NIV Text, 4 Volumes (Matthew-Acts), New Edition, vol. 2 (Camp Hill, Pa: Wingspread Publishers, 2009), 21.
[10] Simpson, “The Holy Spirit” or “Power from on High” All Volumes, 104.
[11] Simpson, Christ in the Bible Commentary NIV Text, 4 Volumes (Matthew-Acts), 2:21.
[12] A. B. Simpson, Christ Life (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016), 43.
[13] A. B. Simpson, The Fourfold Gospel (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2014), chap. 1.
[14] A. B. Simpson, Christ in the Bible Commentary NIV Text, 4 Volumes (Romans-Colossians), New Edition, vol. 3 (Camp Hill, Pa: Wingspread Publishers, 2009), 539.
[15] Simpson, The Fourfold Gospel, chap. 1.
[16] Simpson, chap. 2.
[17] Simpson, chap. 2.
[18] Simpson, chap. 2.
[19] Simpson, chap. 2.
[20] Bernie A. Van De Walle, The Heart of the Gospel: A. B. Simpson, the Fourfold Gospel, and Late Nineteenth-Century Evangelical Theology, Princeton Theological Monograph Series; 106 (Eugene: Pickwick Publications, 2009), 129.
[21] A. B. Simpson, “How to Receive Divine Healing,” The Word, Work and World, August 1885, 204.
[22] A. B. Simpson, “Himself,” The Word the Work and World, October 1885; “This is eternal life, not that you go to heaven someday when you die, but that you should know Christ. Eternal life is Jesus himself.” Simpson, Christ Life, 10.
[23] Van De Walle, The Heart of the Gospel, 173.
[24] A. B. Simpson, Christ in the Bible Commentary NIV Text, 4 Volumes (1 Thessalonians-Revelation), New Edition, vol. 4 (Camp Hill, Pa: Wingspread Publishers, 2009), 1–2.
[25] A. B. Simpson, The Coming One (New York: Christian Alliance Publishing Co, 1912), chap. 15.
[26] Glass, “Mysticism and Contemplation in the Life and Teaching of Albert Benjamin Simpson,” 38.
[27] Simpson, Christ Life, 18–19.
[28] A. B. Simpson, The Names of Jesus (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2014), chap. 9.
[29] Van De Walle, The Heart of the Gospel, 178.
[30] Glass, “Mysticism and Contemplation in the Life and Teaching of Albert Benjamin Simpson,” 137.
[31] Simpson has a tendency to vacillate between extreme Pneumacentric theology and extreme Christocentric theology depending on the setting and the work being examined. For example, in The Word, Work and World [August 1885, 196], Simpson includes a sermon he preached extoling the virtues of how much the Holy Spirit is talked about in the Gospel of John, but elsewhere, in The Holy Spirit Volume 2, Simpson seems buoyed by the relative dearth of reference to the Holy Spirit in the book of 1 John when contrasted to the number of references to Christ. In this little comment he tips his hand even further that we might see his true understanding of the role of the Holy Spirit in relation to Christ: “John was so saturated with the Holy Ghost that, like the Holy Ghost, who never witnesses of Himself, he was constantly thinking of Jesus, and witnessing of him.” [“The Holy Spirit” or “Power from on High” All Volumes, 181]
[32] Simpson, “Himself,” 261.
[33] Simpson, “The Holy Spirit” or “Power from on High” All Volumes, 118–19.
[34] Simpson, Christ in the Bible Commentary NIV Text, 4 Volumes (Matthew-Acts), 2:414.
[35] Simpson, 2:493.
[36] Simpson, The Names of Jesus, chap. 14.
[37] Simpson, chap. 14.
[38] Simpson, “The Holy Spirit” or “Power from on High” All Volumes, 118.
[39] Simpson, 131.
[40] Simpson, The Names of Jesus, chap. 14.
[41] Simpson, “The Holy Spirit” or “Power from on High” All Volumes, 164.
[42] Simpson, 153.
[43] Simpson, The Names of Jesus, chap. 5.
[44] Glass, “Mysticism and Contemplation in the Life and Teaching of Albert Benjamin Simpson,” 146.
[45] https://www.cmacan.org/who-we-are/
[46] It is an interesting question for examination, but ultimately beyond the scope of this paper, as to whether the current missionary motivation in the C&MA is still aligned with Simpson’s contention that any mission activity beyond strict evangelization is a wastefeul endeavor: “How vain and fruitless all our efforts to help humanity and reform society short of God’s plan! Are we wasting our strength in second class philanthropies and enterprises? They are not worth the cost. The time is too short, the crisis is too near, the conditions are too hard. Nothing else will help our ruined world but Christ, His cross and His coming. Do not sink your money in the sands of time, but put all the strength of your life into the best things, the one thing, the only thing that God has given us as the remedy for sin and the business of life.” A. B. Simpson, The Coming One, chap. 15.