The struggle between Robert Richardson and Tolbert Fanning is similar to the differences between our nation's Founding Fathers and Thomas Payne (Paine?). Payne wrote "Common Sense" which embodied all the universal principles that galvinized the American Revolution. He was a key part of it and was accepted by all of our Founding Fathers. One of the in crowd... But around 1790 and the beginnings of the French Revolution Payne attributed the Revolution's success to Man's own ingenuity, self ingenuity and resourcefulness but not to the Lord's Divine Providence. Payne wrote a series on this philosophy that paralleled the French ideas at the time and guess what?!!!! Payne was ostricized by the Founding Fathers to a man, and he wasn't even allowed to be buried with any public notoriety. He was buried in some obscure cow pasture!!! With Fanning and Richardson, it stacks up to me, that Fanning takes the man made ingenuity and resourcefulness tract while Richardson clings more to Providence with the natural state of The Spirit, only Richardson is the one who becomes ostricized by the Church of Christ Status Quo.
For lack of a more eloquent argument I'm going to post some ideas that coincide with Richardson's argument, which I totally agree with thus far.
"The Holy Spirit of God is imparted to the believer, really and truly, taking up his abode in his person, as a distinct guest."
Richardson argued against the idea that the Spirit works only through the Word (or Scripture). {{Its kind of like saying that the only way the Spirit works is by some mystical invocation of the literal written word of scripture. This demotes the Spirit to the written word in scripture and the scripture itself as only some form of magic spell!!!}} Richardson rightly asserts that this view "chilled Spiritual vitality and replaced it with a doctrinal formalism."
That last point leads to his conclusion that "some system of human philosophy has insidiously intruded itself, and, like the serpent in Eden, seduced the unwary, by the charms of forbidden knowledge."
Literally, like the Pharisees in Jesus' time, this human philosophy that is spoken of is consistent with the letter and principle of the Law but doesn't come anywhere near the Spirit and appropriate practice of it!!!
Therefore, the Spirit is rendered sterile, absent of Divine Life and energy.
This sterility reduces Christianity to a "mere profession of faith" void of the Spirit's life.
The most incredible point of it all is that we do it to ourselves, "The contamination of faith with pilosophy is a very subtle business. No one sets out to do it. Everyone thinks that his or her "speculations" are simply revealed Bible truths." {{This explains denominations more clearly to me and reaffirms a belief that I've always had is that the actual Body of Christ is Spiritual and no denomination has cornered that.}}
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I think the fear of the Spirit stems from the fear that things will get out of control. The excesses of the emotionalism of some of the early revivals caused a reaction against anything that looked remotely like this. If I remember right, a man went to one of these revivals, then came home and wrote the words - "Dear Lord and Father of mankind, forgive our foolish ways. Reclothe us in our rightful mind . . . take from our souls the strain and stress and let our ordered lives confess the beauty of thy praise." We have this in our song books. But like so many other thing the pendulum seems to have swung too wide the opposite direction, as if God is not truly active in the world or in the lives of men. Some people in early American were Deists, they believed in God, but did not believe God was active in the world. It was up to man to mine the natural laws God designed the world with, and live according to those. If I remember right, Thomas Jefferson was a Deist. It fit with the rationalistic, scientific worldview that had been sweeping Western Culture.
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