RETURN TO MAIN PAGE BUTTON

How The Restoration Churches
Limiting the Activity
of the Holy Spirit relates to the
Heresy of Decisional Regeneration

Restoration churches (and Scottish Common Sense Realists) limit the Holy Spirit.

1830 Campbell's Consistently Published view (and the majority oppinion of Restorationists), The Verbal-Restrictive theory:
The work of the Holy Spirit is imminent (restricted to, but fully available) in the word of Scripture. The means of salvation are therefore restricted to hearing and reading scripture. Campbell wrote, “Whatever the word does, the Spirit does; and whatsoever the Spirit does in the work of converting men, the word does.” But when confronted with this quote from The Christian System in a debate in 1843 with Nathan Lewis Rice, Campbell said he was NOT a strict “Verbal-Restrictivist”, and that he believed in some way the Spirit quickened scripture in the heart, which should have silenced Rice, because that sounds like the Scottish Common Sense Realism taught at Princeton Theological Seminary. Rice would have called it the "truth-impression" theory. Campbell's church called it the Verbal-Augmentative theory.
1843 Verbal-Augmentative Theory: The Holy Spirit quickens scripture to the understanding.
1870 Verbal-Coefficient Theory (also called the Verbal-Accompaniment Theory): The Spirit ACCOMPANIES the preaching and reading of the word, separately, but in HARMONY.
1960 Verbal-Transcendent Theory (also called the Spirit-Intensive Theory): The Spirit can sometimes act immediately upon the heart apart from the word. This theory corresponded to the influence of Pentecostalism on Restoration Churches after 1906 and the influence of the Charismatic movement on Restoration churches in the 1960’s (See Pat Boone).