Theological Term of the Week
Tuesday, May 10, 2011 at 8:35PM 
Sandemanianism
The system of beliefs of a sect founded by John Glas and his son-in-law Robert Sandeman in Scotland in the mid-18th century, which included the distinguishing tenet that justifying faith is no more than “bare belief of the bare truth,” or mere mental assent to the facts of the gospel; also used loosely of any system of beliefs that teaches that saving faith is no more than mental assent to certain propositions about Christ.
- Scripture used by Sandemanians to support their view:
And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness…. (Romans 4:5 ESV).
- From Andrew Fuller in response to the Sandemanians in The Complete Works of Andrew Fuller, Volume III:1
[The term ungodly in Romans 4:5], I apprehend, is not designed, in the passage under consideration, to express the actual state of mind which the party at the time possesses, but the character under which God considers him in bestowing the blessing of justification upon him. Whatever be the present state of the sinner’s mind—whether he be a haughty Pharisee or a humble publican—if he possess nothing which can in any degree balance the curse which stands against him, or at all operate as a ground of acceptance with God, he must be justified, if at all, as unworthy, ungodly, and wholly out of regard to the righteousness of the mediator.
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From Sandemanianism by Michael Haykin:
In a genuine desire to exalt the utter freeness of God’s salvation, Sandeman sought to remove any vestige of human reasoning, willing or desiring in the matter of saving faith. He was convinced that if the actions of the will or the affections are included in saving faith, then the Reformation assertion of ‘faith alone’ is compromised. Thus, in the Sandemanian system, saving faith is reduced to intellectual assent to the gospel proclamation about Christ. To be fair to Sandeman, it should be noted that he was quite prepared to admit that affections come into play once a person believes. But at the time of conversion, they play no role in saving faith.
It should occasion no surprise that many of those who embraced Sandeman’s intellectualist view of faith became stunted in their Christian lives. For instance, Christmas Evans (1766-1838), an influential Welsh Baptist leader, adopted Sandemanian views for a number of years in the late 1790s, but eventually found himself dwelling in ‘the cold and sterile regions of spiritual frost’, and in the grip of ‘a cold heart towards Christ, and his sacrifice, and the work of his Spirit’.
Learn more:
- Wikipedia: Glasites
- Michael Haykin: Sandemanianism: Andrew Fuller and the Sandemainians
- Tom Ascol: Old Error Rediscovered
- John Piper: Holy Faith, Worthy Gospel, World Vision: Andrew Fuller’s Broadsides Against Sandemanianism, Hyper-Calvinism, and Global Unbelief (mp3)
Related terms:
1I found this quote in Holy Faith, Worthy Gospel, World Vision: Andrew Fuller’s Broadsides Against Sandemanianism, Hyper-Calvinism, and Global Unbelief by John Piper
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