The second concern that’s been expressed over Hudson Taylor’s “exchanged life” experience (and view of holiness) is that it encourages passivity. It is viewed as another form of what historically has been known as Quietism.
P.N. Hillyer defines Quietism as follows:
The term quietism
derives from the belief that God is only
pleased to work in the heart of a person whose whole being is passive or quiet…
In a general sense it denotes an attitude, found in many religions and at all
periods of the history of the church, which suggests that one should ‘Let go
and let God’ or ‘Stop thinking and empty your mind of everything’ and withdraw,
individually or corporately, from concern with the world. (Emphasis added)[1]
In its more extreme form, such as taught by the Spanish priest Miguel de
Molinos (1628-96), it advocates “devoting oneself totally to God and thereafter
remaining like a lifeless body.” It is founded on the belief that “natural activity is the enemy of grace
and it hinders God’s action and true perfection, because God wishes to act in us without us.” (Emphasis added)[2]
Various lesser expressions of Quietism – sometimes called
“semi-quietism” – have surfaced in reform and holiness movements over the
centuries. All relate to how our union with Christ is to be applied in the
experience of sanctification and service. To some degree at least, all
emphasize human inactivity as the condition of knowing the power of Christ in
our lives. “Let go and let God” is the popular way of speaking of this.
Hudson Taylor, as we have already seen, was well aware of his inability to live as he wanted to. He could say with the Apostle Paul, “I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature” (Romans 7:18). Yet that didn’t lead him to take the position that “natural activity” was an “enemy of grace.” Nor did he hold that God wants to act “in us without us.” Throughout his ministry, both before and after the experience we are discussing, Hudson Taylor illustrated that God works through natural human faculties surrendered to his service. The members of our bodies aren’t opposed to grace, just unable to do anything good apart from it. So in that respect he never advocated passive inactivity.
His problem wasn’t so much one of grace verses effort, but how to obtain the grace that would empower the effort. He knew we had a part to play in the Christian life; how to get the power out of Christ to do it was the issue.
Up until he read John McCarthy’s letter, Hudson Taylor thought that “the diligent use of means” was the path to empowered service. He thought that if he prayed and read the Scriptures and fasted, then Christ would give him what he needed. So he set out to do this with ever growing rigor, all the time thinking of Christ as somehow separated from himself. But he found this wasn’t the answer. The more he tried the more he failed. It led him to the point of near despair.
What the Holy Spirit helped him to see through McCarthy’s letter was that he wasn’t thinking of his relationship to Christ in the right way. He wasn’t “outside” of Christ and didn’t need to work to get anything “out” of Christ; for he was in Christ. He had been united to him and become a member of his body just as certainly as his hands and feet were members of his own body. And as such, all that was in Christ – all the merits of his death, his life and power, his grace and holiness – was his already. It wasn’t a matter of getting what he didn’t have, but of appropriating what was already his.
He came to see that struggling and striving wasn’t the way. Use the
means of grace? Yes! But striving to merit or extort it – no! Branches in a
vine and members of a body don’t need to do that. They simply stay connected
with the source of their life and have their every need supplied.
This, I think you will see, is not the same as Quietism. It could be mistaken for it, and easily spill over into it – that happened to me many years ago. But the life of active resting in Christ – a combination of activity and prayerful, resting, dependence – is not the same thing as classical Quietism. It’s the kind of life that the Lord Jesus himself lived.
Andrew Young
Associate Principal (
Grace Theological College