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Invitation to a Journey Sessions Fourteen and Fifteen: Distinctive Landmarks Along the Wesleyan Way
In this session, we shall attempt to isolate distinctive elements of Wesley's theology, particularly with reference to Luther and the Lutheran tradition, Calvin and the Reformed tradition, and at points, the Roman Catholic and even Eastern Orthodox traditions. It should be note that in pointing to distinctive elements in Wesley's theology, we are not necessarily claiming theological originality in Wesley. Often, the focus is on distinctiveness or relative emphasis in Wesley's thought and practice.
For the purposes of our discussion, we will use the traditional categories (i.e., God, sin, human beings, Christ, the Holy Spirit, the means of grace, the Church, and last things) to highlight the distinctive theological landmarks along the "Wesleyan way."
I. The Doctrine of God (Theology)
Luther's doctrine of God focused heavily on God as the Sovereign King (in a historical context that emphasized the divine right of kings!); Calvin's doctrine of God focused heavily on God as the Just Judge; Wesley borrowed these images, but added to them the images of God as a Loving Parent and a Healing Physician.
These images were significant because at the time of the Reformation a primary question was, "who dispenses salvation – God or the Church?" In other words, the issue of sovereignty was of paramount importance. Luther and Calvin wanted to safeguard God's sovereignty (over against that of the Church) and make it clear that God alone is the author of salvation. Salvation is all of God.
This led to a strong doctrine of predestination (i.e., that God determines who will and will not be saved), with which Wesley struggled. Wesley affirmed God's sovereignty, but he labored in his doctrine of God to understand God's sovereignty within the context of God's other attributes, particularly justice and love.
Essentially, Wesley's view of God's sovereignty was one of divine empowerment as opposed to divine overpowerment. Wesley had no problem believing that God worked irresistibly in creating and sustaining nature, but his view of God as Just Governor and Loving Parent prevented him from the same view of God's sovereignty with regard to human beings. Wesley could not accept a view of God working irresistibly in human life, because to do so would be to obliterate human responsibility (and response-ability!).
Wesley's image of God as the Healing Physician is also significant. For him, the "grand end" of religion was the "healing of the soul" (i.e., the restoration of the image of God in us such that we love God wholeheartedly and our neighbor as ourselves). Any notion of God's sovereignty that negated or overrode human responsibility to the promptings of God's grace was unacceptable. This is why Wesley would say that the doctrine of predestination "struck a blow at the root" of all holiness and our renewal in God's image.
(Cf. Wesley, "Free Grace," pars. 10-18; also "Predestination Calmly Considered," Works [Jackson], vol. 10; also "A Blow at the Root: Or Christ Stabbed in the House of His Friends," Works [Jackson], 10:364-69. See also Allan Coppedge, John Wesley in Theological Debate, pp. 127ff.)
Wesley's doctrine of God, then, reflects Wesley's concerns to:
Make God's grace universally available to all people;
Understand grace as that which empowers human freedom without coercing or overriding it;
Affirm God's sovereignty while allowing for authentic human involvement (a true paradox...)
II. The Doctrine of Sin (Hamartiology)
Often, when we think of sin (and especially Original Sin) our thoughts turn toward the term depravity. Sin is often seen as "an entity attached to the human nature as a substitute for lost righteousness" (i.e., as something added to human nature, thus creating "two natures").
Wesley's emphasis, however, is on privation when it comes to understanding sin. For Wesley, there was no such thing as "two natures." There was simply Human nature, created by God but in the Fall became deprived. In the Fall, Human nature became deprived of the Divine Spirit which was its sanctifying presence. The result of the Fall was that the human spirit minus the Holy Spirit. Sin becomes then not so much the addition of something to the human personality, but rather the absence of the Holy Spirit. Sin is deprived human nature acting out of itself. Without the Spirit, every human expression and action is turned away from God and toward the self, rendering us depraved. To say that a person is depraved is to say that such a person is without the presence and empowerment of the Holy Spirit.
(Cf. Leon Hynson, "Original Sin as Privation: An Inquiry Into a Theology of Sin and Sanctification," WTJ 22"2 (1987):65-83. See also Maddox, Responsible Grace).
In his doctrine of sin, Wesley tries to affirm the radical nature of sin and its impact on human beings, without affirming that sin was part of God's original design for humanity. Albert Outler negotiates the paradox like this:
How many of you would take seriously the notion of a human flaw that is radical, inescapable, universal – a human malaise that cannot be cured or overcome by any of our self-help efforts or ethical virtues, however "moral" or aspiring – which is not, at the same time, of the actual essence of God's original design for the humanam (what God intended human existence to be)? ...If you argue that we are sinful by nature (i.e., that the power only to sin is the actual human condition), you are also on the verge of saying that the original sin is simply being human – and that's heresy. If you take the opposite side, and argue that we can banish sin from our lives and societies whenever we muster up sufficient moral effort (prodded inwardly by conscience and outwardly by moral example), you are on the verge of saying that sin is, in essence, a sort of social dysfunction, corrigible by moral insight and effort, or by proper progress of social reform ...This is heresy as well. (Theology in the Wesleyan Spirit, p. 25)
III. The Doctrine of Humanity (Anthropology)
Wesley insisted that genuine Christianity was more than merely correct doctrine (orthodoxy) and active service (orthopraxis); it also involved a rich emotional/affective life.
Wesley is struggling over how to properly relate reason and emotion in religion. Wesley tried to steer a middle course between a strict rationalism which subordinated emotion to reason, and between "enthusiasm" which placed undue emphasis on feelings and emotions, especially when they were undisciplined by biblically informed thinking and mutual accountability.
Because incorrect beliefs and practices often stemmed from faulty affections/dispositions, it is not surprising that Wesley centered God's healing and renewal of our lives to the affections. Wesley insisted that the emotional life should not be left to the psychologist or counselor, but was the domain of the theologian and preacher. Doctrine, liturgy and the community of faith played an active role in the shaping and disciplining of one's emotional life.
(Cf. Gregory S. Clapper, John Wesley on Religious Affections: His Views on Experience and Emotion and Their Role in the Christian Life and Theology. Pietist and Wesleyan Studies, no. 1. [Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1989]. See also Clapper, "Orthokardia: The Practical Theology of John Wesley's Heart Religion" Quarterly Review 10:1 [1990]: 49-66).
IV. The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit (Pneumatology)
As we have already noted in previous studies, Wesley viewed grace both in terms of God's unmerited favor as well as the personal Presence of the Holy Spirit:
By 'the grace of God' is sometimes to be understood that free love, that unmerited mercy, by which I, a sinner, through the merits of Christ am now reconciled to God. But in this place [2 Cor 1:12] it rather means that power of God the Holy Ghost which 'worketh in us both to will and to do or [God's] good pleasure'. As soon as ever the grace of God (in the former sense, his pardoning love) is manifested in our soul, the grace of God (in the latter sense, the power of his Spirit) takes place therein. And now we can perform, through God, what to man was impossible. ("The Witness of Our Own Spirit," Par. 15, WJW, 1:309)
Thus, for Wesley, the Holy Spirit was more than an attribute of God. The Holy Spirit was fully divine, and fully personal. Grace was, for Wesley, "the pardoning, transforming love of God, present to us in the indwelling Person of the Holy Spirit." (cf. Maddox, Responsible Grace, 119)
As such, the Holy Spirit is the Divine Physician who effects the healing of our sin-diseased souls. Wesley often used the term "inspiration" to describe the Holy Spirit's work in our lives. He used it not in the technical sense of the Spirit's cognitive influence on the writers of Scripture, but in it's original sense of "to breathe into, to animate." Inspiration was the restored influence of the Holy Spirit that enables persons to love and serve God. (Cf. Wesley, "A Farther Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion, Part I," WJW 11:153; cf. also "On the Fall of Man," par. II.8, WJW, 2:410.)
V. The Doctrine of Christ (Christology)
Wesley focused more on the work of Christ than on his nature, and he sought to preach and present Christ through a balanced understanding of his roles as prophet, priest and king.
In discussing the atoning work of Christ, Maddox observes that Wesley had two primary concerns:
To ensure that God's character was not compromised or abrogated in the atoning work of Christ. (E.g., certain substitutionary models of the atonement led, in Wesley's mind, to the extremes of either universalism or limited atonement, both of which diminished the role of human responsibility with respect to God's grace)
The meaning of the atonement was seen not primarily in terms of God's wrath, but rather in terms of God's love in initiating and effecting salvation. Christ was not merely a representative of humanity as he hung on the cross; he was a representative of God, specifically of God's pardoning love. For Wesley, to preach the life, death, resurrection and intercession of Christ was most fundamentally to preach "the love of God." (cf. Wesley's letter "To An Evangelical Layman," [20 Dec., 1751], WJW, 26:482; cf. Also Maddox, Responsible Grace, p. 106; and Wesley's sermon, "The Lord Our Righteousness," WJW, 1:444-66)
Wesley did not limit Christ's atoning work to the past, either. In his role as Priest, Christ mediates the forgiveness made possible by his death to persons in the present. Wesley continually emphasizes the need of Christ's priestly work in believers' lives, because we never reach a point where we are beyond need of God's mercy.
By preaching Christ in all of his offices, believer became aware of God's desire to renew them in God's image, as well as the means used (i.e., Christ's work as prophet, priest, and king) to accomplish that renewal.
VI. The Role of the Means of Grace
The sanctified life (i.e., our renewal in God's image) is not an abstraction. It occurs within specific contexts: liturgical, communal, devotional.
We have seen in prior studies how Wesley viewed the means of grace (especially the sacraments) as instruments of our renewal in holiness. They were practices that both communicate grace to us as well as nourish that grace in us.
In particular, Wesley saw the Eucharist, corporate liturgical worship, communal support/accountability, and works of mercy as means of sanctifying grace in believers' lives.
The sacraments for Wesley remind us of the objectivity of Christianity. They remind us that it is by grace that we are what we are. Because early Methodism stressed personal experience, it was extremely important to keep the objective balance (communicated through the sacraments) before people.
It is no less important to emphasize this objective dimension to Christian faith to Wesley's descendants today, particularly given the fact that many of Wesley's descendants have abandoned corporate liturgical worship as a means of grace:
Wesley's vision of corporate liturgical worship has also largely been abandoned by many of his descendants. In America, his Sunday Service adaptation of the Book of Common Prayer was discarded in favor of the formless, emotion-oriented revivalism of the American frontier. Wesley held Anglican liturgy in creative tension with pietist spirituality and formed a flexible liturgy with feeling. Man of his descendants, however, retained the feeling and discarded the liturgy. Only now are they coming to realize the extent to which they have deprived themselves of the rich content of a heritage reaching back through the ages of the church to the Old Testament itself. (cf. F. Dean Mercer, "The Liturgical Vision of Primitive Methodism," in In the Church and In Christ Jesus, ed. Felix Sung. [Mississauga, ON: Light and Life Press, 1993], 123-52).
VII. The Doctrine of the Church (Ecclesiology)
Wesley viewed the church as a means of grace both for the renewal of individuals and for the renewal of the world. Through the presence of the ecclesiolae within the ecclesia, the church mediated grace in four ways:
Corporate, liturgical worship
Mutual support
Accountability
Its presence in society at large
(cf. Wesley, "The Reformation of Manners," par. 2, WJW, 2:302ff.)
VIII. The Doctrine of Last Things (Eschatology)
Salvation for Wesley was both in and beyond one's personal history. His concept of eschatology was broad, extending to all of God's redemptive activity from the resurrection to the consummation of all things. Thus, any manifestation of God's saving work was a partial attainment of the ultimate goal of human existence.
For Wesley, Christian life is a process toward and eschatological goal attainable in the fullness of the world to come, but attainable in part within time and history. The essence of Wesley's eschatology is the realization that God is at work in time and history to bring about the redemption of humankind. It is a confidence that through grace, victory over sin in its personal, social and cosmic expressions, is a possibility.
For Further Reading:
John Wesley. "The Use of Money." (WJW, volume 2). See also other sermons, including: "The Danger of Riches"; "On a Single Eye"; "On Friendship With the World"; "The Danger of Increasing Riches"; "The Good Steward"; "On Riches";
John Wesley. "Thoughts on the Present Scarcity of Provisions." Works [Jackson], 11:53-58.
Manfred Marquardt. John Wesley's Social Ethics: Praxis and Principles. Nashville: Abingdon, 1992.
Randy Maddox. Responsible Grace. Nashville: Kingswood, 1994.
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