THE THEOLOGY OF JOHN WESLEY

Tyndale Seminary
Winter 2004
Instructor: Reverend Victor Shepherd
416 226 6380 (ext. 6726)
Tuesdays at 8:30 a.m.
Office Hours as posted
e-mail: vshep@tyndale.ca  or  victor.shepherd@sympatico.ca

 

Prerequisite: successful completion of THEO 053 and 0532 or Theo 0530.

Course Description:
This course examines major aspects of Wesley’s theology as expounded chiefly in his Sermons on Several Occasions.  Theological, ecclesiastical, social and intellectual environments will be probed, as well as developments in post-Wesley Wesleyanism.  Attention will be given to the nuances of the denominations represented by those enrolled in the course

Course Objectives:
[1] to acquaint students with representative material from Wesley himself;
[2] to have students appreciate the multiform context (social, intellectual, religious and theological) in which Wesley wrote theology;
[3] to have students understand how theology, for Wesley, was always “practical divinity”; i.e., how it subserved the proclamation and exemplification of the Kingdom of God rather than subserving speculative concerns;
[4] to have students locate Wesley in the tradition of the church catholic;
[5] to have Wesley contribute to the students’ theological formation.

Text: Outler and Heitzenrater (eds.), John Wesley’s Sermons: An Anthology
(Numbers opposite readings refer to pages in the text.)

Course Requirements:
(1)Examination
(2)Essay (3000 words approximately, due July 12.) The essay is to be written in conformity with any accepted style manual.
(Essay and Examination are weighted equally.)

 

 

Weekly Classes  (numbers opposite readings refer to pages in the text.)

Jan. 20
Discussion of bibliography
Overview of Wesley’s Life and Work
Wesleyan “Quadrilateral”

Jan. 27
(Quadrilateral, continued)
V. Shepherd, “Catholic Spirit”

Feb. 3
“The Image of God” 13
“The Circumcision of the Heart” 23
“The One Thing Needful” 33 (Before 1738)

Feb. 10
“Salvation By Faith” 39
“Free Grace” 49
“The Almost Christian” 61 (After 1738)

Feb. 17
“Awake, Thou That Sleepest” 85
“Scriptural Christianity” 97
“Justification by Faith” 111

Feb. 24
“The Spirit of Bondage and of Adoption” 133
“The Witness of the Spirit (I)” 145
“The Witness of the Spirit (II)” 393

March 2
“The New Birth” 335
“The Marks of the New Birth” 173
“The Great Privilege of Those That Are Born of God” 183

March 9
“The Original, Nature, Properties, and Use of the Law” 255
“The Law Established Through Faith, I” 267
“The Law Established Through Faith, II” 277

March 16
No Class   Reading Week

March 23
“The Means of Grace” 157
“The Duty of Constant Communion” 501

March 30
“The Use of Money” 347
“The Good Steward” 419
“The Danger of Riches” 45

April 6
“On Sin in Believers” 359
“The Repentance of Believers” 405

April 13
“Christian Perfection” 69
“Can You Conceive Anything More Amiable Than This?”
Anything More Desirable?”
A Note on Wesley’s Challenge Concerning Christian Perfection
(Paper by V. Shepherd)

April 20
“Upon our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, V”  207
“Upon our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, VIII”  239

April 27
Examination

 

Essay Topics

1] The Social Background of the 18th Century Revival

2] The Political Background……………………….

3] The Religious or Theological or Ecclesiastical Background…

4] The Puritans and Wesley: Convergence and Divergence

5] Wesley’s Theological Debt to the Church of England

6] Wesley and Whitefield on Predestination

7] Wesley and Whitefield on the New Birth

8] Wesley’s Understanding of Sanctification (Perfection)

9] Theological Differences between John and Charles Wesley

10] Wesley and the Church Fathers (Patristics)

11] Wesley’s Understanding of Prevenient Grace

12] Wesley on Faith or Justification or Repentance or Assurance

13] An Aspect of Charles Wesley’s Hymnody

14] Wesley’s Disputes with the Calvinists

15] Wesley’s Spiritual Pilgrimage: From Mysticism and Moralism to Saving Faith (Aldersgate)

16] Wesley’s Horror at Material Prosperity

17] An Overview of and Comment on “And Earnest Appeal to Men of

Reason and Religion” (1743)

18] Wesley’s Understanding of Holy Communion

19] Wesley’s Soteriology

20] Wesley and Calvin on the Law of God

21] Wesley’s Ecclesiology

22] The Wesley Brothers’ Understanding of the Lord’s Supper from an examination of Hymns on the Lord’s Supper or J.E. Rattenbury’s The Eucharistic Hymns of John and Charles Wesley.

(Any topic approved by Professor Shepherd)

 

  SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Baker, F.;  Charles Wesley’s Verse
”      From Wesley to Asbury
”      John Wesley and the Church of England

Borgen, O;  John Wesley on the Sacraments

Bready, J.; England Before and After Wesley

Brown-Lawson, A.; John Wesley and the Evangelicals of the Eighteenth Century

Campbell, T.; John Wesley and Christian Antiquity

Campbell, T.; Gunter, S,; Jones, S,; Madddox, R,; Miles, R,; Wesley and the Quadrilateral

Clifford, A.C.;  Atonement and Justification
(Wesley and the Puritans compared with the Ref.)

Collins, K.; A Real Christian: The Life of John Wesley
A Faithful Witness: John Wesley’s Homiletical Theology
”        The Scripture Way of Salvation
”        John Wesley: A Theological Journey

Coppedge, A.; John Wesley in Theological Debate

Dallimore, A.; A Heart Set Free: The Life of Charles Wesley
”         Susanna Wesley

Davies, R.;  Methodism

Davies, R., George, R. and Rupp, G., eds.; A History of the Methodist Church in Great Britain (4 vols.)

Deschner, J.;  Wesley’s Christology

Green, J.B.; John Wesley and William Law

Gunter, Scott, Gunter, W.;  The Limits of “Love Divine”

Harper, S.;  John Wesley’s Message for Today

Heitzenrater, R.;  Mirror and Memory: Reflections on Early Methodism,
The Elusive Mr. Wesley (2 vols.),
”             Wesley and the People Called Methodists

Hildebrandt, F.;  Christianity According to the Wesleys

Jennings , T.W.; Good News to the Poor: John Wesley’s Evangelical Economics

Jones, S.;  John Wesley’s Conception and Use of Scripture

Kimbrough, S.;  Charles Wesley: Poet and Theologian

Langford, T.;  Practical Divinity

Lindstrom, H.;  Wesley and Sanctification

Maddox, R.;  Responsible Grace             ****
            “(ed.); Aldersgate Reconsidered
“(ed.); Rethinking Wesley’s Theology For Contemporary Methodism

Marquardt, M.; John Wesley’s Social Ethics

Newton , J.;  Susanna Wesley and the Puritan Tradition in Methodism
”       John Wesley: His Puritan Heritage

Oden, T.;  Doctrinal Standards in the Wesleyan Tradition
”     John Wesley’s Scriptural Christianity                                             ****
            (Note the references at end of each chapter.)

Oden, T. and Longden, L, eds.;  The Wesleyan Theological Heritage: Essays of Albert Outler

Peters, J.;  Christian Perfection and American Methodism

Pollock, J.;  George Whitefield
”        John Wesley

Rack, H.;  Reasonable Enthusiast                                                               ****

Rowe, K., ed.;  The Place of Wesley in the Christian Tradition

Rudolph, L.;  Francis Asbury

Runyon, T.; The New Creation: John Wesley’s Theology Today

Rupp, E.G.; Religion in England , 1688-1791

Ryle, L.;  Select Sermons of George Whitefield

Sangster, W.;  The Path to Perfection

Smith, T.;  Whitefield and Wesley on the New Birth

Snyder, H.;  The Radical Wesley

Stacey, J., ed.;  John Wesley in Contemporary Perspectives

Tabraham, Barrie W.; The Making of Methodism

Tuttle, R.;  John Wesley: His Life and Theology

”        Mysticism in the Wesleyan Tradition

Tyson, J.;  Charles Wesley on Sanctification

Wainwright, G.,;  Geoffrey Wainwright on Wesley and Calvin

Watson, D.L.;  The Early Methodist Class Meeting

Watson, P.; The Message of the Wesleys

Williams, C.;  John Wesley’s Theology Today

Wiseman, P., ed,;  John Fletcher’s Checks to Antinomianism

The Sources of Authority for Wesley

(see lecture # 1 and 2)

1] Scripture

“I receive the written word as the whole and sole rule of my faith.” (Letter to John Smith. 26:155)

“From the very beginning, from the time that four young men united together, each of them was homo unius libri…. They had one, and only one, rule of judgement with which to regard all their tempers, words and actions; namely, the oracles of God. They were one and all determined to be Bible-Christians. They were continually reproached for this very thing; some terming them in derision Bible-bigots; others, Bible-moths….unto this day it is their constant endeavour to think and speak as the oracles of God.” (3:504)

Note: scripture is the un-normed norm of our knowledge of God.
Note: homo unius libri — what it means and what it doesn’t mean.

Points in W’s understanding of S:
1: Revelation precedes inscripturation.
2: The writings are inspired.
3: God used human agents in this process.
4: S. is devoid of mistakes.

 

“The whole S” or “the general tenor of S” is internally coherent and consistent.
The focus of “the general tenor” is soteriology.
The substance of S comprises “three grand doctrines”: original sin, justification by faith, holiness (perfection, sanctification, “present, inward salvation.”)

 

W’s rules for interpreting S:
1: Wherever possible, use S’l language to express S’l ideas.
2: Assume the literal sense unless doing so contradicts another S or suggests absurdity.
3: Interpret the text with regard to its literary context.
4: Interpret S by S. (“the analogy of faith”)
5: Know that the commandments are covered promises.
6: Interpret literary devices literarily, not literally.
7: Seek the most original text and the best translation.

 

2] Tradition (Wesley cherished the wisdom of the church through the ages, even though as a thorough going Protestant, he didn’t use the word “tradition.”)

(i)  English Reformers and Anglican theology of 17^th century
(ii)  Puritans
(iii)  English Moralists
(iv)  Patristics (W favoured the eastern fathers over the western.)
(v)  Roman Catholic Mystics from the Counter-Reformation
(vi)  Eastern Orthodoxy
(vii)  Continental Reformers

 

3] Reason “It is a fundamental principle with us [i.e., Methodists] that to renounce reason is to renounce religion, that religion and reason go hand in hand, and that all irrational religion is false religion.” (Letter to Dr. Rutherford: 28^th March 1768)

“I would as soon put out my eyes to secure my faith as lay aside my reason.”
(Jackson, 10:267)

Note the difference between reason and rationalism.
Note Wesley’s emphasis on study, Latin, biblical languages, natural science, philosophy, logic.

For W reason is a tool, not a source; W doesn’t speculate theologically.

The three aspects of reason add up to “understanding.”
a: simple apprehension
b: judgement
c: discourse

4] Experience
(1)  Assurance for Discipleship. Note where W differs from Enlightenment empiricists.
(2)  Guidance for our spiritual pilgrimage. Note the “conference” with present and past.
(3)  Public Evidence of Core Christian Teachings.
     a: Exp. has a substantive role but never a solitary role.
     b: Exp. helps clarify the intended meaning of S or T.
     c: Exp. tests applications of the truths of S.
     d: Exp. settles issues in church/Christian life that S doesn’t address.
     e: Exp. is a corporate/communal validation of the gospel and its implications.

JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH ALONE

(see lecture #4 and following)

After the “Aldersgate experience” of 1738, Wesley never went back on his insistence on justification by grace through faith.  He is uncompromisingly Protestant.  There have been several attempts at pretending that he espoused a “works-righteousness” as late as the controversial “Minute” of the Conference in 1770, or that he proposed a via media between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism.  Wesley always maintained that he was an Anglican, that the Church of England’s doctrine neither needed nor admitted of any “improvement”, and that the Church of England was undeniably Protestant.

Wesley is utterly consistent with the Magisterial Reformers in maintaining that justification by (grace through) faith is the material principle of the Reformation.  (The formal principle is sola scriptura.)

Note:

(i) justification by faith is “the very foundation of our Church [i.e., Anglican]…and indeed  the fundamental [doctrine] of the Reformed Churches.” (Sermon # 150, “Hypocrisy in Oxford”)
Plainly Wesley understood just’n by faith to be the fundamental doctrine of the Church of England (Anglican), and he understood said church to be “Reformed.”

Wesley would never have agreed with the notion that “Methodism is neither Protestant nor Catholic.”

(ii) the place of justification in Wesley’s theology and in the faith of the church.  “I have not known ten Quakers in my life whose experience went so far as justification.”  (Letter, 1780)

(iii) where justification isn’t held up, the church doesn’t exist.  (Minutes, 1745)

(iv) the faith connected to justification isn’t assent to a proposition (not even the proposition that justification is by faith) but rather trust in a person, the Person of Jesus Christ the Justifier.  At the same time, Wesley never denied the “assent” element in faith, never denied its necessity.

(v) atonement is the ground of justification.
Wesley denounced mysticism because of its undervaluation of the atonement.
Wesley insisted on propitiation.  (God must be appeased; his wrath must be averted.)

(vi) Wesley believed in just’n by faith from the day of his conversion.
“I believe justification by faith alone as much as I believe there is a God….I have never  varied from it, no, not an hair’s breadth from 1738 to this day.” (1766)

Mediaeval/Reformation Schema of Faith
(see lecture #4)

Notitia:             understanding

Assensus:         assent

Fiducia:           trust

Note 1:  For the Protestant reformers faith (fides qua creditur rather than fides quae creditur) occurs only at the level of fiducia.  Still, the previous two aspects are included in fiducia.  Understanding is essential or “faith” is mere idolatry.

Note 2:  At notitia only there is what Wesley calls mere “notional faith” and Calvin “empty ideas flitting about in the brain.”

Note 3:  The reformers reject the “implicit faith” of 16^th century Roman Catholicism wherein it was asserted that to assent to “the faith of the church” was sufficient (since for the reformers fiducia included assurance, and this assurance many people felt they lacked.)

 

Calvin’s Fullest Definition of Faith

“Now we shall possess a right definition of faith if we call it a firm and certain knowledge of God’s benevolence toward us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts through the Holy Spirit.”            Institutes 3.2.7

Note the following:

“…if faith turns away even in the slightest degree from this goal toward which it should aim [i.e., the Word that creates faith], it does not keep its own nature but becomes uncertain credulity and vague error of mind.”                                                                                   Institutes3.2.6

“It is after we have learned that our salvation rests with God that we are attracted to seek him.”

Institutes  3.2.7.

 

Wesley’s Objection to the Scholastic Protestant Ordo Salutis

 

He felt that the ordo salutis implied a series of atomistic states wherein the person moved from one “link in the chain” to another.  The schema suggested a set of transitions rather than a developing relationship with God as Holy Spirit and quickened spirit “breathed” into each other.

He felt that the order in ordo suggested a direction that could never be reversed; i.e., the Dordt’s insistence on final perseverance denied the possibility of regression or apostasy.

He felt that the ordo was highly abstract as befits scholastic method, lacking the concreteness of pastoral concern.

For this reason Wesley should be understood in terms of a via salutis rather than an ordo salutis.

This paper first appeared in Theological Digest & Outlook (Burlington) in July of 1995

JOHN WESLEY
and
THE WITNESS OF THE SPIRIT

Abingdon Press’s 35-volume annotated edition of Wesley’s Works (14 of which have been completed) begins with four volumes of sermons. Yet as soon as newly interested readers open Volume I of Sermons On Several Occasions they know that the form of these “sermons” has to differ from the form of Wesley’s marketplace utterances. The crowds of thousands who heard Wesley preach included many who were minimally literate, more than a few who were not even that, and scarcely anyone who possessed Wesley’s sophistication in theology, philosophy and literature. The published sermons, on the other hand, are replete with references that presuppose no little erudition. In addition the published sermons are devoid of the illustrations and the rhetorical devices that preachers employ to retain the attention of those unaccustomed to the relatively abstract medium of an oral address lacking the advantage of repeated examination. Plainly the form of the printed sermon is better suited to discussion in the classroom or perusal in the study.

In fact for the most part the sermons are the unillustrated distillate of Wesley’s daily pronouncements; unillustrated, that is, compared to the sort of preaching necessary to attract and hold throngs. The sermons, then, were essentially tracts written for people who needed a compendium of the doctrines which underlay the Revival. In addition the sermons attempted to defuse the hostile attacks of those who misunderstood Wesley and his movement, falsely accusing them of theological dilution, social destabilization, psychological exploitation, and even sedition.

While the sermons were not preached verbatim as they appear in Wesley’s Works, they were yet “preached” inasmuch as Wesley’s ceaseless itinerating found him constantly expanding, illustrating, repeating and subtly reshaping them. (According to his Journal, for instance, he preached on Ephesians 2:8 — “For by grace you have been saved through faith” — no fewer than 60 times.)

There is another sense in which some sermons were “preached”: the theological substance of the sermon was found in Wesley’s public proclamation while the sermon itself was never preached on any one occasion. In other words the sermon was made public only in written form, even though its content leavened Wesley’s oral pronouncements on assorted topics. The two sermons, “The Witness of the Spirit (I and II)” belong to this latter category. Today we should simply designate them essays.

As is evident from even a casual reading of the Works, Wesley had to contend on several fronts throughout his ministry. One front was the Scylla/Charybdis of “formality” and “enthusiasm”. Formalism was an intellectual frigidity that confined itself to doctrinal refinement (or speculation) without impact on life. Enthusiasm (which Wesley defined as the elevation of experience above scripture) was a superheated emotionalism that disdained doctrine only to gush and gurgle in a mindless sentimentality devoid of morality and a religious romanticism devoid of righteousness. Head and heart were always to complement one another.

Wesley refers to these two pitfalls in his Preface as he states once again the purpose of his work:

And herein it is more especially my desire, first to guard those who are just setting their faces toward heaven…from formality, from mere outside religion, which has almost driven heart-religion [Wesley’s Journal entry of 2nd August, 1771, speaks of heart-religion as “righteousness and joy in the Holy Ghost … the gate of it, justification … the life of God in the soul of man.”] out of the world; and secondly, to warn those who know the religion of the heart  … lest at any time they make void the law through faith, and so fall back into the snare of the devil.

When Christians of Methodist conviction spoke of the witness of the Spirit they were instantly accused of an enthusiasm amounting to fanaticism. Wesley, however, steadfastly refused to be stampeded. He knew that the indefensible vagaries found in those who valued heat above light did not discredit the gospel-quickened faith of those who cherished St.Paul’s legacy: God’s children are permitted and privileged to know themselves such. Wesley steadfastly maintained that the witness of God’s Spirit, assuring believers of their standing in Christ, had everything to do with their salvation, their comfort, their holiness (and therefore their temporal and eternal happiness, since he consistently linked holiness and happiness — “None but the holy are finally happy”); everything as well to do with an undeviating discipleship that eschews both formalism and fanaticism; everything to do, for preachers especially, with urgency and zeal in the fulfilment of their vocation.

Wesley always regarded the Sermons On Several Occasions as his major theological statement. At the same time the major statement never precluded many minor. He supplemented the Sermons with other treatises as situations arose, in the unfolding of the 18th century Evangelical Revival, that required additional comment. (One thinks immediately of A Plain Account of Christian Perfection [1777] bracketed by two sermons, “Christian Perfection [1741] and “On Perfection” [1784]. Rather oddly, then, the Sermons On Several Occasionswere considerably less “occasional” than the supplementary materials, the sermons functioning as the theological primer of Wesleyan Methodism. At the same time they were a theological grid that provided the interpretative framework needed to prevent Methodist Christians — and preachers especially — from suffering doctrinal disorientation. (In this regard the Sermons functioned much as Calvin’sInstitutes had in the 16th century Reformation in Geneva, even as Calvin continued to write occasional pieces in response to crises.)

 

 

THE WITNESS OF THE SPIRIT

“… it is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spiritthat we are children of God.”

(Romans 8:16)

The inclusion of the “The Witness of the Spirit” (I&II) in SOSO indicates the place Wesley gave to assurance in his understanding of the Christian life. For several years his critics had insisted that the Revival merely fanned the “enthusiasm” that the 18th Century Enlightenment despised. While the same critics regarded assurance as merely one more aspect of the despicable, Wesley himself insisted that the spiritually needy who looked to the gospel yet were devoid of assurance had therein had their everyday anxiety exacerbated by a peculiarly religious anxiety. At the same time he admitted that those who prattled cavalierly of assurance even as they undervalued the specificity of gospel-truth plainly were enthusiasts and merited being exposed as such. He wanted to help his people along the fine line between the two distortions. He knew that failure to identify and walk the fine line would leave his people meandering and flip-flopping.

In the first paragraph of Part I Wesley identifies the pitfall of subjectivism. “How many have mistaken the voice of their own imagination” for the witness of God’s Spirit, only to assume they were children of God when in fact they continued to behave in conformity to their actual father, the evil one! This lack of self-perception (born of presumption) is “truly and properly” enthusiasm. As lack of self-perception is protracted it sets like concrete. In addition to their initial mistake the enthusiasts confuse their vehemence and impetuosity and intractability with obedience to the command of God to “contend for the faith.” (Jude 3)

In view of the widespread abuse of such a “witness” Wesley concedes that nervous observers might wish to dismiss the contemporary application of the doctrine, relegating the “testimony” to those extraordinary gifts that were said to cease with the close of the apostolic age. His reading of scripture, however, does not permit this facile evasion — even though he will have to spend the rest of his life disowning the distortions surrounding this one theological conviction. Wesley could never deny that the “testimony of the Spirit” looms large in scripture, “a truth revealed therein not once only, not obscurely, not incidentally, but frequently, and that in express terms … as denoting one of the peculiar privileges of the children of God.”

In discussing the relation of the Spirit’s testimony to our spirit’s, Wesley carefully avoids collapsing one into the other. The text (not to mention the corroborating experience of believers) speaks of both the testimony of God’s Spirit and the testimony of ours concerning our adoption.

With respect to the testimony of our spirit Wesley maintains that scripture is unambiguous. It states repeatedly, for instance, that the children of God keep the commandments of God (1 John 2:5) even as they love fellow-children of God (1 John 3:14). Upon examining themselves believers conclude that they do keep the commandments of God and love fellow-Christians, and therefore rightly conclude that they are indeed God’s children. Wesley admits that “this is no other than rational evidence: the ‘witness of our spirit’, our reason or understanding.”

If self-doubt besets believers and they ask themselves how they know whether they truly love fellow-Christians or keep God’s commandments, Wesley attempts to succour them by resorting to an intuitionist epistemology, as valid in the realm of Christian existence as it is in the realm of sense-experience.

How does it appear that to you that you are alive? And that you are now in ease and not in pain? Are you not immediately conscious of it? By the same immediate consciousness you will know if your soul is alive to God; if you are saved from the pain of proud wrath …. By the same means you cannot but perceive if you love, rejoice, and delight in God.   …. Your conscience informs you from day to day if you do not take the name of God within your lips unless with seriousness and devotion, with reason and godly fear…”

The foregoing is the testimony of our spirit. “It is a consciousness of having received, in and by the Spirit of adoption, the tempers mentioned in the Word of God as belonging to his adopted children.”

Plainly, the testimony of our spirit is an inference-following-reflection. Self-examination concerning our conformity to the command of God leaves our conscience unaroused; we conclude that the Spirit of God has effected such transmutation within us as to give rise to those marks that constrain us to thank God for his self-evidencing work of grace.

Admittedly, Wesley is placing no little emphasis on the assumption that self-examination yields self-perception. He did not deny the submerged currents of sin in humankind, as his unqualified endorsement of the 16th century Reformers’ doctrines of Original Sin and Total Depravity attests. At the same time, he always insisted on holding out hope for those discouraged by the submerged currents (which, sorry to say, are never merely submerged). He knew that hope, in order to be biblical hope and not natural wishful thinking, had to be grounded in the actuality of deliverance. Throughout his ministry Wesley reminded his people that God could do something with sin beyond forgiving it. (According to Wesley, deliverance from the power of sin was confirmation that one had been pardoned from the guilt of sin.) The blaspheming substance-abuser, now possessed of God-fearing sobriety and social usefulness, could legitimately conclude that by the grace of God he was a child of God.

Having discussed briefly the testimony of our spirit so as to distinguish it from the testimony of God’s Spirit, Wesley proceeds to consider the latter.

Wesley knows he is probing mystery in this matter. Mystery, according to the author of this paper, is not something bizarre or Hallowe’enish or occultish. Mystery is an everyday phenomenon (e.g., being in love) that is therefore ordinary or commonplace even as it is profound. It is inexpressibly profound; no vocabulary can do justice to it. Mystery may be described but never explained, let alone explained away. Mystery may be pointed to, commended, urged upon others, above all experienced. Yet before it language can finally only stammer. Definition and explanation are impossible; description is inadequate, description being the inarticulate attempt at having others undergo the same experience even as everyone recognizes the poverty of the words which have to be employed.

Wesley knows there are unfathomably mysterious depths to our encounter with God that leave our speech halting. The fact of the Spirit’s testimony does not leave Wesley tongue-tied at all; yet when he attempts to describe the how of it he first cautions us, “It is hard to find words in the language of men to explain ‘the deep things of God’. Indeed there are none that will adequately express what the children of God experience.” Nonetheless, since the alternative to semi-functional articulation is non-communication born of silence, Wesley steps forward. His initial assertion is unambiguous.

The testimony of the Spirit is an inward impression on the soul whereby the Spirit of God directly ‘witnesses to my spirit that I am a child of God’; that Jesus Christ hath loved me and given himself for me; that all my sins are blotted out, and I, even I, am reconciled to God.

The substance of the Spirit’s testimony is readily understood: believers have been reconciled to God through the love of that God who sacrificed himself in his Son, with the result that their condemnation is rescinded. The “how” of the Spirit’s testimony, says Wesley, requires much greater explication even as adequate explanation is finally impossible.

In his initial statement Wesley’s use of “inward impression on the soul” and “directly” indicates clearly where the Spirit’s testimony differs from our spirit’s. Whereas the latter is inference-following-reflection, the former is entirely non-inferential — at the same time as it isnecessarily related to the gospel. The testimony of the Spirit is an idiogenic “mediated immediacy”. The immediacy of the Spirit is not the immediacy that Kierkegaard rightly denounced. (“Immediacy is paganism”, since immediacy disdains the particularity and historicity of the Incarnate one, whereas the immediacy of the Spirit is always “mediated” through the gospel.) At the same time, the testimony of the Spirit is not a conclusion drawn from premises. It is that “stamp” of the Spirit who presses and impresses himself upon us in such wise that he authenticates himself, and does so indisputably. In other words, the self-authentication of the Spirit is necessary (there being nothing outside of God that is able to authenticate him) and sufficient (there being nothing outside of God that is needed to authenticate him).

Next Wesley is careful to remind us that while he discussed the testimony of our spirit before that of God’s Spirit, in fact the latter precedesthe former. “We must be holy of heart and holy in life before we can be conscious that we are so…. But we must love God before we can be holy at all; this being the root of all holiness. Now we cannot love till we know he loves us…. And we cannot know his pardoning love till his Spirit witnesses to our spirit.”

Several matters invite comment here. Wesley’s “know” is plainly more than “have correct information about”. He refers here not to the “head-knowledge” of an intellectual (doctrinal) apprehension of the meaning of “God is love”, but rather to “heart-knowledge”, the “inward impression on the soul”, the innermost conviction and assurance that the theological assertion concerning God’s love adequately describes the reality of the cosmocrator’s benevolent seizure of me.

The subtlety of Wesley’s dialectic in this discussion is profound. While the testimony of God’s Spirit plainly has to do with the “heartfelt-ness” of immediacy, Wesley judiciously directs believers away from themselves, away from a preoccupation with introspection. Evidently he fears fostering an introspection amounting to obsession; an obsession wherein believers think they can discern the testimony of God’sSpirit by ransacking themselves. First we must love God; we are directed away from ourselves to God, only then to find that God so honours our looking to him as to vouchsafe to us the assurance that he has pardoned us. In other words, reality always precedes apprehension of reality. At the same time, it is the nature of this reality (God) to forge within humankind an apprehension of the reality. The logical priority of the Spirit (i.e., the logical priority of God) does not entail divine remoteness. In fact the proximity (proximity of such a degree as to generate an “impression on the soul”) of God simultaneously facilitates the categories for apprehending the selfsame proximity. It is not the case that an impression is made on the soul even as beneficiaries of it are left puzzled as to its nature, origin and meaning. (Much as primitive people might be aware of the phenomena of a thunderstorm yet remain ignorant as to its origin and significance.) Wesley has carefully distinguished the transcendence of God from the testimony of God’s Spirit, and these in turn from a projection or fantasy that would leave him defenceless against the charge of enthusiasm.

The logical order of his discussion is inviolable: we must be reconciled to God through becoming the recipients of God’s pardon before we can be conscious of this.

So very concerned is Wesley to minimize misunderstanding on this matter that he looks at the topic now from this angle, now from another, much as a gemmologist observes scintillations reflecting off a precious stone as the stone is viewed from several different angles. Succinctly he comments, “It is he [i.e., the Holy Spirit] that not only worketh in us every manner of thing that is good, but also shines upon his own work, and clearly shows what he has wrought.” God enlightens us as to what God is doing in us. Were God to effect his salvific work in us and not enlighten us concerning this work within us, Wesley reminds us, we should then be left without awareness of “the things which are freely given to us of God” (1 Corinthians 2:12), and to this extent the testimony of our spirit would be enfeebled, in fact rendered impossible. Because God illumines us with respect to his work within us through the testimony of his Spirit, we are never left (i) wondering incessantly whether we are “in the boat” with Jesus or have missed it, (ii) attempting to impart an ersatz “assurance” by means of “enthusiasm”. The testimony of God’s Spirit, in concert with the testimony of our spirit, obviates both anguished insecurity and groundless bravado.

Once again Wesley turns the gem over in his hand. Anticipating a query from someone who is afflicted with doubt concerning her adoption, Wesley reverts to his intuitionist epistemology. When, in the normal course of our lives, we delight in something creaturely that pleases us, the immediacy of our delight is as much assurance as we need (or can have) as to the actuality of our delight. (In the same way, he adds, someone in pain needs no argument to persuade her she is in pain. To love God, delight in God, rejoice in God is to knowincontrovertibly that one loves, delights, and rejoices. And to know that God is the author and object of all this is to know that one is a child of God.

Then, in his sermon, “The Witness of the Spirit”, Wesley advances for our consideration what seems only a redundant instance of his oft-illustrated assertion, “A Christian…has as full an assurance [of his being a child of God] as he has that the scriptures are of God” — when in fact he has reached back into Calvin’s doctrine of scripture and borrowed its logic concerning the work of the Spirit. In a pregnant passage much cherished throughout the Reformed tradition Calvin writes, “…scripture exhibits fully as clear evidence of its own truth as white and black things do of their colour, or sweet and bitter things do of their taste.” (Institutes, 1.7.2) Just as scripture needs no external authentication of its truth, so believers need no external authentication of their standing in Christ. Calvin’s point is this: to the extent that the Spirit is used of God to bind us to Jesus Christ (i.e., to the extent that the Spirit authenticates Jesus Christ and our inclusion in him), the Spirit by that fact also authenticates the means by which our Lord and we became fused. Wesley’s point is that as the gospel-truth concerning the Spirit’s witness is promulgated, the Spirit confirms the adoption of believers so as to leave them no doubt concerning the truth that is now “impressed” upon their heart. Since God alone authenticates himself to believers (the 16th century Reformers were fond of saying, “God is the only fit witness to himself”), the demand for the criteria of such authentication Wesley pronounces an “idle demand”.

Wesley concludes his overview of the Spirit’s testimony by reminding readers that the mystery surrounding this unique work of the Spirit precludes definition and explication.

The manner how the divine testimony is manifested to the heart I do not take upon myself to explain…. But the fact we know: namely, that the Spirit of God does give a believer such a testimony of his adoption that while it is present to the soul he can no more doubt the reality of his sonship than he can doubt the shining of the sun while he stands in the full blaze of his (sic) glory.

In Part II of “The Witness of the Spirit” Wesley amplifies this point, arguing that the moment Paul heard the voice of God on the Damascus road he knew it to be such, even though the apostle himself could never have proposed criteria by which to deem any one “voice” to be the voice of God. Wesley simply states, “But how he knew this who is able to explain?”. In the same way, when God speaks forgiveness to believers of any era they know themselves pardoned beyond refutation or extrinsic confirmation.

Yet lest any “enthusiast” claim hallucination or any other species of subjectivism to be the word of God Wesley carefully distinguishes once more between the joint testimony (of Spirit and spirit) and presumption or delusion. The unrepentant sinner, upon hearing of this “privilege of true Christians,…is prone to work himself up into a persuasion that he is already possessed” of it. Nonetheless, scripture consistently points out that conviction of sin always precedes assurance of pardon. Drawing on his experience as spiritual director, Wesley notes that humility is one concomitant of the testimony of the Spirit, while the presumptuous invariably exalt themselves. In the same vein the presumptuous are cavalier concerning the commandments of God, especially the command enjoining self-denial or cross-bearing, the presumptuous loftily announcing that they have “…found an easier path to heaven.” Moreover, those who have deluded themselves in the matter of the Spirit’s testimony undervalue scripture’s insistence on the joint testimony; their “discipleship” fails to display the fruits of the Spirit. In any case the vehemence of the self-deluded’s expostulations does not obviate the veridicality of the Spirit’s work in others, just “as a madman’s imagining himself a king does not prove that there are no real kings.”

Calvin had said that when even the children of God look into their own heart what they find there is enough to horrify them; they find pathetically little evidence of their renewal at God’s hand. Is Calvin correct? Is Wesley naive where the Genevan may have been realistic? In Part II, written in the light of 20 years’ pondering Part I and 20 years’ evaluating the spiritual condition of the Methodist people, Wesley concurs with Calvin’s assessment. There are episodes in the Christian’s life when the residues of sin becloud the testimony of our spirit. At such times only divine testimony can attest that we are a child of God in the face of our inner whisperings to the contrary. For this reason Wesley now states as a spiritual director of greater maturity, “…we contend that the direct witness may shine clear, even while the indirect one is under a cloud.” (It is noteworthy that while Calvin doesn’t use the vocabulary of “the testimony of our spirit” he does recognize the effect of believers’ residual sin upon their assurance of their standing in Christ. In his commentaries on Hebrews 10:22 and 2 Corinthians 1:21 Calvin speaks of the subordinate assurance of faith that the love engendered in believers lends them. However, Calvin strictly understands such assurance — born of the fact that the “good tree” is now producing “good fruit” — to be subordinate. It can never be theground of assurance. Love is defective even in believers, he reminds us in his commentary on 1 John 4:13, and the good deeds of even believers ever remain sin-tainted.) Commensurate with his greater maturity Wesley shifts his emphasis so as to link the testimony of the Spirit explicitly to justification: assurance chiefly confirms believers in their forgiveness at God’s hand and their acceptance with God despite the arrears of their sin. Indeed, since we cannot believe ourselves justified, on account of our lingering proclivity to sin, apart from the witness of the Spirit, to deny the testimony is “in effect to deny justification by faith.” This, of course, Wesley will never do, thoroughgoing son of the Reformation that he is. As if to remind his readers of his confessional standing he borrows the vocabulary of this 17th century Puritan forebears: the Spirit attests the “imputation” of Christ’s righteousness.

Even so, episodes of the sort mentioned above do not last forever. The clouds that becloud the indirect witness part, and Wesley returns to his characteristic insistence that the testimony which assures believers is finally a joint testimony as the fruits of the Spirit appear, however slenderly, in Christ’s people.

 

For as long as breath remained in him Wesley rejoiced that “this great evangelical truth has been recovered, which had been for many years wellnigh lost and forgotten.”

Who had recovered it? And who has been mandated to safeguard it? Wesley’s conviction here was ironfast.

It more clearly concerns the Methodists, so called, clearly to understand, explain, and defend this doctrine, because it is one grand part of the testimony which God has given them to bear to all mankind.

The mandate has never been revoked.

 

Victor A. Shepherd

 

The Witness of the Spirit: An Overview

 

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1]  We are in bondage to sin, yet ignorant of it.  We are complacent in our sinnership, and simultaneously sincere in our goodness, humility, etc., naively thinking that our sincerity is sufficient before God.

2]  We are awakened to our predicament by any means God chooses, ultimately, however, being shocked through the law of God.  Herein we are made aware that (i) we have violated God’s law, and (ii) in violating his law we have violated God himself.

3]  We repent and believe the gospel.

4]  We seek the witness of our own spirit; i.e., we gain assurance of our life in Christ by deducing our spiritual vitality from the fruits of the Spirit we find in us.

5]  The testimony of God’s Spirit is qualitatively different.  Here God speaks to us directly as he “impresses” himself upon us so as to eclipse our indirect, inferential operation.

6]  This testimony of God’s Spirit is logically antecedent to the testimony of our spirit, and must be so or else the testimony of our spirit is finally a delusion, since the testimony of our  spirit is the deduction that we are holy, while we can rightly deduce this only if we are holy.

7]  The dialectic here is as follows:
(i)     God loves us.
(ii)    We are aware that God loves us with a pardoning love (mercy) only as God’s Spirit testifies to us of his mercy and our inclusion in it.
(iii)    We then love God.
(iv)    The ongoing dynamic reciprocity of God’s love for us and our swelling love for him issues in holiness of heart and life.
(v)     We become aware of God’s work of grace within us.

The key is #(ii).  This is the hinge on which there turns everything in the Christian life.  In the wake of #(ii), #(v) is legitimate — otherwise #(v) would be “enthusiasm.”

8]  The manner of the Spirit’s testimony can’t be explained even as the fact of it can’t be denied.

9]  The testimony is finally the joint testimony of the Spirit and our spirit.

10]  To safeguard ourselves against natural presumption and devilish delusion we must measure ourselves against Scripture.

11]  Ultimately, however, if we were left looking to Scripture only we’d have returned to an inferential operation.  Therefore the immediate witness of the Spirit is essential to our assurance.

 

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12]  Upon searching our hearts, we may conclude that we see only sin.

13]  Therefore the witness of the Spirit must assure us of justification or pardon rather than of fruit-bearing sanctity.

14]  The witness of the Spirit is essential to justification by faith, for without the witness of the Spirit we’d have no evidence of our justification, justification by works having been ruled out.

15]  The direct witness of the Spirit may be vivid while the witness of our spirit is slight.

16]  Not only residual sin but also trials may beset the Christian so that only the witness of the Spirit maintains our “filial confidence” in God.

17]  If we claim the witness of the Spirit without possessing the fruits of the Spirit we are fanatics (enthusiasts.)  If we claim to possess the fruits of the Spirit without the witness of the Spirit we are formalists.

MYSTICISM

(see lecture #3)

Wesley espoused a mysticism/moralism in 1725, and then explicitly repudiated mysticism in 1738, maintaining that it “stabbed religion in the vitals.” However, his post-Aldersgate theology has an unmistakable mystical dimension in it. He continued to reject mystical “dross” even as the experiential dimension of his thought reflected mystical “gold.”

 

What Wesley Esteemed In The Mystics

total preoccupation with God
heart-experience
spiritual discipline
self-renunciation
holy living
perfection/purity of intention/love

 

A Note on Reason
(see lecture # 1, 2, 12)

The distinction between reason (or the rational) and rationalism is crucial.

Rationalism affirms
(i)  reason has access to ultimate reality
(ii)  ultimate reality is what is naturally intelligible
(iii)  reason is the essence of humankind
(iv)  reason is unimpaired, or at least so slightly impaired as to be naturally correctable

 

The Christian faith affirms

(i)  faith (i.e., a predicate of grace) has access to ultimate reality (There’s no natural access to ultimate reality.)
(ii)  ultimate reality is Spirit or the effectual presence of Jesus Christ
See Balth.: “…the word of God is not of this world and hence can never be discovered in the categories and accepted patterns of human reason.” 61  “I was appointed by God from all eternity to be the recipient of this…eternal word of love, a word, which, pure grace though it be, is…more rational than my reason, with the result that this act of obedience in faith is in truth the most reasonable of acts.” 62 
(iii)  spirit (i.e., our having been created for relationship with God as the good) is the essence of humankind reason as a source of knowledge of God, of the kingdom of God, of the highest wisdom, has been devastated.
Note the naturalistic criticisms of reason:  
Freud
Marx
     Foucault
     postmodernists generally.

Note the theological criticisms of reason:

Paul (“…they became futile in their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools….” Rom 1:21-22)
(“…the futility of their minds; they are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them…..” Eph. 4:18) (Reason is impaired with respect to our life in God [knowledge of God]. This is not to say that reason has become irrational. (This would be a logical contradiction.) Irrationality is the obliteration of reason, not the corruption of reason. There is still an earthly wisdom and an earthly good of which fallen humankind is capable and which we ought not to disdain.)

Jeremiah (“…how long shall your evil thoughts lodge within you?” Jer. 4:14. “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately corrupt. Who can understand it?” Jer. 17:9)

How much of the rational is rationalisation? The rationality of rationalisation is perfectly rational; it just happens to serve an unconscious end and provide the legitimisation of that end. In the same way the rationality of psychosis is rational.

Reason still functions adequately, e.g., with respect to mathematics. But as soon as reason is deployed in the service of a natural end beyond the relations of logic, the distortion of reason is evident.

 

The Christian faith affirms that grace alone (faith) frees reason from reason’s captivity and restores reason’s integrity. For this reason the command of God to love him with our minds is not impossible. Not to love God with our minds is both disobedience and idolatry. Faith is not a species of irrationality. Isaac Watts wrote a textbook on logic that was used for 40 years at Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard and Yale. Wesley too wrote a text on logic. That which mathematics and science probes is the naturally intelligible.

 

Pascal: “Reason is never more reasonable than when it acknowledges the limits to reason.”

 

NEITHER MIST NOR MUD

In the summer of 1976 I was visiting professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland. A nearly-retired clergyman who had been in Newfoundland all his life commented on Newfoundland churchmanship of yesteryear: “The Presbyterians had scholarship, while we Methodists had religion”. The disjunction he spoke of is non-biblical, since, for one, God is to be worshipped with the mind, and for another, to worship one-knows-not-what is simply to worship an idol. I cannot comment on turn-of-the-century Methodism in Newfoundland. But I can tell you what Wesley’s reaction would have been if such a disjunction had been attributed to him: he would have considered himself falsified, even maligned.

There is no doubt concerning the theological dilution of the largest Methodist body which formed the larger part of The United Church of Canada in 1925; i.e., no doubt concerning the doctrinal flaccidity of this branch of the Wesleyan family. As I have sought to find out why and how the largest segment of the Wesleyan family in Canada could unravel theologically so very badly I have heard countless references to Wesley’s sermon, “Catholic Spirit”. It is often suggested to me that Methodism is characteristically theologically indifferent, even suggested that Wesley himself was — as “Catholic Spirit” is referred to (but not quoted unless quoted out of context) again and again.

The truth is Wesley himself knew that doctrine has to do with the truth of God; that doctrine is essential to the soundness of anyone’s faith and essential to the soundness of the church. Then what of his sermon, “Catholic Spirit”? Did he lapse momentarily in this one sermon and unwittingly sow the seeds of the very distortion which has haunted at least the larger North American bodies which bear his name?

In fact Wesley never jettisoned — or thought could be jettisoned — what he held to be the core, the essentials, of the Christian faith. At the same time, to be sure, he deplored what he deemed to be unnecessary quarrelling among Christians. For instance, while he remained enormously indebted to Puritan thinkers of the preceding century, he thought Puritan disputants themselves unnecessarily contentious. Wesley stood opposed in equal measure to dogmatism with respect to non-essentials and indifference with respect to essentials. Then does his “Catholic Spirit” atypically support the cavalierness to the substance of the faith which the sponsors of the chair I am to occupy rightly resist as surely as other denominations with a Wesleyan root have not resisted?

The text for “Catholic Spirit” is 2 Kings 10:15 (KJV). “And when he [Jehu] was departed thence, he lighted on Jehonadab the son of Rechab coming to meet him. And he saluted him and said, ‘Is thine heart right, as my heart is with thy heart? And Jehonadab answered, It is. [Jehu said], If it be, give me thine hand.” We know that Wesley preached on this text on November 23, 1740; September 8, 1749; and November 3, 1749. Likely he preached on it on other occasions as well. The sermon was first published in 1750, then republished in 1755 and 1770. Evidently Wesley deemed its subject-matter important. The latter two editions were graced by the addition of Charles’s forty-two line hymn, “Catholic Love”, one stanza of which is

Weary of all this wordy strife,

These notions, forms, and modes and names,

To Thee, the Way, the Truth, the Life,

Whose love my simple heart inflames,

Divinely taught, at last I fly,

With thee and thine to live and die.

Then did Charles support the notion that any attempt at doctrinal precision is but “wordy strife”? In order to answer this question we must probe the sermon itself.

Wesley’s first point is that “love is due to all mankind” — including, he is careful to add, those who curse us and hate us. Yet there is a “peculiar love” which we owe fellow-believers. All Christians know this and approve it; and just as surely all Christians fail here. Wesley adduces “two grand general hindrances”; Christians “…can’t all think alike, and in consequence of this…they can’t all walk alike”. He admits that differences in opinions or modes of worship may prevent “entire external union”; but “need it prevent union in affection?….May we not be of one heart, though we are not of one opinion?”

As he ponders the text Wesley notes that it “naturally divides itself into two parts”: Jehu’s question to Jehonadab, and Jehu’s welcome to Jehonadab following the latter’s positive reply. Wesley immediately notes that Jehu’s question concerns Jehonadab’s heart, not Jehonadab’s opinion. And to be sure Jehonadab had opinions unusual in Israel, impressing as he did upon his children and grandchildren the Rechabite vow which eschewed wine, and forswearing the security of farms and homes for the landlessness and tents of nomads. Jehu, for his part, so far from being offended or contemptuous, was content to “think and let think” — and a good thing too, says Wesley, since as we “see in part” (1 Cor. 13:12) we shall not all see things alike. Then he adds a comment which all Wesleyans (indeed all Christians) must note carefully. Our not all seeing things alike is a consequence of “the present weakness and shortness of human understanding”, to be redressed only in the eschaton. Our not all seeing things alike with respect to opinion is not the consequence of that darkened, foolish mind which is a predicate of human depravity. Culpable ignorance of God, on the other hand — always to be distinguished from differences of opinion — is the product of the darkened mind of the depraved, as Wesley acknowledges throughout his works.

Concerning opinion Wesley mentions modes of worship. Some Christians are convinced of the virtues of the Anglican Prayer Book while others are convinced of the virtues of the Free Church tradition. We “think and let think”. However, he adds immediately, a churchless Christian is a contradiction in terms. One is a Christian only as one worships with fellow-Christians in a particular congregation. Plainly the mode of worship is of the order of opinion, while corporate worship is of the order of essential.

Jehu’s question, “Is thine heart right…?” has to do not with opinions but with essentials. What are they, or at least some of them?

The first, according to Wesley, is, “Is thy heart right with God? Dost thou believe his being, and his perfections? His eternity, immensity, wisdom, power; his justice, mercy and truth?….Hast thou a divine evidence, a supernatural conviction, of the things of God?” Obviously our belief in God’s attributes and activity does not concern opinions but essentials; and just as obviously Wesley is careful to balance the objective and the subjective, head and heart. Judiciously he avoids identifying Christian experience (“Hast thou …a supernatural conviction…?”) with mere doctrinal assent; and just as judiciously he avoids identifying Christian experience with normless subjectivism.

The next aspect in Wesley’s delineation of what it means to have one’s heart right is, “Dost thou believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, ‘God over all…’?” The doctrine of the Incarnation is bedrock-essential. Nothing less than the most elemental apostolic confession, “Jesus is Lord”, will do. There is no suggestion in Wesley of a crypto-Arianism or crypto-unitarianism. And then once again there is that careful balance, typical of Wesley, between objective truth and the believing subject’s appropriation of the person of him whose truth it is: “Dost thou know ‘Jesus Christ and him crucified’?….Is he ‘formed in thy heart by faith’?” Then Wesley adds what he, a son of the Reformation, will always insist on; namely, justification by faith. “Having absolutely disclaimed all thy own works, thy own righteousness, hast thou ‘submitted thyself unto the righteousness of God’, ‘which is by faith in Christ Jesus’?” And lest those rendered righteous (i.e., rightly related to God) by faith think that anything but lifelong struggle and discipline await them Wesley comments, “And art thou through him [Jesus Christ] fighting the good fight of faith, and laying hold of eternal life?” Justification by faith is non-negotiable, as is vigorous, rigorous discipleship.

Next Wesley discusses matters which force his readers to search their hearts, as he sounds like a spiritual director, having inherited the seventeenth century Puritan tradition of spiritual direction. Puritanism abounded in those who were especially adept at helping others discern the movement of grace within them and helping them discern and deal with impediments to this movement. Here Wesley is brief and blunt: “Dost thou seek all thy happiness in him [God] alone?….Has the love of God cast the love of the world out of thy soul?” And then he zeroes in: we must love God for no other reason than God is who God is. We are not to love God instrumentally (that is, because we need something from God); neither are we to love God primarily to avoid the perils of judgement. “Art thou more afraid of displeasing God than either of death or of hell?” — otherwise, Wesley knows, our fear is still an excrescence of that self-preoccupation from which we need to be delivered.

Lastly he asks, “Do you ‘love your enemies’?”

The foregoing has nothing to do with opinion, everything to do with essentials. Therefore, says Wesley, he will extend his hand to anyone whose heart is right in the sense of what has been outlined above.

It remains for him to tell us what it means to give one’s hand to another. It does not mean that the two shaking hands will hold the same opinion. Nevertheless, it will mean that they genuinely love each other. Lest such “love” be nothing more than sentimental rhetoric Wesley pleads, “Love me with a very tender affection…as a friend that is closer than a brother.” In case we still fail to understand him Wesley amplifies this: “Love me with a love…that is patient if I am ignorant and out of the way, bearing and not increasing my burden…”. And if you, a believer, find me, a believer too, sinning, says Wesley, love me so as to recognize that I sinned “in sudden stress of temptation”.

To give one’s hand to another, Wesley informs us briefly, is always to pray for one another and to encourage one another in love and good works.

Then what does Wesley say a catholic spirit is not?

It is not “speculative latitudinarianism”. Christians are not indifferent to opinion. The baptist is as sincere, convinced, in fact, in espousing believer’s baptism as the paedobaptist is in espousing the understanding associated with this practice. Since a catholic spirit is not even indifference to opinion, how unthinkable that it could ever be indifference to the essentials of the faith! “A man of truly catholic spirit…is fixed as the sun in his judgement concerning the main branches of Christian doctrine.” Those who boast of possessing a catholic spirit “only because you are of a muddy understanding; because your mind is all in a mist”; those people, Wesley insists, don’t even know what spirit they are of! To sit loose to the substance of the faith is simply to display a mind of mist and mud. These self-deluded people think they “are got into the very spirit of Christ” when in fact they are “nearer the spirit of anti-Christ.” Wesley’s assertion here must be allowed its full weight: theological indifference reflects the spirit of anti-Christ.

In the second place a catholic spirit is not “practical latitudinarianism”. Here Wesley repeats his earlier insistence concerning public worship and “the manner of performing it”, as well as his insistence that all Christians must be intimately bound to a congregation which is so dear to us that each of us “regards it as his own household”.

Wesley’s last admonition to us in his sermon, “Catholic Spirit”, is for us to remember that the true catholic spirit is manifested in the daily exercise of catholic love, until that day when faith gives way to sight and we behold that love which God is. Until such time, Wesley advises, “…keep an even pace, rooted in the faith once delivered to the saints [for him there could never be any other root] and grounded in love, in true, catholic love, till thou art swallowed up in love for ever and ever.”

If any doubt remains as to Wesley’s doctrinal orthodoxy and the spiritual rigour required by, because first facilitated by, the One whose truth doctrine apprehends, such doubt is dispelled by one reading of Wesley’s sermons. Not all one hundred and fifty need be perused; consulting the first four will suffice. They are “Salvation By Faith”, “The Almost Christian”, “Awake, Thou That Sleepest”, and “Scriptural Christianity”.

The first, “Salvation By Faith” (1738), Wesley delivered at Oxford University following his Aldersgate awakening, when he flew his evangelical colours. Here he declared himself one with the sixteenth century Reformers.

The second sermon, “The Almost Christian” (1741), isn’t so much about those who are about to enter the kingdom (or about not to enter to it) as it is about the disparity between nominal Christianity and genuine faith in a living Lord. This was not a new theme in British Christendom, the Puritan divines before Wesley having expounded it many times. Still, here Wesley publicly declared himself one with the seventeenth century Puritans. When Wesley was about to preach this sermon (also at Oxford) he was told that Oxford’s theological hostility would find his address without credibility. “I know that”, he had replied, “however, I am to deliver my own soul, whether they will hear or whether they will forbear.”

The third sermon, “Awake, Thou That Sleepest” (1742), was actually written by Charles and endorsed without qualification by John; it too is a throbbing evangelical statement.

The fourth, “Scriptural Christianity” (1744), Wesley delivered on August 24, the anniversary of two dreadful persecutions visited on people of gospel-conviction: the St.Bartholomew’s Day massacre in Paris (1572) and the Great Ejection in England (1662) in which both Wesley’s grandfathers suffered cruelly. By this time Wesley knew the price to be paid for adhering to that faith attested by apostles, church fathers and reformers. In his journal he wrote on August 24, 1744, “I preached, I suppose, for the last time at St.Mary’s [Oxford]. Be it so. I am now clear of the blood of these men. I have fully delivered my own soul”.

And yet it is still heard in some areas of the contemporary church that Wesley had a shallow view of human depravity, that his view of Total Depravity was less “total” than that of the reformers. This is not true. In his sermon, “Salvation By Faith”, Wesley insists that humankind’s “heart is altogether corrupt and abominable”, that salvation is always and everywhere “an unspeakable gift”. “Of yourselves”, he continues in the same article, “cometh neither your faith nor your salvation…. that ye believe is one instance of grace; that believing, ye are saved, another.” Two hundred plus years earlier John Calvin had spoken of faith as an “empty vessel”, meaning that our faith does not contribute to the substance of our salvation, and therefore we cannot boast that we have, however slightly, saved ourselves. In the same vein Wesley writes, “…faith is…a full reliance on the blood of Christ, a trust in the merits of his life, death and resurrection, a recumbency upon him as our atonement and our life…”. Then he adds, “…in consequence hereof a closing with him and cleaving to him as our ‘wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption…’.” His citing 1 Corinthians 1:30 here is surely telling, since this text was Calvin’s favourite! Wesley did not have a diminished understanding of human helplessness before God; he was not less profound than his reformation predecessors. In a pithy aphorism reflecting the style of Puritan thinkers dearer to him than even most Methodists grasp, he comments tersely, “…none can trust the merits of Christ till he has utterly renounced his own.”

Wesley had no truck with a gospel-less Pelagianism or a Christ-less Arianism or a Trinity-less unitarianism; neither did he have any truck with that for which he is blamed often, a degenerate Arminianism. His theology was as soundly apostolic as his spirit was truly catholic.

On behalf of all who have supported the Chair of Wesley Studies at Ontario Theological Seminary, and on behalf of the same people who have supported my appointment to it, I want only to hold up before students, and through them before the wider church, John Wesley himself, in order that they and I, learning together from him, might ever reflect the same passion for the apostolic confession of Jesus Christ and the same catholic spirit which renders our faith ever that faith which works through love. (Galatians 5:6)

 

Victor A. Shepherd
Chair, Wesley Studies
Ontario Theological Seminary
26 September 1993