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Wesley Lenses – Xi Contents Acknowledgments – vii Foreword – ix Introduction B efore You Begin: Put On the Wesley Lenses – xi Belief #1 Scripture Is Our Primary Source – 1 Belief #2 Reason, Tradition, and Experience Help Us Understand Scripture – 13 Belief #3 Grace Is the Necessary Glue of All Discipleship – 27 Belief #4 P revenient Grace: God Takes the Initiative – 41 Belief #5 Repentance: Grace Awakens Us – 55 Belief #6 Justification: Humble Faith Receives Pardon – 69 Belief #7 Initial Sanctification:We Find Our Identity in God’s Family – 81 Copyright © by Abingdon Press. All rights reserved. v Contents Belief #8 Holy Love: Discipleship Combines Heart and Life – 95 Belief #9 We Are Better Together: Christianity Is a Social Faith – 109 Belief #10 E ntire Sanctification: Harmonizing Holy Intentions with Real Life – 121 Notes – 137 Selected Bibliography – 149 Index of Names – 157 Index of Subjects – 161 Copyright © by Abingdon Press. All rights reserved. vi Belief #1 Scripture Is Our Primary Source Who or what do you obey? What will guide the way you live today? It’s a huge question. For the Wesleys the answer, while not simple, was clear. The Bible was their guide. The Methodists were eventually called “Bible bigots.” As a student at Oxford, Charles Wesley discovered, as had John three years earlier, that “a man stands a very fair chance of being laughed out of his religion at his first setting out.”1 That did not deter their commitment to the authority of scripture. The question with which the Bible presented them as they understood it was not, “How can I believe this?” The question was, “What is God saying and how can I obey it?” As we shall see, their faith in the Bible was not wooden and rigid in a fundamentalist sense. Neither was it subject to their whims or the correctness of the day. They earnestly sought to trust and obey God’s Word, and while that made them fruitful, it also brought derision and rejection as well as controversy. Just saying, “I believe in the Bible” does not end the battle as to the nature of its authority. As always, we see in Wesley’s example a willing- ness to move beyond a simplistic “God said it; I believe it; that’s good enough for me” response to scripture. But to do that opens the door to broad possibilities of interpretation. Wesley accepted this as the price for honest faith. It is not a matter for the faint of heart. Copyright © by Abingdon Press. All rights reserved. 1 Belief #1 Wesley instinctively understood that orthodoxy is no guarantee of spiritual vitality. His desire was to unleash . God’s Word and allow it maximum freedom to move beyond the letter to the transformative spirit of truth. Church of England theologians (Bishop Joseph Butler chief among them), in the face of intellectual challenges from persons such as John Locke and Sir Isaac Newton, defended biblical authority. So did John Wesley. The scriptures were, for Wesley, “the fountain of heavenly wis- dom, which they who are able to taste prefer to all writings of men, how- ever wise or learned or holy.”2 His view of the supremacy of scripture would never waver throughout his long journey. While this was of utmost importance to Wesley, he instinctively understood that orthodoxy is no guarantee of spiritual vitality. His desire was to unleash what he firmly be- lieved to be God’s Word and allow it maximum freedom to move beyond the letter to the transformative spirit of truth. For Wesley this was not an academic exercise. It was, as it remains today, a battle for abundant life. Wesley characteristically affirms the uniqueness and authority of scripture in the Preface to Sermons on Several Occasions: “I want to know one thing, the way to heaven—how to land safe on that happy shore. He hath written it down in a book. O give me that book! At any price give me the book of God! I have it. Here is knowledge enough for me. Let me be homo unius libri (a man of one book).”3 In the same way that he embraced the derisive identification “Methodist” as a badge of honor, Wesley gladly endured the sneering epithets “Bible bigot” and “Bible moth.” He wrote in A Short History of Methodism (1765) that in February 1738, the fledgling Methodists “re- solved to be Bible-Christians at all events; and, what ever they were, to Copyright © by Abingdon Press. All rights reserved. 2 Scripture Is Our Primary Source preach with all their might plain, old, Bible Christianity.”4 A year later he wrote in a letter to Oxford friend James Hervey, “I allow no other rule, whether of faith or practice, than the holy Scriptures.”5 Fifty years later he would write in other correspondence, “be not wise above what is written. Enjoin nothing that the Bible does not clearly enjoin. Forbid nothing that it clearly does not forbid.”6 The normative authority of the Bible in Wesley’s theological method is beyond debate. The Bible: Its Best Defense Is to Turn It Loose British Reformed Baptist preacher Charles Spurgeon, in the century following Wesley, famously said that scripture is like a lion, it does not need defense. Rather it needs to be turned loose.7 Wesley, who did not ap- ply his best powers of logic to defending the Bible, would have liked that image. Nonetheless, he dutifully penned a brief tract entitled “A Clear and Concise Demonstration of the Divine Inspiration of Holy Scripture.”8 At best, his defense of scripture falls under the general principle that New Testament scholar Joel Green observed regarding such efforts: “Arguments in favor of the special status of the Scriptures tend to be convincing only to those who are already inclined to grant them this status.”9 Wesley was far more burdened to turn scripture loose than to academically defend it, believing it would prove itself to others as it had to him. Wesley was far more burdened to turn scripture loose than to academically defend it, believing it would prove itself to others as it had to him. I n the preface to Wesley’s Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testa- ment, we find this expanded affirmation of faith in scripture: Copyright © by Abingdon Press. All rights reserved. 3 Belief #1 Concerning the Scriptures in general, it may be observed, the word of the living God, which directed the first patriarchs also, was, in the time of Moses, committed to writing. To this were added, in several succeeding generations, the inspired writings of the other prophets. Afterwards, what the Son of God preached, and the Holy Ghost spake by the apostles, the apostles and evangelists wrote. This is what we now style the Holy Scripture: this is that “word of God which remaineth for ever”; of which, though “heaven and earth pass away, one jot or tittle shall not pass away.” The Scripture, therefore, of the Old and New Testament is a most solid and precious system of divine truth. Every part thereof is worthy of God; and all to- gether are one entire body, wherein is no defect, no excess.10 Wesley’s commentary in his Notes on 2 Timothy 3:16 declares: All scripture is inspired by God – The Spirit of God not only inspired those who wrote it, but continually inspires, supernaturally assists, those that read it with earnest prayer. Hence it is so profitable for doctrine, for instruction of the ignorant, for the reproof or conviction of them that are in error or sin, for the correction or amendment of whatever is amiss, and for instructing or training up children of God in all righteousness.11 Wesley’s unrestrained dedication to the uniqueness and supremacy of the Bible was directly tied to his unshakable focus on leading oth- ers to justification (pardon), sanctification (growing love of God and neighbor/the mind of Christ), and glorification (ultimately the way to heaven). Apart from the Bible, is evangelism and making disciples pos- sible? Wesley knew that it was not. Wesley: A Man of One Totally Unique Book Imagine a compulsively rational person, a lover of logic whose mother said he would not “attend to the necessities of nature”12 (go to the bathroom) without a reason; now picture this man crying out from Copyright © by Abingdon Press. All rights reserved. 4 Scripture Is Our Primary Source the depths of his soul, “O Give me that book! At any price give me that book! I have it. Here is enough knowledge for me.”13 Wesley was a man of letters, an Oxford don, a translator and pub- lisher of poetry, a man who wrote hundreds of books, a spiritual direc- tor of thousands who created a Christian library for their edification, who edited Pilgrim’s Progress for the masses, whose literary production of letters, sermons, and responses to theological controversies now com- prise multiplied numbers of volumes—this person repeatedly declares, “Let me be a man of one book.” Wesley embraced the declaration that “all scripture is inspired by God” and thus reflects an unrivaled divine authority. The written word then plays a categorically unique role in the birthing and formation of Christian disciples. As the decades of the revival went by, he witnessed the power of the written word to facilitate living engagement with the living Word, the risen Jesus. A startling example of the power of the Bible to provide such compelling, divine testimony can be witnessed in the life of Princeton Seminary professor of philosophy Emile Cailliet. Cailliet was born and intellectually bred to embrace a purely naturalistic view of life.
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