CHAPTER 3 JOHN WESLEY AND SANCTIFICATION 3.1 Introduction 3.1.1 General Evaluation of Wesley Some evaluations state that Wesley’s theology is based on experience and the Bible rather than theoretical theology. William Hordern considered Wesley as one of the great theologians, though Wesley’s theology is based on his experience rather than any theoretical system.1 According to Ralph Del Colle, for Wesley, sanctification as Christian experience is a subjective aspect of our salvation while justification is its objective aspect.2 Particular stress is laid on entire sanctification. Dr. G. Croft Cell viewed Wesley as “a principal founder and first conspicuous exemplar of a theology of experience.”3 He noted that Wesley brought Christianity back to the “religion as experience” of the early church. In this religion, “experience and reality come to the same thing.”4 Howard A. Snyder viewed Wesley’s theology as dynamic in the sense that it focused on human transformation. 5 Reinhold Niebuhr also held that Wesley’s conception of perfection contained the largest number of biblical elements as compared to other perfectionist teachings, in the sense that he viewed perfection as deliverance from sin, not from finiteness, and understood its process as existential, not contemplative.6 Kenneth J. Collins claims that Wesley’s theology is essentially biblical rather than theological.7 Some theologians understood Wesley as a balanced theologian of the doctrine of sanctification. For example, Albert Outler described John Wesley as “the most important Anglican theologian of the 18th century because of his distinctive composite answer to the 1 William Hordern, “Recent Trends in Systematic Theology,” Canadian Journal of Theology 7 (1961): 87. 2 Ralph Del Colle, “John Wesley’s Doctrine of Grace in Light of the Christian Tradition,” International Journal of Systematic Theology, Vol. 4, no. 2 (2002): 177. 3 George Croft Cell, The Rediscovery of John Wesley (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1935), p.347. Also, noteworthy is Piette’s mention that Wesley’s “theology of experience has exerted an uncontestable influence upon the theories of liberal Protestant theology from Friedrich Schleiermacher to William James,” in the sense that it shows the relationship between Wesley’s theology and liberal theology. Piette, La Réaction de John Wesley dans l’Évolution du Protestantisme, Preface (1925, Second ed., 1927). Quoted by Cell, ibid., p.75. 4 Ibid., p. 73. 5 Howard A. Snyder, The Radical Wesley: Patterns for Church Renewal (Illinois Inter-Varsity Press, 1980), p.4. 6 Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man, Vol. II (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1943), pp. 173-174. 7 Kenneth J. Collins, “A Hermeneutical Model for the Wesleyan Ordo Salutis,” Wesleyan Theological Journal 19 (1984): 23. 126 age-old question of ‘the nature of the Christian life.’”8 He viewed Wesley’s message as “faith working by love leading to holiness.”9 He deemed it Wesley’s distinct position in history “to grasp the vital unity of both Pardon and Participation.”10 Colin W. Williams held that Wesley stressed sanctification by faith, not sanctification by faith and merit like the Roman Catholics.11 Kenneth. J. Collins notes that Wesley maintained a balance between inward religion and outward religion, i.e., the practice of piety as good works, “law and gospel, faith and holy life, grace and works, grace as both favour and empowerment, justification and sanctification, instantaneousness and process, the universality of grace and its limited actualization, divine initiative and human response, initial and final justification.”12 Donald G. Bloesch is of the opinion that Wesley renewed and complemented Evangelical theology which had been biased towards justification by his emphasis on sanctification.13 On the other hand, Wesley’s emphasis on Christian holy life gave him the reputation of a theologian who was close to Roman Catholicism,14 or Arminianism or Pelagianism, or enthusiasm, though such assessments have their distinctive nuances. George C. Cell deemed Wesley’s perfection the “synthesis of the Protestant’s ethics of grace and the Catholic ethics of holiness.”15 Kenneth J Collins also regards “the dual emphasis of forgiveness and renewal, the appreciation of the insights of both Protestantism and 8 Albert Outler, “The Place of Wesley in the Christian Tradition,” in The Place of Wesley in the Christian Tradition, ed. by Kenneth E. Rowe (Metuchen, NJ: The Scarecrow Press, 1976), p. 14. 9 Ibid. p. 29. 10 Ibid. p. 30. 11 Colin W. Williams, John Wesley’s Theology Today (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1959), pp. 176-178. 12 Kenneth J. Collins, Scripture Way of Salvation: The Heart of John Wesley’s Theology (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1997), p.207; cf. A. Outler mentioned that Wesley “proceeded to develop a theological fusion of faith and good works, scripture and tradition, revelation and reason, God’s sovereignty and human freedom, universal redemption and conditional election, Christian liberty and an ordered polity, the assurance of pardon and the risks of falling from grace, original sin and Christian perfection.” A. Outler, ed., John Wesley (London: Oxford, 1964), preface, iv; cf. Francis Young holds that in Wesley’s theology, “the individual and the community, the personal and the corporate, like Law and Gospel, Old Testament and New Testament, rationalism and emotionalism, were welded inseparably together.” Francis Young, “The Significance of John Wesley’s Conversion Experience,” in John Wesley: Contemporary Perspectives, ed. by John Stacey with an introduction by Frank Baker (London: Epworth Press, 1988), p.43. 13 Donald G. Bloesch, Essentials of Evangelical Theology, Vol.1 (Sanfrancisco: Harper & Row Co., 1978), p.2. 14 Woodrow W. Whidden mentions that “Wesley’s troubling qualifiers in regard to “imputed righteousness” certainly make it appear that he was headed back to Rome,” in his article, “Wesley on Imputation: A Truly Reckoned Reality or Antinomian Polemical Wreckage,” The Asbury Theological Journal Vol. 52, no. 2 (1997): 65; Collins notes that Wesley’s emphasis on the necessity of repentance and its fruits antecedent to justification “made him look like a Roman Catholic in the eyes of the Calvinists.” K. J. Collins, John Wesley: A Theological Journey (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2003), p.222, 217. 15 George C. Cell, The Rediscovery of John Wesley (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1935), p.361. 127 Catholicism” as “one of Wesley’s most distinctive Soteriological fingerprints.”16 Luke L. Keefer, Jr. has noted that Wesley “walked a narrow ledge between Calvinism and Pelagianism in regard to sin, free will, and the nature of saving faith.”17 He has claimed that Wesley’s Arminianism is Anglicized and personalized, and is integrative rather than systematized, and is pastorally motivated.18 Robert A. Mattke mentioned that Wesley “charted a course between Pietism on the one hand and Anglicanism on the other.”19 Woodrow W. Whidden points out Wesley suffered from suspicions that he was a Pelagian, synergist, Roman moralist, or legalist.20 To advocate himself, Wesley claimed that his theology was “within a hair’s breadth” “both from Calvinism and Antinomianism.”21 Maddox points out that such phenomena as “outcries, convulsions, and trances,” as the side-effects of Wesley’s early form of awakening sermons between 1739- 1744, opened him to “accusations of enthusiasm.”22 Kenneth J. Collins also mentions that Wesley was often designated as an “enthusiast” or fanatic by his eighteenth-century detractors.23 B.B. Warfield claimed that it was John Wesley who “infected the modern Protestant world with this notion of ‘entire instantaneous sanctification.’” 24 Collin W. Williams noted that Wesley’s doctrine of perfection based on conscious sin “led easily to a failure to take seriously the depth of unexamined prejudices and inward sins.”25 As observed above, we can see that Wesley was an influential theologian who emphasised sanctification. At the same time, such observations insinuate that it is worthwhile to study whether Wesley’s teaching of sanctification is really biblical or not, in which aspect his doctrine is different from Calvin’s, what characteristics his doctrine of sanctification has, and whether other theologians’ critiques of Wesley’s doctrine of sanctification are pertinent or not. 16 Kenneth J. Collins, Scripture Way of Salvation: The Heart of John Wesley’s Theology (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1997), p.101. 17 Luke L. Keefer, “Characteristics of Wesley’s Arminianism,” Wesleyan Theological Journal 22 (1987): 90. 18 Ibid., pp. 88-97. 19 Robert A. Mattke, “The Baptism of the Holy Spirit as Related to the Work of Entire Sanctification,” Wesleyan Theological Journal 5-1 (1970): 24. 20 Woodrow W. Whidden, “Wesley on Imputation: A Truly Reckoned Reality or Antinomian Polemical Wreckage,” The Asbury Theological Journal Vol. 52, no. 2 (1997): 63. 21 Works 8, 284 - 285. “A. Indeed it does; as it were, within a hair’s breadth: So that it is altogether foolish and sinful, because we do not quite agree either with one or the other, to run from them as far as ever we can.” 22 Randy L. Maddox, Responsible Grace: John Wesley’s Practical Theology (Nashville, Kingwood Books, 1994), p. 161. 23 Kenneth J. Collins, Scripture Way of Salvation: The Heart of John Wesley’s Theology (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1997), p.131. 24 Benjamin B. Warfield, Perfectionism 2:562. 25 C. W. Williams, John Wesley’s Theology Today (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1960), p.180. 128 3.1.2 Wesley’s Response to the Theological Trends of His Times J. Ernest Rattenbury noted that “Catholic and Lutheran, Anglican and Moravian influences were all blended in Wesley.”26 His notion is similar to Cell’s evaluation that Wesley maintained a balance between Catholic and Lutheran theology, Legalism and Moravian mystic quietism. 27 We may add to it that Wesley avoided the extremities of both formalism and enthusiasm. His doctrine of sanctification is said to be formed under the influence of German Pietism, but he rejected passive, quietistic antinomianism and accentuated participation in Christ rather than union with Christ, or Christ as our pattern.