Wesley was not a conceptual theologian.
He did not organise his belief into topics. Rather, he developed theology in relation to life. It is
theology for living: “practical divinity,”
Wesley liked to call it. We discover from his journal writings a pilgrimage motif: theology interpreted in
relation to the story of God’s grace and in relation to our experience of this
grace as we move through the days of our lives. Wesley’s theology flows from
his own life and experience of God. When we read his journal, you can see that
he faced struggles similar to ours.
He made his share of mistakes, and
asked questions during times of doubt
and depression. He was in search of a “scriptural Christianity” that was
confirmed by human experience.
Although the first entry of Wesley’s
Journal was that of Oct 14, 1735,
when he sailed to America, he did
publish a letter with the journal
describing earlier incidents which lead to the formation of the Holy Club.
On Wesley’s own life, he was born to
Samuel and Susanna Wesley in 1703. When
he was six, he was rescued from the
burning rectory in such a remarkable fashion that his mother called him “a brand plucked from the burning”and believed
God special plans for his life. Wesley went to Oxford in 1720 and received the Bachelor of Arts. He was ordained in the Church of England in 1728. His early Oxford years saw the
beginnings of his spiritual pilgrimage.
In his younger days, John Wesley was
already living the life of a model
Christian. In 1729, he led the Holy Club at Oxford (which was started
by his brother Charles in 1927), which visited the prisoners, the ill, and the
poor. He was so passionate about ministry that he sailed to America wanting to preach to the
American Indians! But this journey led him to discover his lack in faith, and he came to realise that it was fear (of death and going to hell) that
drove him to do the good works he
was doing earlier.
On the ship to Georgia in 1735,
he met the Moravians.There was a storm so severe that he thought he was
going to die and there was a terrible screaming among the English, but he was
amazed by the Moravians sang hymns
calmly. That was when he realised how fearful
he was of death, and when he asked the Moravians if they were fearful, they
replied they were not afraid to die. When they arrived in Georgia, Wesley spoke
further with the Moravians, and was asked if
he knew that Jesus has saved him, he replied “I do” but felt they were vain words. Furthermore, he was
commanded to minister the colony,
not the American Indians as he had initially wished. This experience served as
was a true test of faith for him.
In Georgia he courted a young woman who married another. After one year and nine
months he left Georgia because he refused
communion to this lady and was sued for defamation. On his trip back to England, he was still fearful of dying and asked
himself, “why, that I went to America to convert others, was never myself
converted to God?” He complained to the Moravian Peter Boehler whether he should stop preaching but he said “Preach faith til you have it; and then,
because you have it, you will preach faith.”
Things changed during John's famous “Aldersgate experience” of 24 May 1738,
at a Moravian meeting in Aldersgate Street, London, in which he heard a reading
of Martin Luther's preface to the
Epistle to the Romans, and penned the now famous lines “I felt my heart strangely warmed”, revolutionised the character and
method of his ministry, as he had an emotional
response to the gospel and a strong
social concern. He no longer doubted
his own salvation. It was no longer his own salvation that consumed all his
interest. Being assured of it, he could devote all his concern to the salvation of others.
As a first step, Wesley visited a Moravian community in Germany.
Although the visit was greatly inspiring,
it convinced him that Moravian spirituality was ill-suited to his own temperament and involvement in social issues.
Therefore, in spite of his gratitude, he decided not to become a Moravian.
It was George Whitefield who introduced Wesley to field preaching in 1739. When Wesley initially started field
preaching, he was reluctant and felt
preaching outside of a church building is almost a sin as he had always been a
very orderly man and at that time
was convinced that God wished everything to be done in order. Slowly, in the
view of the results, he reconciled himself to that sort of preaching in the view of the results, andwith a vision
that God’s plan was for the whole world, he announced “the world is my parish”. Wesley also described himself as one who “spoke plain words to plain folks”,
avoiding complex theological terminology.
From that point onward, Wesley became England’s
greatest preacher and organiser. When
God planted the love for the people in Wesley’s heart, he became a mass evangelist, preaching passionately
to the poor and bringing on the Evangelical revival movement in England,
which rapidly spread across the world. Wesley
and Whitefield worked together for some time, although Wesley became the
main leader of the movement and eventually they parted because of theological
differences on the doctrine of predestination.
In the earlier years, there were frequent
acts of violence against Methodists,
as some of the clergy and nobility
resented the authority the new movement gave to people from the lower classes.
Meetings were frequently interrupted by paid
ruffians, and Wesley’s life was occasionally in danger.
The last sixty years of his life were a constant motion of travelling
and preaching that took him over 250,000
miles (mostly on horseback) and gave him the opportunity of preaching more
than 44,000 times. He died saying, “The best of all is, God is with us!”
In terms of how Wesley organised his
ministry, we first need to understand that Wesley was brought up in a much
disciplined fashion, so he was also a man of intense and meaningful discipline: for over sixty years he faithfully engaged in devotional living daily! We also see from his journals that he organised the church in a very orderly fashion. The‘classes’ and ‘societies’ were all organised on explicit disciplinary principles,
and ‘annual conferences’ were held. “The soul and the body make the man; and
the spirit and discipline makes a Christian”, he said.
In this young movement, Wesley needed
more people to share in the task of preaching. A few Anglican priests had
joined the movement, but there was not enough ordained clergy, so these
circumstances led to the use of lay
preachers, or as Wesley documented, ‘plain men’. Initially Wesley was
against the idea but changed his mind after hearing layman Thomas Maxfield’s preaching. Soon, a number of women became lay preachers.
It’s important to also note that Wesley
lived and died an Anglican. He did
not inaugurate a new denomination, and he discouraged his followers in doing
so. Throughout his lifetime, Methodism
was a renewal movement within the larger
Anglican Church. It is equally important to stress that Wesley’s ultimate loyalty was to God. Where he
felt the church had strayed, he stood against it. His disagreements with the Church of England were scriptural. He
felt that eighteenth-century Anglicanism had drifted from important scriptural normal,
and as he puts it, the Methodist movement was simply describing “the plain, old
religion of the Church of England.” His goal was not defection, but rather
renewal. However, according to English
law, non-Anglican worship services and church buildings were to be allowed,
but they must be officially registered
as such. This put the Methodists in a difficult
situation, for the Church of England did not acknowledge their meetings and
buildings. If they registered, this
would be a tactic declaration that they were not Anglicans. If they did
not, they would be breaking the law.
In 1787, after great hesitation, Wesley instructed his
preachers to register, and thus the
first legal step toward the formation of a separate church.
Wesley had some disagreeable aspects to
his personality. He was a highly motivated, determined and sometimes
domineering person, who generally had a clear idea of what needed to be done,
and how to do it. When he was convinced that he or the Methodists were on ‘the
right course’ (as he believed God had given him to see the ‘right’) John Wesley
was very difficult to divert.
Wesley’s theological views:
Wesley’s
order of salvation:
You don’t have to be a Christian to
realise that something is wrong with the human race. Our most brilliant social
analysts stand amazed in the presence of radical, often unpredictable
experiences of man’s humanity to man. Everyone seems to be asking, “What is
wrong?” When John Wesley looked at his
century, he asked the same question. He concluded that the fundamental problem
was human sinfulness. Wesley spoke of sin in relational terms. His classic
definition is that sin is “every voluntary breach of the law of love.” At its
base, sin is broken relationship, whether that brokenness is expressed toward
others or toward God. The breach is conscious and wilful: For Wesley, sin is
not something that sneaks up on you; it arises out of you. The result of sin is
sickness. Wesley uses the term ‘corruption’ for this, and it affects the whole
of humanity. The Bible does not say we are sinners because we commit acts of
sin; it says we commit acts of sin because we are sinners. Wesley believed that
Adam was in a perfect state before the Fall and bore the image of God
completely. But in the fall, the image was extensively marred but not
completely destroyed. Intimacy between God and humans was gone, and we are dead
toward God. Another effect of sin is self-captivity: if one is truly dead to
God, the only alternative is to turn inward and make self a god. Wesley saw
humanity doing just that, in the name of freedom. As someone puts it, “I may be
the captain of my soul, but I keep driving myself around in circles”. A third effect
is helplessness to change. As Wesley describes, “Now he truly desires to break
loose from sin and begins to struggle with it. But though he strive with all
his might, he cannot conquer; sin is mightier than he.”
Wesley also spoke of ‘prevenient grace’,
meaning the grace of God is active before we give conscious thought to God or
to our need of him. Like all other aspects of grace, prevenient grace is a
gift: grace for all (no one is excluded) and grace in all (the life we now live
is due to the grace of God). The Law brings knowledge of God’s will, but
knowledge alone is not enough as bare knowledge does not contain the power to
change.
The next step in the activity of grace
is ‘saving grace’, where we’re saved by grace alone. For Wesley, the faith
response was characterised by two movements: repentance and belief. This brings
about change: first we change in the knowledge of ourselves, where we realise
that apart from God, we are not ok. The second experience is conviction, where
when we realise the true condition of our lives apart from God, we are pricked
in our hearts. Third, repentance includes a thorough change of our minds, and
that marks the true end of repentance. The second major part of saving grace is
faith: it is not sufficient to turn from something; we must turn toward
Someone. Another words, belief in God. There several elements to this: love
(God is love), assurance (a note of certainty), reliance (switch the control
centre of our lives from ourselves to Christ), obedience (belief is ultimately expressed
in this. Whether we know Christ is whether we obey him).
Transformation occur in several steps.
First, we are justified: God has pardoned us for the sins of the past. Then we
have new birth: God’s activity of “renewing our fallen nature” as Wesley called
it. Then the third process is initial sanctification, where real righteousness
begins andenable us to mature in the Christian life.
Growth in grace occur, as per the
Wesleyan equation “Grace plus response equals growth.” First we grow out of a
sense of assurance, knowing that we are the children of God, and not with a “maybe”.
‘The means of grace’ describe the specific channels through which God conveys
grace to his people. This include prayer, searching the Scriptures, taking the
Lord’s Supper, fasting, and group fellowship.
Wesley advocates Christian perfection,
which is not spiritual infallibility, but rather the fixation of motive, the
surrender of self-will. Glorification marks the end of the journey.
Wesley’s view
on the church:
In the early eighteenth century, institutional
religion was largely in eclipse. Spirituality was often promoted by independent
and separatist groups. When the Evangelical Revival began, Wesley could easily
have formed his followers into another denomination, but he didn’t. Instead, he
remained consciously in the Church of England and sought to revive it from
within. Wesley defined the church as “a body of people united together in the
service of God.” His intention was to say that the church is personal. At the
same time, he knew people would naturally group themselves into particular
denominations and didn’t judge this to be wrong. The unity he saw and worked
for was more a unity of spirit than a unity of structure. Consequently, he
could move easily among groups as diverse as Roman Catholics and independents,
which was due, in the end, to his fundamental understanding of the church as
people. Sadly, many churches lack the personal dimension, and institutionalism
sometimes takes precedence over individuals. Buildings and budgets can seem to be
more important than ultimate concerns and these emphases create a psychology
that views the church more as an organisation than an organism. Even when the
Methodist movement gained momentum, Wesley continued to maintain that his
followers were nothing more than Bible Christians. He stated that they did not
divide themselves at all from the living body of Christ, or even from the
Church of England. At the same time, he did not lose the priority of God’s will
over the opinions and organisations of men. He wrote, “We will obey the rules
and governors of the Church whenever we can, consistently with our duty of God.
Whenever we cannot, we will quietly obey God rather than men.”
Other
theologies:
It is important to note that Wesley did
not advocate any particular manifestation of the Spirit as necessary proof that
one was Spirit-filled. His journal documents many extraordinary (even unusual)
manifestations. Interestingly, Wesley did not seek to promote or prohibit such
occurrences.
Wesley’s understanding of the gospel is
that God’s offer of salvation was extended to anyone (he rejected the
Calvinistic doctrine of election as double predestination). His vision was also
missiological, that God’s plan was for the whole world. “The world is my
parish” (1739). Wesley’s theology of the priesthood of all believers was
clearly expressed in the early Methodist movement, where he allowed leadership
by devoted laity.
Wesley was a true son of the
Reformation. He envisioned a threefold mission for Methodism: regeneration,
renewal, and reform. The key actions in his strategy for renewal are as
follows: He urges all people to personally experience Christ, to greater
degrees of discipline (because of humanity’s bent to sinning), to get together
in groups, to a renewed appreciation for the sacraments, and that Christ be
offered to everyone. For Wesley, the gospel life was nothing other than
fulfilling the two great commandments: love God and love neighbour.
References:
González, Justo L. The Story of Christianity Volume II: The Reformation to the Present Day,
New York: Harper Collins, 2010.
Wesley, John. John Wesley's journal, edited by Robert Backhouse, London: Hodder
and Stoughton, 1993.
Harper, Steve.The way to heaven: the gospel according to John Wesley,Grand Rapids:
Zondervan, 2003.
“A generation which forgets those who
came before it deserves to be forgotten by those who come after it.” Dr. William
Quick.
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