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Citation: McPherson, Jeffrey. “Social Holiness: The Problem of Dementia for the 
Doctrine of Christian Perfection.” April 30, 2019, Tyndale University College & 
Seminary, Toronto, Ontario: MPEG-3, 32:58 min.

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This is this is a work of, in some ways, speculative or maybe creative theology. I'm trying out some ideas and I want to hear back. Right? So am I on the 
right track? I'm trying to extend Wesley, is this a faithful extension or not? That's my question for you. So please, please listen and let me know what you 
think. So this is a social holiness the problem of dementia for the doctrine christian perfection. In 2009, my father you can see here that's my wife and I 
with my dad, my father suffered a massive stroke, and it was at a relatively young age of 72. Once upon time, I thought that was older. I don't think that I don't 
think that anymore. It seems really young. While initially he made a wonderful recovery from this catastrophic event, a slow decline set in with noticeably increased 
cognitive disabilities. By by 2012, not long into this process, he was diagnosed with dementia, and eventually this diagnosis was clarified as dementia with 
Lewy bodies. This form of dementia includes a buildup of plaque in the brain that mimics the effects of Parkinson's disease. Many of the elements that you would 
expect to manifest with this condition surfaced general confusion, loss of memory, sometimes seeing or experiencing things that were not present, et cetera. 
Slowly, he lost the ability to take care of his personal hygiene needs and very suddenly, in December of 2015, lost the ability to walk. And this necessitated 
his placement in a long term nursing home. Prior to this, my dad had exhibited a strong, strong feeling of displacement. He didn't find his current home familiar 
anymore and constantly sought to leave, to go home. Sometimes you just go. Wandering out of the home as well was scary at times. This behavior intensified in the 
nursing home. When, still mobile in his wheelchair, he spent a large part of each day wandering through the home. His ability to fully relate to others became 
limited because of his confused speech. And now, just a few years later, he actually spends most of his time sleeping and is no longer mobile. My mother visits 
with him every day. She actually pays for someone to go on days she can't go. She's a saint. And my brother and I visit at every opportunity. As most dementia 
patients, his general confusion is broken by remarkable moments of lucidity. However, these are very, very few and far between, similar to the experience of 
others in the room. I'm sure there are other significant people in my life that have developed this condition. My doctoral supervisor has the exact same diagnosis 
as my dad. And actually, one of my colleagues at Roberts had to retire just a couple of years ago in his 50s because of early onset dementia. So this is here, right? 
This is real, and this is part of our continual experience. So my father's condition, these other stories, they raise so many theological questions for me. How do we 
relate to God when we no longer remember who we are, when I can understand what is going around me, and even when I fail to understand myself? Well, I have been 
taught in my theological training to recognize at least some of the influence of dualistic, that is, mind, body, and individualistic atomistic thinking on 
theological formulation. The issue of dementia puts these issues in stark relief. If our sense of personhood is intimately connected to our ability to think 
as it is in the Cartesian philosophical anthropology, then dementia is a particularly nefarious condition because this condition limits our ability to think. 
And thus, with respect to cartesian dualism, it entails a loss of personhood. And even if we don't accept this Cartesian dualism, dementia does not leave us 
any better off with the volitional and effective aspects of the person. All of them are ravaged by this condition. So we're left with all kinds of questions 
regarding the function of basic theological concepts and practices. Is someone with advanced dementia able to respond to preventing grace, just to accept 
justifying faith and live a life of progressive sanctification? My impulse, honestly, is to say yes, but I don't know if it's just because I feel so connected 
to this now that I just want to say, of course, yes. I set for myself the challenge of saying, well, let's take the hardest one. Let's take perfection and see 
if we can understand what perfection might mean in the context of dementia and if we can make sense of it in some way. And honestly, this isn't something that 
Wesley talked about, but if we can faithfully extend Wesley here, I want to answer yes. So this is my attempt, right? So here's my thesis. Here's my thesis. 
Dementia does not exclude any Christian from all aspects of salvation and sanctification. However, it does mean that the experience of salvation and sanctification 
will be different for those with dementia. The experience of dementia means that community becomes crucial for the fulfillment of sanctification. And in fact, 
I would probably say that regardless of dementia or not. And so rather than considering entire sanctification as a state of perfection, we need to consider the 
impact of perfecting community. And that's my category I'm going to develop in the context of this paper, perfecting community. I'll show you the steps I take to 
get there. So this paper will proceed by briefly defining first Christian perfection and then dementia. Then, after arguing that our concept of personhood challenges 
our understanding of dementia, we will consider how new models for Christian perfection, how new models can expand our understanding of personhood. Finally, I will 
argue that we should adopt a new symbol of Christian perfection, namely perfecting community, that will make possible the potential of Christian perfection, even for 
those with advanced dementia. So first, perfection, and we've heard about this in a numerous paper stage, so I really don't tend to spend long on this at all, just 
a couple of points as a general summary, christian perfection can be defined as the state of being where love rules in the heart, such that the heart is entirely 
devoted to God. It is both a possibility and an expectation for Wesleyans that mature Christians will be perfected in love in this lifetime. This is nothing 
less than a state of holiness, which is, of course, why Christian perfection is also referred to his entire sanctification. Wesley refers to it this way he 
defines it in this sense the loving God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength. This implies that no wrong temper, none contrary to love, remains in the 
soul, and that all the thoughts, words and actions are governed by pure love. As we've heard multiple times today, there is a dynamic and progressive sense to 
Wesley's ideas such that I believe it's better to speak of perfecting love rather than perfect love, to speak of teleosis rather than perfectus right. This dynamic 
sense of development, in other words, to think of this as a state of becoming, not necessarily a state of being in that dynamic sense. In fact, perfection as a 
state of being is problematic because it distorts the dynamic nature of our relationships and applies a kind of unequivocal knowledge or unambiguous capacity to 
respond to God. Yet, I mean, those those who are sanctified in this way, there will be a qualitative difference that is expected for those who respond to God of 
this kind of yes. This difference grounds a new orientation that is directed properly towards God and provides the direction for growth and holiness. In light of 
this teleological interpretation, Mark Mann argues that we are perfect in the sense of being properly oriented toward our absolute goal in God such that our lives 
are thereafter formed and shaped by this orientation. The centrality of this doctrine to Methodist theology is widely recognized. Randy Maddox claims that Wesley 
believed God raised up Methodism specifically to teach this doctrine. The language of perfection always caused some confusion in the reception of this idea. All of 
us are deeply in tune, of course, with our own imperfections, so that it almost seems arrogant to claim perfection as a state of being. When disposal rose over this 
question of the nature of perfection in relation to sin, Wesley was quick to point out that perfection did not mean perfection of natural capabilities like knowledge, 
or freedom from natural limitations. In his plain account of Christian perfection, wesley clearly states that the perfect are not free from infirmities such as 
weakness or slowness of understanding, irregular quickness, or heaviness of imagination. Such another kind are impropriety of language and gracefulness of 
pronunciation. To which one might add a thousand nameless defects, either in conversation or behavior. From such infirmities as these, none are perfectly freed 
till their spirits return to God. And when responding to questions about his understanding of Christian perfection, wesley consistently declares that perfection 
in this sense does not mean anyone is free from infirmity, ignorance or mistake. In other words, it is possible in Wesley's understanding to be perfect and 
still be infirm and ignorant and mistaken, even to still be in need of atonement for mistakes of judgment and practice, for omissions shortcomings and defects. 
So for Wesley, you can be perfect and still suffer the limitations of being human, right? In a profound sense. All of these comments at least open the door to 
talking about Christian perfection and dementia together. Dementia clearly is an infirmity. My question still remains though, whether the disability that dementia 
creates is too great to allow for any deeper sanctification. So we'll move on to define dementia. When my father was diagnosed with dementia, we were given a 
document published by Group Health that included the following definition not this one, but a different one. Dementia is a disorder characterized by problems 
with memory and at least one other cognitive function learning, reasoning, language, spatial ability, orientation, and handling complex tasks. So this problems 
that are severe enough to interfere with the activities of daily living. This document is careful to distinguish dementia from memory loss and mild cognitive 
impairment that is consistent with aging. Thus, the normal elements of aging are distinguished from the more severe deficiencies that come with dementia. This 
definition corresponds to the standard definition that is given in the World Health Organization International Classification of Diseases, and this is that definition 
here, which is very helpful. Dementia is a syndrome due to disease of the brain, usually of a chronic or progressive nature, in which there is disturbance of 
multiple higher cortical functions, including memory, thinking orientation, comprehension, calculation, learning capacity, language and judgment. Consciousness 
is not clouded. The impairments of cognitive function are commonly accompanied and occasionally preceded by deterioration and emotional control, social behavior 
or motivation. The syndrome occurs in Alzheimer's disease, in Cerebrovascular disease, and in other conditions, primarily or secondarily affecting the brain. 
This classification, which is designed for the sake of pathology, right, for defining, for determining who has this condition, understands dementia as a mental 
defect that primarily affects cognition. When your cognitive abilities are significantly reduced and there is no other apparent reason for the disability, then 
you can be classed as having dementia. This definition also indicates that this cognitive malfunction will lead to other issues, emotional and social, that creates 
a web of problems. While these definitions are helpful and play an important role in giving structure and parameters for the helping professions, they are also 
significant for what they exclude. In his excellent book on this subject, Dementia Living in the Memories of God, John Swinton properly notes that definitions 
are not value neutral, they are often value forming. These definitions should cause us to ask questions about the assumptions that ground them and the implications 
that flow from them in the first place. Swinton points out that definitions like these are, by design and necessity, universal and emphasize the impact on typical 
patients, something is lost and something is gained. In this approach, what is gained is a language that enables medical professionals to offer precise diagnoses 
in order to construct appropriate treatment plans. Through this process, the condition is named and a plan can be formed to deal with it medically and culturally. 
This allows us to conceive of dementia as a brain condition with certain behavioral outcomes. What is lost in this definition is the social nature of the disease. 
Insofar as one's experience of dementia, of isolation, of loneliness, of malignant social positioning both create and exacerbate the condition. Most devastatingly, 
though, is the idea that dementia is slowly a neurological defect. Dementia itself, the word itself, means deprived of mind. We quickly come to the conclusion that 
having dementia means losing one's mind. And surely this is the great fear we experience in the face of this condition. I will cease to be me in the end. This 
approach, this pathological neurological approach assumes that the most important aspects of human experience are neurological and that dementia is primarily a 
neurological defect. This blinds us to the social realities implications of the experience of dementia. This idea, which most of us find utterly terrifying, raises 
so many questions. Primarily who am I if I can no longer remember, understand myself? Those closest to me immediately behind these questions of classification are 
models of what it means to be human. I have a chart here where I'm going to sort of follow through this chart here that I've created. In the modern dualistic 
Cartesian perspective, we are primarily thinking things, race cogatons, as he names it. And we're thinking things that bear some mysterious relation to that 
which is extended through space. John Locke likewise claims that a human being is a thinking, intelligent being that has reason and reflection and can consider 
itself as a self, the same thinking thing in different times and places which it does only by that consciousness which is inseparable from thinking and as it 
seems to me to be essential to it. This particular kind of anthropological dualism emerges in the modern era with Cartesian philosophy. If we are truly 
rescagatan's thinking things, if this defines what we mean by personhood, then it is clear that those who are intellectually deficient are actually less than persons.
It is this exact problem out of modern philosophy, I think, that creates all of our issues with beginning of life and end of life matters, right where we imagine 
that there are humans that we can say are not persons, right? Which is bizarre, but it comes from here. I believe it comes from here. I have a great example from 
Peter Singer. I don't know if you know. Peter Singer is a utilitarian philosopher who really believes that you can clearly define some humans as not persons.
He's all for radical forms of euthanasia, right? Until I just have this nice story until his mother got sick, the end of life. And he paid all this money to keep 
her alive. In the interview he said, I don't have any clue why I'm doing it. It's a waste of money, but I can't seem to let her go. I mean, this kind of cognitive 
dissonance between his philosophical ideas and his life which I think has to happen out of this perspective. Clearly this definition of personhood is limited. 
There are two distinct but related forms of reductionism at work here. First, Cartesian mind body dualism reduces the person to merely a thinking thing. That's 
primarily what you are. And secondly, atomistic individualism places the self rather than the community. The self, including self consciousness at the center of 
human experience. It results in a disembodied and socially disconnected conception of the person. And seeing Christian doctrines through this lens creates distortion 
as well. For example, it makes belief a function of my cognitive understanding of God's nature rather than a relationship of trust. It reduces the importance of 
my embodiedness and teaches that there is, you know, that it is my soul, merely my soul which is being prepared for an eternity with God. More of a sanctification 
becomes a radically individualistic concept. In this idea of personhood. I am made holy through the work of the Spirit in me. Sanctification is not for the body, 
but the body may help the practice of holiness or the community, although holiness serves the community. But sanctification is for myself and my relationship to God. 
All of that, I'm claiming, is a distortion. The danger of this kind of reductionistic thinking, especially for spiritual formation, is that it manifests in what Martin 
Boomer refers to as I it relationships treating other subjects as if they were objects. You are only real to me insofar as you are useful to me. I thou relationships 
are the key to genuine personhood. I thou relationships are grounded in real connection with the other for the sake of the other, treating other subjects as subjects 
in themselves. However, along with Boomer, we must acknowledge that the primary I vow relationship is always first and foremost with God. So rethinking perfection then 
trying to rethink perfection in his book I highly recommend this book to you. In his book Perfecting Grace, Mark H. Mann argues that the Wesleyan doctrine perfection 
needs to be better reconciled with contemporary understanding of theological anthropology which emphasizes the embodied nature of human beings and their social reality.
This way of seeing human nature has been growing and is recognized by some as more consistent with the Hebrew worldview as opposed to the Greek worldview. To paraphrase 
Genesis two seven we are animated earth, terra, anamata. As Augustine even himself says in City of God. In other words, to be human is to be embodied. At the same time, 
you cannot simply reduce humanity to its material nature. But it is not clear that we exist apart from our embodied nature. One profound implication of this way of 
thinking of human nature is that our spiritual development is very much dependent on our social relatedness. It is our life together in community that forms us into 
mature and virtuous people rather than some disembodied mystical process. That's what we do together. Man further recognizes that our sense of self is complex and 
exists in dialectical tension between the social and psychological forces that shape human nature and our enduring sense of self. While human beings are dynamically 
shaped by their relationships and various aspects of their personal and social worlds, generally speaking human beings are able to weave these experiences together 
into a unified sense of self, a transcendent individuality that gives integrity to the person. When defining human nature, man suggests four linked polarities. 
He says that human beings are united centers of multiple dimensions the moral, the physical, the social. Human beings are fully individual and yet come to their 
fruition in relation. Human beings are fundamentally open and dynamic, but always within larger structures. And human beings are a profound combination of a given 
and embedded nature that also possess a genuine freedom. This way of conceptualizing human nature requires significant adjustment for understanding spiritual formation. 
And here's a quote from man do I have this? No, I don't have that yet. That one's coming later. So there's a quote from man. He says, indeed, so deeply are 
individuals embedded socially that it is highly problematic to consider holiness solely a matter of a person's individual relatedness to God and others. No doubt 
individual holiness is important, but it is only part of the picture. Not only are individuals shaped by their communities, institutions, cultures and societies, 
but habits of sin and holiness can become embedded in the practices, systems and structures of those same communities, institutions, cultures and societies. Man 
concludes that our ability to be spiritually formed will be somewhat dependent on our psychological and our social conditioning. Right? It's this embeddedness that 
leads to this formative idea. So when it comes to the doctrine of Christian perfection, man proposes that we begin to use new symbols which can unpack this doctrine in 
relation to a more dynamic and social understanding of human nature. Thus, alongside the more traditional symbols of perfecting love and renewal of the Emago day, 
man suggests additional symbols which correspond to various aspects of human maturity. I think I have these here. Let's see, I had these here. I'm going to come 
back to that quote in a minute. So this is so this is Man's argument in his book, in the last latter chapter of his book that we need new symbols of what perfection 
actually looks like and we can distinguish different stages of perfection according to life stages. It's a really powerful idea. So that thinking about infancy, 
childhood, adolescence, adulthood, et cetera, we can think of perfecting hope for an infant. We can think of perfecting will for a child, perfecting purpose, right, 
and competence for teenagers, for adolescents, perfecting fidelity for adulthood, perfecting care and perfecting wisdom for those later in life. And this is really 
embracing this idea that what Wesley must have meant is something dynamic and progressive. We were talking about this a couple of papers ago, I think, in a way, and 
I think this actually man actually spins this out. So it's the last two that are particularly relevant for our purposes today. Perfecting care is an extension of 
perfecting love, while perfecting love already orients us towards others in a profound way, such that our sense of holiness corresponds to our service, perfecting 
care broadens the scope of our regard. Care is this is a quote from man care is inclusive of the orientation and scope of love, but also tends to be parental and to 
take into account the larger context, situation and world of which individuals are apart. Thus, perfecting care is oriented towards the whole. This means institutions 
and systems as well as individuals. And then finally, perfecting wisdom is an extension of the symbol of caring. It is the wisdom in the face of death to affirm the 
value of one's own life, and more to affirm the value of all life in creation itself. In general, I believe that man has helped us to understand how this doctrine 
might be lived out in a contemporary context. I've learned a great deal from his work, but I'm struck that at the end, holiness is still about me and about my 
relationships to others, despite his focus on the fundamental nature of our embeddedness and relatedness. If this is truly the case, then it means that holiness in 
this regard is impossible for people with dementia who no longer have this same sense of self. And maybe this is really the case, maybe I'm grasping, but I want to 
propose another symbol in addition to the symbols that man has proposed to extend this idea and to really extend well beyond what Wesley intended. And this is a new 
symbol then, the idea of perfecting community. So this is where I had this quote from John. I'll come back to that in a moment. But here's, this is this quote from 
John Swinton the important thing to see is that any diminution of the self is first and foremost a diminution of community. The self is an individual and a communal 
process, not an individual in her possession or state of mind. A person does not lose herself. Her community loses her. If this is so, then dementia is much more than 
a neurological disease which occurs within the brains of discrete individuals. Dementia is a communal and relational condition that involves, but cannot be defined 
by neurological decline. If we take Wesley seriously that perfection does not mean overcoming infirmity, it seems that the possibility of a form of perfection 
includes infirmity even dementia, right? If it is possible to conceive a perfecting community as a symbol of Christian perfection, then two elements will be necessary. 
First, the orientation of care will be from the community to the one with dementia. Thus, rather than perfecting the capacity to love. The capacity to love this 
aspect of the doctrine will consider perfecting the capacity to receive love. Perfecting the capacity to receive love. Advanced dementia includes a profound reliance 
on others for all basic bodily and social needs. There can be grace in receiving at this stage of life. Secondly, perfecting community will necessarily include 
remembrance. When we have forgotten who we are and whose we are, we are profoundly reliant on our community to remember. For us. This begins with God and the 
subtitle for Swinton's book on dementia is Living in the Memories of God. Once again, Swinton writes to suggest that God remembers persons with advanced dementia 
is not a palliative avoidance of the real truth that they have lost their identity. Neither is it an abandonment of these people by God in the present. Quite the 
opposite. It is a firm statement that God is with them, God is for them and that God is acting with them and for them in the present as they move towards God's future. 
In a similar vein, Rosalie Hudson writes when the Spirit AIDS our remembrance, we are truly remembered. This signifies profound hope for those who are demented, 
who may now in Christ become remented reminded, remembred. Think about that remembred part membered in the community again, right? This is a form of holy grace that 
can dynamically shape someone with dementia. I have a little bit on process thought here, but I'm going to I'm going to skip that. We must also rely on the community 
to remember for the one who cannot remember anymore. And strangely enough, this maybe not even strange. This remembering isn't necessarily verbal, but it comes 
through bodily presence and through connectedness. When I'm with you and continue to relate to you as father, as teacher, as colleague, rather than the one who 
does not know who they are, I'm remembering and living what they have forgotten. Corporate memory of this type should come naturally to Christians after all the 
central sacrament and rituals. Precisely this experience of corporate memory, right? This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me. This cup is 
the new covenant in my blood. Do this as often as you drink in remembrance of me. Passover for our Jewish brothers and sisters is likewise a communal remembrance 
of God's liberation of his people from Egypt already well practiced and gathering together. To practice remembrance, the community is called to share in the 
collective remembrance of what God has done in each other's lives, to tell the stories of shared experience and continue to practice the rituals like communion 
that provide a shared common experience. Collective memory is an essential aspect of this life together, right? I'm suggesting that that shared remembrance together 
can actually confer grace, can extend the symbol of perfection to reception. As I'm sure many of you know, dementia patients can show remarkable acidity at surprising 
moments. Here is the story of one of those moments. My parents are transplants in their community and as such, joined a church outside of their familiar denomination, 
which their denomination didn't have a church in their town. And while they have developed profound friendships in this church, it is safe to say they remain on the 
fringes of the central community. And while we have asked numerous times for the church to come and share communion with my dad, the elders have actually only come 
twice. And he's been there for like it's really sad. He's been there like four years and they've only come twice in that time to share communion with him, which 
I'm extremely disappointed about. But my dad, when you're with him, when you talk to him, if he's having a good day, he'll respond, but almost always it's mumbling 
or it's the wrong words. Like, he'll be trying to say something, but he doesn't remember the right words anymore, so it'll be all confused. And I wasn't there. I 
wish I was there this day and my mum told me about it. But when they were sharing together the holy meal, they also shared a time of communal prayer. And when the 
person leading the prayer paused at the end of communion and said, let us pray, it was to everybody's shock of the room, we started crying. My dad was the one who 
started to pray. It was the shared ritual, the shared moment. Right. And this is a time where he hadn't said coherent words for such a long time and was able to 
actually lead the prayer. Right? Yeah. It was a moment of profound grace and that it was connected to communion. That's not incidental. That's key. Right.
Grace was manifest in my father's community. My father's holiness in this moment was in receiving love and care that even allowed him a participatory element. 
So in this case, the relational moment spurred the receptivity to grace. My hope is, however, that even when that receptivity is not immediately evident, that God 
ministers through his spirit to those such as my dad in such a way that entire sanctification is still possible. My mum visits my dad every day and surrounds him 
as best she can in a community of loving grace. Wesley's famous comment on the social nature of holiness seems to imply that holiness happens in community. What 
I'm suggesting is that in special circumstances, like dementia, it in fact is the holiness of the community that confers holiness on the individual. And as I 
thought more and more about this, I'm not even sure that it's so special. I'm not sure that isn't just how it's always supposed to work, that it's always that 
relatedness. It's always that relatedness.That's what Wesley was trying to point us towards. And the holiness of the individual consists in receiving this grace 
even if they do not know it, insofar as his openness continues, recognizing that often it will not appear so. Entire sanctification for those of. The dementia is a 
real possibility. It's not a guarantee. I'm not trying to say that everybody has this or anything like that. I mean, dementia can really it can be horrible, right? 
And it can expose those deepest elements of yourself that you've hid. People with dementia can become incredibly violent. It can cut you open. But what I want to 
maintain is that it's still a possibility in these terms for this kind of perfecting love. There you go.


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