I shall never forget the faculty meeting.
Ottawa Benny, the then dean of the seminary,
introduced me as the first occupant of the brand new chair of Wesley Studies.
One faculty member looked a scance at me, unable to disguise his aversion, if not to
me personally, then at least to the Wesley chair and everything it held out.
He turned to Rennie, the dean, and sniff superciliously, does this mean that
Tyndale Seminary will be moving in a Wesleyan direction?
With his characteristic good humor that
defused nascent hostility, rennie shot back, Why not?
For then we can all get the second blessing.
Now, the extent to which second blessing
is characteristic of Wesley and his book is I will leave you to deliberate.
In any case, I rejoiced that the dean of the seminary, a Presbyterian, no less, was
undisguisedly delighted with the theological breadth and the spiritual
riches of new fairwood lend tyndale University.
Already Tyndale's board of governors had
approved the necessary changes to Tyndale's Statement of Faith.
Heretofore, the statement of Faith had endorsed a predestinarian view of the
security of believers, denying the possibility of apostasy.
Now, however, it read, believers are kept by the power of God, a New Testament
statement nobody upholding scriptural normativity could ever dispute.
At this point, the trustees of the chair
gladly announced that the chair would be housed.
Henceforth at Tyndale.
The alternative, in case Tyndale had been unwilling to alter its statement of faith,
was Wycliffe College, University of Toronto.
While the location of the chair at Tyndale
was now formally a feta complete, I continued to find untoward put downs of
Wesley in informal settings such as the faculty lunchroom.
Wesley, it was suggested, may have been a
remarkable evangelist, but he was surely a theological lightweight, no better than a
second rate thinker compared to the giants of the 16th century Reformation.
Apparently overlooked in these informal comparisons was the fact that I was the
only faculty member with a doctorate in the 16th century Reformation.
No longer could I sit by and allow John Wesley to be defamed.
I decided good naturedly, of course,
to bring down the hammer at our next noon hour confab, I pointed
out that Wesley had written 35 tomes, including a textbook on logic.
In addition to his native English, he knew
thoroughly eight other languages hebrew, Greek, Latin, French, German.
Phenomenal ability in German, Dutch, Italian and Spanish.
In truth, he knew them so very thoroughly
that he wrote a grammar textbook in seven of them.
Wesley I observed read more comfortably in more languages than Martin Luther, John
Calvin, Philip Malankson, Jonathan Edwards, Joseph Butler or Emmanuel Kant.
Not least, Wesley was a superb patristic scholar, having studied at Oxford in the
twilight of a remarkable period of patristic scholarship.
Now, lest my seminary lunchroom companion sought Wesley to be one more ivory tower
theology professor, remote from human anguish, I went on to inform them that
when Wesley was 81, he was found begging door to door in winter, walking day after
day through ice cold slush, garnering money for his beloved poor.
Having raised 200 pounds, he stopped on
the fourth day because he had all the money his poor people needed.
Of course not.
He had stopped rather because he was ill.
He was suffering, he wrote in his journal,
from a violent flux, which is 18th century English for uncontrollable diarrhea.
He had stopped only because he was too sick and too shaky to continue.
By now, of course, I was in full flight, and nothing could deflect me from
extolling that toughness of early day Method preachers in the UK, to be sure,
but more pointedly in the New World, where life was far more dangerous.
With all the kindness I could muster, I
pointed out that Anglicans and Presbyterians thrived on the eastern
seaboard of the 13 colonies, but they lacked the flexibility and, above all, the
hard nose toughness to thrive on the frontier after all.
Now get this of the first 737 Methodist
preachers in the New World, 50% half of them were dead before they were 32.
Thirds of them didn't live long enough to serve twelve years.
In other words, ordination to the Methodist ministry was a death sentence.
What befell them?
They got lost in the woods and they died of exposure, or they were caught in a
forest fire, or they were swept away in a flash flood, or they froze to death, or
they were slain by those threatened by the Methodist Gospel and its implications.
Thanks to these preachers, 50% of them dead before they were 30 methodism
exploded in a new world, especially on the frontier.
In this regard, I often recall the story of Thomas Ware, 1800, an itinerant
Methodist preacher on the frontier in early day America and Come Thy Fall.
On one occasion, Ware needed accommodation.
He asked a young settler couple if they
would share their one room cabin with him for the night.
The cut settler couple said no.
In his journal, Ware later wrote I looked
at the man and said smiling, that would depend on our comparative strength.
Meaning, do you really think you can lick me?
Ware was allowed to stay the night.
I continued to hear that whereas the Reformational tradition had a profound
understanding of sin, wesley had a shallow grasp of sin.
Superficial armenian that he was.
By the way, Wesley's theology was set before he had read one word of Armenias,
and Wesley's theology never reflected Armenia's Aristotelian scholasticism.
Thomas Aquinas being the most frequently
referenced thinker in Armenias, I knew I had to acquaint my skeptical colleagues
with Wesley's understanding of human depravity.
At this point, I spoke of Charles Wesley's tract 1742.
Awake, thou that sleepest.
Charles speaks of the sinner's supineness
or utter spiritual inertia and nonsensience.
He speaks of the sinner's indolence in the
medieval sense of sloth, the condition of those who do not grasp because they cannot
grasp their appointment as children of God and cannot grasp it inasmuch as they are
sin blinded, not merely sin impaired, and therefore ignorant of their predicament as
sinners before the one who does not tolerate sin.
Charles speaks in the same tract of
stupidity, not in our 21st century sense of feeble minded, but in the 18th century
sense of cognitive stupor and volitional torper.
He speaks of sinners as insensible of their real condition.
In other words, one of the worst features of our depravity is that it renders us
wholly unaware of our depravity and its fateful outcome before the Holy God.
Now, to make sure no one misunderstands
him on this point, charles insists that we are not only spiritually blind and numb,
we are also corrupt our true to faction, making us loathsome.
In other words, not only does sin break
God's heart, not only does sin provoke God's anger, sin also.
And here Charles is one with brother Martin Luther sin arouses God's disgust.
Sinners are an abomination to God where, according to Scripture, that which is an
abomination delugma is that which God cannot withstand.
And everywhere in Scripture, what is an abomination to God, God destroys.
Perhaps I should moderate my severity
concerning those who dismiss Wesley as theological fluff.
For as recently as 1998, when I was in
Seoul, Korea, for the meetings of the International Congress on Calvin Research,
professor Iko Oberman, a Reformation scholar without peer, emphasized that
Reformation scholars must maintain the most rigorous scholarship.
Or else, he expostulated, we shall end up no better than Methodists.
My informal lunchroom proffering suspended
forever any suggestion that Wesley was a spiritual dilettant who had failed to
endorse the Reformer's understanding of the nature, scope, and arrears of sin.
As the first occupant of the chair, and
therefore the person who would determine the ethos of the undertaking for the next
several years, I knew that initially I had to magnify the theology of John Wesley.
As often as I heard the chair spoken of even a tipdale, as a chair of Wesleyan
Studies, I made the correction it's a chair of Wesley studies.
For too long, I insisted, wesley has been regarded, not least by Methodist people,
as inferior to the major thinkers in the Christian tradition.
Overlooked here is the fact that Wesley is
the most important Church of England theologian since Cranmer and the most
important Anglican thinker in the 18th century.
A theologian who was unquestionably
Protestant and therefore belongs to the Western or Latin Church.
I deemed it my first responsibility to slay the notion that compared to the
Reformed or Lutheran or Roman Catholic traditions, the Methodist tradition is
theologically unsubstantial and intellectually efficient.
In fact, Wesley expected unrealistically,
perhaps that his lay preachers like him would study 5 hours per day.
He maintained the most important subject for the preacher to study was Scripture.
What else would you expect him to say?
But after that, the most important subject for the preacher was logic.
Because a self contradicted preacher will
never utter a coherent message, and the preacher's utterance ought to reflect the
logical consistency of God's action and address.
All theology has to be logically rigorous,
or else it doesn't help the wouldbe preacher.
It can only confuse the hearer, and it can't be communicated in any sense.
Then what theology informed Wesley and
will continue to inform those who bear his name?
Wesley was thoroughly acquainted with 17th century Anglican thought.
He read the 16th century Continental Reformers.
He cherished the English reformers.
Ridley Latimer Tyndale cranmer.
The lattermost book of Common Prayer, Wesley insisted, was the finest liturgical
vehicle that the Church Catholic had ever seen.
Regularly I point out to my students
passages in Wesley where the vocabulary and the word patterns and Wesley's
theology come straight out of Calvin's Institutes.
It should be noted here that Wesley always insisted that he agreed without
reservation with the Genevan reformer's understanding of total depravity, and he
said he was only a hyp from Kelvin on several other points.
It was well Wesley heard read at worship
the preface to Luther's commentary in Romans that he came to face.
It was while Charles was reading the text
of Luther's Commentary on Galatians that Methodism's major poet came to face.
When Wesley published his Christian
Library, a 50 book collection he edited and expected Methodists to read.
32 of the 50 volumes were authored by Puritan clerk.
Wesley's studies at Oxford found him meticulously apprised at the Patristic
Scholarship, for which Oxford at that time was famous.
Wesley knew the Church fathers thoroughly, and although a son of the Western Church,
he was critical of Augustine, the chief Western thinker, always preferring the
Eastern fathers, whose outstanding representative was Athenasius.
Even though Wesley was sharp in his criticism of what he observed concerning
the Eastern Orthodox Church in London, England, of his time, he remained indebted
to outstanding Eastern fathers such as Ephraim.
The syrium died 373, and Mercarius died 391.
In fact, Mercarius was the Eastern thinker
whose spiritual homilies underlie Wesley's understanding of sanctification.
Then is Wesley's theology a hodgepodge, little more than a grab bag through which
he runs his fingers and waits to see whatever his hand picks up?
On the contrary, there is a profound,
coherent theology that Christians who bear his name have found compelling.
It's a theology that admits many
ingredients just because it disdains no one.
Nevertheless, it is stamped ultimately by
Wesley's genius as he forged a theology that, as he maintained and those after him
have acknowledged, is formed, informed and normed by the substance and the logic of
what he called the general tenor of Scripture.
For instance, although some biblical texts might be read as supporting
predestination, the general tenor of Scripture may not be read in this way.
Neither does the general tenor permit us
to deny that God's mercy is over all his works.
An eternal decree of reprobation thereby
ruled out the general tenor of Scripture, forbids us to narrow the idea that god
desires all to be saved to God desires some.
Wesley's theology is Catholic little c, meaning non sectarian at its center.
He upholds the three grand doctrines
without which the Gospel is neither needed nor effective, namely, original sin,
justification by faith and holiness, present inward salvation.
He endorses the Vincent canon.
That is what has been believed by all Christians at all times, in all places.
To be sure, Wesley wrote no tome of systematic theology, but neither did
Luther, and no one disputes Luther's singularity and profundity.
Nevertheless, Wesley thought
systematically, as an examination of his corpus on any topic shows.
Unquestionably.
However, we remember Wesley today cheap out of his evangelism while he was
indisputably the greatest Anglican thinker of the 18th century.
We remember him today primarily because he was an evangelist.
Contemporary evangelism, however, appears to differ from his in several respects.
Our concern was evangelistic techniques, programs, and ten.
Effective steps he would regard as
manipulation at best and unbelief at worst.
Wesley's evangelism presupposes three pillars predicament penalty, provision.
Humankind's predicament is bleak.
The unrepentant sinner, he says, abides in death, lost, dead, damned.
Already.
There is nothing in Wesley of modernity's psychologizing of the human predicament.
You know, we feel guilty but aren't guilty.
Neither is there any existentializing of the human predicament.
That is, through our sin we have alienated
ourselves from God, from others, and from self.
Wesley insists, however, that we are alienated from God, from others and from
self, not on account of our sin, but on account of God's judgment on our sin.
We haven't sashade or wandered out of Eden.
We were driven out.
We were expelled by a judicial act of God.
And the penalty for our primal disobedience is God's condemnation.
Such condemnation, said Wesley, isn't reserved for the future.
It's operative.
Now.
The day of judgment will merely render
undeniable that truth of which the condemned are culpably ignorant.
Now, in light of the foregoing predicament
and penalty, the divinely robbed provision is the atonement.
Before sinners can repent and return home,
provision must be made for them, wherein the barricade to their return is removed.
Before we can be reconciled to God, god must be reconciled to us.
It is little wonder.
Charles Wesley Exalts We sang it his blood atoned for all our race and
sprinkles now the throne of grace my God is reconciled.
His pardoning voice I hear he owns before his child I can no longer fear.
When I recited Charles, him let me just sang it.
In a gathering of people who claim to be Wesleyans, I met fierce objection.
We need to be reconciled to God, I was told, because we are estranged from God.
But it is unthinkable that God would need to be reconciled to us.
Doesn't he love us eternally?
As gently as I could, I replied to the objector one god does love us.
In truth, he loves us so very much that he refuses to confirm us in our sinful.
Disobedience.
It is never, never loving to confirm sinners in their sin.
Two, as sinners we are indeed estranged
from God, but not because sin results in estrangement from God.
We are estranged from God because our sin has mobilized God's judgment.
And until God's judgment has been dealt with, that is, until his righteous anger,
his holy hostility to sinners, is dealt with, we can't be reconciled to him.
Three in the cross of Jesus. God incarnate.
God's wrath is averted at God's initiative.
That is, God is reconciled to us
now, and only now may we and must we be reconciled to Him.
Now and only now can the Gospel
invitation, the Evangelistic summons, come home, be issued
apart from the Cross, that act of God by which God reconciles himself to the world.
God loves the world in John's understanding being the sum total of
disobedient humankind tacitly organized in its hostility to God.
Apart from the Cross, as, first, God's reconciliation of himself to us, there is
no ground for or possibility of our being reconciled to God.
Apart from the crosses, god's
reconciliation of himself to us, there is no home for sinners to go home to.
My god is reconciled.
Charles Wesley is oceans deeper than his detractors.
First, Charles speaks of the human
predicament who hath done the dreadful deed, hath crucified my God, curses on his
guilty head, who spilt that precious blood.
Then Charles speaks of the human penalty
worthy is the wretch to die self condemned.
Alas, is he.
I have sold my savior, I have nailed him to the tree.
And then, typically, Charles concludes
with God's breathtaking incomprehensible, ever merciful provision.
Yet they wroth I cannot fear, thou gentle
bleeding lamb, by thy judgment I am clear healed, by stripes I am thou.
For me accursed was made, that I might indeed be blessed.
Thou hast my full ransom paid, and in thy wounds I rest.
Methodist hymnity, we Should Always Be
aware, sings about the atonement more than anything else.
Have you noticed that repentance and faith are impossible?
Apart from God's propitiation, any so
called evangelism that denies or overlooks this much is shallow and ineffective.
It is little wonder that when people came to faith, charles Wesley
characteristically announced they received the atonement.
Make no mistake, the Gospel that early day
method is cherished, eagerly embraced by spirit, sensitized hearers was not
welcomed in the sitting rooms of ecclesiastical officialdom.
Indeed, wherever Whitfield and Wesley brothers went, they met shallow,
ineffective, and obstructive fellow clergy.
In September 1740, George Whitfield, a lifelong Anglican, glowing with Methodist
light and warmth, whitfield arrived in Boston.
There were five Anglican parishes in the city.
All five denied Whitfield access to their pulpits, whereupon Whitfield went outside
on Boston Common and he preached to 20,000 people.
One month later, october 1740, whitfield went to New York City.
There were ten Anglican parishes in New York.
All ten barred clergy.
All ten clergy barred Whitfield from their pulpit, whereupon he spoke outdoors to
huge gatherings, as he had done a month earlier in Boston.
Whitfield will never be forgotten, and his name will ever remain fragment.
The five clergy in Boston and the ten clergy in New York City who thought
themselves and their anemic dribble superior to Whitfield.
Can any person in this room name me one?
C. S.
Lewis insisted that Jesus was kind,
compassionate, caring, sensitive, truthful, merciful, even self sacrificial.
Nevertheless, said Lewis, there was one thing jesus, our Lord, never was nice.
Anyone who reads the written Gospels with even one eye open finds our Lord endlessly
sympathetic with sinning, suffering people, whether victimized by others or
self victimized at the same time as our Lord's.
Public ministry always has a sharp edge to it, a laser like penetration.
And all of this articulated so very
pithily and pointedly as to be unforgettable.
Their Wesley brothers were one with their master in this regard.
As the evangelical revival gained
momentum, it threatened ecclesiastical officialdom.
Since church bureaucrats I don't care what denomination, church bureaucrats are
always rendered nervous by what they cannot control or co opt.
John Wesley was summoned to appear before hostile bishops.
When told that his theology was unanglicate, especially his notion of
Christian perfection, he knew how to handle the accusation.
Did you receive Holy Communion this morning prior to arraigning me before you?
He asked his Episcopal interrogators.
Of course they had.
And did you first repeat the colic for Holy Communion?
That went without saying.
Would you mind repeating it with me?
Almighty God, unto whom all hearts be
open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid, cleanse the thoughts of
our hearts by the inspiration of Thy Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love Thee
and worthily magnify Thy Holy Name through Christ our Lord.
Now, when you prayed these words earlier
today, continued Wesley, fearlessly, did you mean them?
Of course. They had meant them.
Then, said Wesley, why do you fault me for holding out to my people a Christian
perfection, a sanctification neither more nor less than self forgetful, self
abundant love to God and neighbor when you prayed as much for yourself?
Tell me, he said, what is unanglicate about my notion of Christian perfection?
A single minded, unimpeded love when you
implore God for precisely this every time you celebrate or receive Holy Communion.
Wesley could have added that John Calvin, no less.
Calvin had insisted 200 years earlier that the only way for Christians to avoid
backsliding, said Calvin, was to go on unto perfection.
On another occasion, the Bishop of London summoned Charles Wesley to appear before
him and articulate the substance, ethos and trajectory of the Methodist movement.
Charles complied.
Before dismissing Charles, the Bishop of
London said, I trust you don't think, but by asking you to explain what you and your
movement are about, I am thereby granting my approval.
Whereupon Charles reposted, and I hope you
don't stink, my Lord Bishop, that by complying with your request.
I am seeking your approval.
The Wesley brothers, like their Lord
before them, were many things to many people, but they were never nice.
By the way, just in passing, I want to
remind you that in many evil English, nice meant stupid.
Throughout my occupancy of the Wesley
chair, I told every class that I remain persuaded that Wesley needs to be owned
for what he is in himself, namely, the ecumenical figure who can do
ever so much to bridge the Eastern and the Western Churches unquestionably.
Wesley is Protestant and therefore Western.
The Western Church, including both the Protestant and the Roman Catholic.
Wesley always maintained the Book of Common Prayer was thoroughly Protestant.
In fact, it has a Calvinist ring to it, hasn't it?
And the Church of England was Protestant.
Anglo Catholicism, the predominant expression of Anglicanism in Canada today,
didn't assert itself until the rise of the Oxford movement in the 19th century.
Wesley maintained that Article 17, the 39 articles being normative for Anglican,
article 17 of Predestination and Election, admitted ambiguity.
And because the article was
ambiguous, it could be read in a manner that didn't presuppose a twofold decree of
election and reprobation, namely, eternal election to life and therefore
before the believer was born or even conceived, and eternal reprobation to
eternal loss, and therefore before the unbeliever could have sinned.
Wesley chose to read Article 17 in a manner that didn't
contradict his scorching criticisms of Reformed predestination.
Article Eleven concerning justification by
faith, on the other hand, admitted no ambiguity at all.
Therefore, said Wesley, anglicanism was
committed unreservedly to the Protestant solafetic justification by faith alone.
Anglicanism, he said, is Protestant and Protestant only at the same time.
Wesley is a Western Church thinker who leans farther east than anyone else.
For instance, while the Western Church
massively emphasized original guilt as a consequence of original sin, you people
are so guilty, you don't know how guilty you are.
Wesley, while never denying that sinners are guilty before God, preferred to
emphasize the Eastern Church's insistence on original sin as the introduction of
death and corruption and the loss of the Spirit's immediate presence.
In the same vein, while Wesley agreed with
the West's Protestant avowal of justification by faith and the doctrine's
attendant juridical features, he agreed with the East's greater contention that
the main strand in Christianity isn't juridical, it's restorative.
And whereas Protestant Scholasticism,
especially in the century following the Reformation, likes to speak of believers
living in a state of grace, wesley couldn't stand the vocabulary of state.
He objected with the east that the problem
with the state of grace is that it's static.
Believers, said Wesley, live in the
ongoing dynamic of grace as their life and Christ's life interpenetrate in a mutual
indwelling that finds believers living ever more intimately with their Lord.
However, lest we think Wesley naive concerning the East's emphasis on the
restorative nature of grace, wesley maintained the east to have
understated the christological basis of grace.
Grace isn't a substance, a thing, a dollop.
Grace isn't a substance to be discussed that's uncreated or created.
Grace, rather, is always and everywhere
the effectual presence of the living Lord Jesus Christ.
While rightly appreciating the necessary
polemical element in the Wesley's my address being a trifle polemical, we
mustn't lose sight of the downbeat in their ministry and mission, the base note
that reverberates throughout their outward articulation and organization just because
it lies ever so close to their inward conviction and experience.
I speak now of their concern for holiness or present inward salvation.
Tirelessly, Wesley insisted that God had
raised that methodism to spread scriptural holiness throughout the land.
He had profoundly come to see that
holiness is the preoccupation of Scripture.
I agree.
I am one with my theological ancestor.
I have long been convinced that the general tenor wesley's expression of
Scripture is holiness, the holiness of God and the holiness of God's people.
I've long been convinced that Scripture
cover to govern reaffirms God's holiness in the wake of our denying it and
reestablishes our holiness in the wake of our contradicting it.
As sinners, we deny God's holiness, god's
sheer uncompromisable inimitable Godness, whereupon God reasserts it and as sinners
we repudiate our own holiness, whereupon God reestablishes it.
In this regard I have insisted in every course I have taught that the root
commandment my expression, the root commandment in Scripture is Leviticus 19
two and parallels you shall be holy as I, the Lord your God, am holy.
And in every class I have taught, I have pointed out, as our puritan friends remind
us, that all God's commands are covered promises.
That is, all God's commands may be read
and must be read also as promise you shall be holy.
Contemporary Christians always rightly
hear as command but wrongly fail to hear as accompanying promise.
Not only does God insist that his people
must be holy, god also guarantees that his people will be holy.
One day you and I will appear before him without spotter blemish.
Rightly apprehending the substance and
logic of Scripture, wesley consistently pointed to holiness that of God and that
of his people as the Arizona of his movement.
Yet Wesley magnified the theme of holiness for another reason.
Namely, he had noticed that where the doctrine was held up, the people in the
Methodist societies knew and enjoyed a genuine deliverance from sin's grip.
Where the doctrine was neglected, the same people may have been assured of
forgiveness, relief of sin's guilt, but they remained unreleased from sin's grip.
What is the point of being relieved of
sin's guilt if sin's power is undiminished?
Wesley had noticed that in his communities where the inculcation of holiness was
neglected, the people pathetically remained sin habituated.
Not to put too fine an edge on it, for how long would an Alcoholics Anonymous
group last if each meeting began with the speaker seeking we are certainly glad to
see all of you here tonight, we want you to know you're always welcome.
And by the way, no one in this group has
ever been rented contentedly, sober, Wesley had observed that where released
from sin's, power wasn't at the forefront of his communities.
Those communities withered
Wesley announced to his people god can do something with sin beyond forgiving it.
What specifically can God do?
Charles Wesley announced he breaks the power of canceled that is, forgiven sin.
He sets the prisoner free.
Isn't any gospel so called, that can't undo addiction, ultimately useless?
Isn't a gospel that proffers forgiveness, but doesn't effect deliverance?
No gospel at all?
We are fond of singing Sunday by Sunday.
He can break every fetter, can he?
If not, why not?
If not which?
Not?
In his understanding of holiness.
Wesley wasn't concerned to defend himself
in an abstract argument about doctrine that is abstract by definite.
His insistence rather was on practical theology, as his heart broke for
habituated people whose last hope was released in this life.
For this reason and this reason alone, he maintained it was nothing less than cruel
to pronounce limits to God's deliverance in this life.
Of course, all Christians are going to be freed definitively in the Escaton.
Wesley, however, refused to proffer as spiritual counsel wait until death.
We should note that all deliverance group
alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Porn Addicts Anonymous, all these groups
survive for one reason realistically, they hold out hope for deliverance.
Now, all's well that ends.
And I want to conclude my address of my
vision for Tyndale's chair of Wesley Studies.
The first place, without losing sight of
the profundities the chair was designed to uphold already expounded, I envision the
chair to Bendale's Tyndale University's locus of Ecumenical Conversation.
While always convinced of his own theological tradition, wesley appreciated
the contribution of others within the church catholic, for instance.
While he never hesitated to speak of the Romish delusion
and its theological deficits, at the same time he published the works
admittedly edited of eight Roman Catholics from the Counter Reformation.
So highly did he esteem their spiritual discipline, their experience of Jesus
Christ, their selfrenunciation, and their concern for holy living.
Let us never forget that Wesley himself
was frequently criticized for being a crypto Jesuit.
Wesley appreciated the contribution of
Baptists, Lutherans, Presbyterians pietists of different sorts, not least Elk
Anglican, Calvinists, like George Whitfield and John Newton.
Then was there anyone whom Wesley had nothing good to say?
Yes, Quakers.
Because Quakers elevated the inner light,
their idiosyncratic experience above Scripture, wesley denounced them.
Wesley knew that the whole point of the primacy of Scripture isn't Scripture.
The whole point of the primacy of Scripture is the ultimacy of Jesus Christ.
And therefore to elevate the inner light above Scripture was to deny Christ's
lordship and substitute one's self perception as normative.
For this reason, he wrote in his letter to
someone who had recently become a Quaker friend, you have an honest heart, but a.
Weak head.
Wesley maintained that for 55 years he hadn't found any Quakers who grasped the
foundation of the Gospel, namely, justification by faith.
I envision the Wesley Chair, promoting conversations with diverse families within
the Church Catholic, while simultaneously exercising a discernment that can properly
recognize and charitably repudiate theologies movements, ideologies,
novelties and ethical compromises that are a denial of the Gospel.
The second aspect of my vision for the
Wesley Chair reflects Wesley's position in the burgeoning Enlightenment of his era.
Wesley never allowed his Gospel driven
theology to be adulterated by developments in world occurrence.
Even as he recognized aspects of a world occurrence that were humanly helpful in
this regard, he always urged his people to plunder the Egyptians.
Exodus 322.
When's the last time your pastor preached on the text Plunder the Egyptians?
On the one hand, the Egyptians were
Israel's, oppressors, ignorant of hashem, wantonly, cruel and idolatrous.
On the other hand, the Egyptians possessed no little worldly wisdom that all people
everywhere could profit from, among others matters.
Electricity was a preoccupation in Wesley's day.
Think of Benjamin Franklin, his kite and
lightning, and Wesley himself was entranced.
When I first visited Wesley's chapel in
London, I was intrigued by his electrification machine.
It consisted of a stator and a rotor
and two electrodes to be attached to a suffering person's temples.
The faster one cranked the rotor, the
greater the electric shock to the recipient.
Whom did Wesley shock?
Depressed people.
Depressed people who are today are
diagnosed as suffering from endogenous depression.
The point is, Wesley came upon severely
depressed people whose depression, he insisted, was not rooted in psych and
spiritual defectiveness or degenerate behavior or demonic possession.
In this regard, he was light years ahead of his contemporaries.
Now, to be sure, Wesley had no grasp of the neurological sophistication that
underlies today's electroconvulsive therapy.
However, when faced with atrocious human
suffering, wesley was willing to learn from anyone.
We plunder the Egyptians.
In 1747, Wesley penned his primitive Physic, a compend of treatment still
better than folklore, to us, aimed at relieving human distress.
Those afflicted with the flux diarrhea were to receive the smoke of turpentine
cast on burning coals, and for the bloody flux
applies suppository of LemonIn dipped in aquavitite.
At the same time, Wesley never disdained professional medical treatment.
In 1773, when Wesley was 70 years old, his
horse stumbled, throwing him against the pommel of a saddle.
Soon he found himself with a hydro seal, a
very large fluid collection in his scrotum.
When next he was in Edinburgh, he visited three leaders of the university's Faculty
of Medicine and underwent, ultimately, surgery for his affliction.
Always aware of the suffering attending
gynecological disorders, wesley proposed a treatment for menoragia.
Half an ounce of powdered alum was to be
drunk with a quarter of an ounce of dragon's blood.
Dragon's blood is the bright red resin
that is obtained even today from many different plants.
Now, before we laugh at Wesley, we should
note that dragon's blood is possessed of antiviral and wound healing effects.
Taspine, a component of dragon's blood taken from plants, is an alkaloid whose
wound healing efficacy is scientifically documented.
My vision for the Westleyan Chair
wesley Chair includes the willingness to speak with and learn from anyone in any
discipline, especially where human suffering may be alleviated.
What creaturely wisdom?
Not the gospel, to be sure, but creaturely
wisdom nonetheless can be gained from the social sciences.
In my work with convicts and ex convicts, for instance, I am aware of the dreadful
effects of inadequate provision in early childhood, of family instability, of
assorted abuses that will haunt victims for life.
I am not medically trained at all.
Nonetheless, I am hugely immersed in the psychiatric world, and I've been invited
to address both the American Psychiatric Association and the World Psychiatric
Association on the assumption that Christian faith and psychiatric wisdom can
together promote the healing of wounded people.
What creaturely wisdom can we gain from the rising tide of neuroscience?
What wisdom can be found in such
disciplines as philosophy, literature and history?
Cicero smarter men than I once remarked to be ignorant of history is to remain
forever a child is not part of the church's mission to
have people become mature in all dimensions of human existence.
Wesley spared no effort to plunder the Egyptians, not only because of the
creaturely wisdom they possessed, but also because he already knew even more
profoundly, that in Jesus Christ all things hold together.
Colossians one wesley knew that there are
no dichotomies in the universe apart from the dichotomy of sin.
Knowing that in Christ all things hold
together, and aspiring to obey God's command to plunder the Egyptians, wesley
magnified the Lord who is himself the integration and coherence of a creation
that the same Lord, risen from the dead, has already rendered the kingdom of God.
My vision for the Wesley Chair includes a
forum where gospel conviction and theological sophistication welcome gain
from and contribute to any discipline that enhances humankind.
Here in the Wesley Chair will anticipate the person made in God's image, but now
wounded as a creature and sinful as a human.
Here in the Wesley Chair will anticipate that person who will be found on the day
of our Lord's appearing with their creatureliness, no longer disfigured by
pain and their humanness no longer distorted by sin.
In other words, in its multidisciplinary
conversation, the Wesley Chair will promote both wholeness and holiness.
It will promote nothing less than a human
flourishing that resounds to the praise of God's glory.