WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.640 --> 00:00:03.700 Ha. So we've got in this concurrent session. 2 00:00:03.730 --> 00:00:08.360 I don't know how I pulled the short straw and got immediately after life. 3 00:00:08.840 --> 00:00:12.980 I'll talk in your sleep if you have, but I'm Jim Reed. 4 00:00:13.010 --> 00:00:14.220 I'm from Winnipeg. 5 00:00:14.250 --> 00:00:15.740 I'm glad to see you all. 6 00:00:15.770 --> 00:00:24.260 And I have copies of the text here number around. 7 00:00:24.290 --> 00:00:26.540 And you're you're welcome to it. 8 00:00:26.570 --> 00:00:31.540 If you wanted copy of it and there aren't enough copies, just let me know. 9 00:00:31.570 --> 00:00:33.220 There's an email address. 10 00:00:33.250 --> 00:00:38.100 I'm happy to send it to you, so long as you understand. 11 00:00:38.130 --> 00:00:40.620 My background is philosophy. 12 00:00:40.640 --> 00:00:42.020 It's not theology. 13 00:00:42.050 --> 00:00:44.180 It's not historical theology. 14 00:00:44.210 --> 00:00:46.620 I do ethics for my living. 15 00:00:46.650 --> 00:00:49.460 And so I'm trying out some things here. 16 00:00:49.490 --> 00:00:51.700 I hope it's a bit of exploration. 17 00:00:51.720 --> 00:00:53.220 Maybe it'll trigger some ideas. 18 00:00:53.250 --> 00:00:55.700 And I hope some here know kind of the 19 00:00:55.730 --> 00:00:58.300 history of the church and theology better than I do. 20 00:00:58.320 --> 00:00:59.300 And I can learn some things. 21 00:00:59.330 --> 00:01:04.620 But I'd like to try some ideas out with you that I think are pertinent to the 22 00:01:04.650 --> 00:01:07.260 subject here, and we'll try it after lunch. 23 00:01:07.290 --> 00:01:08.380 Anyway. 24 00:01:08.410 --> 00:01:12.770 So I have written this text out because, 25 00:01:12.800 --> 00:01:20.080 trained in philosophy, it's hard for me to even give my name in 40 minutes. 26 00:01:20.880 --> 00:01:23.340 I am going to try, for Steve's sake and 27 00:01:23.370 --> 00:01:26.420 yours, to get through this in about 20 minutes. 28 00:01:26.450 --> 00:01:31.260 I hope it's not get through in a bad time to go through this and hope it'll give us 29 00:01:31.290 --> 00:01:33.420 maybe 15 minutes for a bit of conversation. 30 00:01:33.450 --> 00:01:36.440 Okay, so here we go. 31 00:01:36.600 --> 00:01:40.460 So the program is announced in the next 40 minutes that we're going to explore 32 00:01:40.490 --> 00:01:43.820 experience in a Wesleyan approach to ethics. 33 00:01:43.850 --> 00:01:46.420 But immediately we're confronted with two 34 00:01:46.450 --> 00:01:52.100 concepts that have multiple means ethics and experience. 35 00:01:52.130 --> 00:01:55.180 And the multiplicity of meanings in these 36 00:01:55.210 --> 00:02:00.620 terms threatens misunderstanding and people talking by each other. 37 00:02:00.650 --> 00:02:05.200 So I want to begin this time with a little conceptual clarification. 38 00:02:06.000 --> 00:02:08.300 First, ethics. 39 00:02:08.330 --> 00:02:13.890 Well, ethics I give three sort of three kinds of things that are called ethics. 40 00:02:13.920 --> 00:02:18.730 First, there's ethics is another name for moral theology or moral philosophy. 41 00:02:18.760 --> 00:02:19.540 Look in the dictionary. 42 00:02:19.570 --> 00:02:25.450 It gives you that briefly, that means theorizing about a certain kind of right 43 00:02:25.480 --> 00:02:30.500 and wrong or rights and wrongs of good and bad, ascertaining whether there are 44 00:02:30.530 --> 00:02:35.140 principles of moral behavior, and if so, what those principles are, and whether or 45 00:02:35.170 --> 00:02:37.940 there are some that take precedence over others. 46 00:02:37.970 --> 00:02:40.020 And exploring loads of reasoning 47 00:02:40.050 --> 00:02:45.360 appropriate to morality, or arguing that morality is not a matter of reasoning at 48 00:02:45.390 --> 00:02:51.580 all and unpacking the notion of moral agency and how moral agency is nurtured. 49 00:02:51.610 --> 00:02:56.700 And what sorts of beings have moral agency and trying to determine whether anything 50 00:02:56.730 --> 00:03:01.100 in morality can actually be known and if so, how it can be known. 51 00:03:01.130 --> 00:03:05.940 And connecting the dots between God and morality and on and on. 52 00:03:05.970 --> 00:03:10.420 And I take it that people in the crowd are familiar with theorizing. 53 00:03:10.450 --> 00:03:12.900 So that's ethics, one sense of ethics. 54 00:03:12.930 --> 00:03:17.220 And it energizes weird people like me who like to theorize. 55 00:03:17.250 --> 00:03:20.660 But much of my day job is spent in a different way. 56 00:03:20.690 --> 00:03:21.860 I do ethics. 57 00:03:21.880 --> 00:03:23.020 People say, what do you do? 58 00:03:23.050 --> 00:03:24.610 Well, I do ethics. 59 00:03:24.640 --> 00:03:27.460 By that I mean that 60 00:03:27.490 --> 00:03:32.740 ethics is unlike some other parts of theorizing in that it is, 61 00:03:32.770 --> 00:03:38.180 in part at least, to guide action, not just theorizing for its own sake. 62 00:03:38.210 --> 00:03:44.060 And a major part of my life is spent trying to advise others on difficult 63 00:03:44.090 --> 00:03:50.300 social issues and complex policy alternatives. 64 00:03:50.330 --> 00:03:53.660 Lastly, I call this cleverly ethics. 65 00:03:53.690 --> 00:03:57.860 Three might have to do with the evaluation. 66 00:03:57.880 --> 00:03:59.960 So it's a different this comes down to the 67 00:03:59.990 --> 00:04:02.740 level of particular judgments we talk about. 68 00:04:02.770 --> 00:04:05.060 Well, that wasn't very ethical in talking 69 00:04:05.090 --> 00:04:10.980 about somebody's behavior or we say about somebody, well, they're really an ethical 70 00:04:11.010 --> 00:04:15.220 person, or some adjective that goes along with that. 71 00:04:15.250 --> 00:04:18.020 And so that might be, if you want the 72 00:04:18.040 --> 00:04:22.540 third sense as I'll use it today, okay, that's one side. 73 00:04:22.570 --> 00:04:23.580 Now, experience. 74 00:04:23.600 --> 00:04:25.920 How about experience? 75 00:04:26.960 --> 00:04:27.980 I don't know. 76 00:04:28.010 --> 00:04:29.500 Some of you might know. Right? 77 00:04:29.530 --> 00:04:31.120 I see Dr. Dayton here. 78 00:04:31.150 --> 00:04:33.820 He probably has memorized John Wesley's corpus. 79 00:04:33.840 --> 00:04:34.540 I don't know. 80 00:04:34.560 --> 00:04:37.940 But I don't know if he ever used the word ethics as a matter of fact. 81 00:04:37.970 --> 00:04:42.320 But we do know that he used the word experience. 82 00:04:42.640 --> 00:04:45.500 We know, we're told that experience was 83 00:04:45.530 --> 00:04:51.420 the fourth leg that Wesley added to Anglicanism's theological three legged 84 00:04:51.450 --> 00:04:55.500 stool, giving us the Wesleyan quadrilateral. 85 00:04:55.530 --> 00:05:02.540 And we know that John Wesley was well, he was seldom semantically rigorous. 86 00:05:02.570 --> 00:05:03.660 What does that mean? 87 00:05:03.690 --> 00:05:05.860 Like, sometimes he used the words to mean 88 00:05:05.890 --> 00:05:09.700 one thing in one context, something else in a different context. 89 00:05:09.720 --> 00:05:13.980 So with experience, I think he used the term rather differently. 90 00:05:14.010 --> 00:05:15.900 And so what does experience mean? 91 00:05:15.920 --> 00:05:20.540 There are books in Wesleyan studies on what Wesley meant by experience. 92 00:05:20.570 --> 00:05:27.700 I'm not going to try to cover those, but to in some way simplify our task today. 93 00:05:27.730 --> 00:05:30.300 I want to distinguish two meanings of 94 00:05:30.330 --> 00:05:36.920 experience that I find in Wesley and Wesleyan theology. 95 00:05:37.920 --> 00:05:43.540 The first use of experience I sometimes call public experience. 96 00:05:43.570 --> 00:05:48.220 It refers to events or states of affairs in the external world. 97 00:05:48.250 --> 00:05:53.980 That's the kind of phrase that was used in John An exploring of the external world 98 00:05:54.010 --> 00:06:00.420 and the things that people could observe with their bodily senses. 99 00:06:00.450 --> 00:06:02.900 Hear, see, touch, taste, so on. 100 00:06:02.920 --> 00:06:08.620 So sentences like, the snow is drier in Winnipeg than it is in Toronto. 101 00:06:08.650 --> 00:06:14.940 Just come to Winnipeg, you'll hear that it's cold, but it's a dry cold. 102 00:06:14.960 --> 00:06:16.140 So those are the things. 103 00:06:16.170 --> 00:06:19.860 Those kinds of senses are verifiable by observation. 104 00:06:19.890 --> 00:06:22.100 Maybe you haven't been in both cities and 105 00:06:22.130 --> 00:06:25.460 you don't know firsthand whether the sentence is true. 106 00:06:25.480 --> 00:06:32.180 But in principle, you could have been in both places and could have tested it out. 107 00:06:32.210 --> 00:06:35.380 We all know that empirical verification 108 00:06:35.410 --> 00:06:41.460 has its complexities, but we also know that the heart of it is that anybody 109 00:06:41.480 --> 00:06:45.820 suitably situated with the properly adjusted equipment could observe. 110 00:06:45.850 --> 00:06:50.380 So you may not have been to Winnipeg, but you think, well, if I went to Winnipeg, I 111 00:06:50.400 --> 00:06:53.140 could test this sentence out and tell whether it's true or not. 112 00:06:53.170 --> 00:06:55.740 And it's not because I'm special. 113 00:06:55.770 --> 00:07:01.580 It's rather because I have eyes and you have eyes and you see what I see, right? 114 00:07:01.600 --> 00:07:05.980 Something that anybody could well, there's a second sense. 115 00:07:06.010 --> 00:07:10.620 And in some ways, I think this is what this other sense of experience is. 116 00:07:10.650 --> 00:07:18.140 Maybe what Wesley and Wesleyanism get their special significance for and maybe 117 00:07:18.160 --> 00:07:20.780 want to talk about it more than I talk about it in the paper. 118 00:07:20.800 --> 00:07:24.140 But I call this, in contrast, a public experience. 119 00:07:24.170 --> 00:07:26.900 I call this private experience. 120 00:07:26.920 --> 00:07:29.740 So the second use of the word experience 121 00:07:29.770 --> 00:07:34.860 refers to events or states of affairs that are not public in the same way that the 122 00:07:34.890 --> 00:07:40.380 snow and Winnipeg and the awareness of which is not available to all observers. 123 00:07:40.410 --> 00:07:45.260 In the same way, some events and states of affairs are such 124 00:07:45.290 --> 00:07:49.660 that they cannot be validated firsthand by everyone. 125 00:07:49.690 --> 00:07:53.500 Like the sentence, I am in pain. 126 00:07:53.530 --> 00:07:56.380 If I were, I said, I am in pain, that 127 00:07:56.410 --> 00:07:59.740 would report what I'm calling a private experience. 128 00:07:59.770 --> 00:08:02.060 Now, saying it's private doesn't mean that 129 00:08:02.090 --> 00:08:07.820 you can't verify it, but you do so on a different basis from the ones I use. 130 00:08:07.850 --> 00:08:10.180 You will verify it on the basis of seeing 131 00:08:10.210 --> 00:08:15.380 me wits forever, for instance, or holding my head or whatever. 132 00:08:15.410 --> 00:08:18.760 But I feel the pain itself, and I know the 133 00:08:18.790 --> 00:08:21.980 truth of the sentence on a very different basis from you. 134 00:08:22.010 --> 00:08:23.380 This is not rocket science. 135 00:08:23.410 --> 00:08:24.540 You've all had pain. 136 00:08:24.560 --> 00:08:26.460 You know what it is to feel them and be 137 00:08:26.480 --> 00:08:29.540 around people who don't sympathize because they don't believe you. 138 00:08:29.570 --> 00:08:31.240 Right? 139 00:08:31.880 --> 00:08:36.900 I don't have to see myself wince to know that I'm in pain, right? 140 00:08:36.920 --> 00:08:37.340 Okay. 141 00:08:37.370 --> 00:08:40.620 That's preamble nine minutes and 34 seconds. 142 00:08:40.650 --> 00:08:44.540 Okay. John Wesley when John Wesley said, as he 143 00:08:44.560 --> 00:08:50.180 does in his sermon on the use of money, he says this that I used in the title of 144 00:08:50.200 --> 00:08:55.940 my talk, whatever it is, which reason or experience shows to be destructive of 145 00:08:55.970 --> 00:09:02.540 health and which sense of experience of my two, which sense is he employed? 146 00:09:02.560 --> 00:09:04.340 Well, I think pretty clearly he's using 147 00:09:04.370 --> 00:09:07.700 the first sense of experience, public experience. 148 00:09:07.730 --> 00:09:09.960 John Wesley is saying to the hearers of 149 00:09:09.990 --> 00:09:16.020 his sermon, you and I may not know right now what sorts of activities cause illness 150 00:09:16.050 --> 00:09:22.780 and hurt or, on the other hand, create general prosperity, but we could find out. 151 00:09:22.810 --> 00:09:28.020 We could find out, for instance, by asking doctors and businessmen what makes people 152 00:09:28.050 --> 00:09:32.140 sick and well and what makes people wealthy or poor. 153 00:09:32.170 --> 00:09:35.100 They have seen things that you and I well, 154 00:09:35.130 --> 00:09:40.600 we could have seen them for ourselves if we taken the time. 155 00:09:41.040 --> 00:09:42.620 I think I'm supposed to be on another 156 00:09:42.650 --> 00:09:49.140 slide when in the same sermon, 157 00:09:49.170 --> 00:09:55.300 Wesley says, you should be continually learning from the experience of others or 158 00:09:55.320 --> 00:09:58.940 from your own experience reading and reflection to do everything. 159 00:09:58.970 --> 00:10:02.740 You have to do better today than you did yesterday. 160 00:10:02.770 --> 00:10:05.140 He is doing ethics. 161 00:10:05.170 --> 00:10:09.460 He's doing ethics in the sense of guiding action, 162 00:10:09.490 --> 00:10:15.500 the ethical principles or rules, as he calls them, and he has this great one gain 163 00:10:15.530 --> 00:10:18.380 all you can, save all you can, give all you can. 164 00:10:18.410 --> 00:10:21.020 That's Wesley's three point sermon before 165 00:10:21.050 --> 00:10:26.380 the altar called in use of money that he grounds in experience. 166 00:10:26.410 --> 00:10:31.900 I mean, he grounds those principles in Scripture experience, that is, the 167 00:10:31.930 --> 00:10:37.300 publicly accessible observations that can be made that he's talking about. 168 00:10:37.320 --> 00:10:42.380 That's what links Scripture to the living out the rules in particular situations. 169 00:10:42.410 --> 00:10:44.340 It's the kind of doing ethics from 170 00:10:44.370 --> 00:10:47.980 Scripture, discovering the principles, applying them in practice. 171 00:10:48.010 --> 00:10:50.900 Experience is the link. 172 00:10:50.930 --> 00:10:55.300 The same sense of experience that is public experience is at play when John 173 00:10:55.320 --> 00:11:01.460 Wesley examines the question of whether anyone is perfected in love. 174 00:11:01.490 --> 00:11:04.320 Such a condition is possible, according to 175 00:11:04.350 --> 00:11:08.180 Wesley, that people, someone could be perfected in love. 176 00:11:08.210 --> 00:11:13.440 But he wonders if you read plain account of Christian perfection, you see several 177 00:11:13.470 --> 00:11:17.380 times he wonders like, I believe this is true, certain this is 178 00:11:17.410 --> 00:11:22.460 true, but does anybody actually is anybody actually perfected in love? 179 00:11:22.490 --> 00:11:24.300 And he wonders about this. 180 00:11:24.330 --> 00:11:26.540 And why does he wonder? 181 00:11:26.570 --> 00:11:31.820 Well, on the basis of I haven't yet seen it. 182 00:11:31.850 --> 00:11:33.720 By saying that he hasn't seen it, he 183 00:11:33.750 --> 00:11:37.820 doesn't mean he has some special antenna that nobody else has that could find it. 184 00:11:37.850 --> 00:11:39.580 He means, well, look for yourself. 185 00:11:39.610 --> 00:11:44.260 Have you seen somebody who is perfected in love? 186 00:11:44.290 --> 00:11:49.980 So experience means the same thing in these two contexts for Wesley. 187 00:11:50.010 --> 00:11:52.560 In one case, 188 00:11:54.000 --> 00:12:00.140 he is meaning to move from Scripture rules to practice experiencing, being the link. 189 00:12:00.170 --> 00:12:02.980 And in this other case, he's using 190 00:12:03.010 --> 00:12:06.940 experience to validate certain ethical judgments. 191 00:12:06.970 --> 00:12:09.380 He's not counseling any action, but he's 192 00:12:09.410 --> 00:12:15.480 evaluating the character of people that he is frankly presented with in his community 193 00:12:15.680 --> 00:12:21.460 character ethics, or what some today call virtue ethics. 194 00:12:21.490 --> 00:12:24.580 Character ethics plays a big part in Western ethics. 195 00:12:24.610 --> 00:12:28.260 And I want to return to the subject in a few minutes. 196 00:12:28.290 --> 00:12:30.260 I better move it. I'm going to get there. 197 00:12:30.280 --> 00:12:32.340 At this point, it's sufficient to note how 198 00:12:32.370 --> 00:12:35.660 John Wesley connects experience to characteristics. 199 00:12:35.690 --> 00:12:38.260 Now, I speak as jump forward number of years. 200 00:12:38.290 --> 00:12:41.420 I speak as a Salvationist salvation army member. 201 00:12:41.440 --> 00:12:43.460 And I come to this through founders of the 202 00:12:43.490 --> 00:12:45.660 Salvation Army, catherine and William Booth. 203 00:12:45.690 --> 00:12:47.900 Most of you will not be familiar with them. 204 00:12:47.930 --> 00:12:52.460 Let me just give you access to a couple of their works. 205 00:12:52.490 --> 00:12:54.860 William Booth's book. 206 00:12:54.890 --> 00:12:59.500 Pivotal Book in Darkest England and the Way Out, he calls it 1890 publication. 207 00:12:59.530 --> 00:13:04.460 It's a significant work, as I see it in Wesleyan's social and political ethics. 208 00:13:04.490 --> 00:13:07.140 Boo himself takes empirical claims 209 00:13:07.170 --> 00:13:10.060 publicly, observable claims, very seriously. 210 00:13:10.080 --> 00:13:14.500 At one point in this big book, he calls for the establishment of an intelligence 211 00:13:14.530 --> 00:13:17.340 department which was not Salvation Army CIA. 212 00:13:17.370 --> 00:13:22.140 He's saying that if we want we're to effectually deal with the forces of social 213 00:13:22.170 --> 00:13:27.220 evil, we must have ready at our fingers and the accumulated experience and 214 00:13:27.250 --> 00:13:30.900 information of the whole world on this subject. 215 00:13:30.930 --> 00:13:35.100 His point is that you need good data to do good ethics. 216 00:13:35.130 --> 00:13:37.660 The nature of the argument he uses is 217 00:13:37.690 --> 00:13:43.020 encapsulated in something he called the Cab Horses Charter. 218 00:13:43.050 --> 00:13:48.100 First, he recalls, scripture says, Give us this day our daily bread. 219 00:13:48.130 --> 00:13:51.260 Booth takes that as a prayer to God and as 220 00:13:51.290 --> 00:13:53.540 a moral principle directed to God's people. 221 00:13:53.570 --> 00:13:55.660 Give us this day our daily bread. 222 00:13:55.690 --> 00:13:57.860 Scripture beginning, 223 00:13:57.890 --> 00:14:03.380 Booth contends that unless we look then at what's happening in the world, the 224 00:14:03.410 --> 00:14:09.060 citation of Scripture and any professions of care are just empty phrases. 225 00:14:09.080 --> 00:14:14.820 So he turns to what is the publicly observable world of the late 19th century. 226 00:14:14.850 --> 00:14:17.340 Here's a quote when in the streets of 227 00:14:17.370 --> 00:14:22.540 London, a cab horse, weary or careless or stupid, trips and falls and lies stretched 228 00:14:22.570 --> 00:14:27.700 out in the midst of traffic, there's no question of debating how he came to strum 229 00:14:27.730 --> 00:14:30.540 stumble before we try to get him on his lights again. 230 00:14:30.570 --> 00:14:33.580 These are the two points of the cab horses charter. 231 00:14:33.610 --> 00:14:35.380 When he's down, he's helped up. 232 00:14:35.410 --> 00:14:37.420 While he lives, he has food, shelter and 233 00:14:37.450 --> 00:14:42.380 work that, although a humble standard, is at present, he says, on the basis of 234 00:14:42.410 --> 00:14:46.620 publicly available experience and observation, that is a standard at present 235 00:14:46.650 --> 00:14:52.500 absolutely unattainable by millions of our fellow men and women in this country. 236 00:14:52.530 --> 00:14:56.100 Can the Cap heart horse charter began it for human beings? 237 00:14:56.130 --> 00:14:58.820 I answer yes. 238 00:14:58.850 --> 00:15:04.920 So from Scripture, experience leverage to guiding action. 239 00:15:05.080 --> 00:15:12.540 Catherine Booth, William's wife, was as much a Wesleyan moralist as William was. 240 00:15:12.570 --> 00:15:18.540 Her way of connecting experience and ethics goes in a different direction. 241 00:15:18.570 --> 00:15:19.700 She wrote a book. 242 00:15:19.730 --> 00:15:21.420 Female Ministry. 243 00:15:21.450 --> 00:15:26.480 Subtitled woman's Right to Preach the Gospel. 244 00:15:26.880 --> 00:15:30.540 The question at issue then, like now, is 245 00:15:30.570 --> 00:15:35.900 whether it's permissible for a woman ever to teach or preach to men. 246 00:15:35.930 --> 00:15:39.460 The argument against it in 1859 was that 247 00:15:39.490 --> 00:15:43.460 it opposes a standard revealed in Scripture. 248 00:15:43.490 --> 00:15:49.380 So when Catherine Booth appeals to empirically verifiable experience, it's 249 00:15:49.410 --> 00:15:55.460 not in order to apply a scriptural principle, but rather to use experience to 250 00:15:55.490 --> 00:16:00.220 disclose a more faithful understanding of what scriptures actually teach. 251 00:16:00.250 --> 00:16:02.320 Listen to. 252 00:16:03.080 --> 00:16:05.100 Whether the church will allow women to 253 00:16:05.130 --> 00:16:09.100 speak in or her assemblies can only be a question of time. 254 00:16:09.130 --> 00:16:12.000 Common sense, public opinion, and the 255 00:16:12.030 --> 00:16:17.420 blessed results of female agency will force the church to give us an honest and 256 00:16:17.450 --> 00:16:23.300 impartial rendering of the solitary text on which she grounds her prohibitions. 257 00:16:23.330 --> 00:16:28.780 Then, when the true light shines and God's words take the place of man's traditions, 258 00:16:28.810 --> 00:16:33.160 the doctor of divinity who shall teach that Paul commands woman to be silent when 259 00:16:33.190 --> 00:16:38.100 God's spirit urges her to speak will be regarded much the same as we would now 260 00:16:38.130 --> 00:16:43.520 regard an astronomer who would teach that the sunny is the earth's satellite. 261 00:16:43.720 --> 00:16:45.100 Catch what she said? 262 00:16:45.130 --> 00:16:47.020 She said it with a real gusto. 263 00:16:47.050 --> 00:16:51.640 It took a special man to be married to such a woman. 264 00:16:51.720 --> 00:16:54.300 Yes, dear was a favorite line of this. 265 00:16:54.330 --> 00:16:57.120 It would misrepresent Catherine Booth to 266 00:16:57.150 --> 00:17:03.620 say her only argument in this book is to pit the evidence of the ministry of. 267 00:17:03.650 --> 00:17:05.140 And then she cites none. 268 00:17:05.170 --> 00:17:07.010 The sainted Madame Guillaume. 269 00:17:07.040 --> 00:17:10.090 Lady Maxwell, the talented mother of the Wesley. 270 00:17:10.120 --> 00:17:11.330 Mrs. Fletcher, Mrs. 271 00:17:11.360 --> 00:17:13.290 Elizabeth Fry, mrs. Smith, mrs. 272 00:17:13.320 --> 00:17:14.900 Whiteman, miss Marsh. 273 00:17:14.930 --> 00:17:16.530 Every one of them expounding and 274 00:17:16.560 --> 00:17:20.180 exhorting, from the scriptures to mixed companies of men and women. 275 00:17:20.210 --> 00:17:22.080 She says, 276 00:17:22.280 --> 00:17:28.010 what can we pit against that prohibition of prohibitionist reading of Scripture? 277 00:17:28.040 --> 00:17:31.090 Well, she has various arguments, but one 278 00:17:31.120 --> 00:17:35.140 she takes is this incontestable experience. 279 00:17:35.170 --> 00:17:37.420 Look at Susannah Wesley. 280 00:17:37.450 --> 00:17:42.290 Can you doubt that she, in fact, has the gift of the Spirit? 281 00:17:42.320 --> 00:17:46.050 That she would be gifted to preach, and to 282 00:17:46.080 --> 00:17:50.220 prevent her from doing so would be to stand opposite the Spirit? 283 00:17:50.250 --> 00:17:55.010 If that's the case, then the reading of Paul in the way in which males would want 284 00:17:55.040 --> 00:17:58.770 to at that time is a misreading of Scripture. 285 00:17:58.800 --> 00:18:01.810 So for her, she's arguing the Bible does 286 00:18:01.840 --> 00:18:06.240 not actually teach what many up to that time. 287 00:18:07.040 --> 00:18:12.460 Something similar is happening, I believe, today, concerning the ethics of Christian 288 00:18:12.490 --> 00:18:16.900 same sex relationships in the center of what is a 289 00:18:16.930 --> 00:18:21.090 multidimensional and often schismatic controversy. 290 00:18:21.120 --> 00:18:23.860 Many are appealing to experience, 291 00:18:23.890 --> 00:18:28.500 saying the issue cannot be settled without experiential knowledge. 292 00:18:28.530 --> 00:18:34.140 It's being said by Anglicans like Oliver O'Donovan, like Southern Baptists like 293 00:18:34.170 --> 00:18:38.960 David Gushy, and Methodists like Richard Hayes. 294 00:18:39.040 --> 00:18:45.290 Everybody's become one at West David Gushy the Baptist in recent I mean, 295 00:18:45.320 --> 00:18:49.040 it's significant book and the impact it's having. 296 00:18:49.760 --> 00:18:53.090 David Gushy says 297 00:18:53.120 --> 00:18:59.460 the methodological questions here is what to make of the extraordinary power 298 00:18:59.490 --> 00:19:05.050 of transformative encounters with oneself or a loved one as a sexual minority. 299 00:19:05.080 --> 00:19:10.460 Is perspective shifting sympathy with the suffering of one's child attempting 300 00:19:10.490 --> 00:19:15.460 seduction from God's truth, or is it a path into God's truth? 301 00:19:15.490 --> 00:19:18.180 Do we read ourselves and other people 302 00:19:18.210 --> 00:19:21.010 through the lens of sacred Scriptures that we love? 303 00:19:21.040 --> 00:19:28.140 Or do we read texts of Scripture through the lens of sacred people that we love? 304 00:19:28.170 --> 00:19:30.900 He says this is what happened in the early church. 305 00:19:30.930 --> 00:19:35.250 People encountered Jesus and think the Emmaus road story. 306 00:19:35.280 --> 00:19:39.460 People encountering Jesus unequivocally, 307 00:19:39.490 --> 00:19:46.940 having an encounter with this man, then read Scriptures differently after that. 308 00:19:46.970 --> 00:19:51.570 Some of us believe that in our time, an older destructive 309 00:19:51.600 --> 00:19:56.180 paradigm based on a particular way of connecting the biblical dots has not 310 00:19:56.210 --> 00:20:02.810 survived the transformative encounters we're having with LGBT fellow Christians. 311 00:20:02.840 --> 00:20:06.330 Just a moment to summarize 312 00:20:06.360 --> 00:20:11.250 here we've seen public experience being used by John Wesley and William Booth to 313 00:20:11.280 --> 00:20:14.700 apply general ethical principles to specific situations. 314 00:20:14.720 --> 00:20:16.570 What I at the beginning called ethics. 315 00:20:16.600 --> 00:20:23.250 Two We've seen experience used by Wesley to verify virtue claims. 316 00:20:23.280 --> 00:20:25.010 What I at the beginning called ethics. 317 00:20:25.040 --> 00:20:30.420 Three and in this last used by Catherine Booth and David Gushy to settle a dispute 318 00:20:30.450 --> 00:20:34.740 as to what the fundamental ethical principles really are. 319 00:20:34.770 --> 00:20:38.200 What I call Ethics One, experience and 320 00:20:38.230 --> 00:20:42.810 ethics connecting in this multifaceted, multidimensional way. 321 00:20:42.840 --> 00:20:46.500 So that's one. Okay. 322 00:20:46.530 --> 00:20:48.660 Shall I soldier on? 323 00:20:48.690 --> 00:20:50.840 We're going to go. 324 00:20:51.080 --> 00:20:52.660 I think that's significant. 325 00:20:52.690 --> 00:20:57.290 But if we're going to learn as much as we can 326 00:20:57.320 --> 00:21:02.250 from Wesleyan approach to ethics, I think we need to push a little further and ask 327 00:21:02.280 --> 00:21:07.980 some questions about experiencers as well as experiences. 328 00:21:08.010 --> 00:21:10.220 We need to ask some questions about the 329 00:21:10.250 --> 00:21:15.290 observers as well as the observations about the reports of the observers. 330 00:21:15.320 --> 00:21:17.740 And so it's a bit like this. 331 00:21:17.770 --> 00:21:21.330 So I want to begin with an analogy. 332 00:21:21.360 --> 00:21:26.200 How many of you have seen a fetal ultrasound? 333 00:21:26.800 --> 00:21:29.280 What do you see? 334 00:21:32.480 --> 00:21:36.460 Okay. Can you tell if it's a boy or a girl? 335 00:21:36.490 --> 00:21:37.660 Me neither. 336 00:21:37.690 --> 00:21:42.000 Can you tell whether its fetal development is concerning or not? 337 00:21:42.640 --> 00:21:46.180 But if you can't, why take the ultrasound? 338 00:21:46.210 --> 00:21:50.570 Well, see, as we look at this, many of us 339 00:21:50.600 --> 00:21:52.980 are looking at it, and we're seeing something. 340 00:21:53.010 --> 00:21:57.700 We're having an experience, if you want, and we are seeing the same image. 341 00:21:57.730 --> 00:22:03.290 But we take these ultrasounds because not everybody sees the same thing, right? 342 00:22:03.320 --> 00:22:05.940 If you've got a skilled obstetrician, that 343 00:22:05.970 --> 00:22:10.260 person is going to look at this and be able to make kind of sense of it. 344 00:22:10.290 --> 00:22:13.620 But it's informative to them because their 345 00:22:13.650 --> 00:22:18.330 observational equipment is attuned to see what is really there. 346 00:22:18.360 --> 00:22:20.090 It's not they impose something. 347 00:22:20.120 --> 00:22:26.460 It's rather that they have the skill to see what you and I can't see, right? 348 00:22:26.490 --> 00:22:28.660 I mean, all of their arguments. 349 00:22:28.690 --> 00:22:30.810 Now, I think that's an analogy for 350 00:22:30.840 --> 00:22:34.570 something that's happening in Wesleyan teaching. 351 00:22:34.600 --> 00:22:37.140 If we turn back to ethics, we want to ask 352 00:22:37.170 --> 00:22:43.500 whether everyone's perceptual equipment is equally good, whether every ethically 353 00:22:43.530 --> 00:22:48.420 relevant observation report is equally reliable. 354 00:22:48.450 --> 00:22:53.720 John Wesley himself would say, no, that's not the case. 355 00:22:54.120 --> 00:23:01.020 Listen to a sample of what he has to say in his sermon Original Sin. 356 00:23:01.050 --> 00:23:04.800 Here he's talking about the Depravity. 357 00:23:06.320 --> 00:23:08.860 The ancient heathens, he says, were wholly 358 00:23:08.890 --> 00:23:14.280 ignorant of the entire deprivation of the whole human nature. 359 00:23:14.480 --> 00:23:20.090 Love of the world is now as natural to every man as to love his own will. 360 00:23:20.120 --> 00:23:22.500 What's more natural to us than to seek 361 00:23:22.530 --> 00:23:25.420 happiness in the creature instead of the Creator? 362 00:23:25.450 --> 00:23:28.280 What's more natural than the desire of the 363 00:23:28.310 --> 00:23:34.420 flesh, that is, of this pleasure sense in every kind? 364 00:23:34.450 --> 00:23:37.200 Or again, the desire of the pleasures of 365 00:23:37.230 --> 00:23:42.090 the imagination arise either from great or beautiful or uncommon objects. 366 00:23:42.120 --> 00:23:44.900 That is, we're inspired by great art, but 367 00:23:44.930 --> 00:23:49.620 neither grand nor beautiful objects please us any longer than they're new. 368 00:23:49.640 --> 00:23:51.740 We're actually attracted to their novelty. 369 00:23:51.770 --> 00:23:54.540 And when the novelty is over, the greatest 370 00:23:54.570 --> 00:23:59.810 part, at least, of the pleasure is given over last. 371 00:23:59.840 --> 00:24:06.140 This seems to me from that sermon we learned this concerning man in his 372 00:24:06.170 --> 00:24:09.900 natural state, unassisted by the grace of God. 373 00:24:09.930 --> 00:24:12.040 All the imaginations of the thoughts of 374 00:24:12.070 --> 00:24:16.420 his heart are still evil, only evil, and that continually. 375 00:24:16.450 --> 00:24:22.420 And this account of the present state of man is confirmed by daily experience. 376 00:24:22.450 --> 00:24:27.860 It is true notice it is true that the natural man discerns it not. 377 00:24:27.890 --> 00:24:32.420 The natural man does not know his or her sinfulness. 378 00:24:32.440 --> 00:24:33.860 This is not to be wondered at. 379 00:24:33.890 --> 00:24:39.940 So long as a man born blind continues, so he is scarcely sensible of his want. 380 00:24:39.970 --> 00:24:42.700 That is the absence of his head, what he's missing. 381 00:24:42.730 --> 00:24:46.290 Much less could we suppose a place 382 00:24:46.320 --> 00:24:51.500 much less could we suppose a place where all were born without sight. 383 00:24:51.530 --> 00:24:56.140 Would they be sensible of the want of what we see? 384 00:24:56.160 --> 00:24:59.860 In like manner, so long as men remain in their natural blindness of understanding, 385 00:24:59.890 --> 00:25:03.860 they're not sensible of their spiritual wants and of this in particular. 386 00:25:03.890 --> 00:25:06.260 But as soon as God opens the eyes of their 387 00:25:06.290 --> 00:25:09.460 understanding, they see the state that they were in before then. 388 00:25:09.480 --> 00:25:11.220 They are deeply convinced that every man, 389 00:25:11.250 --> 00:25:14.860 living themselves especially, are by nature altogether vanity. 390 00:25:14.890 --> 00:25:18.330 That is, folly and ignorant, sin and wickedness. 391 00:25:18.360 --> 00:25:21.940 Now, appreciate what Wesley is saying here. 392 00:25:21.970 --> 00:25:26.140 Not everybody desires what is actually desirable. 393 00:25:26.170 --> 00:25:28.940 Not everyone values what is objectively 394 00:25:28.970 --> 00:25:34.860 valuable, or at least they don't value it for its truly valuable quality. 395 00:25:34.890 --> 00:25:37.380 Not everyone sees the truth. 396 00:25:37.410 --> 00:25:40.780 Not everyone is even capable of seeing the truth. 397 00:25:40.810 --> 00:25:44.180 In other words, human nature untransformed 398 00:25:44.210 --> 00:25:50.040 perceives human nature untransformed perceives a very different world from the 399 00:25:50.070 --> 00:25:53.290 world seen by those whom God has sanctified. 400 00:25:53.320 --> 00:25:56.020 The analogy right. 401 00:25:56.050 --> 00:26:01.180 Experts in ultrasound see something different here. 402 00:26:01.200 --> 00:26:03.090 They don't see something that's not there. 403 00:26:03.120 --> 00:26:06.290 They see things there that you and I don't see. 404 00:26:06.320 --> 00:26:12.140 Analogously, I think Wesley is saying God's spirit gets in. 405 00:26:12.170 --> 00:26:18.260 Transforming the human heart creates the capacity to see things that 406 00:26:18.290 --> 00:26:23.330 are really there that are not seen by those who are not so transformed. 407 00:26:23.360 --> 00:26:27.810 If this is true, then I suggest that a Wesleyan approach in ethics 408 00:26:27.840 --> 00:26:32.330 would not, in general, ask for the views of just anybody and everybody. 409 00:26:32.360 --> 00:26:35.700 When an ethical claim is disputed, that is 410 00:26:35.730 --> 00:26:40.140 not ask anybody and everybody, well, what's your experience of it? 411 00:26:40.170 --> 00:26:44.420 A wesling approach would rather seek out the people whose affections God had 412 00:26:44.450 --> 00:26:50.570 transformed and whose eyes God it would want to know how they saw things, 413 00:26:50.600 --> 00:26:56.540 what they thought of them, because genuinely good people, being perfected in 414 00:26:56.570 --> 00:27:02.600 love, have different and more accurate experiential capacities. 415 00:27:06.880 --> 00:27:12.860 In conclusion, I suggest a double Wesleyan contribution to ethics. 416 00:27:12.890 --> 00:27:16.700 They're probably more, but I'm getting at two here short time. 417 00:27:16.730 --> 00:27:19.420 The first contribution that Wesleyan 418 00:27:19.450 --> 00:27:24.980 thinking contribution has to make to the field of ethics, Christian ethics, is to 419 00:27:25.010 --> 00:27:31.700 contend that experience has an assured place at the table of ethical discernment. 420 00:27:31.730 --> 00:27:36.180 And that's an argument, I think, that Wesley, if he had to win it, has won it. 421 00:27:36.210 --> 00:27:37.740 You find this in Anglicans. 422 00:27:37.760 --> 00:27:39.860 Now they've given up their three legged stool. 423 00:27:39.890 --> 00:27:41.330 They've got a fourth two. 424 00:27:41.360 --> 00:27:46.920 We find it in Southern Baptist like Gushy, we find it in Methodist, so on. 425 00:27:48.080 --> 00:27:51.020 But little is attended to this second. 426 00:27:51.050 --> 00:27:55.810 And the second, I think, is to connect the ethical significance of a reported 427 00:27:55.840 --> 00:27:59.570 experience to the character of those reporting. 428 00:27:59.600 --> 00:28:02.380 That's an argument still being debated. 429 00:28:02.410 --> 00:28:05.380 So, for instance, I hear what David Gushy 430 00:28:05.410 --> 00:28:11.290 is saying in our context about are we reading scripturally when we put it 431 00:28:11.320 --> 00:28:16.900 against our experience of the life of people who are gay Christians? 432 00:28:16.930 --> 00:28:19.700 The Wesleyan would want to hear that, but 433 00:28:19.730 --> 00:28:25.290 would want to ask about the person making the observation that is, observing that 434 00:28:25.320 --> 00:28:29.330 these people are mature Christians who are gay or whatever. 435 00:28:29.360 --> 00:28:34.460 It might want to ask, so how reliable is that observational report? 436 00:28:34.490 --> 00:28:40.940 And asking how accurate that is, want to know how well tuned by the Spirit of God 437 00:28:40.970 --> 00:28:44.940 the observational equipment is of the person making the report? 438 00:28:44.970 --> 00:28:49.680 What do you think does that? 439 00:28:49.920 --> 00:28:51.780 We're talking a lot about athletics and 440 00:28:51.810 --> 00:28:55.240 experience, but I also would say that Leslie, the 441 00:28:55.270 --> 00:28:59.280 first thing he's going to look at is the scripture 442 00:28:59.880 --> 00:29:07.330 says, right then those experiences should come in line with the scripture, not 443 00:29:07.360 --> 00:29:10.290 making the scripture come in line with the experience. 444 00:29:10.320 --> 00:29:11.700 So I don't know enough. 445 00:29:11.730 --> 00:29:18.330 Wetley I'm sort of nervous because I've got Dr. 446 00:29:18.360 --> 00:29:22.420 Dayton here in the room and his book Discovering an Evangelical Heritage. 447 00:29:22.440 --> 00:29:24.420 My wife, in reading a draft of this, said, 448 00:29:24.450 --> 00:29:28.220 but you need to put in something about slavery, and I don't have that. 449 00:29:28.250 --> 00:29:30.320 And the abolitionist tradition in North 450 00:29:30.350 --> 00:29:34.140 America of those who are in a Wesley tradition, really important. 451 00:29:34.170 --> 00:29:38.620 But Wesley himself, John Wesley, was against slavery. 452 00:29:38.650 --> 00:29:40.540 So I don't know enough. 453 00:29:40.570 --> 00:29:43.290 Maybe you do, but I might look there to 454 00:29:43.320 --> 00:29:47.880 see whether see, I see cases in which use of Scripture, he says, here's the 455 00:29:47.910 --> 00:29:51.260 scriptural principle, experience leads us to the action. 456 00:29:51.290 --> 00:29:55.740 Or he says, here's someone who presents themselves as being perfected in love. 457 00:29:55.760 --> 00:29:57.330 Let's have the experience of it. 458 00:29:57.360 --> 00:29:59.460 I think there may be cases in which he 459 00:29:59.490 --> 00:30:05.050 says, we have an awareness of something or other, and that's the basis on which we 460 00:30:05.080 --> 00:30:09.640 determine that that's what Scripture is teaching. 461 00:30:09.720 --> 00:30:14.380 That certainly is the way in which a Catherine Booth or a David Gushy is going. 462 00:30:14.410 --> 00:30:17.090 The experience in front of us is being 463 00:30:17.120 --> 00:30:22.420 used by God to help us discern what it is scripture is actually teaching. 464 00:30:22.450 --> 00:30:28.600 That reason and all the other what you're talking about with the ultrasound, if you 465 00:30:28.630 --> 00:30:33.900 go back to the ultrasound and you say, like, here public experience has a seat at 466 00:30:33.930 --> 00:30:38.420 the table, so that would say, is that okay? 467 00:30:38.450 --> 00:30:41.460 This is my wife, she's pregnant, her ultrasound. 468 00:30:41.490 --> 00:30:46.700 So now you have a qualified doctor or team of qualified doctors who can read that. 469 00:30:46.730 --> 00:30:52.740 But then we have 15 friends and they say, yeah, the doctor is saying this. 470 00:30:52.760 --> 00:30:54.780 But listen, don't you worry because this. 471 00:30:54.810 --> 00:30:57.290 Is what we did. 472 00:30:57.320 --> 00:31:01.020 Our experience is that these doctors are wrong half the time. 473 00:31:01.050 --> 00:31:03.040 So then we forget the doctors and. 474 00:31:03.070 --> 00:31:05.200 We go with. 475 00:31:06.480 --> 00:31:11.020 To me is the trained eye first and the Holy Spirit, which illuminates us. 476 00:31:11.050 --> 00:31:13.220 Well, just illuminates. 477 00:31:13.250 --> 00:31:14.570 That's the key point. 478 00:31:14.600 --> 00:31:19.570 The idea is that the Holy Spirit takes a hold of people and changes them, right? 479 00:31:19.600 --> 00:31:25.460 So changes them now that when they look, they actually see features of the 480 00:31:25.490 --> 00:31:30.500 situation that without that transformation of their character, they did not see. 481 00:31:30.530 --> 00:31:32.980 They were really there, but they didn't see them. 482 00:31:33.010 --> 00:31:38.980 So that's why, again, align my wife, wonderful wife said, Take that out. 483 00:31:39.010 --> 00:31:44.260 I said, there's a way in which Wesley I don't know Wesley, but Wesleyan 484 00:31:44.290 --> 00:31:47.460 ethics is aristocratic rather than democratic. 485 00:31:47.490 --> 00:31:53.280 That is, it doesn't take 40 people and said, let's get where's the average in 486 00:31:53.280 --> 00:31:56.570 terms of whether there's problems with this fetal development, right? 487 00:31:56.600 --> 00:32:02.570 No, it appears especially to the reports and assessments of certain people. 488 00:32:02.600 --> 00:32:06.700 The trained doctors, and similarly in ethics, might say, we don't want 489 00:32:06.730 --> 00:32:09.330 everybody's report of what they think is right. 490 00:32:09.360 --> 00:32:15.420 If you want, we want to look to those who, in one way or other have had their eyes 491 00:32:15.450 --> 00:32:18.660 attuned by the Holy Spirit, so they see more. 492 00:32:18.690 --> 00:32:26.200 Accurately, probably many of us have connections or gain. 493 00:32:27.720 --> 00:32:29.800 Connections. 494 00:32:30.440 --> 00:32:36.220 But the Scripture, we believe in the inherent Scripture. 495 00:32:36.250 --> 00:32:43.810 So Romans One makes it very clear that it's unethical and wrong. 496 00:32:43.840 --> 00:32:47.520 So we could get in trouble if we left the 497 00:32:47.550 --> 00:32:51.160 Scripture and just go by experiences there. 498 00:32:51.440 --> 00:32:56.080 Yeah, absolutely. But could I call we have a few minutes. 499 00:32:57.200 --> 00:33:00.330 In some senses, I don't have a skin in 500 00:33:00.360 --> 00:33:02.540 this game in the same way in which others do. 501 00:33:02.570 --> 00:33:05.330 I think it's a very important moment. 502 00:33:05.360 --> 00:33:11.220 Some of what we're being called upon to do is this say Romans One. 503 00:33:11.250 --> 00:33:14.660 What is Romans One really teach, 504 00:33:14.690 --> 00:33:18.420 and how do we ascertain what it is really teaching? 505 00:33:18.450 --> 00:33:22.140 Okay, now just sort of methodologically, I 506 00:33:22.170 --> 00:33:28.290 think, that people like David Cushing are saying, we have this experience. 507 00:33:28.320 --> 00:33:30.500 Like, look for yourself. Look at this person. 508 00:33:30.530 --> 00:33:35.420 Would you actually say this person who self identifies as gay, 509 00:33:35.450 --> 00:33:41.330 would you say that she shows the fruit of the spirit, shows 510 00:33:41.360 --> 00:33:45.660 the maturity that we would expect, makes all professions of Christians? 511 00:33:45.690 --> 00:33:50.380 And if you say yes, then we've got a challenge here. 512 00:33:50.410 --> 00:33:54.860 Do we say that our reading of our 513 00:33:54.890 --> 00:34:00.700 understanding of her must be faulty because Scripture says that can't be? 514 00:34:00.730 --> 00:34:06.740 Or do we say, no, we believe our observations are accurate, so we have to 515 00:34:06.770 --> 00:34:12.440 ask hard questions about what is Romans One really saying? 516 00:34:15.320 --> 00:34:17.780 A lot of years trying to 517 00:34:17.810 --> 00:34:22.100 get the right message, and it seemed very, very clear to me in Scripture. 518 00:34:22.130 --> 00:34:24.460 So I love everyone. 519 00:34:24.490 --> 00:34:28.420 We have to really reach out to the gays, and we love them. 520 00:34:28.450 --> 00:34:32.620 I have a brother who's gay, and I have several brothers, and I love him and pray 521 00:34:32.650 --> 00:34:38.780 for him, but no, he doesn't accept fruit of the spirit in any way. 522 00:34:38.810 --> 00:34:42.300 It just seems so clear to me on that issue. 523 00:34:42.330 --> 00:34:49.620 The tough ones are people who are, boy, I would trust my life into their hands. 524 00:34:49.650 --> 00:34:53.860 They show all sorts of attributes of being Christlike. 525 00:34:53.890 --> 00:34:57.690 Those are the cases that are challenging. 526 00:34:57.720 --> 00:35:06.720 Yes, I appreciate all that, but I think that thorough investigation 527 00:35:07.000 --> 00:35:12.240 would reveal that there are some lack of things lacking in. 528 00:35:13.720 --> 00:35:19.100 I think we need to have a better answer than that for the issue, because we just 529 00:35:19.120 --> 00:35:21.120 blindly say, well, that's what the Scripture says. 530 00:35:21.120 --> 00:35:23.740 Well, the Scripture also says women should keep silent. 531 00:35:23.770 --> 00:35:26.540 The Scripture also says they shouldn't teach men. 532 00:35:26.570 --> 00:35:30.780 And yet Catherine Booth says she saw so powerfully that the Spirit came upon her. 533 00:35:30.800 --> 00:35:32.210 Who were we to fight against that? 534 00:35:32.240 --> 00:35:34.980 So we changed our understanding of those verses. 535 00:35:35.010 --> 00:35:37.000 So we are not being reasonable when we 536 00:35:37.000 --> 00:35:39.500 say, well, the Scripture says it clearly in Romans one. 537 00:35:39.530 --> 00:35:43.520 It also seems to say it clearly about women. 538 00:35:44.160 --> 00:35:48.340 Homosexuality is wrong, but I need a better explanation. 539 00:35:48.360 --> 00:35:49.620 See, this is the challenge. 540 00:35:49.650 --> 00:35:54.100 And I think a Wesleyan approach is in a way, trying to help us. 541 00:35:54.130 --> 00:36:00.740 First of all, say that there are other cases in which we believe. 542 00:36:00.770 --> 00:36:04.200 Let's see, Nick Walterscorp is 543 00:36:05.840 --> 00:36:09.620 he said, not everything scripture says does it teach? 544 00:36:09.640 --> 00:36:11.540 Right? So we can know what scripture says. 545 00:36:11.570 --> 00:36:14.820 The hard thing is to discern what scripture is teaching. 546 00:36:14.840 --> 00:36:18.480 So you get people like a Catherine Booth and others in the churches and Nazarene 547 00:36:18.510 --> 00:36:22.690 and so on who say, we have you cannot contest this experience. 548 00:36:22.720 --> 00:36:25.580 Holy people say about this woman, the 549 00:36:25.610 --> 00:36:30.580 Spirit has gifted her, which means not that Scripture is to be cast aside, but 550 00:36:30.610 --> 00:36:34.020 let us figure out what scripture is really teaching. 551 00:36:34.050 --> 00:36:37.460 And I think that's what we are being challenged with today. 552 00:36:37.490 --> 00:36:40.100 And I say just a little bit 553 00:36:40.130 --> 00:36:45.260 right now in the hot debate, the schismatic debate over same sex 554 00:36:45.290 --> 00:36:50.650 relationships, we are tending in the direction of accepting the testimony 555 00:36:50.680 --> 00:36:56.380 experience without sufficiently asking so what is the quality of the observational 556 00:36:56.400 --> 00:36:59.060 equipment of the people who are reporting the experience? 557 00:36:59.090 --> 00:37:01.740 And I say let's ask the people that on 558 00:37:01.770 --> 00:37:05.980 other grounds we know to be the really holy people in our midst. 559 00:37:06.010 --> 00:37:11.620 Ask them, do you too see this person who professes to be both gay and Christian? 560 00:37:11.650 --> 00:37:14.900 Do you see them too, as mature in Christ? 561 00:37:14.930 --> 00:37:18.980 That for me is then I have to take that rather than say a million people. 562 00:37:19.010 --> 00:37:21.080 Yes, because our mistake is just openly 563 00:37:21.080 --> 00:37:22.600 saying, well, the Scripture is clear about it. 564 00:37:22.600 --> 00:37:25.170 Well, it also says you should hate your mother and father. 565 00:37:25.200 --> 00:37:27.900 It also says it's a shame for a man to have long hair. 566 00:37:27.930 --> 00:37:31.690 It also says, so you have to have better explanations than that the church. 567 00:37:31.720 --> 00:37:33.130 Has got in the context of what. 568 00:37:33.160 --> 00:37:34.340 Is written as well, right? 569 00:37:34.360 --> 00:37:35.940 Of course, when you take something out. 570 00:37:35.960 --> 00:37:39.320 Of context that makes it really easy to make it say what you want to say. 571 00:37:39.350 --> 00:37:43.460 We, that my little role is one thing. 572 00:37:43.490 --> 00:37:46.120 To have the last word. 573 00:37:46.480 --> 00:37:48.580 I'm going to get the hook here. 574 00:37:48.610 --> 00:37:50.360 1 minute and 15 seconds.