Recapturing the Wesleys' Vision

An Introduction to the Faith of John and Charles Wesley

Paul Wesley Chilcote

• Publisher: IVP Academic
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9780830876655
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Scholar and teacher Paul Wesley Chilcote provides a full and clear introduction to the dynamic faith of John and Charles Wesley. The vital theology of John is skillfully gleaned from his voluminous writings. The corresponding faith of Charles is culled from his enduring hymns.For students and general readers this book illuminates the vital balance the Wesleys found in Christian teaching that overcomes the often mutually exclusive options presented in other theological traditions. Chilcote shows that such a synthetic faith is not boring or irrelevant but transforming and life-giving, bringing together faith and works, Word and Spirit, the personal and the social, the head and the heart, mission and service.

PART ONE

THE MESSAGE (KERYGMA)

The Height of Sovereign Grace

KERYGMA

PROCLAMATION AND PREACHING

The starting point of living faith—of the quest to find balance in the Christian life—is the central message (or kerygma) rediscovered by the Wesleys and countless other Christians through the ages. The important Greek word kerygma (the first of four terms that form the framework of this book) is rich with meaning. It can be translated into English as “message,” “proclamation” or “preaching.” In the New Testament the word kerygma has to do with the act of proclaiming the good news about God in Jesus Christ. Because of Jesus, we have a wonderful message to proclaim about God’s unconditional love and grace for all people in all places and at all times. Since this is the message that the Wesleys rediscovered in their own time, it is typical to describe their understanding of the Christian faith as a theology of grace.

C. H. Dodd, in a book titled The Apostolic Preaching, drew attention to the importance of the kerygma in the earliest Christian community. It was as though the church possessed a definite message (“that which it preached” or “proclamation”), the center around which everything else revolved. That message was quite simple. In the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ we have come to know the love and grace of God as never before. The earliest apostles went out into the world with this proclamation and boldly declared it to any who would listen.

The essential content of this ancient kerygma was embedded in the preaching of St. Peter, recorded in the opening chapters of Acts. Peter proclaimed the dawn of God’s inbreaking reign, the self-revelation of God in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, the exaltation of Christ and the creation of a new community of grace in him through the power of the Holy Spirit, and Peter openly invited all to turn away from the old and embrace new life in Jesus Christ. This was the core of the gospel proclamation.

St. Paul’s closing words in his letter to the church at Rome describe this kerygma in a powerful way:

Now to God who is able to strengthen you according to my gospel and the proclamation [kerygma] of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery that was kept secret for long ages but is now disclosed. . . to the only wise God, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever! Amen. (Rom 16:25-27)

The Wesleys proclaimed the free grace of God and consistently preached about God’s inclusive love. We will explore both ideas, under the conjunctions of “faith and works” and “Word and Spirit.”

I

FREE GRACE (PROCLAMATION)

Faith and Works

In Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything; the only thing that counts is faith working through love.

GALATIANS 5:6

One of the most distinctive characteristics of Wesleyan Christians is their emphasis upon the connection between faith and works. To put it simply, if your faith as a Christian is genuine, then other people will be able to see it lived out in loving ways. Faith in Jesus Christ is not real until it is connected to how you live day to day. This is what living faith is all about.

Formal doctrinal statements of Wesleyan traditions make this clear. In 1972, for example, United Methodist leaders declared that the attempt to hold faith and works together was their most widely cherished doctrinal emphasis. I think it is true to say that no other conjunction you will study in this book has been so consistently maintained as faith and works. It is, perhaps, one of the most basic syntheses because it goes to the heart of the Wesleyan proclamation of the gospel. It is the conjunction most closely linked with the Wesleys’ understanding of salvation and what the Christian life is all about. Moreover, the marriage of faith and works is directly related to their conception of grace, God’s offer of relationship to each one of us that is free, a gift that is for all people and in all people. The central proclamation of the gospel, in other words, from the Wesleyan point of view, is God’s free grace received by faith and worked out in love.

Both John and Charles Wesley proclaimed this dynamic conception of the Christian life explicitly and repeatedly. In his sermon “The Almost Christian,” for example, John Wesley made the potent combination of faith and love the defining feature of someone who has become “altogether a Christian” (Works, Sermon 2, 2.6). Likewise, in one of his many sermons based on Jesus’ Sermon of the Mount, he argued, “When we say, ‘Believe, and thou shalt be saved,’ we do not mean, ‘Believe, and thou shalt step from sin to heaven, without any holiness coming between, faith supplying the place of holiness’; but, believe and thou shalt be holy; believe in the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt have peace and power together” (Works, Sermon 25, “Sermon on the Mount, 5,” 3.9). “Peace and power together.” That is a potent way to think about the Christian life. Yet tragically, while that is the kind of life most people yearn for, few seem to experience it.

At an early point in John Wesley’s life, in an age no less torn by divisions than our own, he cried out in despair, “O faith working by love, whither art thou fled? Surely the Son of man did once plant thee upon earth. Where then art thou now?” (Works, Sermon 109, “The Trouble and Rest of Good Men,” 1.3). Indeed, the debate over the supremacy of faith (a central truth rediscovered in classical Protestantism), as distinguished from holiness or good works (a central emphasis in the traditions of Roman Catholicism), consumed much energy in his life. The tendency of many was to argue for either faith or works. The effort to hold “faith alone” and “holy living” together was a delicate balancing act.

In his sermon titled “The Law Established Through Faith, 2,” Wesley argued persuasively about the need to hold faith and works together (Works, Sermon 35). His case rests on two simple points. First, he argued that the doctrine of salvation by faith is the only proper foundation for the whole of the Christian life, if in fact grace is the key to all of life. In other words, faith is the essential response to God’s prior offer of unconditional, loving relationship. But second, he maintained that the purpose of a life reclaimed by faith alone is the restoration of God’s image, namely love, in the life of the believer. In other words, holiness of heart and life is the goal toward which the Christian life moves, having been founded on faith. Faith is a means to love’s end. Faith working by love and leading to holiness of heart and life is the essence of the gospel proclamation of free grace. Faith without activated love (on the one hand) and works founded upon anything other than God’s grace (on the other hand) are equally deficient visions of the Christian life.

Thus Wesley offered this definitive statement:

The truth lies between both. We are, doubtless, “justified by faith.” This is the corner-stone of the whole Christian building. “We are justified without the works of the law” as any previous condition of justification. But they are an immediate fruit of that faith whereby we are justified. So that if good works do not follow our faith, even all inward and outward holiness, it is plain our faith is nothing worth; we are yet ...