John Wesley, Natural Man, and the 'Isms'

Ewbank

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Year: 2009
• eBook ISBN: 9781498275224
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

John Wesley, founder of the Methodist Church, is one of the world's greatest religious figures. A practical rather than systematic theologian, he wrote and preached for the common man. He is well known as a man of one book (the Bible) but he read like no other during his time. We are left with fourteen volumes of his works and eight each of his letters and journals. His brother became the troubadour of Methodism, writing countless hymns. John also took classic Christian works and edited them for the common man to read. And if this were not enough, he preached thousands of times both indoors and out.In John Wesley, Natural Man, and the 'Isms', J. Robert Ewbank examines what Wesley thought about other religions. Did he think all religions were from God and therefore there was little difference between them, or did he think that there is uniqueness in Christianity? Was he concerned about other philosophies and thoughts about religion popular in his day? What did he think about Natural Man, the Indians, the Deists, the Jews, the Roman Catholics, and the Mystics? Were they also fine with him, or did he discuss the differences between them, revealing where he found them wrong?Furthermore, what did Wesley think about the possibility of salvation for all those who held to these other positions? Did he find that it is possible for them to be saved by a loving God, or have they stepped outside of the bounds, therefore requiring extreme difficulty to be saved?

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Natural Man and Prevenient Grace

The Condition of Natural Man

Natural man is the end result of man’s separation from God. Man, being born and created in the image of God, has fallen from that image because of his sin. The entire image has not been lost, for there are elements remaining, twisted and distorted though they may be. Wesley believes the image of God is more than a single element. Man’s image involves the natural image,1 the political image, and the moral image.2 Only the moral image suffers total depravity in natural man. The others—natural and political—are warped and indistinct.

“And God,” the three-one God, “said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him:” (Gen 1: 26–27)—Not barely in his natural image, a picture of his own immortality; a spiritual being, endued with understanding, freedom of will, and various affections;—nor merely in his political image, the governor of this lower world, having “dominion over the fishes of the sea, and over all the earth;”—but chiefly in his moral image; which, according to the Apostle, is “righteousness and true holiness.”3

Man, as natural man, has suffered the loss of the moral image,4 and the distortion of the others. As a result of the loss of the moral image, there is nothing that a human being can do in order to make himself righteous or holy in the eyes of God. Thus, by his own heroic actions, there is nothing he can do to restore the broken relationship with his creator. No act of our will, no collection of pure thoughts, no sacrifice—nothing—can re-create us as righteous, fit for the presence of God. Man’s nature now is such that he does not have within himself the power to do it.

Wesley declares his position with regard to the nature of man in many of his sermons. However, in his Journal he gives us a valuable summary for our consideration. Natural man is in a deplorable condition.

. . . I declared with all plainness of speech: (1) that, by nature, they were all children of wrath; (2) that all their natural tempers were corrupt and abominable; and (3) all their words and works, which could never be any better but by faith; and that (4) a natural man has no more faith than a devil, if so much.5

This outline presents the main and salient points that Wesley maintained through the years. The condition of man is so bad that nothing but the work of God’s grace in his heart is able to save man from his sickness.6 Natural man has no knowledge of God; he has no acquaintanceship with the Creator of his life.7

To use another analogy, we might say that natural man is spiritually asleep. Because he is spiritually asleep he is in some sense at rest because there is nothing spiritually to disturb him. Because he is asleep and at rest he is utterly ignorant of his true condition before God. This ignorance of his true condition before God allows natural man to have a false joy, thinking that everything is fine. Due to his ignorance and false joy he has a false liberty in his actions. Believing he is free and able to decide his actions, he is really a servant of sin.8 We could propose to push the analogy further and say that if he is spiritually asleep maybe he can become spiritually awake. With this thought, however, Wesley would disagree. So much for this analogy, we have pushed it to its limits and perhaps beyond its limits.

The natural man has neither fear nor love,9 is spiritually dead and close to eternal death,10 and is at a distance from God.11 His thoughts wander continually from God.12 To sum up:

But the natural man—That is, every man who hath not the Spirit; who has no other way of obtaining knowledge, but by his senses and natural understanding. Receiveth not—Does not understand or conceive. The things of the Spirit—The things revealed by the Spirit of God, whether relating to His nature or His kingdom. For they are foolishness to him—He is so far from understanding, that he utterly despises, them. Neither can he know them—As he has not the will, so neither has he the power. Because they are spiritually discerned—They can only be discerned by the aid of that Spirit, and by those spiritual senses, which he has not.13

Natural man has no chance of salvation, for he is separated from the author of salvation. As natural man, God is apart from him, but in reality—in existence as we know it—God is seeking and working within him. As Colin W. Williams writes:

The loss of the moral image spells total depravity because separation from God and the substitution of self-government in place of acceptance or the Lordship of God means that the good capacities of man are twisted from their true course and used for a wrong purpose.14

The Reality of Natural Man

Interestingly enough, we find that for all he has written about him, Wesley does not believe in the existence of natural man, per se. Natural man by definition is man completely apart from God, totally separated from Him. This man does not have a saving relationship with God, and is not even pointing or moving in that direction. His mind is set upon this world, and the things to be found therein.

Umphrey Lee writes:

But for Wesley the “natural man” is a logical abstraction. Like the economic man or the caricatures set up today by amateur psychologists, anthropologists, and theologians, the “natural man” does not exist . . . for Wesley, the “natural man” is only a logical fiction.15

In our previous discussion of natural man, we seemed to find quite a bit of life within him. Though he partakes of logical reality, he has no flesh and blood counterpart in real life. Wesley answers this problem by declaring, in his sermon “Working Out Our Own Salvation,” there is no such thing as a purely natural man, and with this diagnosis Lee, Williams, and Harald Lindstrom all agree.

The concept of natural man, then, is man liv...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Natural Man and Prevenient Grace
• Chapter 2: Heathenism, Indians, and Christianity
• Chapter 3: Judaism and Christianity
• Chapter 4: Deism and “True Christianity”
• Chapter 5: Roman Catholicism and “True Christianity”
• Chapter 6: Quakerism and “True Christianity”
• Chapter 7: Mysticism and “True Christianity”
• Chapter 8: Conclusion
• Study Guide
• Bibliography