Wesleyan Genetics: The Broader Family

I may as well blog much of the rest of the "What is the Wesleyan in a Wesleyan University."

A Little Genetics
0-1054 The Church Catholic
If you were a Christian during the first thousand years of Christian history, you were part of the church catholic, the church universal (P.S., you still are). Protestants often forget that the first 1500 years of the church were “catholic” (small c) years. But it was during this period that God led the church to formulate such foundational concepts as the New Testament, the Trinity, the Fall of Adam, and so many other things that are only hinted at in Scripture. It would be possible to read Scripture and come to different understandings, as the history of heresies and cults testifies. Most cult leaders have hyper-conservative views on the inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture. It is because they are in discontinuity with the church that they end up with perverse interpretations. In the first thousand years of Christian history God worked out far more than most imagine of who—not only Wesleyans, but who all Christians are and should be.

The year 1054 saw the Great Schism between the Eastern and Western church. The Eastern church was willing to consider the Pope the “first among equals,” but the Pope of that time insisted that he was above, not equal to the other bishops. A flurry of mutual excommunication ensued, and the first really major split between segments of the church catholic took place. We might hereby note that the supreme authority of the Pope is not a matter of Christian consensus.

1500’s The Anglican Reformation
With the power of the Roman Catholic Church in ebb, a number of reformers successfully challenged its authority both on a political and theological level. The most famous is of course Martin Luther, the “father” of Protestantism. As part of what we might call a “Back to Scripture” movement, Luther questioned things like celibacy in priests, purgatory, and especially the idea that you could get years off of purgatory because of the merits of the saints (indulgences). His pruning would lead him to reject the deuterocanonical books that the church had used from its inception (Matthew builds on Sirach, Hebrews builds on Wisdom) and accordingly he felt free also to question various New Testament books like James. With a lesser basis for rejection, he retained all the New Testament books.

From a scholarly standpoint, some of Luther’s pruning was likely overreaction. For example, it is the consensus of the scholarly community that his reading of Paul was skewed at a number of points, particularly on his formulation of justification by faith. On many other issues a significant portion of the scholarly community would take issue with Luther, including issues that are important to the Wesleyan tradition. Finally, we can question whether it is even possible to divorce Scripture from the church and remain orthodox. Certainly the nature of the biblical texts is such that context must be provided in order for them to take on meaning, and at this point the Protestant dictum of sola scriptura becomes very problematic—and indeed the primary culprit behind Protestant fragmentation.

But John Wesley was not a Lutheran. He was an Anglican. To be sure, Wesley could be quite vitriolic with regard to the Pope. We should remember that the post-Vatican II Popes of the Roman Catholic Church have been cut from a different cloth from the Popes of the Reformation Era. But as an Anglican, Wesley was prone to be more “catholic” in flavor than the reformers of the Continent. Henry VIII initiated the separation of the Anglican Church for more “practical” than theological reasons and in fact had written a treatise against Luther as Luther began to remove from the Church (Henry really wanted an annulment of his marriage from the Pope). But we should not equate the virtuous reformers of England who actually carried out the separation with him. Individuals like Thomas Cranmer were incredibly virtuous Christians.

These formative Anglicans were also quite catholic in flavor. It is to this day considered ironic that Cranmer was burned at the stake for his Protestant role in the separation (by Bloody Mary), given how catholic in nature he was. Some reformers like John Jewel argued that the Anglican Church was in fact catholic in a truer sense than the Roman Catholic Church, which he believed had departed from the true catholic faith. Make no mistake, Wesley was Protestant. But Wesleyans take in their DNA a Protestantism that by its very nature has a larger role for Christian tradition and the church to play than other Protestant groups might. We see this factor especially in Wesley’s Quadrilateral, the sense that in addition to Scripture, tradition, experience, and reason are factors in discerning God’s will. Gary Cockerill of Wesley Biblical Seminary has referred to the Wesleyan hermeneutic as prima scriptura rather than sola scriptura, “Scripture first” rather than “Scripture only.”

1700’s John Wesley
You will notice that Wesley is background to The Wesleyan Church rather than its founder. This is a point of some significance. One might think that with the name Wesleyan, John Wesley would be the founder of this church. But Wesley was the “father” of Methodism and the Methodist Episcopal Church in America, not The Wesleyan Church.

Some important benefits result from this historical situation. For example, while we hold Wesley in high regard (after all—we would not call ourselves The Wesleyan Church if we did not), our beliefs and practices are not limited by his. As part of a broader Wesleyan movement, we are particularly free to critique Wesley and even possess beliefs and practices that are not in complete concordance with his. We can freely engage in critique of this great thinker and churchman.

A second benefit is the fact that we look less cult-like. We do not worship John Wesley or come even close to thinking the man to be perfect (no pun intended). I will confess to getting a little uncomfortable—even a little irritated—when I have heard Wesleyans begin to reference Wesley’s thought and works in any almost Scriptural way. Wesley was a truly great man and a great theologian (I believe). But he was a product of his age as well and could no doubt have used therapy at times. There is a sense in which we cannot “recover” our roots in John Wesley because he is before our roots. He’s our grandfather—in our genes but not our closest relative.

We will look at some of the more important Wesley elements in our genetics in a moment. Some, like the idea that you can be assured of salvation in this life, have influenced broader Christendom. However, by far the most significant teaching of John Wesley in the emergence of the Wesleyan Church was his idea of Christian perfection, or “entire sanctification” and “holiness,” as the idea was more commonly known in the formation and consolidation of the Wesleyan Church. As it relates to the current state of the church universal, the very idea that you can successfully resist temptation to sin may be the greatest potential contribution of Wesley to the broader church today. We will mention the most significant contributions of Wesley to Wesleyan identity subsequently. In particular, the relevance of the Quadrilateral to Wesleyan higher education seems quite significant.