A Great Time for Wesleyan Theology

A year or two back, Indiana Wesleyan was glad to have the editors of Christian Scholars Review on campus. The story was one that has been repeated several times recently. Scholar comes in with little knowledge of IWU, thinking it--perhaps without any blame to be given--a small and perhaps inferior college academically. Then they get here and see the enormity and beauty of our campus. They suddenly realize that we are the largest private school in Indiana--even bigger than Notre Dame when you take into account all our satellite campuses scattered throughout Indiana, Ohio, and Kentucky. Purists may snide, but the market wins. Welcome to reality!

Of course, we are not guaranteed continued success, and we don't have a corner on God's grace. We are genuinely thankful for this moment in history that God has extended to us and don't take it for granted. Dust we are, and to dust we shall return. I hope the success continues, but we know we don't deserve special favors from God, and we don't simply assume it will continue.

What irked some of us from the CSR visit was a comment by one of the editors of CSR (on the level of a Cheshire grin, no offence taken--it's just one of those comments that becomes a byword among the people, or at least among some of us in the religion division). I don't remember exactly how it went, but it basically implied that none of us at IWU were publishing because they had never seen an article from us in Christian Scholars Review. My thought at the time was, "Sorry, I have been sending my manuscripts to the Journal of Biblical Literature and the Catholic Biblical Quarterly"--in other words, the flagship journals of my discipline. I had never even heard of CSR until the year before they came to campus!

Now when their Google Alert clues them in on this post, or when they come across it doing a random Google search, maybe they won't publish anything from the likes of me ;-) But I thought I would throw them a bone sometime ;-) ... you know, let them know that there are some IWU who publish. I actually plan to spend most of my free time this spring break working on an article I plan to submit either to New Testament Studies or the Harvard Theological Review. Then there's a proposal I've been puttering around with I plan to send to Indiana University Press. But as a grudge match, I thought I might tinker about with a little piece to send CSR as well.

I hope you will read me as having fun here. I'm probably 50-50 with articles/proposals that get accepted and rejected. My last two submissions to NTS were rejected, at least without further work. So I fully realize that I am not on the top of the scholarly food chain. But, alas, if I ever have to stop having fun like this, then why would anyone continue to read this blog?

The piece I want to write is "A Great Time for Wesleyan Theology." This piece is also a grudge match in its own right. There is a long standing bias among academic Reformed and Calvinist types that those Wesleyan in theology are intellectually inferior. Wesley himself is regularly criticized for being an unsystematic thinker. Of course I am no worshipper of Wesley, and I'm not one of those people who pours over his writings. Although I am more sympathetic to his theology than to Barth's, I will readily concede that Wesley looks unsophisticated next to Barth.

The piece I'm thinking of writing for CSR will tout Wesleyan theology in broad terms as a splendid intermediary between Catholic and Protestant trajectories in the light of recent developments in biblical studies. I may write some seed thoughts here this week on the side. Of course the idea that Wesleyan theology stands between Catholicism and Protestantism is nothing new. I will not be arguing for this historically, for that is neither my purpose nor am I convinced I could win an argument that Wesley thought of himself that way. I am arguing for what the Wesleyan tradition might be now.

In particular, I plan to structure the piece around the three cries of the Reformation: sola gratia (by grace alone), sola fide (by faith alone), and sola scriptura (by Scripture alone). I plan to show that each of these concepts as they have typically been formulated by Protestantism are problematic.

"By grace alone" is problematic in the way it is usually formulated because of a failure to grasp the nature of ancient patron-client relationships. Grace was certainly unmerited favor, but that did not mean that no solicitation was involved or that it came without strings. The NT reads most coherently against an understanding of grace that 1) involves the solicitation of the client and 2) requires appropriate response. Any notion of eternal security or of pervasive dishonor of God's patronage by sin after receiving His grace is an absurd misunderstanding of ancient patronal dynamics.

"By faith alone" is problematic particularly in its Lutheran form. The most basic perusal of Paul's own language shows that he did not see faith and works as polar opposites. Works in particular did not contradict faith for Paul; they were simply an inadequate basis for justification. Further, Paul expected fulfillment of a law core after reception of the Spirit. The notion that Paul (or 1 John) saw sin as an inevitable part of a believer's life is thoroughly dismantled.

"By Scripture alone" is an impossibility of language. The so called Wesleyan Quadrilateral, while itself needing some modification after modernism, is nevertheless a much more coherent model of biblical appropriation than the mirage that is sola scriptura. 25,000 Protestant denominations later, with a little postmodern reflection poured on top, Erasmus is pronounced the winner of his debate with Luther over whether the meaning of the Bible was sufficiently clear on its own for most people to grasp its meaning.

What these things imply is that it is a great time to be Wesleyan in theology, at least on these key points. I don't see how any sane person can look at the current denominational scene and not see the need for some strong ecclesiology to balance out our use of Scripture. And whatever we might think of total depravity theologically, the NT does not consider the Christian life to be one of unconditional election, irresistable grace, eternal security, or pervasive sin. The NT remains far more Jewish than most Protestants have imagined.