What is evangelicalism? Part I

1. The thing about words is -- they change their meaning over time. 

Take the word woke. For most of my life, it simply meant that someone was awake. Not sleeping, in other words. Then, about fifteen years ago, it began to be used in certain circles to refer to someone who had become aware of their own privilege in society and the challenges of others who are largely unseen to them.

Now, it has become a strongly negative term without much content, largely a nickname to mock liberal or progressive individuals. If it has any content at all, it mocks those with social concerns in relation to people of color or women.

Same word. Changing meanings and connotations.

This is how words work. The same word can mean significantly different things over time. A word can flip from being positive to negative or negative to positive. In the 1980s, Michael Jackson came out with a song called "Bad" in which the word bad came to mean really, really cool. In the early 2000s, a "googol" (1 with 100 zeros) became Google, and "to google" something became a verb.

2. The same is true of the word evangelical. It has not always meant exactly the same thing. 

In German, evangelisch simply means Protestant. Preachers of the 1700s like John Wesley, George Whitefield, and Jonathan Edwards used the word to describe an approach to salvation that, like Martin Luther, emphasized salvation by grace through faith. That was "evangelical" faith and "evangelical" religion.

So we largely call these individuals "evangelical" in hindsight. In their own time, the word described a kind of Christianity more than it named a distinct group.

As the 1800s progress, two streams of "evangelical" Christians begin to emerge. On the one hand, you have those like Charles Finney who continue to emphasize the "conversion" sense of the word that Wesley and Whitefield did. These are the revivalists of the 1800s. [1]

The other stream is foreshadowed by William Wilberforce, who begins to use the word evangelical to contrast the "alive" part of Anglicanism from the "nominal" part that, from his perspective, is Christian in name only. The evangelical part of Anglicanism is still orthodox. It still believes in sin and salvation. It sees faith as personal. The other is respectable and formal, perhaps a little too influenced by the Enlightenment. [2]

By the end of the 1800s, you have two distinct centers of gravity in what we would call evangelical Christianity in America. The one is the revivalist wing that, like D. L. Moody, emphasized conversion and the experience of salvation. They are evangelically "orthodox," but that is not their focus. 

The other includes academics like Charles Hodge and B. B. Warfield, whose center of gravity is the more doctrinal aspects of faith. They are Calvinists who focus evangelical faith on a particular understanding of sin and salvation. For them, an evangelical especially has the right beliefs about the Bible and salvation.

3. In the mid-1900s, the word evangelical would emerge now as a clear sociological movement after World War II. Now, it is very intentionally defined by a group calling themselves "neo-evangelicals." And both streams loosely rejoin in this new coalition.

On the one hand, you have Billy Graham...

[1] For an excellent survey of this stream, see Donald W. Dayton, Rediscovering an Evangelical Heritage: A Tradition and Trajectory of Integrating Piety and Justice (Baker Academic, 2014).  

[2] David W. Bebbington, as we will see, commits the root fallacy by mixing these two distinct streams together.

Self-Published: A Horse Strangely Warmed

I decided to try to write a crowd sourced novella of about 100 pages over spring break. One thing led to another and, voila, here it is: A Horse Strangely Warmed: The Life of John Wesley as Told by His Horses. A. J. Thomas had the winning idea and I ran with it.



Here are some quotes:

• "If your hoof is as my hoof, then give me some hoof."
• "The best of all is, God likes horses."
• "You have nothing to do but save soles."

And the lost verse of All Hail the Power of Jesus' Name
     Horses and cows and tiny cats
          In holey triumph join!
     Saved is the horse that doth believe
          From glue and bows of twine.

I read a couple books while doing research:

• Richard Heitzenrater's, Wesley and the People Called Methodists
• Stephen Tomkin's, John Wesley: A Biography

Dongell on Love, Purity, and Power

1. I had the chance to have lunch with Joe Dongell a couple weeks ago in Atlanta. He's a Wesleyan professor at Asbury Seminary and one of the smartest people I know. We have a lot in common, including similar backgrounds and similar educational pathways. I always know I'm going to be laughing when I'm having a meal with Joe, his brother Pete, and other friends from the Asbury era of my life.

Recently, Joe read through all of Wesley's works multiple times. I believe he will put out a book with his reflections, but he has spoken several times on his conclusions in various circles. I wanted to explore and expand on one train of thought emerged from that study.

2. It is well known by now that Wesley did not talk about entire sanctification in terms of the book of Acts. His preferred phrase was "perfect love" and he much preferred the books of John and the Sermon on the Mount in his preaching. It was John Fletcher who equated this experience with Acts, which gave the experience a much clearer experiential template.

There is some evidence that Wesley didn't have a problem with this approach, but you practically have to be a Wesley scholar to argue for it. It just wasn't a primary way he thought about entire sanctification.

3. One train of thought Joe has explored is that the shift from preaching on being perfected in love to preaching on Acts entailed some shifts in the way the American holiness movement thought about entire sanctification. In particular, Joe believes it shifted the focus from love to a focus on purity and power. I'll let the church historians hash out the details, but I want to dance a little with Joe's thoughts here.

One thing I think is clear is that the shift to Acts eventually shifted the American holiness movement away (not completely, but in focus) from the substance of the doctrine (love) to the experience of the doctrine. For example, Joe would argue that Wesley did not really specify any timetable for having this experience. In the late 1800s, the holiness movement would shift toward having a second experience ASAP after conversion.

Joe is suggesting that when Fletcher preached sanctification by way of Acts, he presupposed the substance of Wesley's teaching on love. But once the focus was on Acts, Joe argues, it became possible to preach sanctification without the substance of Wesley's teaching.

This shift inevitably made a lot of room for a certain shallowness to the experience, what Keith Drury once called, "two-tripism." At the beginning of the twentieth century, people were asking questions like, "Did you jump when you were sanctified?" "Did you shout?" In a slightly different context, "Did you speak in tongues?"

4. At some point, another shift happened. Sanctification shifted from a positive dynamic--love toward others--to a negative move. Holiness somewhere shifted to being against things. This was a twisting of the heart of the doctrine. Holiness was now about what you didn't do, about stopping certain behaviors, and holiness preaching was often dominated by preaching against relatively external things like what you wear or where you go. The holiness movement became heavily infected with legalism and Pharisaism.

(Soon forgotten was the social activism of the mid 1800s, when Wesleyans were activists against slavery and for women's right's.)

Not everyone, to be sure, not every sermon. There was still preaching about being saved from anger or self-destructive behaviors. I especially prize the preaching I heard on selflessness and self-denial, of doing everything for the glory of God. It was only the content toward which that teaching was directed that I question.

Could it be that the prevailing sense of holiness in the mid-twentieth century became a negative movement, and often about relatively superficial things? Holiness preachers were conceived along the lines of the prophets of the OT, but they missed a key dynamic. The OT prophets preached more for people than against sin. The prophets railed for social justice and against idolatry. They didn't primarily preach against breaking the Law.

5. It's no wonder that the Boomers of the Wesleyan Church largely rejected holiness in the late twentieth century. They saw neither purity nor power in the movement. They shifted their focus to the church growth movement.

Even moreso, those groups that continued to focus on this shell of a doctrine understandably confused a certain kind of cultural conservatism with holiness. A place like Bob Jones or Liberty University felt more holiness to them than a place like IWU, which actually promotes Wesley's actual values and the values of the nineteenth century church. Holiness became cultural and political conservatism, not perfect love.

Indeed, it was fascinating recently to hear the question of when Wesleyans shifted from a holiness emphasis to an emphasis on love, as if holiness was ever for Wesley anything but perfect love!

In short, we lost our way.

Wesley's Class Meetings (at first)

1. I had a fascinating conversation with Patrick Eby, Wesley Seminary's church history professor, on the way a lot of AME churches do class meetings and the way they started with John Wesley himself. If I understand correctly, AME churches (African Methodist Episcopal) have classes and class leaders...

[Wesley's classes were small accountability groups that met to help encourage each other to do right and resist temptation.]

... But, interestingly, in some AME churches, the classes don't actually meet in small groups. Rather, the class leader contacts the members of the small group one-to-one.

When I first heard this fact, I thought maybe that was an effective variation on Wesley for our current context. How many people will sign up to be asked about their temptations in a group setting these days? But one-on-one, with a leader they trusted and respected, maybe that would work for accountability better. Then maybe the group could get together regularly for Bible study and more social functions.

2. Upon telling this to Patrick (who I would argue is the number 2 Charles Wesley expert in the world after his doctoral advisor John Tyson), he told me that this is actually how John Wesley's classes worked in the beginning. Interestingly, he said that the classes started when Wesley would send leaders to individuals to collect a penny for, I believe, the New Room chapel in Bristol.

Then, with Wesley's characteristic genius, he saw that this was an opportunity for spiritual formation as well. The leader began to inquire of their spiritual state as well as to collect an offering. Only those with some resources did this so that they might serve as a model.

But eventually, they began to meet in accountability groups. This is often the case. Something develops organically into something special, and we forget how they developed almost coincidentally (or shall we say providentially?).

Fascinating!

Wesley on communion, at Oxford, on the Law

We read three more sermons of Wesley this week at IWU.

The Duty of Constant Communion
I've had people suggest this sermon to try to guilt trip Wesleyans into taking communion more often. Don't do it. It backfires. Give them the sermon "Means of Grace" instead.

What works in this sermon is the idea that, if God actually dispenses his mercy to us in communion, then why wouldn't we want it as often as possible? I also agree with Wesley that one shouldn't be fearful about taking communion because you're not perfect. Similarly, I do not at all believe that communion inevitably becomes a ritual if you take it often. I believe I could take communion every day and it not become a "vain repetition."

However, his argument that it is a command of God to do it as often as possible doesn't work. Jesus says, "as often as you drink it." He does not command a specific time frame. It is also unhealthy to think of it as a duty. It is a privilege. It is a great opportunity. In that sense, I fear we are hearing some of Wesley the "almost Christian" in this sermon.

The Almost Christian
This is a masterful little sermon. Wesley preached it at Oxford in 1741. It is masterful for the way it fits its context and for the way it builds its rhetoric.

The text is incredibly clever, Herod tells this to Paul in Acts 26, that Paul almost convinces him to be a Christian.

What Wesley does is he describes a very religious person, a very pious person. Indeed, he is describing himself as a "methodist" in the Holy Club when we was at Oxford before. How wonderful if we had lots of people in our churches who were "almost Christian" like he describes!

He builds to the "altogether Christian." This is the person who loves God and neighbor truly. And at the climax of the letter he gets to the main point. This is the person who is justified by faith.

I wonder if today we should almost preach the sermon backward, since we have plenty who are justified but are hardly as dedicated as the almost Christian he describes.

The Original, Nature, Properties, and Use of the Law
I was really impressed with this theological piece. I think, to a large part, it fits very well with the new perspective on Paul. Wesley recognizes that Paul in Romans 7 is referring to the Jewish Law, but he distinguishes different referents within the Jewish Law when Paul uses the word law.

I know that purists will point out that Jews did not distinguish between ceremonial and moral parts to the Law. But, like it or not, Paul uses the word law to refer to different parts of the Law that roughly correspond to what Wesley means by these terms. The phrase "works of Law," especially in Galatians, largely refers to what Wesley calls the ceremonial law. Similarly, Romans 7, as Wesley says, points to the part of the Law that Paul expected believers to continue to live out.

Wesley also weighs in on some contemporary debates within Protestant. Lutherans and, I believe, some Pietists, rejected the "third use of the law." Luther accepted the first two uses of the Law: 1) to show us that we are sinners, 2) to lead us to Christ. (Wesley does here have the old sense of the law as a schoolmaster, where it would be more appropriate to think of it as our guardian).

Calvin and Luther, however, debated about the third use of the Law--to show us how to live. Wesley here sided squarely with Calvin. The (moral) law shows us how we need to live, by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Also interesting here is Wesley weighing in on divine command theory and the Euthyphro question: "Is good good because God says so, or does God say so because it's good?" For Wesley, good is not arbitrary or a random choice of God's will. Good is good because God is good and thus good is his will.

Of course I have questions about this answer, orthodox and Wesley-an though it be. But my thoughts are only musings, nothing I am willing to stand on.

Wesley's The Way to the Kingdom

This Spring the Honor's College at IWU has initiated reading groups on campus that are reading through a number of Wesley's sermons. One of them I read this morning is titled, "The Way to the Kingdom."

1. Wesley's main text is Mark 1:15: "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news" (NRSV). Some will recognize this verse as quite possibly the cornerstone of Jesus' message on earth. Of course Wesley did not have the benefit of the last two hundred fifty years of biblical studies. In their apocalyptic context, Jesus and John the Baptist likely referred to the coming in-breaking of God's rule to the earth in a very concrete and visible kingdom, for which we still look.

But as a child of his age, Wesley tied this kingdom to true, inward religion. He connects the phrase "the kingdom of God" in Mark to the phrase in Romans 14:17: "The kingdom of God is not food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit" (NRSV). Wesley takes this verse to mean that the kingdom of God is something inside us. I suspect more is going on here for Paul than Wesley sees in this verse, because he was 1700 years removed from Paul. A more literal paraphrase of Paul would go something like this: "The kingdom of God, which we await to come to earth fully when Christ returns, will not be focused on the purity rules of the Jewish Law and should not be now. Rather, the key concern in God's kingdom is that we be righteous and that we be at peace with one another and that we be a community of joy."

2.  Here we get to an essential point and one that I think is particularly important for the Wesleyan tradition. Neo-evangelicalism, because it was born out of the fundamentalist-modernist controversy, is very focused on the original, historical meaning of the Bible (although it sets sharp boundaries on the conclusions a scholar can reach using historical-method). If you go to the pillar institutions of evangelicalism--Wheaton, Gordon-Conwell, Trinity, or any number of others--the focus of their biblical studies program is not only on how to read the Bible in context but you will find an assumption that this meaning is more or less the meaning we need to know to hear God in the Bible. In so many words, unless you learn Greek, Hebrew, and do extensive homework, you are not equipped to read the Bible "for all its worth."

Wesley was not a scholar of the original meaning, but his theology was usually spot on. We can do the hard original meaning research and the sophisticated hermeneutics work to come up with the same things he came up just by catching the spirit of Scripture, even if he was not in a position to know the letter with precision (and truth be told, even experts disagree frequently on this).

I am not against the original meaning at all, what the Bible really meant. I'm out of a job as a Biblehead if the church ever throws the real meaning of the Bible away completely. What I am saying is that the original meaning task is not the "be all and end all" of the Bible for the Church. It is relevant. It is part of it. But the theological task in which it sits is more primary. Our theology and ethics find their origins in the original meaning of the Bible, but they come to us within a framework that the Spirit has worked out over time. The Church does not read the Bible so much to "get back" as to move forward.

3. So in this sermon, Wesley argues that true religion is a matter of the heart, not of orthodoxy or ritual. "Neither does religion consist in orthodoxy or right opinion which... are not in the heart, but the understanding" (56). "The nature of religion is so far from consisting in these, in forms of worship or rites and ceremonies" (55).

Remember of course that Wesley was quite concerned to be orthodox and that, as an Anglican, his ritual practices were far more extensive than the typical Wesleyan Church (a lot of my seminary students would be wierded out thinking he was Catholic ;-) But these were not the essence of religion for him. These were not the heart of the matter.

"This alone is religion, truly so called; this alone is in the sight of God of great price. the Apostle sums it all up in three particulars--'righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost'" (56).

Faith "is not... a bare assent to the truth of the Bible, of the articles of our creed, or of all that is contained in the Old and New Testament... It is... a sure trust in the mercy of God through Christ Jesus" (60). More properly, it is faith in the God who raised Jesus from the dead and, thus, in Jesus as Lord, but Wesley is completely right in what it is not.

4. I found this sermon refreshing. I put smiley faces in the margins when he broke exegetical rules or got an interpretation wrong. He mixes Scriptures together from different places in the Bible. He has a "soterian" view of the gospel (60). As a child of the Enlightenment, his filter is individual focused in places where Paul was surely more corporate in thinking.

But Wesley's message is spot on. It is not that orthodoxy is unimportant, and there is much a Christian can gain from the sacraments. But these do not make someone a Christian. BTW, this also applies to neo-evangelical orthodoxy or even the expected practices of holiness communities. We may find that we have just changed the referent of these terms but still missed the point.

Repentance for our wrongdoings and faith in Christ--this is what God expects of our hearts. Love of God and love of our neighbor, this is what God expects in our lives.  God expects true righteousness, and this will result in peace and joy.

"Means of Grace" 5

Paraphrasing continues of Wesley's sermon, "Means of Grace" in contemporary English.

I
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

II
Part 4
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6. These individuals do not really understand that great foundation of the whole Christian building: "You are saved by grace." That is, you are saved from your sins, from the guilt of them and from the power of them, by the free gift and grace of God, his sheer mercy. You are saved through the merits of God's well-beloved Son. Only in this way are you restored to God's favor and only in this way is the image of God restored in you. It does not happen because of anything you have done on your own or because you have earned it or deserved it. You are not saved by any power or wisdom or strength that is in you or any other creature. You are only saved through the free gift and power of the Holy Spirit, who is working in everything.

7. Nevertheless, the central question remains for someone who is convinced that he or she does not have salvation: "We know that this salvation is the gift and work of God, but how can I get it?" If you say to this person, "Believe and you will be saved," the person might answer, "True, but how do I believe?"

You might respond, "Wait on God."

Again, you might hear in response, "OK, but how should I wait. Should I wait and participate in the means of grace, or should I wait without participating? Should I try to use these means of grace as I wait for the grace of God which brings salvation or should I not use them while I wait?"

8. It's impossible to imagine that the word of God has not given us any direction on such an important point. We can't imagine that the Son of God who came down from heaven "for us humans and our salvation" (Nicene Creed) would not have left us without a clear sense of a question that is so connected to our salvation.

And, indeed, he did not leave us without a clear answer. He has shown us the way in which we should go. We only have to consult the oracles of God [in Scripture] and ask what is written there. And if we will simply abide with what they teach, no possible doubt will remain...

"Means of Grace" 4

Paraphrasing continues of Wesley's sermon, "Means of Grace" in contemporary English.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
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... I am using this expression, "means of grace," because I don't know of any expression that is better. I also use it because it has frequently been used by Christians in the Church for many ages. It has particularly been used by our own church, the Anglican Church, which instructs us to praise God both for giving us these means of grace, as well as for our hope of future glory. The Church teaches us that a sacrament is "an outward sign of an inward grace, and a means by which we receive this grace."

The most important of these means are 1) prayer, whether privately or publicly in a worshiping congregation, 2) searching the Scriptures--including reading it, hearing it read, and meditating on them, and 3) partaking of the Lord's Supper, eating bread and drinking wine in remembrance of Christ. We believe that God has ordained these to be the normal channels by which God conveys his grace to the souls of men.

2. But let's make it clear that the whole value of these means depends on whether they actually serve the ultimate goal of faith. As a result, all of these means, when they are separated from the goal, are less than nothing. They are emptiness. If they do not contribute to knowing and loving God, they are not acceptable in God's sight. Indeed, they become rather an abomination before God, a stink in his nostrils. He is tired of putting up with them. Most of all, if they are used to do away with the faith they were designed to serve, it is not easy to find words for the enormous foolishness and wickedness of thus turning God's arms against himself. It is keeping Christianity out of the heart by using the very means that God put in place to bring it.

3. Similarly, we accept that apart from the Spirit of God, no outward means whatsoever can bring any benefit. It cannot to any degree bring the knowledge or love of God. Beyond dispute, the Spirit himself brings about any help that happens on the earth. It is he alone who, by his own almighty power, brings about in us what is pleasing in his sight. All outward actions--unless God is working in them and by them--are only ineffective and impoverished actions.

Therefore, whoever imagines that there is any intrinsic power in any means of grace whatsoever is greatly in error. This person does not know the Scriptures or the power of God. We know that there is no inherent power in the words that are spoken in prayer, in the letter of Scripture read, the sound of Scripture heard, or the bread and wine received in the Lord's Supper. Rather, it is God alone who is the giver of every good gift and the author of all grace. The whole power is from him whereby there is any blessing conveyed to our soul through any of these.

Similarly, we know that he is able to give the same grace even if there were no means [of grace] on the face of the earth. In this sense, we may affirm, that, with regard to God, there is no such thing as a means of grace, because he is just as able to work whatever he wants by any means or by no means at all."

4. We believe further that no use of these means of grace will ever atone for a single sin. Only the blood of Christ alone can do that. Only through the blood of Christ can any sinner be reconciled to God. There is no other satisfaction of the need for atonement [propitiation] because of our sins. There is no other fountain to wash our sin and uncleanness.

Every believer in Christ is deeply convinced that there is no worthiness before God except in Christ. There is no virtue in any work that we do, not in saying prayers or searching the Scripture or hearing the word of God or eating the bread of communion or drinking the cup of communion. No one who knows the grace of God will deny that Christ is the only real basis and cause of God's grace, which if nothing else is captured by the expression that "Christ is the only means of grace."

5. Still again, although it is a sober truth, we recognize that a large proportion of those who are called Christians today abuse the means of grace to the destruction of their souls. No doubt this is the case with all those who are content with a look of godliness but who lack the power of it. Some of them would like to think that they are already Christians, because they do certain things, even though Christ was never yet revealed in their hearts, nor the love of God poured out in them. Others suppose that they will certainly become one just barely because they use these means. They may be dreaming, without hardly thinking about it, that there is some kind of automatic power in them that will sooner or later (they don't know when) make them good people. Or they imagine that there is some sort of merit in using them that will earn them true righteousness from God--or that perhaps he will accept them without it...

Wesley's "Means of Grace" 3

Paraphrasing Wesley's sermon, "Means of Grace" in contemporary English.

Part 1
Part 2
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...
6. Experience shows how easily this idea spreads and insinuates itself into the minds of people. And it happens especially to those who have been awakened from the sleep of death, those who begin to feel the weight of their sins a burden too heavy to bear. Such individuals are usually impatient about their current state and are trying to find a way to escape it. They are eager to catch any new idea, any new proposal for ease or happiness. They probably have already tried these sorts of outward means and found no relief in them. Indeed, they may have experienced as a result more and more remorse, fear, sorrow, and condemnation.

Therefore, it is easy to persuade them that it is better to abstain from all these means. They are already tired of working hard, seemingly in vain. They are tired of working in the fire. They are therefore eager for any excuse to through them aside, actions in which they are finding no pleasure. They want to get up their painful striving and to sink down into lazy inactivity.

II1. In the following discussion, I want to examine in general whether there actually are any "means of grace."

By "means of grace," I mean outward signs, words, or actions, ordained of God, and appointed for this purpose, to be the normal ways that God uses to convey grace to us--grace that leads us to him (prevenient grace), grace that makes us right with him (justifying grace), and grace that actually makes us righteous (sanctifying grace)...

Wesley: "Means of Grace" 2

Paraphrasing Wesley's sermon, "Means of Grace" in contemporary English.

Part 1

Now Part 2
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...

5. At the same time, in their zeal for the glory of God, in their attempt to recover souls from the fatal delusion that ritual acts are effective in themselves, isn't it strange that some of these individuals would speak as if "outward religion"--things like prayers, reading Scriptures, and communion--is completely meaningless and has no place in following Christ? Certainly it was because they were strongly convinced that the abuse of these "ordinances," these God-ordained activities, had spread across the whole church and almost driven true religion out of the world. It isn't surprising at all that they have not always been careful enough as they have expressed themselves. If you weren't careful, someone listening might think they were saying that all outward actions were completely useless and not actually designed by God to be the normal way God conveys his grace to our souls.

Indeed, it is possible that some of these holy voices did themselves fall extensively into this position. I'm thinking especially here of those who were cut off from these ordinances, not by choice, but in God's providence. Some  were forced to wander the earth with no place to live, even living in the caves and crannies of the earth. Since they were able to experience the grace of God directly, because they were deprived of these outward means in the Church, some might easily have jumped to the conclusion that grace would still be given to those who intentionally stay away from them...

Wesley - "The Means of Grace" 1

Yesterday I started paraphrasing one of John Wesley's sermons, "On a Catholic Spirit." However, I found that someone else has already done a fine job of that here. There are a few other Wesley resources there in modern English.

A man named Teddy Ray has also done three of Wesley's sermons in contemporary English ("Salvation by Faith," "The Almost Christian," and "Awake, Thou That Sleepest"). Ken Kinghorn has published all of them in modern English in three volumes.

Rather unmotivating, but I'm willing to give a new sermon a try, one that isn't represented above on the web (Kinghorn's is only in book form). I thought I'd start over with one that Wesley Seminary MDIV students read in their first semester spiritual formation course, "The Means of Grace."
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Scripture: Malachi 3:7
"You have gone away from my decrees and have not kept them."

I. 1. Are any decrees from God now, since the gospel brought life and immortality to light? Under the Christian dispensation, are there any usual channels, any means of grace that are ordained by God now?

This question would never have been asked in the early church by the apostles, except by some pagan who came to Christ out of the blue with no knowledge. On the contrary, the whole body of Christians were agreed that God had instituted certain outward means, certain paths by which he conveyed his grace into the souls of humanity. [1] The early church's constant practice of these sorts of actions makes this claim beyond dispute for as long as "all believed and had all things in common" (Acts 2:44). And, "They continued firmly in the teaching of the apostles, in breaking bread together, and in prayers" (Acts 2:42).

2. But in time, when "the love of many waxed cold" (Matt. 24:12), some began to mistake the means of grace for an end in itself. [2] They began to think that faith and religion [3] was about those outward actions themselves rather than having a heart that is renewed to be like God, for the image of God in us to be renewed. [4] They forgot that the goal of every commandment of God is "love, from a pure heart" with a "faith that isn't faked" (1 Tim. 1:5). The goal is for us to love God with all our heart and our neighbor like ourselves. It is to be purified from pride, anger, and evil desire by "faith in the working of God" (Col. 2:12).

Nevertheless, some seemed to think that there was something about these outward actions in themselves that would make them pleasing and acceptable to God, even though the heart of faith does not lie in these outward means, even though they did not show the same concern for the more important commands of God--justice, mercy, and the love of God.

3. In this case, it is clear that individuals who abused these means of God's grace were not using them in the way that God intended them to be used, for the reasons God instituted them. Rather, that which was meant to make them whole actually became a cause of failure. They were so far from receiving any blessing from them. Rather, they were bringing down a curse on their heads. So far from growing "more heavenly," more like God in their hearts and the way they lived--the purpose of these outward actions--they became "twice as much a child of hell" as before (Matt. 23:15).

Then as an over-reaction, when others saw that these actions did not change these children of the Devil, they began to say that these actions were not tools for facilitating God's work in us at all, that they were not means of grace at all.

4. In most of Christian history, the number of those who abused these channels of God's transforming power was far greater than those who ended up despising them. Yet in recent history, certain individuals have arisen who would also throw them away who have made this way of thinking into a more significant movement. [5] Here I have in mind individuals of great understanding, sometimes with considerable learning, people who seem to be people of love. These are people who in practice are well acquainted with true, inward religion. Some of them have been shining lights, people who were famous in their time, people who have stood in the gap against the tide of ungodliness, the kind of people that the church of Christ needs.

At first, these holy and noble individuals did not intend to do anything more than to show that outward religion is worthless unless it also involves a religion of the heart, because "God is a Spirit, and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and truth" (John 4:24). Therefore, external worship is worthless unless it is accompanied by a heart devoted to God. But if it is accompanied by this heart, then these outward actions God has put in place bring a great benefit. Then they advance us in holiness (being pure in our hearts).

But when these actions do not advance inward holiness, they are useless and pointless. They are less than pointless. Indeed, when they have nothing to do with our hearts, they are a complete abomination to the Lord....

[1] It might be helpful to get on the table right off the bat what Wesley is talking about here. He is talking about actions like prayer, searching the Scriptures, communion. As "means of grace," Wesley believed that God especially transformed people as they prayed, read the Bible, and partook of the Lord's Supper. As will be clear, he did not think this happened automatically, but he would have said people were transformed more often when doing these things than when doing other things.

[2] Here Wesley might have had in mind both the Roman Catholic Church of his day as well as, no doubt, many in his own church, the Church of England or Anglican Church. Wesley of course lived in the 1700s.

[3] The word religion has taken on a negative connotation today, so I have added the word faith here. It is important to realize that this condemnation of the word "religion" is just a recent fad of language in certain Christian circles. To critique Wesley for using the word religion is only to be ignorant of how the connotations and meanings of words change over time.

[4] The image of God in us for Wesley especially refers to the part of us that, when God restores us, is like God, especially when it comes to goodness (the moral image of God in us).

[5] I have considerably expanded this sentence to give context. Wesley is thinking here of the Anabaptist movement of the 1500s, 1600s, which continued in his day and has persisted to the present. They would reject "means of grace" altogether as a concept.

Wesley's Sermons: "On a Catholic Spirit"

In the Spring, many at IWU are going to be reading some of Ken Collins and Jason Vickers' mammoth new Wesley collection, Wesley's sermons arranged systematically. Since I'll be reading through the sermons anyway (right now we're reading Steve Harper's The Way to Heaven in preparation), I thought I might poke a little at a project I've suggested someone do--paraphrasing key sermons of Wesley in contemporary English.

So why not? I thought I'd start today with sermon #34 (in the collection of 44 sermons) or #39 (in the collection of 53): "On a Catholic Spirit."
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On a Catholic Spirit [1]

Scripture: 2 Kings 10:15
"And when Jehu departed from there, he met up with Jehonadab, the son of Rechab, who was coming to meet him. 

"And Jehu greeted him and said, 'Is your heart with me, as my heart is with you?' 

"And Jehonadab answered, 'It is.' 

"'If it is,' Jehu answered, 'then give me your hand.'"

Sermon
Introduction
1. "You will love your neighbor as yourself." Even those who don't love as they should, agree that they owe love to all humanity. This is the royal law. When you hear the command, you know it's right.

The command does not mean what some of those in Jesus' day took it to mean--love your relative, your friend, your associate, "but hate your enemy." Not so, Jesus said. Rather, "Love your enemies, bless those who curse you." Do good to those who hate you. Pray for those who use you in spite, who persecute you. If you do these things, you will be children of your Father in heaven, who gives sun not only to the righteous but to the evil as well. He does the same with the rain. (Matt. 5:43-45). If you do these things, all humanity will see it.

2. To be sure, there is a special love we owe to those who love God. David wrote, "All my delight is on the saints who are on the earth on those who excel at virtue" (Ps. 16:3). [2] And of course Jesus is greater than David, and he says, "I am giving you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you must love one another." (John 13:34-35).

The Apostle John frequently and strongly insists on this love.  He says, "This is the message that you heard from the beginning, that we should love one another." (1 John 3:11) "By this we perceive the love of God: because he laid down his life for us." So we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters, if love should call us to do so. (3:16)

Again John says, "Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God." The one who doesn't love does not know God, for God is love. (1 John 4:7-8) "Not that we have loved God, but that God has loved us and sent his Son to be an atoning sacrifice for our sins." (4:10-11)

3. Everyone agrees with these ideas. But does everyone practice it? Our daily experience shows the opposite. Where are there even Christians who love each other as he has given the commandment?

How many obstacles stand in the way? The two biggest hindrances are 1) Christians do not agree on everything and, consequently, 2) we do not have the same lifestyle. Indeed, their way of living in small matters differs in proportion to how different their beliefs are.

4. So Christians will differ in their opinions or in the way they worship. These may prevent us from uniting as organizations. But does it need to prevent us from loving each other? Although we do not think the same way, can we not love the same way? Isn't it possible for us to be of one heart, even though we aren't of one opinion?

Without a doubt, we can! In this way, all the children of God can unite, despite our smaller differences. Even though these other differences remain, we can advance each other forward in love and good works.

5. So we see in the example of Jehu in the Scripture, even though he was a mixed sort of character. His sentiment is worth the attention and imitation of every Christian. "And when Jehu departed from there, he met up with Jehonadab, the son of Rechab, who was coming to meet him. And Jehu greeted him and said, 'Is your heart with me, as my heart is with you?' And Jehonadab answered, 'It is.' 'If it is,' Jehu answered, 'then give me your hand.'"

This Scripture naturally divides into two parts. First there is a question from Jehu to Jehonadab. "Is your heart with me, as my heart is with you?" Then there is the offer, after Jehonadab responds, "It is." "If it is, then give me your hand."

...

[1] I have kept the word catholic in the title because it is a good word to learn in the sense that Wesley used it. Catholic here does not mean "Roman Catholic" because, of course, Wesley was not a Roman Catholic nor was he particularly friendly in some of his writings toward the Roman Catholic Church.

The word "catholic" here has its older sense of the church everywhere in all times and places. It is the universal Church. To have a "catholic" spirit in this sense is to sense your unity with Christians who belong to Christian groups other than your own. The sermon will make this sense clear.

[2] As we would expect of a man from the eighteenth century, Wesley was a pre-modern in his use of Scripture. He read its words in the light of the way words were read in his day and, of course, assuming traditional authorship. 

Wesley to the People Called Methodist (a pseudepigraph)

To Mr. Francis Asbury, February 25, 1791.

My dear brother, sensing that my time on this earth may not be long (indeed, it may be that by the time this letter reaches you I will myself have reached that distant shore), I am moved to release the burden of my heart for the people called Methodist who will come in the last days.

You know that we have disagreed on the matter of Bishops in the now former colonies. Yet I have come to accept that it may be necessary to have strong leadership in a country destined to be spread over a vast expanse of land. Otherwise our travelling preachers might come Independent of each other and the Spirit worketh best communally. Yet you know my experiences here in England, where the Episcopacy has oft become an obstacle to the Gospel.

May there never come a time in your fellowship when your Bishops would lord it over the people called Methodists! Nevertheless have I learned to trust the Spirit to move His people to His desired destination, although it oft takes time. One day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. God is never slack concerning His promise. He will always renew His people. At first it might be a little cloud out of the sea, like a man's hand. Yet a little while, and He that shall come will come, and will not tarry.

The Bishoprick will not alway be right, but neither shall the preachers and plain men. We must believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world. We are every man prone to think we are right, and here we must remember the words of Gamaliel, that if counsel or work be only of men, then God will surely bring it to nought. Or contrariwise, if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it; lest haply ye be found even to fight against God.

So perhaps it is best alway to work within whatever Church, until they finally force you into the field. At times it seems inevitable that a Bishoprick or Institution will lose sight of Primary things. Dare I think that there would come a time when the people called Methodist would become timid with regard to such a vile Institution as slavery? Or God forbid there come a time when the Bishops might not endure the sound faith which was once delivered to the saints.

The call of the Methodist thus will always be to reform the nation and especially the Church, even if that Church be the Methodist. In such a time as this, we still only plant and water. Only God giveth the increase.

I have been young, and now am old; yet have I not seen God forsake His righteous. Be patient. Do justly. Love mercy. Walk humbly with your God, who never faileth. He will get His people where they need to go.

As for me, the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith. And what I have discovered best of all is, God is with us!

Your affectionate friend and brother,
J. Wesley

Wesley versus the Wesleyans

The United Methodist Church is in a major crisis right now. Billy Abraham (who is part of the Theological Symposium at Wesleyan HQ these next two days) has given his own spin on the factions within the church here. Part of the UM problem, he suggests, is that it was a conglomeration of multiple parent bodies in 1960s.

The practical focus of The Wesleyan Church, coming as it did at the leading edge of the Church Growth Movement, has minimized distinctions between our parent bodies, especially The Wesleyan Methodist Church and the Pilgrim Holiness Church. The identities of both were arguably forged most in the fires of turn of the century revivalism, as well as the fundamentalizing forces of the mid-twentieth century.

So what is your point, Schenck? My point is that this twin parentage might suggest different levels of proximity to the man himself, John Wesley. For example, as someone from the Pilgrim side, I respect Wesley, but think we can do better. I get a little annoyed at those who think that Wesley is some sort of control or final authority in relation to what Wesleyans must think. Good grief, the guy lived in the 1700s. We potentially have 200 years of further Wesleyan thinking to draw on.

I get especially annoyed with what I view as "I've learned a little" trump-ism. This is the person that now thinks he or she is smarter than everyone else because they've now read a little in the man. I consider this is a transitional stage. Full maturity, IMO, is when one not only knows a little about the man, great though he was, but can now think Wesleyan for him or herself.

Some thoughts...

A History of Inerrancy

A few quick thoughts on how I think the Bible's truthfulness has been conceived over time and has changed throughout church history.

Phase 1: Pre-Reformation
From the New Testament authors to the Reformation, there was an assumption that the Bible was the very words of God and that it was obviously truthful in everything it said. However, there was no restriction that would limit that truthfulness to the literal. If a passage seemed problematic from a literal standpoint, it could be interpreted allegorically.

Basically, the meaning of the Bible was tethered to the "rule of faith" rather than to history. Passages perceived to be difficult in relation to orthodoxy or their sense of the world were interpreted in a different way. We see this still in the church today in the pew, as church members who were not trained to read the Bible in context search for interpretations that fit with what they have already been taught to believe.

Phase 2: Reformation
The Reformation untethered the meaning of the Bible from orthodox tradition and forbid figural interpretation. Sola scriptura in effect retethered the meaning of the Bible to history rather than to the rule of faith. The moment this change of meaning orientation happened, Protestant liberalism and higher criticism immediately became one likely eventuality.

The orientation of meaning shifted from being a premodern mirror of common Christian understanding to an individual quest to "get back" to what it meant. The operating mode became one of pealing back, which would lead eventually to the quest for the historical Jesus and the pealing away of historical layers in the gospels.

It would take a few centuries for this to take its course. Luther, Calvin, Wesley continued to some extent to read the Bible in a premodern way, as a big picture mirror of their own theologies. They continued to read a single theology into the biblical texts taken as a whole. And of course they believed the Bible (meaning their own theologies which they saw in the Bible) was completely truthful.

Phase 3: The Princeton Calvinists
The modern doctrine of inerrancy was arguably born of Charles Hodges' support of slavery. (By the way, few people know that the Southern Baptist Church itself was also formed in defense of slavery.) Hodge's doctrine of inerrancy pushed the locus of meaning down to the verse level rather than the overall, big picture theological level as before. So since individual verses in Colossians, 1 Peter, etc. told slaves to obey their masters, Hodge argued that the abolitionist movement was going against the details of the Bible. Meanwhile, abolitionists such as my Wesleyan forebears argued from the big principles of Scripture.

We see this same hermeneutic in play today with the question of women in ministry. Rather than an overall theology informing the whole meaning of the Bible as before, individual, "inerrant" trump verses are brought to play in debates. This was a shift in the way the Bible's truthfulness is approached.

In the late 1800s, B. B. Warfield continued to push Hodge's approach to Scripture at Princeton. He argued literal interpretation of the Bible against my holiness, revivalist ancestors. It was during his time that historical criticism and evolution were coming into play, and he made some early responses. He did not completely rule out evolution (it's hard for us to "feel" that there was ever a time when emotions weren't as polarized as ours are now).  Warfield also accepted a kind of dual authorship of the biblical texts, with the personalities of the authors being involved.

My key take-away here is that modern inerrancy originated in direct opposition to the values of the Wesleyan tradition of which I am a part.

Phase 4: Fundamentalist Inerrancy
The form that inerrancy took in the mid-twentieth century was a defensive mechanism against developments in science and biblical studies. It set down assumptions that created a wall against these perceived threats. No matter what science says, you can't believe in evolution. No matter what Bible scholars say, you have to believe Moses wrote the Pentateuch.

The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy is the codification of these fences. The CSBI assumes an evidentiary, modernist approach but only within certain boundaries.  If the evidence seems to be pointing in a direction that crosses one of the boundary lines, the evidence must be reinterpreted. This is analogous to the way the patristic fathers reinterpreted biblical texts but now it is the historical and scientific evidence that is reinterpreted rather than the meaning of the biblical text.

Phase 5: Evangelical Inerrancy Today
As the new book, Five Views of Inerrancy, reflects, evangelical scholars today have resorted to more complex understandings of inerrancy in an attempt to be faithful to the biblical texts themselves. Kevin Vanhoozer reflects the complications of genre (the Bible does much more than affirm propositional truths). Michael Bird points to the cultural-embeddedness of the whole American debate and pushes us in some ways back toward the ways the truthfulness of the Bible was understood before Hodge. John Franke reminds us of the "plurivocity" of the biblical texts.

Some thoughts after walking through the book...

Wesley's definition of "evangelical"

I chanced upon a place in one of John Wesley's sermons where he used the word "evangelical." I've been curious about how the word was used prior to the twentieth century. I've generally found that those who argue for continuity of a concept throughout history (e.g., Al Mohler's sense of inerrancy throughout history) generally have a rather superficial understanding of how meaning works.

Just because someone uses the same or a similar word in a different time and place doesn't at all mean that they used the word in the same way. Meaning is always culturally embedded. The "denotation" of certain words may even seem the same, but the "connotations" may be quite different.

Thus is my contention that to be "evangelical" in the twentieth century is not the same thing as calling something "evangelical" in another time and place. The most obvious example here is the fact that "evangelisch" in German simply means Protestant and has little to do with being evangelical in the US today.

In any case, Wesley uses the word "evangelical" three times in his sermon, "The Spirit of Bondage and Adoption."  He is sketching out stages in a person's spiritual development. He sees three: 1) the natural state, 2) the legal state, and 3) the evangelical state (IV.1).

The progression goes something like the following. The natural state is not really aware of its sinfulness. This person sins willfully but doesn't really care. The person in the legal state comes under fear and an awareness of bondage to sin. He or she wants to stop sinning but cannot (Rom. 7). Finally, in the evangelical state one may still struggle against sin but this person is able not to sin.

Since Wesley likens the second state to being under law, the evangelical state is being under grace and being a child of God. He calls it at one point a "state of love" (IV.2).

So I infer that what Wesley means by evangelical here is something like "under the good news" or "under the gospel." The good news for him in this instance is that a person has been freed from the law and empowered by the Spirit to love and not sin.

I'm sure others could shed more light on what he meant. I did a quick search on the NNU Wesley site and found one other sermon in which Wesley used the adjective ("Spirit Bears Witness"). I noticed also that Arminius used the term in the 1600s. My first thought was that perhaps it was associated with Luther's idea of justification by faith as the essence of the good news?

There is much that could be studied here and no doubt it's been done. I am just not ready to trust what's been done. In any case, Wesley doesn't use the word "evangelical" anything close to the way we do today.

P.S. We can't fault Wesley for being a child of his age. For us today, he is a poor model of how to do exegesis. But that doesn't mean that his theology is wrong. We read Wesley for his theology, not for how to do inductive Bible study.  There is a picture of truth in this sermon, even if it is not absolute or exactly what Paul was thinking.

Wesleyan Version of the Reformation

Happy Reformation Day!  496 years ago today, Martin Luther posted his famous 95 Theses on the door of the Wittenberg Cathedral.  Today I'd like to give a Wesleyan version of the Reformation.

1. When Martin Luther was over there in Germany, stirring up trouble, we were just a twinkle in Henry VIII's eye. The notorious loser king himself wrote a treatise against Luther called The Defense of the Seven Sacraments (no doubt with some help from someone he later beheaded). Henry opposed the Reformation, was made "Defender of the Faith" by the Pope, and was quite Roman Catholic...

... until the Pope refused to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon in 1527. Over the course of the next 10 years Henry VIII in stages would extract England from the authority of Rome and take over the new Church of England. Religious anarchy began to knock at the door. By 1539 Henry had reaffirmed transubstantiation, celibacy of priests, confession, etc and was trying to get control of English translations of the Bible.

2. The English Reformation didn't really begin taking on a more positive direction, in my opinion, until Thomas Cranmer put together the Book of Common Prayer in 1549.  As this book of Anglican faith and practice developed, it would come to include the Thirty-Nine Articles, the grandpappy of Methodist and Wesleyan statements (although not without alteration). These articles were not a complete statement of faith, but located the Anglican church in relation to the rest of Christendom at the time.

a. For example, they placed the locus of authority for the church in Scripture. You can't require believers to believe or do anything that can't be demonstrated through Scripture. The locus here has to do with salvation, however, not belief about any topic whatsoever. The Apocrypha were included for instruction, but not for doctrine (deuterocanonical, as for Jerome).

b. In general, the Thirty-Nine Articles bear the strong influence of the High Reformation.  There is justification by faith here.  There is Calvin's predestination and the continuance of a sin nature after faith. There is the rejection of transubstantiation but continuation of infant baptism. Priests can marry. Only two sacraments. It opposes those Anabaptists who shared their possessions in common, as well as speaking in other tongues. It was possible to commit the unpardonable sin.

3. Much of Anglicanism would follow a Calvinist route, and Wesley himself said he was a "hair's breadth" from Calvin. However, England in the 1700s was impacted fairly strongly by the thinking of another individual who came out of Calvinism, Jacobus Arminius (d. 1609).

Some of the most important distinctions included that God's election was conditional on our choice, that God desired everyone to be saved, and that the atonement was thus in theory for everyone. Wesley would follow this line of thought rather than that of Calvinist Anglicanism.

4. Wesley represents a true amalgam of influences.  At Oxford he drank deeply from Roman Catholic writers on the goal of holiness.  He took justification by faith from Luther and extended Calvin's more pessimistic version of sanctification to stretch toward Catholic holiness.  He took prevenient grace from Arminius.

But the real missing piece of the equation was the Pietism of the Moravians.  Very unusual for the day, they believed they knew they were saved. Wesley's thinking took on an experiential dimension. In 1738 he felt his heart strangely warmed. He would understand holiness as another experience to be pursued in the life of a believer, "Christian perfection."

5. The Wesleyan tradition is not part of the high Reformation. Justification by faith, yes. But not Luther's "at the same time sinner and saint." Depraved and elected, yes, but not determined and requiring faithfulness to be maintained. The Bible sufficient for salvation, yes? But much to learn from tradition as well.

Happy Reformation Day!

Sunday Theology: Wesley's Quadrilateral

Here's my final post on revelation in my ongoing theology series.

Wesley, Soterianism, and Oliver Wendell Holmes...

... No, these don't all go together, but I thought it would peak your curiosity more than "Thoughts I've Had Today."

Wesley and Soterianism
I was reflecting today in class about the fact that the ordo salutis ("order of salvation") was the defining feature of Wesley's theology, and I was connecting this fact to my take-away from Scot McKnight's recent King Jesus Gospel that the very terms of the Reformation got us out of focus on the gospel in the process of correcting an overemphasis on the church as the agent of salvation.

Let me put it in my own terms. The focal point of the Reformation was the argument over the role of works in salvation, indulgences in particular. (The other emphases of the Reformation followed naturally on this focal issue.  The argument over Scripture was about the ground rules of the debate. The foci on Christ and grace had to do with the theological framework of the question of works)

The result is that Protestantism has always tended to overemphasize Paul and overemphasize anthropology at the center of theology.  That is to say, the terms of Luther's debate inevitably has led us to focus on the human problem and its solution as the center of theology.  Rather, God should be the center of theology.

Wesley was simply playing out the terms of the Reformation on the details. So he took justification from Luther, extended sanctification from Calvin, appropriated the Arminian wing of the Calvinist tree, and threw in some assurance of salvation from the Moravians for good measure.  Since he was Anglican, he remained closer to Roman Catholicism than Luther or Calvin.

Oliver Wendell Holmes
Finished the second and third chapters of The Metaphysical Club on the plane home yesterday. Felt quite sorry for Holmes in chapter 2 as the naive "all or nothing" abolitionist/idealist got a real life lesson in the absurd violence of the Civil War.  It is a good reminder for anyone who is excited about war.  War should always, always be a last resort when everything else has failed.

But I didn't like the post-Civil War Holmes. He came to consider individual lives as generally unimportant in comparison to society doing its thing.  Rules became simply conventional for him and his big deal was simply following them, no matter who got run over in the process.

Having started quite interested in the man, I ended that section with little identification with him at all.

McKnight 6: Salvation takes over Gospel

The next in our pilgrimage through Scot McKnight's King Jesus Gospel.

Intro: Evangelism Explosion
Chap. 1: The Big Question: What is the Gospel?
Chap. 2: Gospel Culture vs Salvation Culture
Chap. 3: From Salvation to Story
Chap. 4: The Gospel of Paul

Now Chap. 5: "How Did Salvation Take Over the Gospel?"

This was an interesting chapter.  It seems to me that we can sum it up in two claims: 1) the early Christian creeds were basically expansions of the gospel narrative found in 1 Corinthians 15:1-5 and 2) the Lutheran Augsburg Confession (1530) and Calvinist Genevan Confession (1536) started a trajectory that eventually led to the question of "how to get saved" taking over the matter of "the gospel of King Jesus."

This is very interesting and I was once again thankful for coming from the Wesleyan-Methodist tradition and thus through Anglicanism.  I did not grow up worried about the "five solas" of the Reformation or the hot button issues of neo-evangelicalism.  I grew up concerned about whether you'd had the experience of entire sanctification.  While that revivalist emphasis had it's extremes as well, I never felt like the things Scot clearly has to tippy-toe around were that big of a deal.  [warning Wesleyans--don't borrow unnecessary baggage from other evangelicals just because we are currently in bed with them]

So he grew up in circles that were squeamish about saying the creeds (his background is Anabaptist).  To be sure, not a lot of Wesleyan churches say the creeds either.  But I wouldn't say there's much opposition to them either.  Wesleyan Methodist churches certainly never had a problem with the creeds.  Scot sees the creeds as expansions of the basic narrative of the gospel in 1 Corinthians 15.

He has a very good thought here to those who opposed the creeds--what would you object to in them?  There really isn't much to which a Christian could object.  Rather, most Christians would have real problems with someone who actually rejected the things in the Apostle's or Nicene creeds.

With the Augsburg and Geneva Confessions, the issue of how and why a person can be saved came to the foreground.  This is natural since the Reformation itself centered on such issues.  Protestantism became oriented around personal salvation and, eventually, individual experience of personal salvation (Scot quotes Wesley's famous "heart strangely warmed" journal entry).

Eventually, the salvation bits that were added to the Protestant "creeds" took over.  We no longer talk about God the creator or Jesus who became flesh and rose again.  Now we start with the sinfulness of humanity and end with our salvation.  Now our theology is focused around us rather than God and his story.

Scot ends with a quote from Dallas Willard's The Divine Conspiracy: "'Gospels of Sin Management' presume a Christ with no serious work other than redeeming humankind... they foster 'vampire Christians,' who only want a little blood for their sins but nothing more to do with Jesus until heaven" (76 of McKnight).
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An afterword seems in order for Wesleyans.  I believe that McKnight does indeed point to some potential blind spots in Wesleyan theology and gives us a concrete example of what I have meant at other times when I have pointed out that Wesley is more our grandfather than our father.

Wesley was both a child of the Enlightenment and lived near the birth of the Romantic era.  He tried to steer a center course between too much and too little an emphasis on personal experience.  My read of his personal introspection is that he never quite found the right mix, and I identify with his seeming roller coaster of personal uncertainty.  Been there.

Today, we probably do need to balance out his emphasis on the ordo salutis, the "order of salvation," in our thinking.  The priorities should be the more central features of the gospel (God, Christ).  The materials are there in Wesley and, more importantly, in the 2000 year old faith of Christendom.  The things Wesley emphasized had to do with the most pressing issues of his day. Probably, our more immediate heritage in the 1800's revivals only moved us further away from balance in these areas (two trips to the altar and you're done).  

My bigger take away is this.  We've had two hundred years to refine Wesley's trajectory.  There are parts of his theology that should be smoothed out, parts that should be elevated, probably parts that should be eliminated.  Those who are a slave to Wesley run the risk of being about two hundred years behind!