This is now the fourth and final post in a unit on the Holy Spirit in my ongoing series, theology in bullet points. The first unit had to do with God and Creation, and the second was on Christology and Atonement.
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The Spirit sanctifies the believer.
1. In terms of priority, the body of Christ is primary, and the individual believer is secondary. Yet every individual is valued equally, created in the image of God, male and female, people of every tribe and nation, people of every status. All are loved whether sinner or saint.
God is love, so he loves every individual. But there are many individuals in the Church. So it seems obvious that there is more love dispensed to the Church as a whole than to any one individual in the Church. The health of the whole Church takes priority over the liberty of the individual Christian (e.g., Rom. 14; 1 Cor. 10).
Accordingly, the way in which the Spirit engages the individual is a microcosm of the way he engages the Church as a whole. The Spirit sanctifies the Church and makes it God's own. So the Spirit sanctifies the individual believer. The Spirit purifies the Church and makes it righteous, and the Spirit purifies the believer and makes us righteous. The Spirit empowers the Church for mission and service. The Spirit empowers the individual for mission and service. The Spirit leads the Church into truth. The Spirit leads individuals into truth.
2. If Christ is the basis of atonement, all the grace relating to salvation is dispensed through the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit that dispenses prevenient grace, the grace that comes to us before we are able to go looking for God. It is the grace that enables us to move toward God. It is the grace that empowers us to be able to repent and exercise faith.
It is the Holy Spirit that dispenses the grace that justifies us and acquits us of all our sin. The Holy Spirit is God's "seal" of ownership (2 Cor. 1:22), such that if someone does not have the Spirit, that person does not truly belong to Christ (Rom. 8:9). The Holy Spirit is an "earnest" of our eternal inheritance (2 Cor. 5:5; Eph. 1:13-14), which is both a guarantee of that coming promise and a down payment of what is to come, a "foretaste of glory divine."
The Holy Spirit is thus the central factor in the incorporation of a person into the body of Christ. You can be baptized and not have passed from death to life (Acts 8:16). You can have passed from death to life and not been baptized (Acts 10:44-48). You can have undergone significant change and movement toward a godly and righteous life. You can have prayed the sinner's prayer and agreed to all the creeds of Christendom with your head.
But unless a person has the Holy Spirit, he or she is not yet in Christ. [1] It is the Holy Spirit that gives witness to our spirits that we are children of God (Rom. 8:16). The Holy Spirit thus brings us the assurance that we are children of God. It is the act of the Holy Spirit whereby we become "in Christ" and when we speak of Christ in us, we are speaking of the Spirit of Christ, Christ's presence in us somehow mysteriously mediated by the Holy Spirit.
3. It is somewhat popular at the moment to speak of conversion as a long gradual process rather than an instantaneous one. [2] There is of course a good deal of truth in this claim. It usually does take a good deal of time for a person to change.
It's also a slightly different question from whether you will escape the judgment. Most believe that unbaptized children will escape the final judgment, and yet they have neither been baptized nor have they received the Holy Spirit. If so, then one can technically be "saved" in that sense without baptism, faith, or having even received the most crucial element of all--the Holy Spirit.
But the Holy Spirit comes in an instant, and in that sense, you become part of the people of God in a moment. There may be a long process leading up to that point, and there is almost always a long process thereafter. But this is a different issue than being baptized into Christ by receiving the Holy Spirit, which must thereby always happen definitively in a moment.
The disciples cannot be used as an example of gradual incorporation into the body of Christ, even if they changed gradually. The Holy Spirit simply was not given in the manner of the new covenant until the Day of Pentecost. In that sense, none of the disciples were "in Christ" until the Day of Pentecost, when they were baptized into Christ in an instant. [3]
4. How does one know that this baptism, this receiving of the Holy Spirit has taken place? There can and often have been noticeable signs. The book of Acts testifies to the sudden ability to speak in other languages, a sudden boldness to proclaim Christ's resurrection, the sudden ability to perform miracles and healing. In the American revivals of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, people often felt an overflow of emotions and might start shouting or even running the aisles of a church.
But did everyone in the early church experience these sorts of dramatic manifestations or emotions? Not likely. We can imagine that the most typical manifestation of the Holy Spirit is a sense of peace and assurance, a sense that, in fact, you are received by God and at peace with him.
No doubt there will be some who do not feel different. Some, perhaps because of their past, may not feel anything at all. But are you truly committing to God with your whole will to the extent you know how? Are you making a choice of faith for God? Are you willing to make that faith public, including a public confession of faith in baptism?
Then you should trust that your sins are forgiven and that the Holy Spirit has taken control over your life. Sometimes God uses others to give us an assurance in such cases. Seek out someone you trust. God often empowers others in the body of Christ, especially those he has called to minister, to proclaim to us that our sins are indeed forgiven (cf. John 20:23).
3. The Holy Spirit thus sanctifies us and sets us apart as belonging to God. He purifies us of our guilt of sins past and he overcomes the power of Sin present and future. The Holy Spirit is behind initial sanctification, the act of cleansing us of our past sins and setting us apart as God's children. The Holy Spirit is behind progressive sanctification, the increase of righteousness and godliness in our lives.
When we get to the point of complete surrender of all our lives in every way we know how, the Holy Spirit can sanctify us entirely, making it easy to do the good we want to do. But we will always have room for growth until the day when we are glorified, when our mortal, corruptible bodies, our flesh subject to Sin and temptation, is transformed into resurrected bodies that are made like Christ's glorious resurrection body.
The Holy Spirit thus empowers us for obedience. The Holy Spirit imparts righteousness and godliness to the believer so that we are not only legally in right standing before God, but the Spirit actually makes us good. We are not, as Luther taught, doomed always to be both sinner and saint, but the Spirit empowers us not only to do the good but even to want the good. [4]
3. The Holy Spirit not only empowers us for purity. He also empowers us for ministry. We have already mentioned the manifestations of the Holy Spirit in Acts. The Church is praying in an upper room in Jerusalem when the Holy Spirit comes on the Day of Pentecost. The Church is born. The Spirit brings everyone there into Christ.
Immediately we see a change. They are witnessing with boldness to the crowds, even in languages they have never learned. The next day, Peter and John heal a lame man. Later in Acts they and others will cast out demons.
The mission of the Church is the mission of God. The mission of God is the redemption of everything in the creation. The Spirit empowers the Church--both on an individual and corporate level.
The Holy Spirit sanctifies the believer. He purifies us. He incorporates us each individually into the body of Christ. He empowers us.
Next Sunday: E1. The Church is the body of Christ.
[1] We are not talking about tongues here, for not all who receive the Holy Spirit in Acts speak in tongues and the rest of the New Testament is practically silent on the topic, except for a couple chapters in 1 Corinthians.
[2] E.g., Richard Peace, Conversion in the New Testament: Paul and the Twelve (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999).
[3] In this sense, Peace's book is inadvertently trying to address two quite different questions at once, one a question of change and the other a question of incorporation. Given this blurring of questions, it is no surprise that his book barely mentions the most important element in conversion of all--the Holy Spirit.
[4] Simul iustus et peccator, semper repentans -- "At the same time, righteous and a sinner, as long as we are always repenting"
Showing posts with label sanctification. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sanctification. Show all posts
Sunday, May 10, 2015
Sunday, February 15, 2015
S8. The power of the Spirit breaks the power of Sin.
This is the eighth post in a unit on salvation in my ongoing series, theology in bullet points. The first section had to do with God and Creation, and I have also finished units on Christology and Atonement.
________________________________
The power of the Spirit breaks the power of Sin.
1. "Since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ... and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God" (Rom. 5:1-2). By his grace, God has initiated the possibility that we can be reconciled to him. He sent his Son to die on the cross for sins. He sought us out in his prevenient grace when we were not looking for him.
He brought us to the possibility of repentance and faith. Then when we put our faith in the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ, We trusted in his faithful death. God gave us the Holy Spirit as a down payment of a glory yet to come, a guarantee of our coming inheritance, a seal of his ownership of us. He forgave us of past sins. He justified us, putting us in a right relationship with him. He adopted us as his children.
He purified us of our uncleanness. He sanctified us through his Spirit, setting us apart as his own. He regenerated us to new life. He made a new creation. We were born again.
We are now "in Christ," just as Christ is in us. We have been crucified with Christ. Now we live in the life of the risen Christ. We are at peace with God. We have hope of the resurrection and finally receiving the glory God originally intended for humanity to have in the creation.
2. Paul's opponents in the early church did not make a distinction between those parts of the Jewish Law that were "moral" and those that might be considered "ceremonial." In fact, Paul himself did not explicitly divide up the Law in this way. However, Paul did seem to distinguish between parts of the Jewish Law that were specifically for Jews and parts that were more universal in scope. These parts correspond roughly to the later Christian distinction between the "ceremonial" and "moral" parts of the Law. [1]
So for Paul's opponents, he seemed to be encouraging sin when he told Gentile believers that they were not bound by "works of Law." He records one of the rumors about him. He is accused of saying, "Let us do evil so that good may come" (Rom. 3:8). Romans 6-8 is more or less a defense against this charge.
"What then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it?" (Rom. 6:1-2). Here Paul is not talking about the parts of the Law that are specifically for Jews but what we might call today the "moral" parts of the Law, the universal parts. When we were raised with Christ, we were raised to "newness of life" (Rom. 6:4).
Accordingly, we must not "let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions" (Rom. 6:12). Since Paul talks about not obeying Sin, he clearly is not talking about some legal situation. That is, he is not saying that God considers us to be righteous because of Jesus, even though we are not really living righteously. Paul is clearly talking about how we live, a real change in our lives.
"Just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness for sanctification" (Rom. 6:19). Again, Paul is talking about real life consequences that come from the Spirit inside us. Romans 12:1-2 draws out the ethical implications of the entire first eleven chapters of Romans: "Present your bodies as a living sacrifice... Do not be conformed to this world."
3. The Holy Spirit thus empowers a Christian to live a life that is not characterized by sin. "Those who have been born of God do not sin, because God’s seed abides in them" (1 John 3:9). That is not to say that it is impossible for believers to sin (1 John 2:1). Indeed, much of 1 Corinthians is directed at Corinthians who continue to sin even though they should not. "I could not speak to you as spiritual people, but rather as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ... for you are still of the flesh. For as long as there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving according to human inclinations?" (1 Cor. 3:1, 3).
However, sinning and giving into temptation should not be the norm for a Christian. "No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength" (1 Cor. 10:13).
It is popular to see Romans 7:14-25 as the ongoing struggle of a believer with temptation and sin. However, the context in Romans 6 and 8, not to mention the first part of Romans 7, make it clear that Paul is not talking about the Christian in these verses but about a person who wants to keep the moral part of the Law but does not yet have the power of the Spirit to do so. Romans 8 gives the conclusion: "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death" (8:2).
4. John Wesley systematized these scattered dynamics of the New Testament into what he considered to be the normal storyline of a Christian, what he and others called the ordo salutis, the "order of salvation." God's prevenient grace leads to his convicting grace. Conviction is when the Holy Spirit convinces you that you need God's forgiveness. When we then repent and put our faith in Christ, we experience God's justifying grace. He then purifies us of sin and imparts true righteousness to us by his sanctifying grace. [2]
The Wesleyan tradition has historically distinguished between initial sanctification, progressive sanctification, and entire sanctification. While sanctification is a biblical term, these gradations are based upon the logical implications of the biblical text. That is to say, these are not exactly biblical terms themselves.
Initial Sanctification
Sanctification in the New Testament is when a person is purified from the stain of sin and set apart as God's. In theology, however, sanctification refers to the actual impartation of righteousness. At conversion, Wesley taught, a person is empowered to be victorious over Sin and temptation. A person will likely continue to struggle with temptation, Wesley taught, but they should largely be victorious over it. "Initial" sanctification thus refers to this initial cleansing from the sin acts of the past and the power in our lives by the Spirit to overcome the power of Sin. [3]
The power of Sin is the default force in this world that pulls humanity toward sin. Wesley, following Calvin and Augustine, thought of the power of Sin in terms of a sin nature inside us, the default tendency of humanity to commit acts of sin because of a nature we have inherited from Adam. In a previous article, we argued that Paul thought of this dynamic more as a power over the creation than nature inside us.
Although Wesley formulated his ideas in his own theological categories, we can see his idea of initial sanctification as a logical extension of the biblical text. A Christian may struggle with temptation after he or she receives the Spirit. But God has forgiven them of past sin acts. God has cleansed them of the stain of past sins. God gives them the power to live a life in which Sin does not rule over their actions.
Progressive Sanctification
Wesley believed that a Christian would continue to grow in righteousness. If a believer continues to struggle in various areas when they first believe, over time they should fall into temptation less and less. The person should continue to grow.
We saw in 1 Corinthians 3:1-3 above that some believers remained "in the flesh" even after they became Christians. They were like babies and needed to grow up. Some of the New Testament is dedicated to this strange problem. How can a person continue to sin after they have God's Spirit within them.
Wesley thus was playing out logically and systematically what the biblical text says here and there about the need for believers to become more and more victorious over temptation as they progress through the Christian life. By "progressive sanctification," Wesley referred to the continued growth of a believer after conversion and the fact that it should become easier and easier to fight temptations to sin the longer a person is in Christ.
Entire Sanctification
This process of sanctification, Wesley believed, should climax in a moment of "entire" sanctification. This moment in an individual's salvation story is the one that requires the most logical and experiential construction beyond what the biblical text. Wesley himself referred to this moment in the life of a believer as achieving Christian perfection, drawing on passages like Matthew 5:48 and Hebrews 6:1. [3]
The wording of "entire" sanctification comes from 1 Thessalonians 5:23: "May the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." Paul here of course was speaking informally. He was not speaking of a systematic doctrine or of a crisis experience in this verse. He was speaking, first, to the entire community more than to each person as an individual. He was speaking of his hope that there would be no sin at all among them--that any sin would be removed--as well as that the community would remain spotless until the point of Christ's return.
But Wesley and the Wesleyan tradition systematized these elements. Wesley believed that a Christian would come to another moment of crisis, even after conversion. A person would experience God's convicting grace again, this time of the fact that the power of Sin still had some power in one's life, even if it was not often victorious. A person would be aware of the sin nature within. This would lead to repentance and faith again, this time to experience a moment of entire sanctification. Wesley characterized this state as one of perfect love, of 1) loving God with all one's heart, mind, soul, and strength and 2) loving our neighbor as oneself (e.g., Matt. 22:34-40).
While there is no systematic statement like Wesley's in the Bible, we can see that the components are there and that we can construct such an event logically and experientially. We regularly find Christians who are still "fleshly" or carnal in the manner of 1 Corinthians 3:1-3. They should not have sin in their lives. They should not struggle so much with the power of Sin, but they do.
Believers often come to a point in their walk with Christ where they realize the existence of undiscovered sin or unsubmitted aspects of our lives. Wesley more than anyone else in Christian history draws our attention to the need for us to surrender ourselves completely to God. True, we will not always know every bit of ourselves. True, our lives are always changing. New areas to submit will always arise.
But Wesley prompts us to ask, "Have I given everything to God that I know to give? Am I willing to do anything the Lord would call me to do? Will I sign over the deed to the property of my life, beyond any individual room in the house? Will I give God the whole house of my life? Will I commit to give God every knew part of my life that I discover?"
This level of commitment usually comes down to a final decision. There will often be one final area of hold out, one final part of our lives that is harder to surrender completely to God than the others. For this reason, more than any, the moment of final surrender is usually a crisis moment, an event. We cannot logically be completely sanctified, completely God's, unless we are completely surrendered. [5]
Wesleyans thus speak of complete surrender and consecration of ourselves to God as our part in entire sanctification (although even that is empowered by the Spirit). Then God responds with full empowerment, full sanctification. How, after all, can we be fully empowered by the Spirit if we are not fully surrendered?
5. In 1739, Charles Wesley, the brother of John Wesley, wrote the words to the hymn, "O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing." One of the verses begins by saying, "He breaks the power of canceled sin, he sets the prisoner free." Charles was not actually talking about entire sanctification in this verse but about what he and John believed should be true of every Christian.
When we become a Christian and receive the Holy Spirit, God breaks the power of Sin over our lives. The lives of Christians from that point on should not be typified by acts of sin. Rather, we should walk in a newness of life. The more of our lives we surrender to God, the more empowered for righteousness we will be.
And when we surrender ourselves fully to God, as much as we know to do, then we are wholly God's. Then it should cease to be a struggle to love God and to love our neighbor. It should become easy to do the good we know to do. We should be able to love others with delight and not only with effort.
The power of the Spirit breaks the power of Sin.
Next Sunday S9: The dead in Christ will rise.
[1] The sacrificial parts of the Jewish Law seem to fall into a third category for Hebrews, namely, parts of the Jewish Law that were fulfilled in Christ. Meanwhile, the civil law of Israel had much to do with its Ancient Near Eastern context and so was very specific to its today, although we can still discern universal principles in it.
[2] Wesley's classic sermon in this regard is "The Scripture Way of Salvation."
[3] In general, I am capitalizing the word Sin when it refers to the power of Sin rather than individual sin acts.
[4] Unfortunately, neither of these verses will bear the load Wesley wanted them to bear. Most versions rightly translate Hebrews 6:1 as "maturity" rather than "perfection." Meanwhile, Matthew 5:48 is talking more informally of loving everyone rather than just our neighbors--going the whole way and being "complete" in our love. Wesley took informal comments and made them into systematic formulae.
[5] John Fletcher was the first person in the Methodist tradition to equate this crisis moment with the Spirit-fillings of Acts. Wesley, however, did not formulate Christian perfection in terms of Acts, even if there is some evidence that he was favorable toward Fletcher's use of Acts. However, almost no contemporary biblical scholar in any tradition would now interpret Acts in that way. See the previous article on the Spirit in conversion.
________________________________
The power of the Spirit breaks the power of Sin.
1. "Since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ... and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God" (Rom. 5:1-2). By his grace, God has initiated the possibility that we can be reconciled to him. He sent his Son to die on the cross for sins. He sought us out in his prevenient grace when we were not looking for him.
He brought us to the possibility of repentance and faith. Then when we put our faith in the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ, We trusted in his faithful death. God gave us the Holy Spirit as a down payment of a glory yet to come, a guarantee of our coming inheritance, a seal of his ownership of us. He forgave us of past sins. He justified us, putting us in a right relationship with him. He adopted us as his children.
He purified us of our uncleanness. He sanctified us through his Spirit, setting us apart as his own. He regenerated us to new life. He made a new creation. We were born again.
We are now "in Christ," just as Christ is in us. We have been crucified with Christ. Now we live in the life of the risen Christ. We are at peace with God. We have hope of the resurrection and finally receiving the glory God originally intended for humanity to have in the creation.
2. Paul's opponents in the early church did not make a distinction between those parts of the Jewish Law that were "moral" and those that might be considered "ceremonial." In fact, Paul himself did not explicitly divide up the Law in this way. However, Paul did seem to distinguish between parts of the Jewish Law that were specifically for Jews and parts that were more universal in scope. These parts correspond roughly to the later Christian distinction between the "ceremonial" and "moral" parts of the Law. [1]
So for Paul's opponents, he seemed to be encouraging sin when he told Gentile believers that they were not bound by "works of Law." He records one of the rumors about him. He is accused of saying, "Let us do evil so that good may come" (Rom. 3:8). Romans 6-8 is more or less a defense against this charge.
"What then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it?" (Rom. 6:1-2). Here Paul is not talking about the parts of the Law that are specifically for Jews but what we might call today the "moral" parts of the Law, the universal parts. When we were raised with Christ, we were raised to "newness of life" (Rom. 6:4).
Accordingly, we must not "let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions" (Rom. 6:12). Since Paul talks about not obeying Sin, he clearly is not talking about some legal situation. That is, he is not saying that God considers us to be righteous because of Jesus, even though we are not really living righteously. Paul is clearly talking about how we live, a real change in our lives.
"Just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness for sanctification" (Rom. 6:19). Again, Paul is talking about real life consequences that come from the Spirit inside us. Romans 12:1-2 draws out the ethical implications of the entire first eleven chapters of Romans: "Present your bodies as a living sacrifice... Do not be conformed to this world."
3. The Holy Spirit thus empowers a Christian to live a life that is not characterized by sin. "Those who have been born of God do not sin, because God’s seed abides in them" (1 John 3:9). That is not to say that it is impossible for believers to sin (1 John 2:1). Indeed, much of 1 Corinthians is directed at Corinthians who continue to sin even though they should not. "I could not speak to you as spiritual people, but rather as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ... for you are still of the flesh. For as long as there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving according to human inclinations?" (1 Cor. 3:1, 3).
However, sinning and giving into temptation should not be the norm for a Christian. "No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength" (1 Cor. 10:13).
It is popular to see Romans 7:14-25 as the ongoing struggle of a believer with temptation and sin. However, the context in Romans 6 and 8, not to mention the first part of Romans 7, make it clear that Paul is not talking about the Christian in these verses but about a person who wants to keep the moral part of the Law but does not yet have the power of the Spirit to do so. Romans 8 gives the conclusion: "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death" (8:2).
4. John Wesley systematized these scattered dynamics of the New Testament into what he considered to be the normal storyline of a Christian, what he and others called the ordo salutis, the "order of salvation." God's prevenient grace leads to his convicting grace. Conviction is when the Holy Spirit convinces you that you need God's forgiveness. When we then repent and put our faith in Christ, we experience God's justifying grace. He then purifies us of sin and imparts true righteousness to us by his sanctifying grace. [2]
The Wesleyan tradition has historically distinguished between initial sanctification, progressive sanctification, and entire sanctification. While sanctification is a biblical term, these gradations are based upon the logical implications of the biblical text. That is to say, these are not exactly biblical terms themselves.
Initial Sanctification
Sanctification in the New Testament is when a person is purified from the stain of sin and set apart as God's. In theology, however, sanctification refers to the actual impartation of righteousness. At conversion, Wesley taught, a person is empowered to be victorious over Sin and temptation. A person will likely continue to struggle with temptation, Wesley taught, but they should largely be victorious over it. "Initial" sanctification thus refers to this initial cleansing from the sin acts of the past and the power in our lives by the Spirit to overcome the power of Sin. [3]
The power of Sin is the default force in this world that pulls humanity toward sin. Wesley, following Calvin and Augustine, thought of the power of Sin in terms of a sin nature inside us, the default tendency of humanity to commit acts of sin because of a nature we have inherited from Adam. In a previous article, we argued that Paul thought of this dynamic more as a power over the creation than nature inside us.
Although Wesley formulated his ideas in his own theological categories, we can see his idea of initial sanctification as a logical extension of the biblical text. A Christian may struggle with temptation after he or she receives the Spirit. But God has forgiven them of past sin acts. God has cleansed them of the stain of past sins. God gives them the power to live a life in which Sin does not rule over their actions.
Progressive Sanctification
Wesley believed that a Christian would continue to grow in righteousness. If a believer continues to struggle in various areas when they first believe, over time they should fall into temptation less and less. The person should continue to grow.
We saw in 1 Corinthians 3:1-3 above that some believers remained "in the flesh" even after they became Christians. They were like babies and needed to grow up. Some of the New Testament is dedicated to this strange problem. How can a person continue to sin after they have God's Spirit within them.
Wesley thus was playing out logically and systematically what the biblical text says here and there about the need for believers to become more and more victorious over temptation as they progress through the Christian life. By "progressive sanctification," Wesley referred to the continued growth of a believer after conversion and the fact that it should become easier and easier to fight temptations to sin the longer a person is in Christ.
Entire Sanctification
This process of sanctification, Wesley believed, should climax in a moment of "entire" sanctification. This moment in an individual's salvation story is the one that requires the most logical and experiential construction beyond what the biblical text. Wesley himself referred to this moment in the life of a believer as achieving Christian perfection, drawing on passages like Matthew 5:48 and Hebrews 6:1. [3]
The wording of "entire" sanctification comes from 1 Thessalonians 5:23: "May the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." Paul here of course was speaking informally. He was not speaking of a systematic doctrine or of a crisis experience in this verse. He was speaking, first, to the entire community more than to each person as an individual. He was speaking of his hope that there would be no sin at all among them--that any sin would be removed--as well as that the community would remain spotless until the point of Christ's return.
But Wesley and the Wesleyan tradition systematized these elements. Wesley believed that a Christian would come to another moment of crisis, even after conversion. A person would experience God's convicting grace again, this time of the fact that the power of Sin still had some power in one's life, even if it was not often victorious. A person would be aware of the sin nature within. This would lead to repentance and faith again, this time to experience a moment of entire sanctification. Wesley characterized this state as one of perfect love, of 1) loving God with all one's heart, mind, soul, and strength and 2) loving our neighbor as oneself (e.g., Matt. 22:34-40).
While there is no systematic statement like Wesley's in the Bible, we can see that the components are there and that we can construct such an event logically and experientially. We regularly find Christians who are still "fleshly" or carnal in the manner of 1 Corinthians 3:1-3. They should not have sin in their lives. They should not struggle so much with the power of Sin, but they do.
Believers often come to a point in their walk with Christ where they realize the existence of undiscovered sin or unsubmitted aspects of our lives. Wesley more than anyone else in Christian history draws our attention to the need for us to surrender ourselves completely to God. True, we will not always know every bit of ourselves. True, our lives are always changing. New areas to submit will always arise.
But Wesley prompts us to ask, "Have I given everything to God that I know to give? Am I willing to do anything the Lord would call me to do? Will I sign over the deed to the property of my life, beyond any individual room in the house? Will I give God the whole house of my life? Will I commit to give God every knew part of my life that I discover?"
This level of commitment usually comes down to a final decision. There will often be one final area of hold out, one final part of our lives that is harder to surrender completely to God than the others. For this reason, more than any, the moment of final surrender is usually a crisis moment, an event. We cannot logically be completely sanctified, completely God's, unless we are completely surrendered. [5]
Wesleyans thus speak of complete surrender and consecration of ourselves to God as our part in entire sanctification (although even that is empowered by the Spirit). Then God responds with full empowerment, full sanctification. How, after all, can we be fully empowered by the Spirit if we are not fully surrendered?
5. In 1739, Charles Wesley, the brother of John Wesley, wrote the words to the hymn, "O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing." One of the verses begins by saying, "He breaks the power of canceled sin, he sets the prisoner free." Charles was not actually talking about entire sanctification in this verse but about what he and John believed should be true of every Christian.
When we become a Christian and receive the Holy Spirit, God breaks the power of Sin over our lives. The lives of Christians from that point on should not be typified by acts of sin. Rather, we should walk in a newness of life. The more of our lives we surrender to God, the more empowered for righteousness we will be.
And when we surrender ourselves fully to God, as much as we know to do, then we are wholly God's. Then it should cease to be a struggle to love God and to love our neighbor. It should become easy to do the good we know to do. We should be able to love others with delight and not only with effort.
The power of the Spirit breaks the power of Sin.
Next Sunday S9: The dead in Christ will rise.
[1] The sacrificial parts of the Jewish Law seem to fall into a third category for Hebrews, namely, parts of the Jewish Law that were fulfilled in Christ. Meanwhile, the civil law of Israel had much to do with its Ancient Near Eastern context and so was very specific to its today, although we can still discern universal principles in it.
[2] Wesley's classic sermon in this regard is "The Scripture Way of Salvation."
[3] In general, I am capitalizing the word Sin when it refers to the power of Sin rather than individual sin acts.
[4] Unfortunately, neither of these verses will bear the load Wesley wanted them to bear. Most versions rightly translate Hebrews 6:1 as "maturity" rather than "perfection." Meanwhile, Matthew 5:48 is talking more informally of loving everyone rather than just our neighbors--going the whole way and being "complete" in our love. Wesley took informal comments and made them into systematic formulae.
[5] John Fletcher was the first person in the Methodist tradition to equate this crisis moment with the Spirit-fillings of Acts. Wesley, however, did not formulate Christian perfection in terms of Acts, even if there is some evidence that he was favorable toward Fletcher's use of Acts. However, almost no contemporary biblical scholar in any tradition would now interpret Acts in that way. See the previous article on the Spirit in conversion.
Sunday, May 27, 2012
Pentecost Observed
I don't have time to write much, but I did want to express how fun it would have been to walk through Acts 2 here today. I've paid special attention to Acts 2 as a Wesleyan, since the holiness revivalist tradition always saw this passage as the disciples becoming entirely sanctified. That wasn't, of course, how John Wesley himself formulated the idea, and I couldn't name one Wesleyan, Free Methodist, or Nazarene New Testament scholar who thinks that's what Acts 2 is about, but it is an important part of Wesleyan history.
[for the article that was the tipping point away from this interpretation, see http://www.lcoggt.org/Articles/baptism_and_spirit_baptism.htm]
Although it's hard to say what the future will bring, after I've finished the two Jesus books I'm working on, it would be nice to do two final books covering Acts and the other non-Pauline parts of the New Testament. If so, Acts 2 will almost certainly get its own chapter!
[for the article that was the tipping point away from this interpretation, see http://www.lcoggt.org/Articles/baptism_and_spirit_baptism.htm]
Although it's hard to say what the future will bring, after I've finished the two Jesus books I'm working on, it would be nice to do two final books covering Acts and the other non-Pauline parts of the New Testament. If so, Acts 2 will almost certainly get its own chapter!
Sunday, March 11, 2012
Reconciliation (Wes Theo Series)
Outline/overview of Wesleyan theology. More detailed posts:
1. Faith (Introduction)
2. God
3. Creation and Alienation
4. Revelation
5.1 Incarnation
Christians have long viewed Christ taking on flesh as the first step in the reconciliation of the world. God becomes one of us. He not only comes to us. He identifies with us. He assumes our situation and our problem, to some extent. He is tempted as us. His earthly life is part of the reconciliation.
5.2 Christ's Death
Christians of the ages have used a number of pictures to describe how Christ's death serves as a mechanism for our reconciliation. Christ's death satisfies God's anger toward sin or satisfies the need for justice and order in the world. It is an atoning sacrifice. Christ takes our punishment and substitutes for us. Christ shows us God's love and thus woos us back to him. Christ redeems us from slavery or defeats the power of Satan over us.
These are all pictures of atonement and Wesleyans can ascribe to all of them. The Wesleyan emphasis on God as love, however, sometimes shifts the focus. So Wesleyans often resist rigid views of penal substitution, where some mathematical sense of punishment had to be assumed for it to work. A Wesleyan may lean toward seeing Christ's death ultimately as a matter of God's choice in reconciliation rather than some inevitable path he would have to take. Would not God have the authority to forgive us outright if he wanted?
A Wesleyan might see the picture of God's wrath as one of the least literal of the pictures, though one with which we may most identify. Anger involves emotion and emotion involves new stimulus, but God knows all things equally from all eternity. A fuller picture is of God's love in action. We understand and identify with sacrifice for us. There is a certain order to things that Christ's death embodies. We are enslaved and we understand the defeat of our enslaver.
5.3 The Spirit and the Church
Christ's presence in the world continues through the Spirit and the Church. The Spirit inside us marks us as God's possession and empowers us to live reconciled lives. We are a new creation. We are an island of heaven in a fallen world.
God also uses his Church as a means of reconciliation. The invisible Church consists of all those with the Spirit in all times and all places, despite what visible Church they may attend. But the Church is also physical, visible entity that gathers together to proclaim God's word and participate in means of grace. Baptism is the image of entrance into the Church, although the Spirit is the more important threshold. Communion is the image of atonement, reminding and catalyzing our continued reconciliation with God.
5.4 Justification and Sanctification
Protestants think of justification as our legal acquittal of the charges against us for our past sins. Through Christ, all charges are dropped against us. Sanctification then positively empowers us to do what is right. Wesley largely adopted Luther's understanding of (initial) justification. A difference comes in his sense of final justification.
For Wesley, final justification is dependent on a continued relationship with God that manifests itself in right living. Lutherans fear such talk, because it seems to give too much importance to "works" in the equation of justification. Calvinists agree with Wesley that works must follow, but see no element of human will involved in the process and affirm the persistence of the elect from beginning to end.
Wesleyans do not believe in "eternal security" but see right relationship with God as breakable. A person must continue in faithfulness to that relationship after initial justification.
Calvinists and Wesleyans also disagree on the extent to which God makes us righteous in this life. Wesley even taught a crisis experience where one was freed from the power of sin, to be able to love God with all one's heart, mind, soul, and strength. Wesleyans do not believe that the fight against sin in this life must always be a struggle, and especially not a losing struggle.
5.5 Society
Wesleyans have historically been activists for change in society where possible. An emphasis on helping those in need has been core to Wesleyan identity since Wesley himself. Many in the Wesleyan tradition were strong supporters of abolition and women's rights. Today, the best Wesleyan voices speak out against those who would intentionally or unintentionally oppress the disempowered of society. Even when someone has done wrong, the best Wesleyan attitude is one that looks to redemption and insists on love as the primary value.
5.6 Creation
A view of reconciliation that does not include the entire cosmos is an incomplete view. The best Wesleyan voices will be conscious of God's creation and strive to be good stewards of it. Paul says that the creation too is enslaved to sin and slated for redemption. It is the Wesleyan way to be optimistic about how much redemption we can see now on every level, without waiting for Christ's return.
1. Faith (Introduction)
2. God
3. Creation and Alienation
4. Revelation
5.1 Incarnation
Christians have long viewed Christ taking on flesh as the first step in the reconciliation of the world. God becomes one of us. He not only comes to us. He identifies with us. He assumes our situation and our problem, to some extent. He is tempted as us. His earthly life is part of the reconciliation.
5.2 Christ's Death
Christians of the ages have used a number of pictures to describe how Christ's death serves as a mechanism for our reconciliation. Christ's death satisfies God's anger toward sin or satisfies the need for justice and order in the world. It is an atoning sacrifice. Christ takes our punishment and substitutes for us. Christ shows us God's love and thus woos us back to him. Christ redeems us from slavery or defeats the power of Satan over us.
These are all pictures of atonement and Wesleyans can ascribe to all of them. The Wesleyan emphasis on God as love, however, sometimes shifts the focus. So Wesleyans often resist rigid views of penal substitution, where some mathematical sense of punishment had to be assumed for it to work. A Wesleyan may lean toward seeing Christ's death ultimately as a matter of God's choice in reconciliation rather than some inevitable path he would have to take. Would not God have the authority to forgive us outright if he wanted?
A Wesleyan might see the picture of God's wrath as one of the least literal of the pictures, though one with which we may most identify. Anger involves emotion and emotion involves new stimulus, but God knows all things equally from all eternity. A fuller picture is of God's love in action. We understand and identify with sacrifice for us. There is a certain order to things that Christ's death embodies. We are enslaved and we understand the defeat of our enslaver.
5.3 The Spirit and the Church
Christ's presence in the world continues through the Spirit and the Church. The Spirit inside us marks us as God's possession and empowers us to live reconciled lives. We are a new creation. We are an island of heaven in a fallen world.
God also uses his Church as a means of reconciliation. The invisible Church consists of all those with the Spirit in all times and all places, despite what visible Church they may attend. But the Church is also physical, visible entity that gathers together to proclaim God's word and participate in means of grace. Baptism is the image of entrance into the Church, although the Spirit is the more important threshold. Communion is the image of atonement, reminding and catalyzing our continued reconciliation with God.
5.4 Justification and Sanctification
Protestants think of justification as our legal acquittal of the charges against us for our past sins. Through Christ, all charges are dropped against us. Sanctification then positively empowers us to do what is right. Wesley largely adopted Luther's understanding of (initial) justification. A difference comes in his sense of final justification.
For Wesley, final justification is dependent on a continued relationship with God that manifests itself in right living. Lutherans fear such talk, because it seems to give too much importance to "works" in the equation of justification. Calvinists agree with Wesley that works must follow, but see no element of human will involved in the process and affirm the persistence of the elect from beginning to end.
Wesleyans do not believe in "eternal security" but see right relationship with God as breakable. A person must continue in faithfulness to that relationship after initial justification.
Calvinists and Wesleyans also disagree on the extent to which God makes us righteous in this life. Wesley even taught a crisis experience where one was freed from the power of sin, to be able to love God with all one's heart, mind, soul, and strength. Wesleyans do not believe that the fight against sin in this life must always be a struggle, and especially not a losing struggle.
5.5 Society
Wesleyans have historically been activists for change in society where possible. An emphasis on helping those in need has been core to Wesleyan identity since Wesley himself. Many in the Wesleyan tradition were strong supporters of abolition and women's rights. Today, the best Wesleyan voices speak out against those who would intentionally or unintentionally oppress the disempowered of society. Even when someone has done wrong, the best Wesleyan attitude is one that looks to redemption and insists on love as the primary value.
5.6 Creation
A view of reconciliation that does not include the entire cosmos is an incomplete view. The best Wesleyan voices will be conscious of God's creation and strive to be good stewards of it. Paul says that the creation too is enslaved to sin and slated for redemption. It is the Wesleyan way to be optimistic about how much redemption we can see now on every level, without waiting for Christ's return.
Monday, December 26, 2011
After John the Baptist...
Continued from here.
__________
We know what happened to John. Herod Antipas arrested and then beheaded him. Rulers don't take nicely to those who announce that another king is coming who is going to replace their kingdom with a better one. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, which are sometimes called the Synoptic gospels, Jesus does not start proclaiming the kingdom until John is arrested.
But the impact of John the Baptist seems to have continued for decades after he died. For example, there were some people who were still following his teaching at Ephesus in Acts 18-19. The first is Apollos in Acts 18:24-28. He is instructed in the "Way of the Lord" and proclaimed the coming of Jesus, but was only aware of the baptism of John. Apparently, John the Baptist must have proclaimed "the way of the Lord." It is interesting that both Isaiah 40 and Malachi 3 use the word "way." These are the passages the gospels remember in relation to John's prophetic ministry. So it is not a stretch to say that John must have proclaimed quite literally "the Way of the Lord" as one of his key messages.
Followers of the Way were thus individuals who believed John's message--whether they believed in Jesus or not. Apollos could be a follower of the Way and know very little about Jesus. What he knew was John the baptizer's prediction that the "anointed one," the messiah, was coming. The Gospels also remember this message as part of what John proclaimed: "The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals" (Mark 1:7, NRSV).
Acts 19:1-7 reinforces this interpretation. Paul finds certain "disciples" at Ephesus. These individuals only know the baptism of John. They do not seem to know much of anything about Jesus. When Acts calls them "disciples," it must not mean followers of Jesus but followers of the Way, followers of the movement started by John the Baptist.
For Acts, receiving the Spirit is the big distinction between the two movements. The Jesus movement was part of the Baptist movement. Both were followers of the Way. But the Jesus movement believed Jesus was the messiah John predicted, and it involved the Holy Spirit. Jesus' followers received the Holy Spirit. At some point, John's baptism became distinguished from baptism "in the name of Jesus," so much so that Paul has the followers of the Baptist get re-baptized so they will receive the Holy Spirit in Acts 19.
The Gospel of John indirectly supports interpretation. One of the intriguing features of the Gospel of John is the extent to which it downplays John the Baptist in relation to Jesus. John never actually mentions John baptizing Jesus. John's presentation implies that the Baptist's mission is basically over once Jesus arrives (e.g., 1:36-37; 3:30). Only John's gospel tells of Jesus' followers baptizing at the same time as the Baptist. Finally, in contrast to Matthew 11:14, the Gospel of John denies that John the Baptist is Elijah (1:21).
Why would the Gospel of John downplay John the Baptist so much more than the other gospels? A possible answer is that, as we see in Acts 18-19, there were followers of John the Baptist at Ephesus who not only did not follow Jesus. There may have been followers of the Way there who opposed the Jesus movement, who opposed the idea that Jesus was the messiah. John and Acts are thus written in such a way as to make it clear that Jesus is the one John predicted. [1]
So not only did John proclaim the coming judgment of God and the potential restoration of political Israel. He was one of those Jews who also predicted the coming of a king to rule Israel in this coming kingdom, the messiah. [2] In preparation, he called Israel to repent and to wash themselves in the Jordan, symbolizing the washing and forgiveness of their sins.
What a massive movement he must have started! We do not know much about it apart from those of his followers who went on to believe Jesus was the messiah John was predicting. But at the time his movement must have paralleled that of Jesus and may have been even bigger. Some in this movement of the Way may have known very little about Jesus at all. It must not have been clear at the time that John endorsed Jesus as the one he predicted.
In fact, we can read passages like Matthew 11:2-6 as the Baptist himself having some uncertainty. John is in prison but sends some of his followers to ask Jesus if he is the one. The things he is doing make him a prime candidate. But John must not have been entirely certain. [3] Perhaps John was expecting Jesus to be more "political" and "military" than he was.
What is clear is that all four gospels see Jesus' ministry in continuity with that of the Baptist. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus is baptized by John, which indicates that Jesus at least mostly endorsed John's message. As many Jesus scholars have argued, this fact has enormous implications for how we understand Jesus' own mission and message. [4] We must understand Jesus' words not as wise sayings a philosopher might say but as words said against this historical background.
[1] The incident in Acts 19 is thus not about entire sanctification (as many holiness revivalists preached in the late 1800s/early 1900s). Still less is it about the necessity of tongues as evidence of truly being converted (certain Pentecostal groups). Acts 19, including its added evidence of tongues, was originally a polemic against followers of John the Baptist who did not believe Jesus was the messiah.
[2] Again, if we have to pick a Jewish group his message best fits, it would be the Essenes.
[3] This scene has of course given rise to much speculation as to John's motives, especially if you bring Luke 1 and John 1 into the conversation.
[4] One of the first to point out this fact was A. E. Harvey, Jesus and the Constraints of History E. P. Sanders' Jesus and Judaism then built on this approach.
__________
We know what happened to John. Herod Antipas arrested and then beheaded him. Rulers don't take nicely to those who announce that another king is coming who is going to replace their kingdom with a better one. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, which are sometimes called the Synoptic gospels, Jesus does not start proclaiming the kingdom until John is arrested.
But the impact of John the Baptist seems to have continued for decades after he died. For example, there were some people who were still following his teaching at Ephesus in Acts 18-19. The first is Apollos in Acts 18:24-28. He is instructed in the "Way of the Lord" and proclaimed the coming of Jesus, but was only aware of the baptism of John. Apparently, John the Baptist must have proclaimed "the way of the Lord." It is interesting that both Isaiah 40 and Malachi 3 use the word "way." These are the passages the gospels remember in relation to John's prophetic ministry. So it is not a stretch to say that John must have proclaimed quite literally "the Way of the Lord" as one of his key messages.
Followers of the Way were thus individuals who believed John's message--whether they believed in Jesus or not. Apollos could be a follower of the Way and know very little about Jesus. What he knew was John the baptizer's prediction that the "anointed one," the messiah, was coming. The Gospels also remember this message as part of what John proclaimed: "The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals" (Mark 1:7, NRSV).
Acts 19:1-7 reinforces this interpretation. Paul finds certain "disciples" at Ephesus. These individuals only know the baptism of John. They do not seem to know much of anything about Jesus. When Acts calls them "disciples," it must not mean followers of Jesus but followers of the Way, followers of the movement started by John the Baptist.
For Acts, receiving the Spirit is the big distinction between the two movements. The Jesus movement was part of the Baptist movement. Both were followers of the Way. But the Jesus movement believed Jesus was the messiah John predicted, and it involved the Holy Spirit. Jesus' followers received the Holy Spirit. At some point, John's baptism became distinguished from baptism "in the name of Jesus," so much so that Paul has the followers of the Baptist get re-baptized so they will receive the Holy Spirit in Acts 19.
The Gospel of John indirectly supports interpretation. One of the intriguing features of the Gospel of John is the extent to which it downplays John the Baptist in relation to Jesus. John never actually mentions John baptizing Jesus. John's presentation implies that the Baptist's mission is basically over once Jesus arrives (e.g., 1:36-37; 3:30). Only John's gospel tells of Jesus' followers baptizing at the same time as the Baptist. Finally, in contrast to Matthew 11:14, the Gospel of John denies that John the Baptist is Elijah (1:21).
Why would the Gospel of John downplay John the Baptist so much more than the other gospels? A possible answer is that, as we see in Acts 18-19, there were followers of John the Baptist at Ephesus who not only did not follow Jesus. There may have been followers of the Way there who opposed the Jesus movement, who opposed the idea that Jesus was the messiah. John and Acts are thus written in such a way as to make it clear that Jesus is the one John predicted. [1]
So not only did John proclaim the coming judgment of God and the potential restoration of political Israel. He was one of those Jews who also predicted the coming of a king to rule Israel in this coming kingdom, the messiah. [2] In preparation, he called Israel to repent and to wash themselves in the Jordan, symbolizing the washing and forgiveness of their sins.
What a massive movement he must have started! We do not know much about it apart from those of his followers who went on to believe Jesus was the messiah John was predicting. But at the time his movement must have paralleled that of Jesus and may have been even bigger. Some in this movement of the Way may have known very little about Jesus at all. It must not have been clear at the time that John endorsed Jesus as the one he predicted.
In fact, we can read passages like Matthew 11:2-6 as the Baptist himself having some uncertainty. John is in prison but sends some of his followers to ask Jesus if he is the one. The things he is doing make him a prime candidate. But John must not have been entirely certain. [3] Perhaps John was expecting Jesus to be more "political" and "military" than he was.
What is clear is that all four gospels see Jesus' ministry in continuity with that of the Baptist. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus is baptized by John, which indicates that Jesus at least mostly endorsed John's message. As many Jesus scholars have argued, this fact has enormous implications for how we understand Jesus' own mission and message. [4] We must understand Jesus' words not as wise sayings a philosopher might say but as words said against this historical background.
[1] The incident in Acts 19 is thus not about entire sanctification (as many holiness revivalists preached in the late 1800s/early 1900s). Still less is it about the necessity of tongues as evidence of truly being converted (certain Pentecostal groups). Acts 19, including its added evidence of tongues, was originally a polemic against followers of John the Baptist who did not believe Jesus was the messiah.
[2] Again, if we have to pick a Jewish group his message best fits, it would be the Essenes.
[3] This scene has of course given rise to much speculation as to John's motives, especially if you bring Luke 1 and John 1 into the conversation.
[4] One of the first to point out this fact was A. E. Harvey, Jesus and the Constraints of History E. P. Sanders' Jesus and Judaism then built on this approach.
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Deneff on Temptation: A Wesleyan Reflection
Steve Deneff preached a good sermon this morning on temptation. You can listen to it on iTunes in a day or two. Check back at the College Wesleyan website.
What made me think of posting was the fact that he really ignored the Wesleyan question of entire sanctification. If we're honest, few Wesleyan pastors preach this doctrine. Few people in the pew understand it. Forgive the imagery, but this morning sermon struck me as something like a by-pass around a blocked artery.
Deneff's sermon took off from Genesis 4 and the line that "sin crouches at the door." He made very healthy distinctions between evil and sin. He had a helpful section on avenues by which temptation come (personality, physical issues, environment). He had a practical "to this" start toward solutions (practice the virtue opposite the tempting vice).
He warned the entirely sanctified not to forget that still "sin crouches at the door." Crouches, not as in we "fall" into sin but that it is looking to get us.
How am I as a Wesleyan to map this sermon to our historical doctrines? Is this Keswick? Sin will always be a struggle, even though you can beat it through the Spirit. That's not historically Wesleyan. What about entire sanctification? Where the power of Sin over me is defeated over the whole?
For good or ill, those aren't the questions Christians are asking and I suspect if we were to dwell on them, we simply consign ourselves to irrelevance. I believe Deneff has hit the nail on the head this morning and has, intentionally or not, boiled down the Wesleyan tradition in this area to what people need to hear and will actually help them.
1. Sin crouches at the door of all our lives, no matter how long you have been a Christian. No one dare think they have arrived or ignore the constant possibility of having and yielding to temptation.
2. No one need be defeated by Sin or temptation, through the Spirit's power. Sin may crouch, but it never need catch.
3. Implicit, although it was not the focus this morning, is the possibility that God can "break the power of cancelled Sin." I personally think it is more problematic than helpful to debate the breaking of the power of Sin for the entirety of a person, since we are constantly changing all the time. In principle, I completely agree that a Christian should be able to say at any point of their life that, for their part, they are as surrendered to God as they know how to be and would obey Him whatever He might ask them to do.
But what matters today--and as humans we only ever have today--is that the power of Sin be broken in the area where Sin is crouching today. Wesleyans believe that God can shoot the lion crouching today to where that particular temptation ceases to crouch so threatenly tomorrow.
The blood will flow through this artery.
What made me think of posting was the fact that he really ignored the Wesleyan question of entire sanctification. If we're honest, few Wesleyan pastors preach this doctrine. Few people in the pew understand it. Forgive the imagery, but this morning sermon struck me as something like a by-pass around a blocked artery.
Deneff's sermon took off from Genesis 4 and the line that "sin crouches at the door." He made very healthy distinctions between evil and sin. He had a helpful section on avenues by which temptation come (personality, physical issues, environment). He had a practical "to this" start toward solutions (practice the virtue opposite the tempting vice).
He warned the entirely sanctified not to forget that still "sin crouches at the door." Crouches, not as in we "fall" into sin but that it is looking to get us.
How am I as a Wesleyan to map this sermon to our historical doctrines? Is this Keswick? Sin will always be a struggle, even though you can beat it through the Spirit. That's not historically Wesleyan. What about entire sanctification? Where the power of Sin over me is defeated over the whole?
For good or ill, those aren't the questions Christians are asking and I suspect if we were to dwell on them, we simply consign ourselves to irrelevance. I believe Deneff has hit the nail on the head this morning and has, intentionally or not, boiled down the Wesleyan tradition in this area to what people need to hear and will actually help them.
1. Sin crouches at the door of all our lives, no matter how long you have been a Christian. No one dare think they have arrived or ignore the constant possibility of having and yielding to temptation.
2. No one need be defeated by Sin or temptation, through the Spirit's power. Sin may crouch, but it never need catch.
3. Implicit, although it was not the focus this morning, is the possibility that God can "break the power of cancelled Sin." I personally think it is more problematic than helpful to debate the breaking of the power of Sin for the entirety of a person, since we are constantly changing all the time. In principle, I completely agree that a Christian should be able to say at any point of their life that, for their part, they are as surrendered to God as they know how to be and would obey Him whatever He might ask them to do.
But what matters today--and as humans we only ever have today--is that the power of Sin be broken in the area where Sin is crouching today. Wesleyans believe that God can shoot the lion crouching today to where that particular temptation ceases to crouch so threatenly tomorrow.
The blood will flow through this artery.
Monday, March 16, 2009
In House Quote from Dunn's Galatians Commentary
"In view of a continued emphasis within Christianity on the Spirit as a second experience, subsequent to conversion (so still in classic Pentecostalism), it is important to note that Paul saw reception of the Spirit as essentially the 'beginning' of Christian discipleship" (156, on Galatians 3:3).
Of course Wesleyans believe this as well... I just never really heard the Spirit preached in any way but in regard to entire sanctification until seminary. Despite my quarrels with Asbury and my enthusiasm for IWU's new kind of seminary, I would give Asbury the primary credit for lifting the maturity and depth of the Wesleyan Church into something recognizable by the broader church these last fifty years. For that I thank it.
Of course Wesleyans believe this as well... I just never really heard the Spirit preached in any way but in regard to entire sanctification until seminary. Despite my quarrels with Asbury and my enthusiasm for IWU's new kind of seminary, I would give Asbury the primary credit for lifting the maturity and depth of the Wesleyan Church into something recognizable by the broader church these last fifty years. For that I thank it.
Monday, August 04, 2008
My working definitions of sanctification and holiness
I'm teaching an online class for IWU these next few weeks, and posted my working definitions of "holiness" and "sanctification" for them this morning at the end of a workshop.
By the way, I'm thinking of proposing an online grad class in the Spring "Preaching Paul's Life and Letters." If God and accreditors smile on our undertaking, we may be approved to offer an MDiv by then, and this could give a person a head start on electives. If all goes well, we'll be looking for 30 brave members of the "first seminary class" in Fall '09--one cohort of 15 online and one cohort to meet once a week onsite. Be looking for more information if all goes well.
Anyway, this online course for the Spring would run for 14 weeks in the Spring from January to early April. One day a week would be a lecture/discussion of content by way of Adobe Acrobat (I would do it somewhat differently from Hebrews last Spring--we would actually meet online at a specific time like a normal class). The rest of the class would meet on Blackboard in online class format. Everyone would preach at least once, maybe twice. The content would include both Acts 13-28 and all of the Pauline letters.
Anyway, here's what I posted this morning for the class:
To sanctify means "to make holy," to "holy-fy." So "sanctification" would mean the process of becoming holy or the state of having been made holy. The harder thing to define is what it means to be or become holy.
Holiness has as its basic sense being set apart to GOD as GOD's. I put God in all caps because a cognitive definition just doesn't cut it. The sentence should be said with some trembling and nervousness. You should fall on your face in the manner of Isaiah 6 when you speak of God's holiness, for to say God is holy is to say that God is GOD! To touch His stuff, to get near His presence is like stepping close to an electricity relay station where the voltage is so high you can feel the tingling on your skin and you get a little nervous because you know this stuff can fry you alive!
To be holy or to be made holy is thus to be God's or be made God's. It means that other people better be careful what they do to you because you are God's property. You are drawn on His side of the line. And it means that you'd better be careful how you live as well, because you're set apart as His. Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5 should suffice as an example of what happens when you mess around with the holy.
The idea of purity of heart and life is thus secondary to what holiness is, but it is a natural by-product of the fundamental idea. We act appropriate to something that belongs to GOD. It makes perfect sense that we would become holy by the "sanctification of the Spirit," since having God possess us fits with God's Spirit within us.
We are holy from the time we receive the Spirit, which is the defining moment of becoming God's or in popular Christianese, "getting saved." I personally don't think it makes sense to become more or less holy, at least not in the biblical sense of the word. Either you belong to God or you don't.
By the way, I'm thinking of proposing an online grad class in the Spring "Preaching Paul's Life and Letters." If God and accreditors smile on our undertaking, we may be approved to offer an MDiv by then, and this could give a person a head start on electives. If all goes well, we'll be looking for 30 brave members of the "first seminary class" in Fall '09--one cohort of 15 online and one cohort to meet once a week onsite. Be looking for more information if all goes well.
Anyway, this online course for the Spring would run for 14 weeks in the Spring from January to early April. One day a week would be a lecture/discussion of content by way of Adobe Acrobat (I would do it somewhat differently from Hebrews last Spring--we would actually meet online at a specific time like a normal class). The rest of the class would meet on Blackboard in online class format. Everyone would preach at least once, maybe twice. The content would include both Acts 13-28 and all of the Pauline letters.
Anyway, here's what I posted this morning for the class:
To sanctify means "to make holy," to "holy-fy." So "sanctification" would mean the process of becoming holy or the state of having been made holy. The harder thing to define is what it means to be or become holy.
Holiness has as its basic sense being set apart to GOD as GOD's. I put God in all caps because a cognitive definition just doesn't cut it. The sentence should be said with some trembling and nervousness. You should fall on your face in the manner of Isaiah 6 when you speak of God's holiness, for to say God is holy is to say that God is GOD! To touch His stuff, to get near His presence is like stepping close to an electricity relay station where the voltage is so high you can feel the tingling on your skin and you get a little nervous because you know this stuff can fry you alive!
To be holy or to be made holy is thus to be God's or be made God's. It means that other people better be careful what they do to you because you are God's property. You are drawn on His side of the line. And it means that you'd better be careful how you live as well, because you're set apart as His. Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5 should suffice as an example of what happens when you mess around with the holy.
The idea of purity of heart and life is thus secondary to what holiness is, but it is a natural by-product of the fundamental idea. We act appropriate to something that belongs to GOD. It makes perfect sense that we would become holy by the "sanctification of the Spirit," since having God possess us fits with God's Spirit within us.
We are holy from the time we receive the Spirit, which is the defining moment of becoming God's or in popular Christianese, "getting saved." I personally don't think it makes sense to become more or less holy, at least not in the biblical sense of the word. Either you belong to God or you don't.
Thursday, June 07, 2007
Acts and Entire Sanctification
I had a good conversation with one of my uncles on the phone today. He had read my paper for the church symposium and (being a smart cookie) had noticed footnote 6:
"An informal polling at the Salvation Conference of The Wesleyan Church two years ago yielded the striking result that not a single Bible scholar at Wesley Biblical, Nazarene Theological, Asbury Seminary, Indiana Wesleyan, Houghton, Southern Wesleyan, Bartlesville, or Bethany was found who understood the Spirit-fillings of Acts to be experiences of a second work of grace. In this conclusion Wesleyan Bible scholars have apparently come to agree with the virtually unanimous sense of biblical scholarship in general that receiving/being baptized with the Holy Spirit in Acts is an entry experience rather than a secondary experience subsequent to conversion. The turning point in Wesleyan scholarship might be marked from Robert W. Lyon’s 1979 article in the Wesleyan Theological Journal, “Baptism and Spirit-Baptism in the New Testament,” WTJ 14 (1979): 14-26. The best known scholarly monograph on the topic is James D. G. Dunn’s, Baptism in the Holy Spirit (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1970)."
As I read the paper at the conference, I did not stop to discuss this comment. It was not of course the point of the paper or even in the main text. But I did pause after the sentence that inspired the footnote:
"So in Acts 8 when a group in Samaria have been baptized in water but have not received the Holy Spirit, Peter and John travel there and lay hands on them (8:10). Almost all Wesleyan Bible scholars today would see the problem here as the fact that these people were still lacking the most important ingredient in conversion—namely, they lacked the Holy Spirit."
I nervously paused as I read this comment, noting with my usual understatement that this comment was somewhat controversial, and then suggested I move on.
Why are these things controversial? Let me give a bit of the Wesleyan story.
1. The Wesleyan Church, despite its name, was not founded by John Wesley. Its identity, probably more than anything else, derives from the holiness revivals of the late 1800's. This is certainly true of the Pilgrim Holiness Church, formed around 1900.
And I would argue it is true of the Wesleyan Methodist Church that emerged from the late 1800's. As much as I like to boast over the social consciousness of the WM church's founding, these things were not the central identity of the church as it entered the twentieth century. After many of its founders returned to the mainstream Methodist church after the civil war, its surviving identity turned to other identity markers.
These identity forming traditions of the Wesleyan Church preached entire sanctification from the book of Acts, using the Day of Pentecost as the model for how to get sanctified. The thinking goes like this. The disciples were "saved" before the Day of Pentecost. Then on the Day of Pentecost they become "entirely sanctified."
So you see that when I suggest that I have not found any Bible scholars in The Wesleyan Church currently who equate the Spirit fillings of Acts with entire sanctification, I am making a startling claim. I am suggesting that somehow, perhaps unbenownst to anyone, one of the core features of Wesleyan identity has mysteriously vanished in the last thirty years without anyone hardly noticing!
Clarifications: It is very important to point out what is not being said here. I am not suggesting that the Bible scholars at our Wesleyan schools do not teach entire sanctification. At the Saving Grace conference of two years ago, I think some of our church leaders were surprised to find a good deal of enthusiasm among Wesleyan scholars for the doctrine of entire sanctification. That is not what is at issue here, although there are implications I will mention below. Wesleyan Bible teachers strongly affirm complete victory over sin!
The issue is whether we formulate our understanding of the process of becoming entire sanctified by way of the book of Acts and Pentecost or not.
A second clarification here is that I am speaking of Bible scholars, not theology scholars. We might find a number of theology scholars who associate the Spirit fillings of Acts with entire sanctification (e.g., Larry Wood at Asbury).
Third I have specified Bible scholars, not Bible teachers (although we didn't find anyone teaching Bible at the Wesleyan schools at the conference who understood Acts this way). We might find any number of non-Bible specialists teaching here and there in Wesleyan circles who still preach Acts this way.
I'm not being elitist here. I'm speaking of graduate level training in inductive Bible study method. And I am not suggesting that a person with a PhD in Bible can hear God's Word through Scripture better than anyone else. I'm suggesting they are more likely to know what the original meaning of the Bible was.
Of course that doesn't mean they're right on the original meaning either, of course. It just means they are more likely to be right on the original meaning, especially when they have a consensus on an issue.
So how did the association of entire sanctification with Acts disappear in The Wesleyan Church?
Scene 1: The generation of current Wesleyan grandparents.
I'm going to call this phase of holiness preaching the legalistic phase. Now let me be clear, I am not suggesting that all our grandparents were legalists. And I would also make a significant distinction between being strict and being a true legalist. To me this is a very important distinction!
But the doctrine of entire sanctification was strongly connected with standards for this generation--at least that's the way their children, the generation of current Wesleyan Boomer parents, perceived it.
Holiness was perceived to mean no jewelry, no movies, no smoking, long hair for women, no slacks or pants on women, no buying on Sunday, etc... Again, I am not commenting on hearts. For my purposes, I am describing how I think the Boomer generation, the parents of the current generation, experienced their parents.
At the merger, there was a "split" of sorts in this generation, the generation of grandparents. The more "standard oriented" holiness people didn't go with the merger. To remove oneself from the church required an identifying act. And since the "liberalization of the church" was the protest, those who withdrew from our fellowship effectively defined themselves around standards as the dominant lens for understanding holiness.
Those who didn't merge thus tended to be less committed to a standards understanding of holiness. Those who withdrew might say these didn't want to be different from the world. Those who stayed might say the differences from the world of this group were arbitrary rather than substantial. Those who withdrew might say they weren't fully committed to God or were rebellious. Those who stayed might say those who withdrew did not understand what true holiness was.
This was the conflict of the grandparents' generation over holiness.
Scene 2: Boomer generation, the parents of the current generation
This group wanted to have nothing to do with what they saw as the "legalistic holiness" of their parents' generation. In fact, they cared little about the message of entire sanctification at all because they associated it with standards, what they saw as bitter people squabbling over what so and so was wearing. They saw these debates as trivial and quite distracting from the gospel.
Here also there were two ways:
a. There were those who followed John Maxwell into battle. I would say these were largely the leaders of the church for the last decades of the twentieth century. "We need to save souls and stop arguing over petty things," was their sentiment. The previous generation was seen as dying small churches of old people with no message but a lot of bitterness and backstabbing. Where are the fruit of the Spirit in these so called entirely sanctified individuals?
This was the church growth phase of our church, a phase in which almost no attention was paid to doctrine whatsoever. It was all about numbers and evangelism. This generation group couldn't care less about the doctrine of entire sanctification.
In a now famous paper, Keith Drury with regret pronounced the holiness movement dead in the 90's.
b. There was another group among the Boomers and Gen xers like me. Following the lead of the J. D. Abbott trajectory, we reached out for respectability, for decency and order. We went to seminary, where we reached out to John Wesley to be thought intelligent and respectable.
They discovered that entire sanctification was supposed to be about "perfect love," not about earrings. And here's the surprise. Wesley, the originator of the doctrine of entire sanctification, never formulated it in terms of the book of Acts! In fact, although Larry Wood has argued that John Fletcher did with Wesley's approval, consider this quote from Vic Reasoner of Northwest Nazarene University:
"Wesleyan scholars such as Herbert McGonigle, Rob Staples, Kenneth Grider, Donald Dayton, George Allen Turner, Mildred Wynkoop, Kenneth Collins, Leo Cox, and William Greathouse have all concluded that early Methodism did not connect the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost with entire sanctification, as did the later American holiness movement."
("John Fletcher Revisited" http://wesley.nnu.edu/arminianism/arminian_mag/16_2_98.htm )
The seminary Boomers found John Wesley's version of entire sanctification much more attractive than that of their parents, who for the most part didn't even realize the historical forces at work on their thinking (e.g., Phoebe Palmer). They thought they were just reading the Bible and doing what it said and were almost completely unaware of the historical factors behind how they preached these texts.
At the same time, this seminary crowd absorbed the evangelical method of reading the Bible in context, inculcated not least among Wesleyan leaders by the "English Bible" method of Asbury Theological Seminary, where the overwhelming majority of seminary trained leaders in The Wesleyan Church went for graduate studies.
At the same time that Larry Wood at Asbury was a lonely voice for the early Methodists associating Acts with entire sanctification, Bob Lyon at Asbury, following James Dunn, was using evangelical methods of exegesis to show that this was not the original meaning of Acts.
Melvin Dieter, at the Saving Grace conference of two years ago, made a plea for Wesleyans to return to preaching entire sanctification from Acts. He decried Lyon (and Dunn) for the damage they had done to the Wesleyan tradition. I understand and deeply appreciate what he was saying. Wesley and Fletcher may not have formulated entire sanctification by way of Acts. But it is so much easier to promote the doctrine from Acts!
Acts gives us a narrative to preach entire sanctification in the following way. The disciples were "saved" before Pentecost. But they were cowards and weren't fully committed. Look at how Peter denied Jesus. Look at how they all ran away.
Then they get entirely sanctified at Pentecost. Now look at the boldness! Now look how they are ready to die for their faith! How much easier it is to preach entire sanctification from a concrete, experiential narrative in Acts rather than from the heady theological arguments of Wesley!
3. The current Wesleyan generation.
The current generation of Wesleyans by and large know little of the "legalism" of their grandparents' generation. It is funny to them, if anything. Yeah, "Sister so and so"doesn't wear make-up. Look at that facial hair! Can I just pluck a few of those for you?
But they don't have the bitterness of their parents' generation. Some of them are actually excited about Wesley's ideas of full salvation. They don't associate holiness with earrings or Wesleyan wads.
What about Acts? Ironically, the postmodern age re-opens the door a little to preaching sanctification from Acts.
The evangelical/Asbury/boomer scholar asks this question:
"Did Luke have entire sanctification in mind when he wrote Acts?"
I think the answer to that question is clearly "no." I mean, does he mention it? Look up "entire sanctification" in your concordance for how many times that phrase appears in the book! Does Luke say anything about removal of the carnal nature? For that matter look for the phrase "sinful nature" in Greek even in Paul's writings--you won't find it! Does Luke say anything about victory over inbred sin? Put it this way, "Would the book of Acts be worded the way it is if a holiness preacher had written it?" I think the answer is pretty clearly no.
But the holiness preacher was not asking the question I have above. They were asking this question:
"Were the disciples entirely sanctified on the Day of Pentecost?"
Now that's a very interesting question! I think I'm inclined to say they were, even though this is not a question Luke was meaning to ask or answer!
The holiness preacher, like the biblical authors themselves, placed the biblical text within an overarching story of salvation they to some extent brought with them to the text. They were not, like the evangelical scholar, trying to find it in the original meaning of the text. True, the holiness preacher intuitively drew many of the elements for that story from the biblical text. But they did not look at John for the contextual meaning of John or Luke-Acts for the contextual meaning of Luke-Acts. Rather, they drew elements from these books to tell the single, overarching story of the disciples, not the particular stories of Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John.
So they were not asking what Luke's theology of Pentecost was, like the evangelical scholar of today does. They were constructing (without knowing it) a theological story of the disciples. They were hearing the Word of God in dialog with the words. In this sense they were preaching a theological parable by way of the biblical texts. This parable was not exactly the story of the "historical" disciples. Nor was it exactly the original meaning of the biblical text.
But this does not mean that the story was untrue, any more than the Parable of the Prodigal Son is untrue even though it is not a story that actually happened!
So were the disciples "saved" before Pentecost? I believe they would have gone to heaven if they had died then, just as Abraham.
And were the disciples "entirely sanctified" on the Day of Pentecost? I bet they were, even though I don't think Luke would know what you were talking about. And I'm not sure I would say the same thing of the Christians in Samaria, or Cornelius, or Paul in Acts 9, or the people at Ephesus in Acts 19, although it's possible.
The doctrine of victory over sin is not dead. The fallow ground of the Boomer field is ripe for planting. Actually, I have a twisted sense of relief about some of this story. I remember thinking as a teenager, "Wow, how unlikely is it that I would just happen to be born in the Christian group whose theology was all right!" I mean the statistics against that are staggering!
Now I think we were mostly right! And I'm releaved that since I think I can identify some blind spots to our tradition's history, the statistics are much better in my favor! ;-)
"An informal polling at the Salvation Conference of The Wesleyan Church two years ago yielded the striking result that not a single Bible scholar at Wesley Biblical, Nazarene Theological, Asbury Seminary, Indiana Wesleyan, Houghton, Southern Wesleyan, Bartlesville, or Bethany was found who understood the Spirit-fillings of Acts to be experiences of a second work of grace. In this conclusion Wesleyan Bible scholars have apparently come to agree with the virtually unanimous sense of biblical scholarship in general that receiving/being baptized with the Holy Spirit in Acts is an entry experience rather than a secondary experience subsequent to conversion. The turning point in Wesleyan scholarship might be marked from Robert W. Lyon’s 1979 article in the Wesleyan Theological Journal, “Baptism and Spirit-Baptism in the New Testament,” WTJ 14 (1979): 14-26. The best known scholarly monograph on the topic is James D. G. Dunn’s, Baptism in the Holy Spirit (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1970)."
As I read the paper at the conference, I did not stop to discuss this comment. It was not of course the point of the paper or even in the main text. But I did pause after the sentence that inspired the footnote:
"So in Acts 8 when a group in Samaria have been baptized in water but have not received the Holy Spirit, Peter and John travel there and lay hands on them (8:10). Almost all Wesleyan Bible scholars today would see the problem here as the fact that these people were still lacking the most important ingredient in conversion—namely, they lacked the Holy Spirit."
I nervously paused as I read this comment, noting with my usual understatement that this comment was somewhat controversial, and then suggested I move on.
Why are these things controversial? Let me give a bit of the Wesleyan story.
1. The Wesleyan Church, despite its name, was not founded by John Wesley. Its identity, probably more than anything else, derives from the holiness revivals of the late 1800's. This is certainly true of the Pilgrim Holiness Church, formed around 1900.
And I would argue it is true of the Wesleyan Methodist Church that emerged from the late 1800's. As much as I like to boast over the social consciousness of the WM church's founding, these things were not the central identity of the church as it entered the twentieth century. After many of its founders returned to the mainstream Methodist church after the civil war, its surviving identity turned to other identity markers.
These identity forming traditions of the Wesleyan Church preached entire sanctification from the book of Acts, using the Day of Pentecost as the model for how to get sanctified. The thinking goes like this. The disciples were "saved" before the Day of Pentecost. Then on the Day of Pentecost they become "entirely sanctified."
So you see that when I suggest that I have not found any Bible scholars in The Wesleyan Church currently who equate the Spirit fillings of Acts with entire sanctification, I am making a startling claim. I am suggesting that somehow, perhaps unbenownst to anyone, one of the core features of Wesleyan identity has mysteriously vanished in the last thirty years without anyone hardly noticing!
Clarifications: It is very important to point out what is not being said here. I am not suggesting that the Bible scholars at our Wesleyan schools do not teach entire sanctification. At the Saving Grace conference of two years ago, I think some of our church leaders were surprised to find a good deal of enthusiasm among Wesleyan scholars for the doctrine of entire sanctification. That is not what is at issue here, although there are implications I will mention below. Wesleyan Bible teachers strongly affirm complete victory over sin!
The issue is whether we formulate our understanding of the process of becoming entire sanctified by way of the book of Acts and Pentecost or not.
A second clarification here is that I am speaking of Bible scholars, not theology scholars. We might find a number of theology scholars who associate the Spirit fillings of Acts with entire sanctification (e.g., Larry Wood at Asbury).
Third I have specified Bible scholars, not Bible teachers (although we didn't find anyone teaching Bible at the Wesleyan schools at the conference who understood Acts this way). We might find any number of non-Bible specialists teaching here and there in Wesleyan circles who still preach Acts this way.
I'm not being elitist here. I'm speaking of graduate level training in inductive Bible study method. And I am not suggesting that a person with a PhD in Bible can hear God's Word through Scripture better than anyone else. I'm suggesting they are more likely to know what the original meaning of the Bible was.
Of course that doesn't mean they're right on the original meaning either, of course. It just means they are more likely to be right on the original meaning, especially when they have a consensus on an issue.
So how did the association of entire sanctification with Acts disappear in The Wesleyan Church?
Scene 1: The generation of current Wesleyan grandparents.
I'm going to call this phase of holiness preaching the legalistic phase. Now let me be clear, I am not suggesting that all our grandparents were legalists. And I would also make a significant distinction between being strict and being a true legalist. To me this is a very important distinction!
But the doctrine of entire sanctification was strongly connected with standards for this generation--at least that's the way their children, the generation of current Wesleyan Boomer parents, perceived it.
Holiness was perceived to mean no jewelry, no movies, no smoking, long hair for women, no slacks or pants on women, no buying on Sunday, etc... Again, I am not commenting on hearts. For my purposes, I am describing how I think the Boomer generation, the parents of the current generation, experienced their parents.
At the merger, there was a "split" of sorts in this generation, the generation of grandparents. The more "standard oriented" holiness people didn't go with the merger. To remove oneself from the church required an identifying act. And since the "liberalization of the church" was the protest, those who withdrew from our fellowship effectively defined themselves around standards as the dominant lens for understanding holiness.
Those who didn't merge thus tended to be less committed to a standards understanding of holiness. Those who withdrew might say these didn't want to be different from the world. Those who stayed might say the differences from the world of this group were arbitrary rather than substantial. Those who withdrew might say they weren't fully committed to God or were rebellious. Those who stayed might say those who withdrew did not understand what true holiness was.
This was the conflict of the grandparents' generation over holiness.
Scene 2: Boomer generation, the parents of the current generation
This group wanted to have nothing to do with what they saw as the "legalistic holiness" of their parents' generation. In fact, they cared little about the message of entire sanctification at all because they associated it with standards, what they saw as bitter people squabbling over what so and so was wearing. They saw these debates as trivial and quite distracting from the gospel.
Here also there were two ways:
a. There were those who followed John Maxwell into battle. I would say these were largely the leaders of the church for the last decades of the twentieth century. "We need to save souls and stop arguing over petty things," was their sentiment. The previous generation was seen as dying small churches of old people with no message but a lot of bitterness and backstabbing. Where are the fruit of the Spirit in these so called entirely sanctified individuals?
This was the church growth phase of our church, a phase in which almost no attention was paid to doctrine whatsoever. It was all about numbers and evangelism. This generation group couldn't care less about the doctrine of entire sanctification.
In a now famous paper, Keith Drury with regret pronounced the holiness movement dead in the 90's.
b. There was another group among the Boomers and Gen xers like me. Following the lead of the J. D. Abbott trajectory, we reached out for respectability, for decency and order. We went to seminary, where we reached out to John Wesley to be thought intelligent and respectable.
They discovered that entire sanctification was supposed to be about "perfect love," not about earrings. And here's the surprise. Wesley, the originator of the doctrine of entire sanctification, never formulated it in terms of the book of Acts! In fact, although Larry Wood has argued that John Fletcher did with Wesley's approval, consider this quote from Vic Reasoner of Northwest Nazarene University:
"Wesleyan scholars such as Herbert McGonigle, Rob Staples, Kenneth Grider, Donald Dayton, George Allen Turner, Mildred Wynkoop, Kenneth Collins, Leo Cox, and William Greathouse have all concluded that early Methodism did not connect the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost with entire sanctification, as did the later American holiness movement."
("John Fletcher Revisited" http://wesley.nnu.edu/arminianism/arminian_mag/16_2_98.htm )
The seminary Boomers found John Wesley's version of entire sanctification much more attractive than that of their parents, who for the most part didn't even realize the historical forces at work on their thinking (e.g., Phoebe Palmer). They thought they were just reading the Bible and doing what it said and were almost completely unaware of the historical factors behind how they preached these texts.
At the same time, this seminary crowd absorbed the evangelical method of reading the Bible in context, inculcated not least among Wesleyan leaders by the "English Bible" method of Asbury Theological Seminary, where the overwhelming majority of seminary trained leaders in The Wesleyan Church went for graduate studies.
At the same time that Larry Wood at Asbury was a lonely voice for the early Methodists associating Acts with entire sanctification, Bob Lyon at Asbury, following James Dunn, was using evangelical methods of exegesis to show that this was not the original meaning of Acts.
Melvin Dieter, at the Saving Grace conference of two years ago, made a plea for Wesleyans to return to preaching entire sanctification from Acts. He decried Lyon (and Dunn) for the damage they had done to the Wesleyan tradition. I understand and deeply appreciate what he was saying. Wesley and Fletcher may not have formulated entire sanctification by way of Acts. But it is so much easier to promote the doctrine from Acts!
Acts gives us a narrative to preach entire sanctification in the following way. The disciples were "saved" before Pentecost. But they were cowards and weren't fully committed. Look at how Peter denied Jesus. Look at how they all ran away.
Then they get entirely sanctified at Pentecost. Now look at the boldness! Now look how they are ready to die for their faith! How much easier it is to preach entire sanctification from a concrete, experiential narrative in Acts rather than from the heady theological arguments of Wesley!
3. The current Wesleyan generation.
The current generation of Wesleyans by and large know little of the "legalism" of their grandparents' generation. It is funny to them, if anything. Yeah, "Sister so and so"doesn't wear make-up. Look at that facial hair! Can I just pluck a few of those for you?
But they don't have the bitterness of their parents' generation. Some of them are actually excited about Wesley's ideas of full salvation. They don't associate holiness with earrings or Wesleyan wads.
What about Acts? Ironically, the postmodern age re-opens the door a little to preaching sanctification from Acts.
The evangelical/Asbury/boomer scholar asks this question:
"Did Luke have entire sanctification in mind when he wrote Acts?"
I think the answer to that question is clearly "no." I mean, does he mention it? Look up "entire sanctification" in your concordance for how many times that phrase appears in the book! Does Luke say anything about removal of the carnal nature? For that matter look for the phrase "sinful nature" in Greek even in Paul's writings--you won't find it! Does Luke say anything about victory over inbred sin? Put it this way, "Would the book of Acts be worded the way it is if a holiness preacher had written it?" I think the answer is pretty clearly no.
But the holiness preacher was not asking the question I have above. They were asking this question:
"Were the disciples entirely sanctified on the Day of Pentecost?"
Now that's a very interesting question! I think I'm inclined to say they were, even though this is not a question Luke was meaning to ask or answer!
The holiness preacher, like the biblical authors themselves, placed the biblical text within an overarching story of salvation they to some extent brought with them to the text. They were not, like the evangelical scholar, trying to find it in the original meaning of the text. True, the holiness preacher intuitively drew many of the elements for that story from the biblical text. But they did not look at John for the contextual meaning of John or Luke-Acts for the contextual meaning of Luke-Acts. Rather, they drew elements from these books to tell the single, overarching story of the disciples, not the particular stories of Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John.
So they were not asking what Luke's theology of Pentecost was, like the evangelical scholar of today does. They were constructing (without knowing it) a theological story of the disciples. They were hearing the Word of God in dialog with the words. In this sense they were preaching a theological parable by way of the biblical texts. This parable was not exactly the story of the "historical" disciples. Nor was it exactly the original meaning of the biblical text.
But this does not mean that the story was untrue, any more than the Parable of the Prodigal Son is untrue even though it is not a story that actually happened!
So were the disciples "saved" before Pentecost? I believe they would have gone to heaven if they had died then, just as Abraham.
And were the disciples "entirely sanctified" on the Day of Pentecost? I bet they were, even though I don't think Luke would know what you were talking about. And I'm not sure I would say the same thing of the Christians in Samaria, or Cornelius, or Paul in Acts 9, or the people at Ephesus in Acts 19, although it's possible.
The doctrine of victory over sin is not dead. The fallow ground of the Boomer field is ripe for planting. Actually, I have a twisted sense of relief about some of this story. I remember thinking as a teenager, "Wow, how unlikely is it that I would just happen to be born in the Christian group whose theology was all right!" I mean the statistics against that are staggering!
Now I think we were mostly right! And I'm releaved that since I think I can identify some blind spots to our tradition's history, the statistics are much better in my favor! ;-)
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