|  | Wesleyan Distinctives in Salvation Army Theology
Earl Robinson
Introduction
Salvation Army doctrines are “Wesleyan” in that they arise out of interpretations of Scripture taught and lived out by John Wesley. “To me there was one God, and John Wesley was his prophet,”1 said William Booth, founder of The Salvation Army. His spiritual life had its beginnings in his teen years among Wesley’s followers in the Methodist tradition, and his theology was developed as a minister of the Methodist New Connexion.
Much of the teaching of John Wesley and The Salvation Army could be considered “catholic” (with a small “c”), in that it is not unlike the teachings of many denominations of the Christian faith. For example, there is little difference between the second, third, and fourth statements of belief of The Salvation Army and those statements (and their interpretations) made by the mainstream of Christianity concerning God, the Trinity, and Jesus Christ. They are fundamental doctrines of Christianity that can be found in the classical Church creeds affirmed by both John Wesley and the Army.
There are, however, certain distinctive emphases in Wesleyan thought that are at the core of Salvation Army interpretation of other Christian doctrines. This article focuses on our indebtedness as Salvationists to the teaching of John Wesley in four specific areas, which Salvation Story: Salvationist Handbook of Doctrine refers to as “the source of Christian doctrine,” “the doctrine of humanity,” “the doctrine of salvation” (including “the doctrine of the Atonement”), and “the doctrine of holiness.”2
The Source of Christian Doctrine
A Man of One Book
Writing about “The Character of a Methodist,” Wesley said: “We believe the written word of God to be the only and sufficient rule both of Christian faith and practice,”3 wording similar to that of the Army’s first statement of belief: “We believe that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments were given by inspiration of God, and that they only constitute the Divine rule of Christian faith and practice.” He referred to himself as homo unius libri,4 “a man of one book,” and stated, “In the year 1729, I began not only to read, but to study, the Bible, as the one, the only standard of truth, and the only model of pure religion.”5
Those declarations did not mean that Wesley read nothing else but the Bible in his search for truth. Professor Albert Outler in his book, Theology in the Wesleyan Spirit, carefully amasses evidence to the contrary as he reveals the extensive background of reading that can be detected in Wesley’s writings and sermons. Outler says that the record of Wesley’s reading after his call to the ministry in 1725 runs to “more than fourteen hundred different authors”, including classical writers, dramatists, scientists and secularists as well as theologians. Wesley therefore did not exclude insights from other sources. He was not exclusively a “biblicist.”6
The Wesleyan Quadrilateral
Wesley’s reliance upon other than pure Scripture for religious authority and theological truth is so significant that Professor Outler suggests there are four sources of truth which feature prominently in Wesleyan thought, what Outler and other commentators on Wesley call the “Wesleyan Quadrilateral”—a four–sided appeal to truth from Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience.7
Wesley appealed to the early Church and to Christian tradition at large as complementing witnesses to the meaning of specific passages of Scripture. Critical reason and the Christian experience of assurance would then be applied to Scripture and tradition in order to arrive at truth. Outler concludes that “we can see a distinctive theological method, with Scripture as its pre–eminent norm but interfaced with tradition, reason and Christian experience as dynamic and interactive aids in the interpretation of the word of God in Scripture.”8
What Wesley therefore appears to mean by referring to himself as “a man of one book” and stating that the written word of God is the “only and sufficient rule of Christian faith and practice” is that, while other writings and other ways may be helpful in leading to truth, Scripture alone is ultimately authoritative. An understanding of truth from that one book should take precedence over all other paths to knowledge.
The Language of the Holy Ghost
To understand Wesley’s teaching on scriptural centrality, it is necessary to have some insight into his view of the inspiration of Holy Scripture. He wrote:
God speaks not as man, but as God. His thoughts are very deep; and hence his words are of inexhaustible virtue. And the language of his messengers, also, is exact in the highest degree: for the words which were given them accurately answered the impression made upon their minds: and hence Luther says, “Divinity is nothing but a grammar of the language of the Holy Ghost.”9
Wesley’s view of Scripture as the language of the Holy Ghost appears in some of his statements to be almost what might be thought of today as a verbal dictation theory of the inspiration of Scripture. He further appeared in at least one of his statements to adopt what might be regarded today as a total inerrancy position with respect to the Scriptures. On the other hand, there are parts of his writings in which Wesley appears to take a much more liberal approach. In the “Preface to his Explanatory Notes on the New Testament,” he indicates that he cannot affirm that the Greek copies from which the common English translation were made were always correct, and therefore states that he “shall take the liberty, as occasion may require, to make here and there a small alteration.”10 He thus allows for the corruption of the received text and affirms the need for textual criticism of the Scriptures.
It is necessary to interpret Wesley’s beliefs within the context of his total teaching concerning the Scriptures. For example, he quotes 2 Timothy 3:16 in one of his sermons, “All Scripture is given by inspiration of God” and adds the comment: “Consequently, all Scripture is infallible, true.”11 But J. Kenneth Grider in an article titled “Wesleyanism and the Inerrancy Issue” suggests that his meaning of “infallible” needs to be interpreted in light of another comment: “The Scriptures are a complete rule of faith and practice; and they are clear in all necessary points.” Grider interprets “faith and practice” as the “necessary points” to which Wesley was alluding. He suggests that the Wesleyan position on inerrancy is that there are no errors in doctrine and Christian practice in Scripture, but that there may be errors in math or science or geography.12
The Doctrine of Humanity
A Pessimism about Human Nature Unaided by God
A Wesleyan distinctive that is vital to Salvation Army faith and practice is the belief that there is something good in every person—that no one is beyond redemption. That optimism is not, however, immediately apparent in our fifth statement of belief. The statement, as it stands, focuses on a pessimism about human nature following the fall of humankind: “We believe that our first parents were created in a state of innocency, but by their disobedience they lost their purity and happiness, and that in consequence of their fall all men have become sinners, totally depraved, and as such are justly exposed to the wrath of God.”
In some circles, Wesley is criticized for underestimating this pessimism about human nature in his teachings on holiness. It has been said that he is not sufficiently realistic in admitting the tendency of human nature for failure and recognizing the continuing possibility of sinning and the consequent continuing need for the forgiveness and renewal of grace. But certainly in his teaching on original sin and its consequence in what our fifth doctrine describes as “total depravity,” he is clear that humanity, unaided by God, is “‘wretched, and poor, and miserable, and blind, and naked.’. . . He has a deep sense of the loathsome leprosy of sin, which he brought with him from his mother’s womb, which over-spreads his whole soul, and totally corrupts every power and faculty thereof.”13
He further says that that there is a “three–fold cord” against Heaven, not easily broken, a blind mind, a perverse will, disordered affections. The mind, swelled with pride, says, The man should not stoop; the will, opposite to the will of God, says, He will not: and the corrupt affections, rising against the Lord, in defense of this corrupt will, say, He shall not. And thus we stand out against God, till we are created anew in Christ Jesus.14
Prevenient Grace
The question naturally arises as to how that cord might be broken. Wesley’s response to such a question included a distinctively optimistic understanding of the workings of God’s grace before one is born again, that which theologians term “prevenient” grace (from the Latin pre meaning “before” and venient meaning “coming to”), grace available before coming to Christ.
Wesley could not agree with the pessimistic view he found in some theologians—that fallen man is nothing but evil desire, that only the elect can be saved, that they are saved by God’s irresistible grace, and that grace for salvation is available to them alone. This had to do with the Augustinian–Calvinist concept of original sin and total depravity with sin pervading the whole being of natural humanity. John Calvin put it this way: “That whatever is in man, from intellect to will, from the soul to the flesh, is all defiled and crammed with concupiscence.”15
But neither could Wesley agree with the opposite, unrealistically optimistic view of human nature held by Pelagius, that humankind is born “with a capacity for choosing good or evil.”16 Pelagian optimism contended that one is able to sin or not to sin as a matter of choice. That was a gospel of self–salvation. Wesley held that because of their fallen nature, humans are powerless to choose either good or evil on their own. However, we are enabled by God’s prevenient grace to choose good, and ultimately, by faith, to accept God’s saving grace.
Allowing that all the souls of men are dead in sin by nature, this excuses no one, seeing there is no man, unless he has quenched the Spirit, that is wholly void of the grace of God. No man living is entirely destitute of what is vulgarly called natural conscience. But this is not natural. It is more properly termed preventing grace.… Every one has some measure of light, some faint glimmering ray, which, sooner or later, more or less, enlightens every man that cometh into the world.17
Outler suggests that this Wesleyan view of prevenient grace “functions as an alternative to election” in the teachings of Augustine and Calvin as the only path toward salvation by grace through faith. “What is original here,” Outler claims, “is Wesley’s stout upholding of the sovereignty of grace but not its irresistibility.”18 Just as it is by freedom of will that we sin, so it is by freedom of will that we can resist the way of deliverance from sin.
In Wesley’s theology, salvation by grace through faith begins then with preventing or prevenient or enabling grace, grace which can be resisted by free will, but if accepted, becomes what John Wesley described as the first wish to please God, the first dawn of light concerning his will, and the first slight transient conviction of having sinned against him. All these imply some tendency toward life; some degree of salvation; the beginning of a deliverance from a blind, unfeeling heart, quite insensible of God and the things of God.19
The Doctrine of Salvation
The Atonement
That first wish of prevenient grace can lead to the acceptance of the saving grace of the Atonement, falling on the grace of God in Christ, the grace of the Cross, which offers forgiveness and new life. It is that grace of Atonement of which the Army’s sixth doctrine speaks: “We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ has by His suffering and death made an Atonement for the whole world so that whosoever will may be saved.”
It is clear from Wesley’s writings that he saw the doctrine of the Atonement as central to the Christian faith. For example, in the first of his discourses on the Sermon on the Mount, after dealing with the recognition that one is totally “poor in spirit,” totally depraved with a deep sense of a “loathsome leprosy of sin,” Wesley then deals with the way by which the totally depraved might inherit the Kingdom of Heaven.
“Theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.” Whosoever thou art, to whom God hath given to be “poor in spirit,” to feel thyself lost, thou hast a right thereto, through the gracious promise of Him who cannot lie. It is purchased for thee by the Blood of the Lamb… Art thou all sin? “Behold the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of the world!”20
The seventh and eighth Salvation Army statements of belief pertain to the subjective or experiential aspects of salvation—what “we” must do to be saved. However, this subjective element to the salvation process can never be separated from the objective fact of the Atonement of Christ on the Cross. And, according to Wesley, the benefits of the Atonement are available to all without distinction—“whosoever thou art,” or, as stated in the Army’s sixth statement of belief, the “whole world” and the “whosoever will.”
Justified by Grace through Faith in Our Lord Jesus Christ
The Army’s eighth doctrine begins: “We believe that we are justified by grace through faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.” Our life in Christ and subsequent spiritual life development commences with the experience of being saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. Wesley’s life clearly points to the importance of not seeking to start that journey in any other way. The defining moment is recorded in what has become the most well known of all his journal entries:
In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation; and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.21
Prior to Aldersgate, Wesley struggled to earn the favor of God by obedience and good works. He tells of being taught in his childhood that he could only be saved by keeping all the commandments of God. This led him to become an Anglican priest during his university years at Oxford, and even to accept a missionary appointment to the Native Americans in Savannah. It was not until his Aldersgate Chapel experience that he knew for a certainty that he was saved—not through anything he had done or could do, but only through what God in Christ had done at Calvary. He accepted the Protestant Reformation principle of sola gratia, sola fide (“by grace alone, by faith alone”), which speaks to the promise of righteousness that “comes by faith, so that it may be by grace” (Romans 4:16).
This is not to negate the importance of the discipline of keeping the commandments of God, but rather to put it in its proper place. Salvation by grace through faith is the point of beginning in the life of a Christian. The aspiration to holiness follows as a function of the faith that justifies. Outler suggests that Wesley’s premise established the priorities of “salvation, faith and good works” but with the watch phrase of sola fide so that “our aspiration to holiness is as truly a function of faith as justification itself is. The faith that justifies bears its fruits in the faith that works by love.”22 And what is the nature of sola fide that justifies? Wesley says:
It is not, as some have fondly conceived, a bare assent to the truth of the Bible, of the articles of our Creed, or of all that is contained in the Old and New Testament. The devils believe this, as well as I or thou! And yet they are devils still. But it is, over and above this, a sure trust in the mercy of God, through Christ Jesus. It is a confidence in a pardoning God. It is a divine evidence or conviction that “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, not imputing to them their former trespasses”; and, in particular, that the Son of God has loved me, and given himself for me; and that I, even I, am now reconciled to God by the blood of the cross.23
Repentance Towards God
That’s the beginning to the spiritual life pilgrimage—our acceptance of the grace of the Atonement and being justified by grace through faith alone. We now turn back to the seventh of our doctrines that provides details as to how that happens, commencing with a reference to repentance as a necessary component of the faith that justifies: “We believe that repentance toward God, faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, and regeneration by the Holy Spirit are necessary to salvation.”
Wesley taught that repentance is the result of the convincing grace of the Holy Spirit that arises from prevenient grace and leads to saving grace. It includes the conviction of sinfulness with the awareness of a need for a Savior, and an indication of the intent for change—“the works meet for repentance . . . obeying God as far as we can, forgiving our brother, leaving off from evil, choosing good, and using his ordinances according to the power we have received.”24 He thought of repentance as the “porch of religion,” leading to the “door” of justifying faith, which in turn is the entrance to that holiness which is “religion itself.”25 As part of the convincing grace of God, the conviction part of repentance comes through the Holy Spirit, bringing to us an awareness of our failure to meet the requirements of God. According to Wesley, the “ordinary method of God is to convict sinners by the law.”26 It is an awareness of the law of God that causes us to be conscious of our failures, of the sickness of sin.
The preaching of the gospel, on the other hand, is the offer of a physician for the disease of sin. Wesley said: “It is absurd . . . to offer a physician to those that are whole, or that at least imagine themselves to be. You are first to convince them that they are sick; otherwise they will not thank you for your labor.”27
When the offer of Christ as physician is accepted, we have walked beyond the porch of repentance, through the door of faith. Convincing grace has been followed by saving grace through faith, and we experience regeneration or new birth through the gift of the Spirit.
Regeneration by the Holy Spirit
Simultaneous with justification by faith in Wesley’s thought is being regenerated by the Holy Spirit. His opening words in his sermon on “The New Birth” suggest the relationship between justification and regeneration and the primacy of these two doctrines.
If any doctrines within the whole compass of Christianity may be properly termed fundamental, they are doubtless two—the doctrine of justification, and that of the new birth: The former relating to that great work which God does for us, in forgiving our sins; the latter, to the great work which God does in us, in reviving our fallen nature. In order of time, neither of these is before the other; in the moment we are justified by the grace of God, through the redemption that is in Jesus, we are also “born of the Spirit”; but in order of thinking, as it is termed, justification precedes the new birth. We first conceive the wrath to be turned away, and then His Spirit to work in our hearts.28
Wesley’s references to the new birth are particularly replete with an emphasis on this being the work of the Holy Spirit of God as one who is “born of the Spirit,” and a change is “wrought in the whole soul by the almighty Spirit of God when it is ‘created anew in Christ Jesus.’”29 It is in his sermon on John 3:7 (“You must be born again”) that Wesley develops his teaching on regeneration. The final paragraph of his sermon is dramatic. He indicates that it is not enough to have the sacrament of baptism, not enough to do no harm to any man, not enough to do all the good you can, not enough to go to church twice a day or to go to the Lord’s table every week or say ever so many prayers or hear ever so many good sermons or read ever so many good books. Then he adds:
None of these things will stand in the place of the new birth; no, nor anything under Heaven. Let this therefore, if you have not already experienced this inward work of God, be your continual prayer: “Lord, add this to all thy blessings—let me be born again! Deny whatever thou pleasest, but deny not this; let me be born from above!”30
The change of regeneration is the personal appropriation of the promise received through the apostle Paul that “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!” (2 Corinthians 5:17). Those words suggest a radical crisis–point experience. Wesley too indicates that while regeneration is only the beginning to a new life in Christ, it is normally an instantaneous beginning, just as “a child is born of a woman in a moment or at least in a very short time.”31 To be born again of God is to know a change as radical as that of one’s first birth when one leaves the womb, and eyes begin to see the light, ears hear sounds, and one breathes and lives in a manner wholly different from before.
Wesley admits, however, that there may be variations to such an instantaneous beginning. He emphasizes that the important thing is the experience itself rather than its timing:
The first sowing of this seed I cannot conceive to be other than instantaneous; whether I consider experience, or the word of God, or the very nature of the thing; however, I contend not for a circumstance, but the substance: If you can attain it another way, do. Only see that you do attain it; for if you fall short, you perish everlastingly.32
Outler points out that, in this emphasis on regeneration, Wesley was “committed to a doctrine of justification that involved both a relative and a real change in the forgiven sinner.”33 It is a relative change in our status before God because of what God does for us on the Cross of Calvary to speak His word of forgiveness. But it is also a real change in the moral quality of one’s life through what God does in us by the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit of Christ. There is “an actual change of character, along with the change in the God–human relationship.”34
Assurance of Salvation
The second part of the Army’s eighth statement of belief is particularly Wesleyan in character: “He that believeth hath the witness in himself.” This is the doctrine of the assurance that one is saved. For Wesley the great issue leading to his Aldersgate experience was to know for sure that he was saved by grace through faith, justified, born again, adopted into the family of God. That was the issue related to the impression made upon him by the words expressed by his father on his deathbed, words which at the time John Wesley did not really understand. “The inward witness, son, the inward witness, he said he to me, that is the proof, the strongest proof, of Christianity.”35
In later years, Wesley admitted that disorder of the body or ignorance of the gospel promises might hinder the assurance of the inward witness. He said in a letter dated thirty years after Aldersgate, “Therefore, I have not for many years thought a consciousness of acceptance to be essential to justifying faith.”36 But he went on to indicate his belief that “a consciousness of being in the favor of God is the common privilege of Christians, fearing God and working righteousness,” available to all who truly trust in Christ for salvation.37 And he maintained that an emphasis on the doctrine of assurance ought to be one of the main concerns of Methodism:
It more nearly concerns the Methodists, so called, clearly to understand, explain, and defend this doctrine; because it is one grand part of the testimony which God has given them to bear to all mankind. It is by his peculiar blessing upon them in searching the Scriptures, confirmed by the experience of his children, that this great evangelical truth has been recovered, which had been for many years well nigh lost and forgotten.38
Two of Wesley’s sermons on assurance are entitled “The witness of the Spirit” and deal with Romans 8:16: “The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.” In these discourses Wesley enunciates the marks of the children of God as loving God and neighbor and keeping His commandments. Whether or not we have these marks is known by the inward witness of our own spirit, in knowing within ourselves if we love, rejoice, and delight in God. But antecedent to the testimony of our own spirits is that of the Spirit of God Himself, relating to our repentance and pardon and new birth. Wesley says:
The Spirit of God does give a believer such testimony of his adoption, that while it is present to the soul, he can no more doubt the reality of his sonship, than he can doubt of the shining of the sun, while he stands in the full blaze of its beams.39
The immediate result of the testimony of the Spirit of God with our spirit is the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22). The witness of the Spirit within is not therefore just related to feelings, but to a change in character and attitude. The “inward impression of the soul”40 is linked to the evidence of the fruit of the Spirit for an awareness of full assurance. That double assurance (inward and outward) is a safeguard toward proper discernment as to what is the witness of the Spirit of God on the one hand, or a delusion on the other. It is an assurance beyond that of the emotions that are so easily affected by our disordered spirits.
The Doctrine of Holiness
Continuance in a State of Salvation
In Salvation Story, the Army’s ninth doctrine occurs at the beginning of two chapters. It is first stated in chapter eight on “Salvation Experience—the Doctrine of Salvation” because of its association with “Backsliding” which is addressed in that chapter. But it is also stated in chapter nine on “Full Salvation—the Doctrine of Holiness” because the doctrine council believed that its message has a direct link to our tenth doctrine on sanctification. Salvation Story states the following in chapter eight concerning the possibility of backsliding:
Assurance does not mean that our salvation is guaranteed to us against our own free will. It is possible to cease to obey Christ and so to forfeit our hope of eternal life. This is consistent with our understanding of the grace of God, who always leaves us open to respond freely to Him. Freedom to live by grace includes freedom to turn away.41
That position is also a Wesleyan distinctive. It is in contrast to the position of other branches of the Christian church that have beliefs such as the following: “All true believers endure to the end. Those whom God has accepted in Christ, and sanctified by His Spirit, will never fall away from the state of grace, but shall persevere to the end.”42 John Wesley, in a sermon titled “A Call to Backsliders,” emphasized the possibility of backsliders being restored to God’s grace and recovering “both a consciousness of his favor, and the experience of the pure love of God.”43 And yet, in the same sermon, he delivered this warning:
But let not any man infer from this longsuffering of God, that he hath given any one a license to sin. Neither let any dare to continue in sin, because of these extraordinary instances of divine mercy. This is the most desperate, the most irrational presumption, and leads to utter, irrecoverable destruction. In all my experience, I have not known one who fortified himself in sin by a presumption that God would save him at the last, that was not miserably disappointed, and suffered to die in his sins. To turn the grace of God into an encouragement to sin is the sure way to the nethermost Hell.44
The reference in Salvation Story to the possibility of ceasing to obey Christ, and so forfeiting our hope of eternal life, is in keeping with that Wesleyan warning. That having been said, Salvation Story is also in keeping with the teaching of John Wesley, who takes a more positive view of our ninth doctrine at the beginning of its chapter nine on holiness:
Our conversion inaugurates a journey during which we are being transformed into Christ’s likeness. Thus salvation is neither a state to be preserved nor an insurance policy which requires no further investment. It is the beginning of a pilgrimage with Christ. This pilgrimage requires from us the obedience of separation from sin and consecration to the purposes of God. This is why “obedient faith” is crucial: it makes pilgrimage possible.45
The Pilgrimage of Holiness
That pilgrimage is the pilgrimage of holiness. It has to do with our growing in grace and obedient faith to the point of becoming “aware of the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit.”46 Holiness is part of the total process of salvation. It is part of the whole, an extension of the regeneration or new birth that takes place when a believer is justified by grace through faith. At the same time, it is a doctrine with features of its own.
In Wesley’s writings, holiness is variously termed: “wholly sanctified,”47 “entire sanctification,”48 “sanctified throughout,” “cleansed from all pollution of the flesh and spirit,” loving God “with all (the) heart, and mind, and soul, and strength,” continually presenting soul and body “a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God,”49 “full salvation from all our sins,” “perfection,” “perfect love”50 and “holiness of heart and life.”51 By such terminology, Wesley presents the doctrine as distinguishable from other aspects of the doctrine of salvation. He does not, however, see this doctrine as an appendage or as a doctrine to be isolated from other aspects of salvation theology. This is what he says in his sermon on “The Scripture Way of Salvation”:
From the time of our being born again, the gradual work of sanctification takes place. We are enabled “by the Spirit” to “mortify the deeds of the body,” of our evil nature; and as we are more and more dead to sin, we are more and more alive to God. We go from grace to grace, while we are careful to “abstain from all appearance of evil,” and are “zealous of good works,” as we have opportunity, doing good to all men; while we walk in all His ordinances blameless, therein worshipping Him in Spirit and in truth; while we take up our cross, and deny ourselves every pleasure that does not lead to God. It is thus that we wait for entire sanctification; for a full salvation from all our sins—from pride, self–will, anger, unbelief; or, as the Apostle expresses it, “go on unto perfection.”52
Wesleyan followers have had difficulties with some of the terms that John Wesley used to describe the experience of holiness, including those of “full salvation,” “entire sanctification,” and “perfection.” At first reading, they appear to speak of the final arrival on the pilgrimage of holiness, a static or completed stage in Christian discipleship. That emphasizes the need to take those terms in the context of Wesley’s own understanding of them and of his teaching as a whole. For example, concerning the term “perfection,” Outler admits that part of the blame for not understanding what that meant lay with Wesley himself, but he then clarifies the meaning by saying:
Somehow, he [Wesley] could never grasp the fact that people, formed by the traditions of Latin Christianity, were bound to understand “perfection” as perfectus (perfected)—i.e., as a finished state of completed growth, ne plus ultra! (nothing beyond). For him, certainly since his own discoveries of the early fathers, “perfection” meant “perfecting” (teleiosis [in Greek]), with further horizons of love and participation in God always opening up beyond any given level of spiritual progress.53
Another point helpful to understanding Wesley’s concept of holiness or perfection is his caution about being boastful of the experience of entire sanctification. Early after his conversion in the year 1739, he wrote a tract with the title of “The Character of a Methodist,” dealing with perfect love. He placed in the front, “Not as though I had already attained.”54 Likely he would have been reluctant to make too loud a claim to having the experience even in later life. This is suggested in a 1759 tract titled “Thoughts on Christian Perfection,” which dealt with the subject in a question and answer fashion. He made a rather cautious response to the question, “Suppose one had attained to this (the pure love of God and man), would you advise him to speak of it?”
At first perhaps he would scarce be able to refrain, the fire would be so hot within him; his desire to declare the loving–kindness of the Lord carrying him away like a current. But afterwards he might; and then it would be advisable, not to speak of it to them that know not God; (it is most likely, it would only provoke them to contradict and blaspheme;) nor to others, without some particular reason, without some good in view. And then he should have special care to avoid all appearance of boasting; to speak with the deepest humility and reverence, giving all the glory to God.55
Therefore, the experience of sanctification or holiness ought not to be seen in terms of an arrival experience of which one can boast. There should always be in view the possibility, on one hand, of lapsing through unbelief or willful sin (as suggested in our ninth doctrine), and on the other, of maturing further in one’s relationship with God and neighbor. In this connection, Outler indicates that this maturing is related to our development towards three particular objectives:
“Going on to perfection” has a consistent and clear end in view: 1) love (of God and neighbor), 2) trust (in Christ and the sufficiency of His grace), and 3) joy (upwelling in the heart from the “prevenience” of the indwelling Spirit). This is “holy living”: to love God (inward holiness) and neighbor (outward holiness) with all your heart, to trust securely in Christ’s merits, and to live joyously “in the Spirit”!56
Notes
1. Harold Begbie, The Life of General William Booth, 2 volumes (New York: Macmillan, 1920) 1:367–368.
2. Headings for chapters one, six, seven, eight and nine from Salvation Story: Salvationist Handbook of Doctrine (London, England: The Salvation Army International Headquarters, 1998).
3. John Wesley, The Works of John Wesley, 14 volumes (Peabody, Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishing House, 1986) 8:340.
4. Wesley, Works, 5:3.
5. Wesley, Works, 11:367.
6. Albert C. Outler, Theology in the Wesleyan Spirit (Nashville: Tidings, 1975), pp. 5–6.
7. Ibid., p. 7.
8. Ibid., p. 9.
9. Wesley, Works, 14:238–239.
10. Ibid., p. 236.
11. Wesley, Works, 5:193.
12. J. Kenneth Grider, “Wesleyanism and the Inerrancy Issue,” Wesleyan Theological Journal, volume 19, number 2 (Fall 1984), p. 57.
13. Wesley, Works, 5:253.
14. Wesley, Works, 9:457.
15. John Calvin, “Institutes of the Christian Religion” from The Library of Christian Classics, 23 volumes (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960) 20:252.
16. Ibid., “Pelagius Denies Original Sin,” 20:75.
17. Wesley, Works, 6:512.
18. Outler, Theology in the Wesleyan Spirit, p. 37.
19. Wesley, Works, 6:509.
20. Wesley, Works, 5:257.
21. Wesley, Works, 1:103.
22. Outler, John Wesley (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964), pp. 27–28.
23. Wesley, Works, 5:85.
24. Wesley, Works, 8:275–276.
25. Ibid., p. 472.
26. Wesley, Works, 5:449.
27. Ibid.
28. Wesley, Works, 6:65–66.
29. Ibid., p. 71.
30. Ibid., p. 77.
31. Ibid., p. 75.
32. Wesley, Works, 8:48.
33. Outler, Theology in the Wesleyan Spirit, p. 52.
34. Ibid.
35. Wesley, Works, 12:100.
36. Wesley, Works, 14:348.
37. Ibid.
38. Wesley, Works, 5:124.
39. Ibid., p. 117.
40. Ibid., p. 124.
41. The Salvation Army International Headquarters, Salvation Story, p. 83.
42. Baptist Faith and Message document adopted by the USA Southern Baptist Convention in June 2000 under the heading “God's Purpose of Grace.”
43. Wesley, Works, 6:526.
44. Ibid., pp. 526–527.
45. The Salvation Army International Headquarters, Salvation Story, p. 86.
46. Ibid.
47. Wesley, Works, 8:294.
48. Ibid., p. 293.
49. Wesley, Works, 6:526.
50. Ibid., p. 46.
51. Wesley, Works, 8:341.
52. Wesley, Works, 6:46.
53. Outler, Theology in the Wesleyan Spirit, p. 73.
54. Wesley, Works, 11:371.
55. Ibid., p. 397.
56. Outler, Theology in the Wesleyan Spirit, p. 72.
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