Given at the Uniting Church Centre for Theology and
Ministry, Parkville, 27 August 2012
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| The Wesleys in Georgia icon by Louise Shipps |
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Note: There is some duplication in the first section of this post from my earlier post on 'Listening to John Wesley in the Uniting Church.' Those who do not wish to read that again can skip down to the next section
It is a
genuine honour to be invited to respond today to the excellent paper of my
colleague Dr. Geordan Hammond. Before I respond directly to the paper, I would
like to reflect briefly on the Uniting
Church context.
Listening
to John Wesley in the Uniting Church
It is sometimes difficult to say too much
about one of the precedent traditions of the UCA since to do so might seem to
be privileging the contribution of one tradition over the others. There are
those who feel that hearkening back to Wesley would be a backward step when the
UCA is called to be a new, dynamic, and forward-looking Church. Yet the Basis of Union calls us to pay close
attention to the formative voices of the past.
Paragraph 10 of the Basis of Union calls
upon the Uniting Church to ‘listen to the preaching of John Wesley in his
Forty-Four Sermons (1793)’ and commits its ministers and instructors to ‘study
these statements, so that the congregation of Christ’s people may again and
again be reminded of the grace which justifies them through faith, of the
centrality of the person and work of Christ the justifier, and of the need for
a constant appeal to Holy Scripture.’
Davis McCaughey, in his Commentary on the Basis of Union,
reflected on the Uniting
Church’s readiness,
expressed in Paragraph 1 of the Basis of Union, to ‘go forward together in sole
loyalty to Christ, the living Head of the Church.’
It would have
been easier to say, ‘we shall go forward loyal to the best of our traditions as
Calvinists and Wesleyans…And…we would neglect what Calvin and Wesley have to
teach us to our peril. But at the beginning the Basis of Union reminds that our
loyalty is not to them but to Christ.
There is wisdom in these words. The ancestors are not to be followed blindly
or uncritically and our loyalty is first to Christ. Yet to neglect Calvin,
Wesley and other fathers and mothers of the faith is to be imperiled. Earlier
this year I read Robert Bos and Geoff Thompson’s Theology for Pilgrims, a collection of important formal documents
of the UCA. It was interesting to note the tendency in the definitive sources selected
to appeal to John Wesley and the Methodist tradition when wishing to affirm the
ongoing significance of Evangelicalism and evangelistic activity in the Uniting Church.
The idea that Wesley’s thought may be an important theological resource for the Uniting Church
was less evident. I think it is fair to
say that the renaissance in Wesley studies that was initiated in the second
half of the twentieth century and continues to the present, has made it much
clearer than the framers of the Basis of Union could have foreseen, how
valuable a theological resource is the founder of Methodism.
The Christocentric features of the Basis of Union make the document
profoundly Evangelical in the broadest sense of that term, and there is at
least one particular place where a characteristically Wesleyan theological emphasis
may be identified. Paragraph 6 confesses
that Christ, by the gift of the Spirit, ‘awakens, purifies, and advances in
[us] that faith and hope in which alone [the] benefits [of new life and
freedom] can be accepted.’
Giving close attention to Wesley’s theology can continue to be one way that the
Uniting Church can live out of that freedom which is made ever new by the
Spirit.
Wesley and the
Sacraments
Dr. Hammond has provided us with a careful and comprehensive
account of Wesley’s approach to the sacraments, well grounded in the sources
and in Wesley’s own immediate context, particularly in Georgia. His paper is a model of what Albert
Outler called ‘Phase III’ of Wesley Studies.
‘Phase I’ was the hagiographical approach
to which early biographers and admiring Methodists were particularly
prone. ‘Phase II’ was the attempt to
claim Wesley as belonging to a particular tradition - Anglo-Catholic
(Rattenbury), Reformed (Cell, Cannon, Deschner), Puritan (Monk), Moravian
(Towlson, Hildebrandt), and others.
‘Phase III’ according to Outler was long overdue and would open toward a
‘new future for Wesley studies’ reading Wesley on his own terms and in light of
his sources.
So thank you Geordan for making clear the
influence of the Nonjurors on Wesley’s sacramental thought and practice, for
providing us with a summary of John Johnson’s Unbloody Sacrifice, Daniel Brevint’s Christian Sacrament and Sacrifice, and William Wall’s History of Infant Baptism, and for describing
Wesley’s sacramental practice in Georgia.
The observation that Wesley held a minority view within the Church of
England on the Prayer Book in keeping with the Usagers among the Non-Jurors is
of very real interest. It is also worth
noting in Geordan’s conclusion that, though Wesley later dropped some of the
practices applied in Georgia,
his overall theology of the sacraments did not undergo significant change later
in his life.
Such careful contextual reading of Wesley has too often been
neglected so that we have ended up with readings of Wesley that are coloured
by what some modern Methodists wish
that Wesley had said and did, rather than what he actually did say and do. Protestants, and especially Evangelicals,
have often been embarrassed by Wesley’s
sacramental views, and have attempted to show, either that Wesley uncritically
accepted the Anglican formularies, or that his theology underwent a change
after his Aldersgate experience, as if he had been a High Church sacramentalist
beforehand and a Low Church evangelical afterwards. This is wide of the mark. There seems to have been little shift in
Wesley’s sacramental views after Aldersgate although Swedish Bishop Ole Borgen
argued in the 1970s that after 24 May 1738 there was in Wesley’s view of the
sacraments a greater stress on God’s
action rather than on human action.
The claim that Wesley’s sacramental theology is muddled or inconsistent or
that his Protestant theology of justification cannot be reconciled with his
Catholic theology of the sacraments is uncritical and thus misplaced.
Wesley follows Augustine and the Western
tradition generally in distinguishing between the signum (the sign) and the res
(the thing signified). There are two parts to a sacrament and they naturally
belong together, though they cannot be identified as the same thing. This is
why Wesley is able to say that baptism is not the new birth, and at the same
time that it is brings the new birth.
The word ‘baptism’ sometimes refers only to the outward sign of water, and in
this sense baptism is not the new birth.
However, when the word is used in the sense of including the inward
reality of baptism - justifying and regenerating grace - then baptism does
bring the new birth. When Wesley refuses to identify the signum with the res, he
is certainly not suggesting that they should ever be separated! Notwithstanding
any misgivings about the mind/body distinction that may be in our audience, for
the sake of the argument – the mind and the body are to be separated in logical
distinction, but no one would want them to be separated in experience. The soul is not the body and the body is not
the soul, but body and the soul together make a person. Similarly, the outward sign is not the inward
reality and the inward reality is not the sign, but both together make a
sacrament.
Whilst John Wesley maintained the importance
of the formal validity of sacramental administration among the episcopally
ordained priests of the Church of England, this insistence was, for him, a question
of church order. He had a much deeper
concern and that was the concern to demonstrate that unless God himself
validates the sacraments, they are of no effect, regardless of who performs
them, or how closely the rubrics are followed.
Unless God’s grace effectuates the sacramental signs they are nothing. It
is not the validity of the orders of the one who presides that matters, or even
the form of words, but the grace of the one who effectuates, a kind of ex opera Deus is at work.
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| William Wall's History of Infant Baptism |
Wesley
on Baptism
It is traditional in meetings such as
these for the respondent to find something to criticise in the main paper. I
have no real criticism to make and the suggestion I do make now hardly even
qualifies as a quibble. It may have been
preferable in considering the sacraments to begin with baptism before moving on
to the Eucharist, since baptism is constitutive of Christian identity and it is
baptismal grace that provides the foundation of all subsequent religious
experience and entrance to the Eucharistic feast.
Whilst baptism is not absolutely
necessary for salvation, it is, according to Wesley, God’s ordinary means of
conveying justifying grace. Christ, the
Second Adam, has found a remedy for the disease of sin, and ‘the benefit of
this is to be received through the means which he has appointed; through
baptism in particular, which is the ordinary means he hath appointed for that
purpose; and to which God hath tied us, though he may not have tied
himself. Indeed, where it cannot be had,
the case is different, but extraordinary cases do not make void a standing
rule.’
This does not mean that Wesley saw baptism
as any sort of absolute guarantee of heaven.
It is possible to strangle the seed of new life implanted in baptism. Wesley never loses sight of moral
responsibility, which is why he was able to declare to the baptized gentlemen
at Oxford, ‘You
must be born again!’ It wasn’t that they
hadn’t been born again at baptism, but that they had so quenched the Spirit
through a lifetime of willful sin, that they must now repent and believe. In baptism ‘...a principle of grace is
infused, which will not be wholly taken away, unless we quench the Holy Spirit
of God by long-continued wickedness.’
Infants, as well as older believers, are
the proper recipients of baptism, a position for which Wesley argues ‘from
Scripture, reason, and primitive universal practice.’ Borgen contrasts Wesley’s approach with that
of modern Methodists.
[Modern
Methodism has] reduced [infant baptism] to little more than an ‘excuse’ for
demanding certain vows of the parents.
God is not allowed to give his grace to
anybody who is not of age. The emphasis
is purely on human actions and experience.
Such views exhibit a frightening ignorance of what Wesley actually teaches concerning baptismal grace…Modern
Methodism practically push[es] God out of the picture. Wesley always stresses experience, but his
emphasis is on God’s work, and not on [human] ability or ‘experience.’
Infants ought to be baptized,
furthermore, since they ought to come to Christ and be admitted into the Church
and thus dedicated to God through the means he has appointed.
Turning to apostolic practice, Wesley argues, ‘If to baptize infants has been
the general practice of the Christian Church in all places and in all ages,
then this must have been the practice of the Apostles, and consequently, the
mind of Christ.’ He
cites Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Cyprian, Ambrose
and Augustine in support of this.
Indeed, there is not ‘...one instance in all antiquity, of any orthodox
Christian who denied baptism to children...[Such practice was] never opposed
till the last century but one, by some not very holy men in Germany...[W]e may
safely conclude, it was handed down from the Apostles, who best knew the mind
of Christ.’
Finally, Wesley argues from the covenant
of grace. All that was promised under
the Old Covenant has its equivalent under the New Covenant. Just as children
received circumcision then, they ought to receive its equivalent in baptism
now.
It is clear, then that Wesley’s theology
of baptism, far from being muddled, confused, or uncritical, is a well thought
through position, consonant with the classical Christian consensus. Certainly, Wesley displays no great innovation
in his theology of baptism, and some might see this conservatism as less than a
virtue. His most important work on the
subject, A Treatise on Baptism (1758)
is an extract from his father, Samuel’s work Pious Communicant (1700).
Some find fault with this, as if Wesley ought to have done more thinking
of his own in this area and come up with a theology of baptism that fit more
neatly his evangelical doctrine of the new birth. But Wesley’s theology of infant baptism is no
less evangelical than his theology of justification by faith. (The same of course is true of Martin
Luther’s doctrine.)
Wesley
on the Eucharist
Geordan has helpful distinguished Wesley’s
views on the Eucharist from Richard Hooker’s ‘receptionism’ identifying
Wesley’s approach as closer to that of the Non-jurors with their stress on the
Spirit’s role invoked in the epiclesis.
Let me here briefly make some other
comparisons. Wesley affirms a real spiritual presence of Christ in the Lord’s
Supper, which is close to Calvin with his idea of ‘Spiritual Presence,’ but
whereas Calvin stresses the presence of Christ in terms of ‘power and strength,’
mediated through the Holy Spirit, Wesley
stresses the Presence of Christ in his divinity. ‘[I]n fact the whole Trinity is present and
acting, bestowing upon men [and women] the benefits of the incarnation,
crucifixion, and resurrection.’
Thomas Cranmer held a two-fold Presence - figurative in the sacrament and real
and spiritual in the hearts of believers, and Wesley comes close to this view. Whatever
the case, Wesley seems furthest from the Zwinglian ‘real absence’ position.
‘The sacraments,’ for Wesley ‘are true and effectual means of grace; thus all
purely memorialist conceptions are excluded.’
In Wesley’s view of the Eucharist the church reverently adores God and
transcends time and space so as to enter vicariously into the Eternal Now of
Christ’s sufferings.
The Trinity and the
Sacraments
There is a Trinitarian shape to the Wesleyan
theology of the sacraments exhibited in the 1780 Hymns for the Use of the People Called Methodists. The following is
from a section entitled ‘At the Baptism of Adults.’
Come
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,
Honour
the means ordained by thee!
Make
good our apostolic boast,
And
own thy glorious ministry...
Father, in these
reveal thy Son;
In these for whom we
seek thy face
The
hidden mystery make known,
The
inward, pure baptizing grace...
Eternal Spirit,
descend from high,
Baptiser
of our spirits thou!
The sacramental seal
apply,
And witness with the
water now!
The sacrament of baptism is here spoken of as
having been ordained by the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, rather than simply by
Christ, as we might expect. The Father
is asked to reveal his Son in those who are to receive ‘the hidden mystery’ of ‘pure
baptizing grace.’ And it is the Spirit
who comes down and applies the sacramental seal. In another, ‘Father, Son, and
Holy Ghost, in solemn power come down,’ the entire Godhead is present, along
with the angels, ready to plunge the candidate into a second birth, into ‘the
depths of God.’ The divine character that is impressed is not that of any one
Person alone. The Father reveals his love, Jesus imparts his name, and the Holy
Ghost renews and dwells in the heart.
In the much-neglected Eucharistic hymns of
the Wesleys we also see a distinctively Trinitarian stamp. As the believer approaches the Lord’s Table
there is the need for a supernatural quickening of the imagination that will
make clear the fullness of the Father’s love in giving his Son up to death for
our sakes. It is the Spirit who provides
this supernatural assistance.
Come,
Thou everlasting Spirit,
Bring
to every thankful Mind
All
the Saviour’s dying Merit
All
His Suffering for Mankind
The objective record of revelation given to
us concerning Christ’s redemptive death, and the justifying and sanctifying
grace that flow from it, are experienced only through the application of the
Spirit’s presence and power. Such a Trinitarian spirituality as we find in the
Wesley hymns is a powerful antidote to a certain type of piety, found in both
Evangelical and liberal forms, that focuses on human decision and human agency
in such a way as to obscure the priority of diving grace and action. Too often
individualistic appeals for human decision at an altar of prayer have been
allowed to obscure or even replace the communal nature of the Eucharistic feast
where we sit down together as sisters and brothers at our Father’s table, the
guests of our Jesus our Host, and through the Spirit of Adoption anticipate the
heavenly banquet.
Jerry Mercer warns that when ‘the liturgy
has the congregation rather than God as its primary referent [it] is a tragedy
of unbelievable proportion [for] only when personal and social holiness are
understood to be the result of the faithful living out of Word and Table can
there be a renewal of the church local and the Church catholic in the spirit of
the New Testament.
Tracing the history of the development of
sacramental neglect in Methodism makes a fascinating, though tragic,
study. Was it Francis Asbury or another
early American Methodist preacher who, in answering the lack of interest in Wesley’s
Sunday Service amongst his preachers,
stated ‘Our preachers prefer to pray with their eyes closed.’ The rugged frontier and its illiteracy made
liturgical worship less suitable in early America.
As Methodists became increasingly influenced by theologies of human
agency with their attendant Pelagianising tendencies, sacramental theology
became more and more humanly focused.
John Miley’s Systematic Theology
(1893) shows early signs of this rationalistic drift in describing the
sacraments as means of grace only in so
far as they set forth lessons to us, which through our ‘proper mental
exercise’ convey the realities they signify.
No longer are they means of grace as that term is classically
understood. Instead they have become mere object lessons.
Modern
Methodism for all practical purposes must be considered Pelagian, with little
spiritual power and very limited intercourse with God in the lives of the individuals.
The sacraments have become ‘empty,’ mere signs...Wesley’s emphasis upon
God’s work and initiative, coupled with [hu]man[ity]’s responsibility, will
serve as a much needed
corrective to our self-sufficient, middle-class work righteousness...In short,
without a recovery...of the substance of Wesley’s theology of the sacraments
and the means of grace, the future
of [Methodism] as the living body of Christ is rather doubtful...There is...no need to set...the Word
and preaching in opposition
to the sacraments. Wesley demanded
both. The distinction between ‘evangelicalism’
and ‘sacramentalism’ must never be applied to Wesley. For him these two aspects were one, and later
Methodism has paid dearly for tearing apart what God has united.
Dr.
Hammond closes his paper with the suggestion that Wesley’s high sacramental
theology and practice should ‘continue to shape Wesleyan theological reflection
and sacramental practices.’ Perhaps during our discussion time we may begin to
think through how that might be the case.
Robert Bos and Geoff Thompson, Theology for Pilgrims: Selected Theological
Documents of the Uniting Church in Australia
(Sydney: Uniting Church Press, 2008). This is my
anecdotal reflection, though specific page numbers could be provided.
Albert C. Outler, “A New Future For Wesley
Studies: An Agenda for Phase III,” in
Thomas C. Oden
and Leicester R. Longden,
eds. The Wesleyan TheologicalHeritage: Essays of Albert C. Outler. Grand
Rapids: Zondervan, 1991),
125-142.
Wesley, ‘Treatise on
Baptism,’ Works X: 193.
Matthew 19:13-14; Luke
18:15. Those churches which dedicate
infants recognize the need to incorporate children into the community and
provide for it through a service of infant dedication. However, a ‘dedication service’ is of human,
not divine, origin. Jesus did not institute a sacrament of infant dedication, but
he did institute a sacrament of baptism. Once it is conceded that infants may
be baptised, and therefore infant baptism is a legitimate sacrament, a service
of infant dedication would appear to be redundant.
Wesley, Works, X 197-98, cited in Borgen, 144-45.
John T. McNeil, John Calvin’s Theological Institutes
(Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), 1362-1381.
Thomas Cranmer, ‘Defense of
the True and Catholic Doctrine of the Sacraments’ in C.G.E. Duffield, ed. Works
of Thomas Cranmer (Appleford: Sutton Courtney Press, 1964), 45-233.
Borgen indicates that ‘real
absence’ was not in fact taught by Zwingli, though this is often leveled at
him. But this tantalizing reference is not elaborated upon. Borgen, 68. Zwingli did teach that Christ was
present in the midst of the gathered community of believers when they partook
of the Supper.
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