Wesley—A Proto-Pentecostal Case Study
• Wesley was a practical theologian
with a balanced equation for
leadership
World of Wesley
• A growing empire
• A revolution in the “colonies”
• Royalty as God’s servant
• The Church of England and England as
a nation-state joined at the hip
The Shaping of Wesley
• Epworth
• Oxford—Lincoln College
• Holy Club (with brother Charles and George
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Whitfield)
Georgia Missions
Moravians
Heart Strangely warmed at Aldersgate Street
The “vile thing”
The Wesleyan Influence
• The Church as a community of God’s
grace
• The Church’s unity is the koinonia of
the Spirit
• Pursuit of maturing Christian lives
sustained by grace is crucial
The Wesleyan Method
• Outside accepted boundaries, but connected
to the center.
• The Church is a system of discipline in
community:
– Class Meetings—once a week to inquire how our
souls prosper (house churches, seekers welcome)
– Bands/Small Groups—to confess your faults one
to another and pray for one another that ye may
be healed (had received assurance of sins forgiven)
– Select Society —those making progression
inward—outward holiness
Three Rules of a Select Society
• Let nothing spoken in this society be
spoken again.
• Submit to the appointed minister.
• Bring an offering for the “common
stock.”
Traveling Preachers
• Taught to manage difficulties in
societies
• Face mobs
• Brave any weather
• Subsist without means
• Rise at 4 a.m. and preach at 5 a.m.
• Die without fear
Daily Rules
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Preach
Study
Travel
Meet with bands—classes—societies
Exercise daily
Eat sparingly
Preach nowhere that could not be
followed up with organized “structures”
with adequate leadership
The Primacy of Scripture
• “I allow no other rule, whether of
faith or practice, than the Holy
Scriptures.”
• Scripture was the only all-sufficient
source commonly available to people
for investigating the nature of God
and life.
• “O give me that book! At any price
give me the book of God!”
• The personal character of humility
and reliance on grace gave Wesley
the freedom to see a dynamic interaction between sources to illuminate
and enrich biblical truths. This never
succumbed to a thoroughly
pragmatic approach that reduces
truth to relativity.
• Wesley affirms Reformation
treatise of sola fide and sola
scriptura.
• However, he interprets sola as
“primarily” rather than
“exclusively”.
• “Tis not enough to have Bibles,
but we must use them, yea, use
them daily. Our souls must have
constant meals of that manna,
which if well-digested, will afford
them true nourishment.”
Rule of Interpretation by John Wesley
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Literal sense is emphasized
Importance of context
Comparing Scripture with Scripture
Christian experience has confirmatory
and correctional value
• Reason is the handmaiden of faith
• Practicality—for the plain unlettered
people
The Authority of Tradition
• Wesley’s concern for historical
continuity in an age of distrust in
Christian tradition.
Old Religion
Religion—the Bible
Religion of the Primitive Church
Religion of the Church of England
Methodism
• Old Religion
– John 3:16—heart religion
• Religion—the Bible
– The only sufficient authority for religious life
• Religion of the primitive church
– It would be easy to produce a cloud of witnesses
testifying the same thing, were not this appoint
which no one will contest who has the least
acquaintance with Christian antiquity
• Religion of the Church of England
• Methodism
• “If any doubt still remains, I consult
those who are experienced in the
things of God and then the writings
whereby being dead they yet speak.
And what I thus learn, that I teach.”
• Tradition as authority second only to
Scripture. To the extent that the
Holy Spirit continued to direct
decisions in the early church, Wesley
believed tradition was an essential
extension of the witness of the
Scripture.
The Authority of Reason
• Desired a religion founded on reason
and in every way agreeable to it.
Passion and prejudice rule the
world…it is our part with religion and
reason joined to counteract them all
we can.
• The image of God persisted in the
human race after Adam’s fall, effaced
but not obliterated.
• Human reasoning was a part of
humanity’s original constitution.
• Although the heart was prone to evil,
the mind was free to reason and
respond to God by faith.
• An era where the Enlightenment is
in full sway.
– Natural theology present in the Church of
England
– Navigates philosophical influences from
Aristotle’s rational (scientific) sensory
perspective to Plat’s intuition.
– This explains his both-and posture
integrating the empirical with the
experiential and mysticism.
• His “both-and” perspective draws
criticism from all sides.
• Wesley concludes that:
– “No man is a partaker of Christ until he
can clearly testify the life I now live…I
live by faith in the Son of God—revealed
in my heart.”
Acknowledge Tension
• Let reason do all that reason can.
Employ it as far as it will go. But, at
the same time, acknowledge it is
utterly incapable of giving faith, or
hope or love and consequently of
producing real virtue or substantive
happiness. Expect these from a
higher source, even from the spirits
of all flesh.
The Authority of Experience
• Considered by many as Wesley's
greatest contribution to the
development of Christian theology.
• “I’m not afraid that the people called
Methodists should ever cease to
exist…I am afraid lest they should
only exist as a dead sect having the
form of religion without the power.”
“It is necessary that you have the
hearing ear and the seeing eye, that
you have a new class of senses opened
to your soul not depending on organs of
flesh and blood to be ‘evidence of
things not seen’ as your bodily senses
are of visible things, to be avenues to
the invisible world, to discern spiritual
objects and to furnish you with ideas of
what the outward ‘eye has not seen,
neither the ear heard.’”
• Wesley was deeply concerned about
“enthusiasm.”
• While he acknowledged excesses,
Wesley still believed in the
supernatural, immediate gift of God,
which “He commonly gives in the use
of such means as he hath ordained.”
Outward Experiences
• Empirical experiences with creation
were a source of evidence for
religious experience.
Inward Experiences
• Knowledge derived from a personal
experiential encounter with God is
objective in the sense if establishing
contact with a real, albeit hidden
reality.
• Wesley believe that the reality of God
and of God’s salvation is hidden from
our natural senses though not from
spiritual senses.
• Spiritual senses were created by
God and reactivated by His grace
that gives potential for discovering
religious insights that were
previously inconceivable.
• The personal conversion experience
as well as assurance of salvation are
two places people experience a
direct awareness of God.
• “The testimony of the spirit is an
inward impression on the soul
whereby the Spirit of God directly
witnesses to my Spirit.”
• “Now there is properly the
testimony of our own spirit even the
testimony of our own conscience
that God has given us to be holy of
heart and holy in outward
conversation.”
A Heart Strangely Warmed
• 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.”
The Wesleyan Quadrilateral by Donald A. D. Thorsen, p. 129
• Experience is the appropriation of
authority and confirms the
truthfulness of Scripture,
tradition and reason.
Contemporary Applications of Wesley’s
Understanding of Experience
• Pentecostals experience the sacred
in the midst of the profane, divine
guidance for both personal and
institutional concerns, standing in
contrast to rational and
beaureacratic methods, a reticulate
organization that refuses to
immortalize tradition and the past.
In addition, it refuses to routinize
the charismata.
Margaret Poloma in The AG at the Crossroads
• Pentecostals insist that it is not enough for
truths—even biblical truths, to be
precipitated in the mind and viewed
philosophically. There must be a submission
to the truth in faith and reverential adoration
in worship. This is worship of truth that is
not merely imprisoned in the mind, but is
personified transcendentally over the mind in
the glorious person of Christ. This is an
experience—certified theology where an
experience of Christ as subject and not just
object constitute genuine experience.
William McDonald in Perspectives on the New Pentecostalism