THE ABIDING RELEVANCE OF DIVING LOVE

by
RICHARD S. TAYLOR, Ph. D.
(Professor of Theology, Nazarene Theological Seminary)

There is a place -- a very significant place -- for men devoted, under God, to the academic enterprise. I recall the remark of Dr. H. Orton Wiley to a man who apparently thought he ought to be out "saving souls": "If some of us didn't apply ourselves to books and writing you wouldn't know what to preach."

Interpretation should be followed by proclamation, but proclamation must be preceded by interpretation. Sooner or later what is taught in the class room and written in textbooks finds its way into the kitchen and the shop. But this places upon us a sobering, almost frightening load of responsibility. For this task only deeply humble men are qualified, who before being men of letters are men of the Spirit, and who are as skilled in the prayer closet as they are in the library.

Just as it is proper for us to pursue the vocation of the Christian scholar, so is it proper for us to meet in gatherings such as this in order to pool our resources of insight and knowledge toward the mutual acquisition of greater understanding of Wesleyan theology as it relates both to the Bible and to the peculiar needs of our generation. But in this attempt there are certain perils. One is that instead of being truly relevant we shall be "only relative." Another is that we shall go beyond clarification into the vagaries of speculation. Our interest in the lively and timely topics on the program must be much more than intellectual; we must be fired with redemptive concern. We do not desire to mint a lot of "far out" ideas which cannot readily be converted into the coinage of life. It is the crossroads preacher and the grass roots member that we desire to help. We want truth that can be lived as well as conquer error. We wish to help that humble fighting Christian who needs to be made whole by being made holy, or who having been made holy is struggling to grow into maturity, and may sometimes be confused and puzzled along the way.

In this endeavor we shall gladly enlist the resources of every friendly, adjacent discipline, including sociology, philosophy, and psychology. But let us not permit the mystique of scientific nomenclature, or the proven findings or the helpful concepts of these disciplines, to overwhelm us until we are hypnotized into abandoning our primary authority for redemptive truth, and our primary source of "know-how" in meeting spiritual needs, which is the Bible.

The faithful theologian knows himself to be always in a movement back to the Bible, never away from it. Our biblical theology may be under the judgment of modern psychology (if it is ours rather than the Spirit's), but the Bible is not. On the contrary, philosophy, sociology, psychology, and our theology, either biblical or systematic, are all under the judgment of the Scriptures. Let us therefore never permit ourselves to become so lost in extra-biblical investigations that we neglect to be men of the Bible. In this respect at least we should emulate the man whose name we bear, who both read and wrote many books, but was ways preeminently a man of "one Book," namely John Wesley.

And in maintaining a truly biblical (and Wesleyan) polarity of thought, let us keep close to our theological mentor in another respect also. I refer to Wesley's undeviating insistence that love was the essence of Christian holiness, and that love could become the dominant, all embracing motive and dynamic in a believer's heart. Some would say that in the recovery of emphasis on the centrality of love Wesley made his greatest contribution to theology, as well as to the practical life of the church. For in this emphasis he was not only biblically sound, but ethically, sociologically and psychologically sound also.

Only love can provide the proper dynamic of life, or constitute the cohering and balancing force which can mold faith, hope, zeal, knowledge, and all other graces and gifts into full-orbed Christian character. Love is the "bond of perfectness," wrote Paul. This is true for the individual and also for the church, and it is just as true for society. All social reform or cultural advance is stumbling and partial if not prompted and structured by Christian love. To be true to our calling, therefore, as Wesleyan theologians let us be apostles of love, and not rest until we proclaim the demands of love, and apply the wisdom of love, to today's problems.

But in this effort we confront a certain inescapable dualism. We may point out the course of action in industry, race relations, or international politics which is consonant with Christian love; but such love as a motivating force, sufficiently strong to prompt the adoption of Christian courses of action, is highly personal. It speaks with authority only within the hearts of its possessors. Even if at the political level men render lip service to love, they will not know how to implement it, for they are experientially strangers to its essence at the agape level.

Love is, therefore, not a policy which can be voted in legislative halls. It is not a spontaneous phenomenon of group dynamics. It is dynamic in groups only when there are individuals in the group who are its conductors. The reason therefore that talk about love between races often seems like impractical sentimentality is that it is too often no more than an abstract ideal. At this very point is the genius of Wesleyan theology, for it talks about love in the concrete - in the believer, perfected by the Spirit, working its way out dynamically into one's neighbor-relations, business relations, race relations, employer-employee relations. But while certain minimal standards of conduct, formulated in harmony with love's dictates, can be enforced by law, divine love itself cannot. It can only be infused by grace, and is known only by the regenerate, and even more fully by the Spirit-filled. This is why holiness evangelism, which not only promulgates a doctrine, but ignites, under God, the flame of personal experience, is at once the most relevant of all instruments of social reform, and the most indispensable.

Admittedly, the members of holiness denominations have not always been living witnesses to the dynamic power of love in transforming either personal or group ethics. Temporary blind spots in newly sanctified Christians can be tolerated. But when some who profess a high state of grace possess an undisguised hostility to the Negro (for example), which borders on hatred, we have a serious and irreconcilable contradiction of our doctrine and what we claim for it. Several things should be said about this.

First, in the overall history of the Wesleyan movement there is abundant evidence that normally the advocates and professors of perfect love have found within themselves a heightened ethical sensitivity, both for themselves and society, and a spontaneous moral concern and affinity for social reform. The record of Wesleyans on this score is not too bad.

Second, too often critics have thought they have spotted defects in the exhibition of perfect love, when in reality they have been irked by what appeared to them to be tardiness in the implementation of social and political policy. The very nature of perfect love tends toward carefulness, with a desire to be fair and wise, and this caution is often interpreted by the activists as either indifference or cowardice. The implications of perfect love do not include intellectual agreement concerning the practical solution of social problems which have profoundly complex and far-reaching overtones. Being human, the Christian perfected in love may have an inadequate grasp of all the facts, and hence be confused and misguided, as well as anyone else.

Why have holiness churches been too often, in recent years, vulnerable to the accusation of inconsistency respecting the race issue? May I hazard the opinion that it is because we have in our denominations large masses of those who are but nominal holiness people. Too often this is true, even among our preachers. Wesleyan doctrine is with too many a shibboleth which does not express experiential reality. Only a profoundly radical experience of heart holiness will reach the tap roots of racial prejudice, and have within it sufficient power to overcome the generations of enculturated fears and hostilities which are subversive of love. But at least in some measure the blame for this nominalism can be placed at our doorstep. Is it too strong to say that a generation of holiness preachers may have failed a generation of holiness churches? Have we diluted our distinctive message and turned from our unique mission? It is to be feared that we have not preached holiness in such a way that has left our hearers in not the slightest doubt that if their holiness did not alter their attitudes it was spurious, and that love instilled in conversion would sour if it did not go on to master the whole of life. Let us therefore meet during these days, not only as scholars, but as penitents. And let us pray that our discussions will prompt more effective preaching both by ourselves and by those whom this convention may influence.

Scanned and Edited by the Student Staff of the
Wesley Center for Applied Theology
at Northwest Nazarene University
© Copyright 2000 by the Wesley Center for Applied Theology

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