In 1893 the noted historian Frederick Jackson Turner of the University of Wisconsin wrote a book entitled The Frontier in American History in which he challenged the prevalent view that the American character was molded predominantly by the culture which the white settlers brought with them from Europe. Instead it was Turner's thesis that it was the challenge of the continually advancing frontier which made this nation what it is. "This perennial birth," said Turner "this fluidity of American life, this expansion westward with its new opportunities, its continuous touch with the simplicity of primitive society, furnish the forces dominating American character."¹

It is not my purpose here to discuss American history even if this is our Bicentennial year. Nor do I necessarily wish to promote Turner's thesis. Perhaps a true reading of American history would be less "either/or" and more "both/and" than was his. But translated into theology what he had to say is valid for present-day Wesleyanism. The original character of Wesleyan theology was molded by the innovative experimental genius of the Wesleys as they faced the challenge of the frontiers of eighteenth-century thought and culture.

Wesley was no systematic theologian in the technical sense. He was rather a theologian of "counter-action" (not re-action in the pejorative sense in which one merely repeats old cliches from the past, but counter-action in the sense that his theology was shaped by his response to the challenge of the threatening forces). In short, Wesley's theology was molded not in a speculative ivory tower, but on the frontier (sometimes literally in the saddle). His was not a "hothouse" theology but a "horseback" theology. And I believe that the degree of our sensitivity to the challenges of today's frontiers of thought and the dedication with which we face these challenges will decide whether Wesleyanism will be a viable alternative amid the growing multiplicity of options available today in the realm of belief, or unceremoniously confined to the theological museum as a quaint relic of a bygone era.

In developing his thesis of the frontier, Turner spoke of the "fluidity of American life." Likewise in the theology of John Wesley there was a rich fluidity of thought. His ideas were in constant ferment reshaping themselves in the crucible of experience, testing themselves by immersion in the acids of reason and enriching themselves in an interminable exploration of God's Word. It is the plight of much of modern Methodism that it has allowed this "fluid" to become a vapor in which the call to perfection has evaporated into a nebulous and far-off ideal. But its the plight of the Holiness movement that too frequently this fluid has been frozen into a solid, a "hardening of the categories," a deadening fixity of doctrinal forms in sacrosanct terminology.

I am not suggesting that Wesleyanism change its message. On that score, I will "out conserve" the most rigid conservative among us. But I am suggesting that there are some modern frontiers on which Wesleyan theologians ought to be working. I am suggesting that there are crises in our contemporary culture to which Wesleyanism can speak effectively if it can find its voice. And in order its voice it must of necessity listen to what is being said in the "profane" world around it (the Latin pro-fanum means "before the temple") In an unfair expression, and certainly an uncouth one, an opponent of the Wesleys once accused the early Methodists in their Class Meetings of spending their time looking at their own navels." Wesleyan theology dare not be caught doing that today. It must get modern man's attention and enter into dialogue with him. And this will require an understanding of his "profane" (outside the temple) language. Only thus can there be brought to fulfillment the true frontier spirit of Wesleyanism.

Of course there are dangers here. Merely to say something novel is the worst possible reason for "doing theology" at all. On my first trip to England to trace the steps of Wesley, I chanced one day to find myself passing through the city of Crewe, and I remembered the old limerick that I had learned in childhood:

Or the rest will be wanting on too "

In recent years an amazing number of so-called theologians have announced the "discovery" of some new "mouse" in the theological stew. In rapid succession we have been treated to liberation theology, black theology, feminist theology, biopolitical theology, story theology and futurist theology to name only a few of these "theological mice." No sooner does one gourmet wave his mouse before the public than the next would-be scholar gets into the act and fins a new one. Certainly we Wesleyans must beware lest we seek novelty for novelty's sake.

But I must insist: There is no final theology, even for Wesleyans. Theology is not handed down from heaven on golden tablets. Theology is a human activity -- a work of man the thinker as he reflects upon his faith and seeks to express the content of this faith in the most meaningful language available in the contemporary human situation. Since man's situation is in continual flux, and since his perception of reality is being continually modified, theology, if it is to speak to men, must meet head-on the challenges which lie at the frontiers of human thought. Let us be clear on one distinction: God's Revelation is final, perfect, complete; but man's theological construction is never finished. We have no final theology. We only have a Final Word! It is God's Word, and we are commissioned to "go into all the world" proclaiming even to "the uttermost part of the earth," or in the words of Frederick Jackson Turner "on a continually advancing frontier line"²

The question now arises: Where is the frontier line today? What are Wesleyanism's frontiers?

First, I would hope that we would not waste our time and energy at the wrong frontiers. For instance the most significant challenge to Wesleyan theology today is no longer Calvinism, for the simple reason that Arminianism is already winning. And although the many aggressive members of Christ's Church who have Genevan genealogies would not allow the label "Arminian" to be applied to their vastly modified Calvinism, the fact remains that the kind of deterministic weltanschuung implicit in Calvinism is out of place in today's scientific and philosophical milieu. Furthermore within the framework of Christianity's confrontation with today's culture we do well to remember that on the pertinent issues of sin and grace Wesley himself engaged in a "theological brinkmanship" coming to "the very edge of Calvinism"³ and differing from Calvin "not a hair's breadth."⁴

Nor is the most serious challenge to the Wesleyan faith to be found in Pentecostalism-- "neo" or otherwise. This is one battle (if it is a battle) that we will best win by refusing to take up arms -- by taking a leaf from Gamaliel's notebook (Acts 5:38) and letting the wind blow where it wishes (John 3:8) and having made our own position crystal clear letting our lives demonstrate our Wesleyan conviction that the Spirit's fruits are ultimately more persuasive than the Spirit’s gifts.

Nor should Wesleyanism spend its ammunition fighting "The Battle for the Bible" -- at least not in the terms in which Harold Lindsell has thrown down the gauntlet. To be sure, biblical authority is a vastly important issue in Wesleyan theology (and I will have more to say about this later), but we must resist all tendencies which would polarize Wesleyans in the way that Lindsell has sought to polarize Evangelicals as a whole.

No, our greatest challenge does not come from movements or ideas which, in common with Wesleyanism, are theistic and biblically oriented, however, much they may differ with us in interpretation. These are not sufficient targets to warrant the firing of all our weaponry. To discern the real frontiers we must scan the horizon more carefully.

The real frontier, I believe, lies in the secularistic, humanistic, subjectivistic bent of our contemporary culture. To put it simply the frontier on which Wesleyan theology ought to be working is the thought-world in which modern man now finds himself.

Today there is a widespread questioning of traditional belief stemming from the massive shins in man's perception of his world and of himself that have taken place in modern times. The classical Christian tradition consisted of the inter-weaving of the biblical revelation with the science and philosophy of the ancient world. The system of theological ideas in which the Christian faith was fist expressed naturally drew upon the mind of Graeco-Roman antiquity. Progressively refined, this edifice of ideas endured for over a millennium with its scientific and philosophical assumptions largely intact. Then about three hundred years ago the rise of experimental science triggered a rapid expansion of knowledge in all fields, accompanied by the upsurge of a spirit of invention exploration and social revolution. Profound transformations have occurred in the entire mind-set of modern man (or "post-Cartesian man" as Helmut Thielicke prefers to call him⁵).

At least three ingredients of this modern mind-set can be identified. They are (1) an assertion of the dignity and autonomy of free personhood, (2) an affirmation of the goodness of life in this world, and (3) an awareness of the reality of process and change.⁶ Interestingly, these three great revolutionary energies were identified by Immanuel Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason where he stated that the three fundamental questions raised by the mind of man are: (1) What can I know? (2) What should I do? (3) What may I hope?⁷ The first question is that of epistemology; the second is explicitly the question of ethics and, implicitly and derivatively that of ecology; the third is the question of eschatology. If we remember that, as William Hordern has pointed out, the twentieth century did not begin theologically until after 19l4, it is quite striking that thus far in the twentieth century theology has successively (I did not say successfully!) dealt with these three questions. The first of Kant's questions ("What can I know?") was the problem with which neo-orthodoxy mainly grappled. Epistemology was in the forefront, as Barth, Brunner, Bultmann, and the other greats wrestled with the question of hermeneutics and the problem of revelation.

Then in the sixties, Kant's second question ("What should I do?") gained the headlines. Radical, or secular, theology was the result, with its catchword "God is dead." There was really nothing we could know, only something to do. Since there was no God to do it for us, man, now "come of age," must get busy and feed the hungry, and create justice. Theology became ethics--social and situational—but strangely and sadly an ethics with no theological underpinning. The positive value of this otherwise negative outlook was a recovery of the Hebraic and Reformation insights that the realm of the secular was not evil but good. Along with this reaffirmation of the goodness of life in this present world there was also the recognition that the natural world itself was good. This has factored out into the current theological interest in ecology and the possibilities of a theology of nature.

And now in the seventies we are right in the middle of a great surge of interest in Kant's third question ("What may I hope?"). The answer to this eschatological question has taken two forms. In Germany we have seen the rise of the "Theology of Hope," with Jurgen Moltmann and Wolfhart Pannenberg as two of its main leaders, relying to some extent on the philosophy of Ernst Bloch, but finding antecedents in the thought of Henri Bergson, Pierre de Chardin and others. In America the answer to this question has relied mostly on Whiteheadian philosophy. Charles Hartshorne was one of the main early theological interpreters of Whitehead's philosophy. Contemporary thinkers such as John B. Cobb and Schubert Ogden have made serious attempts to find in Whitehead a philosophical base for Christian theology.

Now to return to the starting point of this essay: I suggest that the proper frontiers on which Wesleyan theology ought to be diligently working, it is to speak effectively to this age, are precisely these three revolutionary ideas in the mind-set of modern man, namely (1) the assertion of autonomy, (2) the affirmation of worldly life, and (3) the awareness of the reality of change. What I am pleading for is a Wesleyan apologetic which will be a true "theology of mediation" or "correlation theology" which seriously relates the Wesleyan message to man's present perception of reality. It is my conviction that Wesleyan theology is uniquely suited both to profitably appropriate from, and to offer needed correctives to, modern man's self-understanding. Because of both its content and its methodology, Wesleyan theology can push into these frontiers in a way that is impossible for other Christian traditions.

To spell out all the details of such a program is obviously too big an undertaking for a short essay. I can only offer suggestions. But it is hoped that such suggestions will be sufficiently heuristic to point the way that such an exploration into these frontiers should take.

Above, I have listed these three suggested frontiers in Kant's order --which is also the chronological order in which they have been developed in twentieth century theology. I wish now to reverse this order to reflect the degree of urgency with which each frontier, as I see it, beckons to Wesleyan pioneers. Thus I will deal, in an ascending order of importance with modern man's (1) awareness of evolutionary change, (2) affirmation of worldliness, and (3) assertion of autonomous Freedom. Not every aspect of each frontier can be adequately dealt with; therefore, some further narrowing of the subject is necessary. Perhaps the extrapolation of just one problem in each frontier will suffice to illustrate the sort of "Wesleyan correlation theology" I have in mind: (1) Central to man's awareness of the reality of change is the current interest in Process Philosophy. (2) At least one expression of man's affirmation of life in this world is the current concern for the natural environment -- the ecological crisis. (3) And lying at the heart of man's assertion of freedom is the problem of authority, particularly religious authority. Within these parameters, then, we will proceed.

The hottest thing in town today is process theology, which refers specifically to reflection on the content of Christian faith in the context of the metaphysical vision of Alfred North Whitehead. Actually it is no newcomer. But just at the time when process theology might have flourished, it was pushed onto a back burner by neo-orthodoxy. Only with the demise of the neo-orthodox consensus about l960 did process theology come into its own.

Ancient thought tended to equate the real with the unchanging. The great thinkers Plato and Aristotle, who influenced all subsequent science and theology, acknowledged the fact of motion and change but judged them inferior in the scale of being. They saw real, true being as that which was eternally unmoved and unchanging. But Whitehead, in the 1920s and 1930s, challenged these assumptions. The roots of process thought can be traced back to Heraclitus, who once observed that one could not step into the same river twice. The basis of reality, said he, was change and flux. This idea was in sharp contrast with Parmenides, who held that "being" was prior to "becoming," and that underlying every change was some more fundamental reality that endured. By a fateful choice of history, Parmenides became the father of metaphysics and the basis of most of Western thought, while Heraclitus was largely ignored. As a result Western thought and the entire Christian tradition was cast into the mold of the static concepts of "being" and "substance" rather than the more dynamic concepts of "becoming" and "process."

Until very recent times we were content with the way Parmenides viewed the universe. There was an underlying stability to our institutions, our culture, and our lives. But in recent years we are being confronted with a suspicion regarding the capacity of our culture to deal with radical change. All this has created for us a new perception of reality. No longer is reality seen as fundamentally stable, with change being merely an accidental alteration of its makeup. Today reality itself is experienced as being in constant flux, so that the basic category of reality is process, not stability. We have returned to the insight of Heraclitus: we cannot step into the same river twice because our world is not the same world twice.

Under Parmenides' categories of "being," if someone were asked to identify the smallest unit of reality, he would probably name the smallest bit of matter, an atom or an electron. But under the process category of "becoming," Whitehead suggests a new model: the fundamental elements of reality are "actual occasions" or "moments of experience." And with this "experience model" we come immediately to a point of contact with Wesleyan theology, with its emphasis on experience and the "moment-by-moment" life of holiness.

I have some severe questions about process theology. Its concept of God, at least in Whitehead, seems inadequate -- although Hartshorne's bipolar theism in which God embraces both "being" and "becoming" may bear some resemblance to the traditional Christian insight that God is both transcendent and immanent. The concept of immortality in process thought is, I believe, sub-Christian. A process Christology, which appears to be the central interest right now among the process theologians, seems to result in either an adoptionism on the one hand or else a neo-Apollinarianism on the other. Process thought may offer some possibility for a Christian ethics which steers between a legalism on one hand and a situationism on the other.

But I do strongly suspect that these process categories offer some models which will help us to clarify our Wesleyan doctrines of man, sin, and sanctification. Regarding the latter, Wesleyans have always insisted that sanctification is both a crisis and a process. But exactly how these two are to be related has not been made conceptually clear. Perhaps the Whiteheadian concept of "actual occasions" together with his related concept of "prehension" could enable us to show how sanctification is not merely a crisis, not merely a process, not merely both a crisis and a process held in some loose and undefined conjunction, and not merely a series of crises unrelated to one another as in the Oberlin theology and as in a strictly existentialist interpretation. With this suggestion I pass on to the next frontier:

The second frontier which we mapped out above is modern man's affirmation of life in this present world and the essential goodness of the natural world itself.

This has not always been the case. In past ages religious wisdom, as it was conditioned by Greek philosophy, tended to be pessimistic about the here and now. This life was merely a place to prepare for the next. The spiritual took exclusive preference over the material, the heavenly over the earthly. In spite of its Hebraic heritage, early Christian theology was conditioned by this atmosphere, due to the Platonic notion that this world was only a shadow of the real world which was spiritual.

Today a drastically different attitude prevails. Human history and life in this material world are celebrated as meaningful and good. Along with this mood there has come about an intense concern for the natural environment.

It would be presumptuous of me indeed to claim to speak with authority on all the ramifications of Ecology. Although I am deeply interested in the subject of ecology as a "science", I have no qualifications along that line. My concern is that of a theologian -- to see to it that the scientific and technological solutions to the problem are not grounded on presuppositions which are incompatible with biblical and Christian truth. It is my conviction that Wesleyan theology has at least a helpful comment or two to contribute to the search for a solution to the Ecological Crisis. At least Wesleyans need to be aware of whatever resources their faith contains for a relevant "theology of ecology."

Wesleyan theology has always recognized the validity of experience as a guide to truth. John Wesley himself was willing to modify his theological formulations, even the doctrine of Christian perfection, if experience clearly showed such modification to be necessary. I recognize that one could push this principle too far. But it would seem safe to say that as today our human experience is teaching us how essential is man's interrelatedness with his natural environment, it may be necessary to reformulate and enlarge some of the customary expressions of Wesleyan theology. At least it will be necessary that we seek to make applications of our theology in areas of life previously ignored.

There are some principles inherent in Wesleyan theology which, we believe, offer implicit help toward shaping a proper Christian theology of the environment. The first of these principles is what I would call the continuity between nature and grace. In more theological language it is the doctrine of prevenient grace. We do not identify nature and grace as do romanticists, deists, and pantheists. But neither do we posit a radical discontinuity between the two, as traditional Protestant theology, through Augustine, Luther, and Calvin, has sometimes tended to do. In Wesleyanism, nature is, as my colleague Dr. J. Kenneth Grider calls it, "a residency of grace."⁹ Francis Schaeffer makes much the same point. Nature is valuable because God made it. Jesus taught that God is aware of the sparrows, i.e. they are valuable as His creatures. But in the same breath Jesus said that we (humans) are of more value than the sparrows.¹⁰ As Schaeffer says it, the Christian, unlike the pantheist, has categories. Such a view would seem, however, to be more logically consistent in a Wesleyan framework in which nature and grace have a continuity between them, than in Schaeffer's Calvinist orientation with its "pessimism of nature" and its postponement of total deliverance from sin to the other world. Also the tendency of Calvinism to locate sin in the "flesh" undercuts any positive view it might otherwise have of the relation between nature and grace.

Wesleyan theology, then, when true to its own best principles, will take a respectful, almost reverent, attitude toward the natural world -- not as an end in itself but as the residency, the vehicle, of grace.

A second Wesleyan principle which has relevance for ecology is the doctrine of Christian perfection or Perfect Love which is the distinctive Wesleyan tenet. John Wesley always defined Christian perfection in terms of love -- love to God and neighbor. Christian perfection meant nothing more nor less than loving God with all the heart, soul, mind, and strength, and loving one's neighbor as oneself. Martin Buber points out, and we believe Wesley would agree, that Jesus' command to love one's neighbor as oneself, which is quoted from Leviticus 19:18, does not mean, in the Hebrew language, "love your neighbor as you love yourself," but rather "love your neighbor as one like yourself." Buber further says, and again we believe Wesley would agree:

Thus as Wesleyans the direction is already mapped out for us regarding our proper attitude toward the environment. Wesleyans have always professed "love to neighbor" as the way of Holiness. But today our human experience in the world is teaching us that the neighbor cannot be separated from his natural environment. It would seem a very legitimate extension of our doctrine of Perfect Love to say that if we truly love our neighbor, our concern for him will not stop with "saving his soul," or even with feeding his body, but will extend also to the saving of his world, i.e. his physical environment. We cannot consistently love our neighbor if we permit the destruction of his life-support systems.

The third frontier for Wesleyan theology today lies in modern man’s assertion of the dignity of free personality and the right of all persons to do "their own thing" and find fulfillment in their own way. Ancient philosophy could scarcely see any exalted meaning in the exercise of human freedom. Such a philosophical climate encouraged a theology of predestination.

Here again a vastly different mood prevails today. No value is more highly esteemed than human freedom and creativity. This is all to the good. But along with such gains there is a widespread and virulent epistemological subjectivism that permeates our post-Cartesian world, and an accompanying moral relativism which leaves man without a final standard to which he can appeal for authority. In theory there are as many standards as there are individuals.

History amply demonstrates that man seems unable to bear the burden of absolute freedom and autonomy. Clyde Manschreck says of man:

Even to hint that Wesleyan theology might be able to present to the world a view of authority that could become a "consensus," and thus a rescuer of society, might appear to be an impossible dream. Nevertheless, we Wesleyans need to be aware, and to be able to make others aware, of the epistemological resources explicit and implicit in out particular understanding of authority. I speak especially of religious or theological authority, but what we believe about this has implications for other types of authority as well -- political, social, economic, etc.

The ability of Wesleyanism to speak to this problem lies in the emphasis it places on experience as a way to truth. Roger Shinn has written: "There can be in Christian faith no authority that does not either arise out of human experience or somehow enter into that experience."¹³ With this statement, both Wesleyans and "moderns" would agree. But Shinn goes on to state an opposite but equally valid truth: "the whole message of the Cross is that authority in some way stands over against us and our experience – especially the experiences that we are likely to assert most dogmatically and confidently."¹⁴ With this statement Wesleyans would agree but modern man would not. Modern man cannot accept this "over-against-ness" of authority. It is the genius of Wesleyan theology that in its view of authority it is able to make a place both for the truth that "authority arises out of experience" and the truth that "authority stands over against our experience."

We are treading here on unplowed ground. Theological methodology is a great unworked area in Wesleyan theology. One reason for this is that since the Fundamentalist-Modernist controversy there has been a major, although sometimes unconscious, shift in methodology in Wesleyan circles. Wesleyanism has been fenced into a ghetto, with reference to epistemology, and any contribution it might have made to the authority crisis of our time has gone unnoticed. Wesleyanism has been trapped into "allowing its emotional ties with the aims of Fundamentalism to saddle it with a Fundamentalist doctrine of the Scripture that is quite out of place in Wesleyanism."¹⁵

John Wesley had a well-balanced view of the work of the Holy Spirit in the area of soteriology. But sometimes his followers have forgotten the essential Christocentricity of Wesley’s doctrines of salvation, especially the doctrine of sanctification. In almost every instance, Wesley’s descriptions of holiness were given in terms of Christlikeness. And certainly this was in keeping with the emphasis of his favorite New Testament writer, John, for whom the Paraclete would not bear witness to himself but to Christ. The preservation of this Christocentricity will be our strongest bulwark against the aberrations of neo-Pentecostalism.

It is now equally urgent that Wesleyanism recover John Wesley’s emphasis on the Holy Spirit in the area of epistemology as well. We must avoid describing the Holy Spirit’s work in inspiring the written words of Scripture in such a way that we detract from the understanding that we have only one Revelation – Christ Jesus. The authority of Scripture lies not merely in the fact that its written words were inspired, but that the Living Word by way of the written words has been heard in the Proclamation of the Church and witnessed to by the inner testimony of the Spirit in the heart.

This testimonium Spiritus sancti internum fulfills the basic requirement of modernity, that authority must "arise out of experience." But since it is the Spirit, and not man himself in his subjectivity, such authority also "stands over against" human experience. In a letter to Dr. Conyers Middleton in 1749, John Wesley discusses the merits of inward experiential authority compared with the external tradition authority of Christianity. By external authority he means the creeds and doctrines of the historic church in which Scripture is interpreted. Though he respects this kind of evidence, priority belongs to the inward evidence because it is contemporary, comprehensible, and intimate.¹⁶ Again and again Wesley stresses the experiential nature of true religion.¹⁷ He uses such phrases as an "experimental knowledge and love of God"¹⁸ and "an experimental knowledge of Christ."¹⁹

Of course Wesley had a strong doctrine of the external authority of the inspired Scripture. Said he: "The best way to know whether anything be of doctrine authority is to apply ourselves to the Scripture."²⁰ The Scriptures, for Wesley, constituted the "Oracles of God"²¹ and thus "stand over against" our own experience. One would suppose that Wesley’s strong emphasis on the full inspiration of the written Scriptures would have made any further authorization superfluous and unnecessary. Nevertheless he often speaks of the Holy Spirit’s inspiration of those who read and hear the sacred text, as in the words of Charles’s hymn:

Is still by inspiration given,

And again:

Spirit of Faith, come down,

Reveal the things of God,

And make to us the Godhead known,

And witness with the blood.

No man can truly say

That Jesus is the Lord,

Unless Thou take the veil away,

And breathe the living word.²³

The inspiration of the Holt Spirit is needed for a saving understanding and believing of the Scripture. Wesley says: "The Spirit of God not only once inspired those who wrote it but continually inspires, supernaturally assists, those that read it with earnest prayer."²⁴

We see then that, although in Wesleyan thought the authority of experience always has reference to the Holy Spirit (and this is its corrective of modernity), such authority is nevertheless not merely externally imposed but "arises from experience" (and this is its continuity with modernity).

Fully as important to Wesley as the fact that the Holy Spirit inspired the writers of Scripture is the correlative fact that the same Spirit inspires the readers, and hearers, of Scripture. Sometimes he does seem to use the Scriptures as, in the words of Sangster, "an arsenal of proof-texts." And he even sounds like a Fundamentalist when he says: "If there be any mistakes in the Bible, there may as well be a thousand."²⁵ But such "inerrancy" was not, for Wesley, the foundation of his belief in the Scripture’s authority. He had a higher view of Scripture than that.

Wesley would understand well Luther’s statement that Christ is Lord and King of Scripture. He echoed Luther’s dictum that "Scripture is its own interpreter." Furthermore, he would approve Luther’s idea that the scripture interprets itself Christocentricity, and his metaphor that the Bible is the manger in which Christ is laid." Wesley would agree also with Calvin who sounds so heteronomously authoritarian in many of his utterances but who so clearly stated that the Bible becomes our true authority only as the Spirit witnesses to it. Where this testimonium is lacking, the Bible becomes merely an external (heteronomous) authority, obedience to which would be mere subjection and not inward personal experience.

Squarely at the core of Wesleyan theology is the significance of experience – experience with real authority as a way to truth. But this similarity which Wesleyanism has with the modern mind is balanced by the corrective insight of Wesleyanism that this experience is not mere human experiences alone but is rather experience of the Living Word of God. This Living Word is the Living Lord. But obedience to this Living Lord is not heteronomy. For the Living Lord is none other than the Spirit who indwells the believer. This is what William Temple called "the immanence of the transcendent." But the Holy Spirit is never a whit less transcendent when most fully immanent, no more easily exploited because He is "closer to us than breathing, nearer than hands and feet." Always His domain is the human and the historical. The Spirit does not speak of himself, but takes what Christ has said and discloses it to us (John 16:13-14). The unique ministry of the Spirit is the realization of the effects of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ in the hearts and lives of men.

The Spirit answers to the blood,

And tells me I am born of God.

Perhaps Paul said it best, in II Cor. 3:17-18:

Now the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.

But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord,

are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from

the Lord, the Spirit.

The Spirit lives within us when we open our lives to Him. Therefore our authority (the Lord) is not an external, heteronomous, on-the-Throne authority. The authority is an Other, but an Other who is within us. And as we obey that Authority, we soon find we are obeying the very laws of our own essential being. We find our freedom in His will. Autonomy truly finds itself in theonomy. When we do His will, we do our own deepest will. The Authority then wills our own deepest interests. By losing ourselves we find ourselves. And this is freedom. "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty."

If Wesleyanism will develop this with intellectual vigor and spiritual conviction, it can speak to the authority crisis in today's world. At the same time it can avoid the bloodletting of the "Battle for the Bible" being fought among evangelicals. Wesleyanism doe not quarrel with the concept of biblical inerrancy, providing such inerrancy is understood as Wesley would understand it, and kept within the context of the entire Wesleyan understanding of authority. But true Wesleyanism does quarrel with those who define inerrancy in such a way that it can only be attributed to some nonexistent "autographs" and who then base their entire structure of biblical authority on such a definition. The inerrancy which Wesleyans affirm of the Bible is an inerrancy which can be affirmed of the extant texts. Any discussion of any other kind of inerrancy is merely academic and a non sequitur.

The sons and daughters of John Wesley, saturated with the spirit of their father in the faith, can say to other Evangelicals: "Look, you who are fighting down there on the plains of this needles hermeneutical Armageddon. You may kill each other off if you insist! But we are saddened by such a possibility. We wish you would lay down your arms and join us up here on the Mountain. For we have an authority greater than inerrancy!"

I have enumerated the present frontiers of Wesleyan theology as I see them. In each of these areas Wesleyan theology is, I believe, the best-equipped of all theological traditions both to creatively appropriate from and to constructively offer correctives to, the central insights of modern man. Such a Wesleyan "correlation theology" is the crying need of the hour. The frontiers beckon. Let us be on our journey!

Footnotes

1. Frederick Jackson Turner, The Frontier in American History (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1962), pp. 2-3.

2. Ibid

3. The Works of the Rev. John Wesley, A.M., ed. Thomas Jackson (London: Wesleyan-Methodist Book Room, 1831), VIII, 285. Cited hereafter as Works.

4. The Letters of Rev. John Wesley, A.M., ed. John Telford (London: The Epworth Press, 1931), IV, 298. Cited hereafter as Letters.

5. Cf. Helmut Thielicke, The Evangelical Faith (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eardmans, 1974).

6. Cf. A. Durwood Foster, The God Who Loves (New York: Bruce Publishing Company, 1971), pp. 6-8.

7. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (London: J. M. Dent and Sons, 1934), p. 457.

8. The latter is one possible reading of John B. Cobb, Jr., Christ in a Pluralistic Age (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1975).

9. J. Kenneth Grider, "Perspectives for Doing Theology." Unpublished Wiley Theological Lectures, Pasadena College, April 19-23, 1971, pp. 14ff.

10. Francis Schaeffer, Pollution and the Death of Man (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1970), p.85.

11. Martin Buber, Between Man and Man, trans. Ronald Gregor Smith (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955), p. 52.

12. Clyde L. Manschreck, "Authority and Skepticism: An Introductory Essay," Erosion of Authority, ed. By Clyde L. Manschreck (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1971), p. 32.

13. Roger L. Shinn, "The Locus of Authority: Participatory Democracy in the Age of the Expert," Erosion of Authority, p. 9.

14. Ibid

15. Paul M. Bassett, "Conservative Wesleyan Theology and the Challenge of Secular Humanism," Wesleyan Theological Journal, Spring, 1973, pp. 74-75.

16. Letters, II, 383-88.

17. Works, V, 186; VII, 461; VIII, 204; Cf. Letters, III, 41, 47; VI, 136; VII, 47.

18. Works, VII, 283.

19. Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament (London: The Epworth Press, 1948), Phil. 3:8; Eph. 4:13. Cited hereafter as Notes.

20. Letters, III, 128-129.

21. Wesley’s Standard Sermons, ed. Edward H. Sugden (2 Vols.; London: The Epworth Press, 1921), I, 245. Cf. Notes, Rom. 12:6; Works, VII, 294, 296.

22. Osburn, G., editor. The Poetical Works of John and Charles Wesley (13 Vols.; London: Wesleyan Methodist Conference Office, 1868-72), VII, 249.

23. Ibid., IV. 196.

24. Notes, II Tim. 3:16; cf. Acts 7:38; John 15:3; Heb. 4:12

25. Cf. Harold Linsell, The Battle for the Bible (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1976).

Edited by KimberLee Bingham for the Wesley Center for Applied Theology of Northwest Nazarene University, 2000.