MUSINGS

by

Melvin E. Dieter

On the Moment

As we meet here tonight for our annual banquet, there are continuing signs that significant developments are taking place in our Society. An increasing number of interested and involved persons have added their names to the membership rolls and have swelled attendance figures at the annual meetings. Many of the most capable scholars in the Wesleyan-Holiness Movement have found in the Society the forum of ideas and fellowship of learning which the founders of WTS hoped it would prove to be. The deliberations of the past fourteen years have been widely circulated through the Journal. The listing of Journal articles in religious periodical indexes opens up the Society's work to a broad spectrum of interested students outside the Holiness Movement.

This expanded activity has also attracted a large number of students from our colleges and seminaries to a renewed interest in the Wesleyan-Holiness tradition and its theological understanding. The significant number of such young persons who are in attendance at this meeting is one of the most encouraging portents of the future vitality of the Society. We welcome them.

We should also note that we seem to be able to consider issues critical to the tradition with a new forthrightness attended by a spirit of mutual respect and love representative of the gospel we seek to proclaim. There is no other place within the structures of the Wesleyan-Holiness Movement which allows for such open theological dialogue among so representative a group of scholars. Our active participation provides a service which we can render to the Wesleyan-Arminian churches and people whose need for self-understanding requires definition and interpretation.

But the society must increasingly serve also as a means to explicating our relationships with other Christian traditions and the secular culture as well. If Wesleyanism is to be more than an eddy in the backwater of religious life, much less in evangelicalism, an even greater willingness to face up to ourselves and to others than we have sometimes mustered is imperative. The viability of such debate, however, depends not only upon the dedication and integrity of this scholarly community, but also upon the willingness of the church community being served to allow the freedom to follow the search for truth in an atmosphere of mutual respect. This can be done out of our common concern for the integrity of the gospel and the mission of the church.

Both our self-understanding and our understanding of others would be greatly enhanced with the orderly, structured input in some of our meetings of responsible scholarship from other Christian traditions tangential to or even at variance with our own. We all recognize some risk in such a venture, but I believe it is essential to the whole theological enterprise. If I am in dialogue or even dispute with another point of view, I am basically in dialogue with persons who have committed themselves to those views. If I am to come to the best understanding of the position that such persons espouse, I should be willing to listen to the strongest defense of the position by its most able representatives. For example, it seems to me that an essential part of our continued discussions on our understanding of such movements as Keswick, the Charismatic Movement, Fundamentalism, etc., should involve input by representative scholarship from those traditions. Much theological reflection on questions of the deepest concern to us has taken place in these movements. We could stimulate a healthy creativity among ourselves out of interaction with and even reaction to such presentations. I believe that a whole series of future meetings could be devoted profitably to such dialogue with traditions that we often interact with at great distance. These contacts could infuse new life into our own biblical, theological and historical understanding. If our dialogue is to be with others as they are and not with the proverbial straw men we so humanly create, such exchanges carried out in an atmosphere of mutual respect with Christians who differ with us can mean growth; we can also define our genuine differences. This interaction can also encourage community in Christian mission with such traditions in spite of differences. Anything less may well weaken all our hands in a world which is increasingly hostile to the gospel. Provision has already been made in our structures for such interchanges. We have made initial efforts to provide for such input but have not succeeded to this point. I hope we will renew these efforts in future programming.

Another area of still untapped potential for the usefulness of the Society is that of encouraging increased writing and publication of Wesleyan-Holiness literature. Through additional issues of the Journal or by sponsoring other publications in accord with its commitments, the influence of Wesleyanism upon current movements-particularly evangelical movements-could be greatly enhanced. We will continue to suffer a great loss of leadership in these areas if we fail here. We all know that the pressing need at this point is for editorial leadership which possesses the grace and wisdom, the theological and practical leadership requisite to the success of such efforts and, not incidentally, the time to devote to it. Let us pray for such a person or persons to spark an enlarged ministry here.

Certainly these musings on the role and mission of the Society do not exhaustively represent the needs and potential of our work. Each of you members certainly has similar concerns. I hope you will express them freely in business sessions at this and successive meetings.

On a Movement

We cannot approach such an issue as we had before us last year in its historical-theological setting and this year in its Biblical-theological setting without honestly facing up to a broad range of implications. Let me work around a few of them out of my own very visceral feelings about the critical import they may carry for the movement's future understanding of its identity and mission. Boris Pasternak purportedly said, "In every generation there has to be some fool who will speak the truth as he sees it." Perhaps every theological society needs someone of the same genre. I'll play the role this time, with the confidence that should I fail there are many others who can take up the torch.

First of all, it seems to me that our discussion of baptism language reveals that the American Wesleyan-Holiness Movement, as much as it has tried to put considerable room between itself and the Pentecostal-Charismatic Movement through certain administrative and historical disclaimers, really has not succeeded very well. The close association of the two movements in the popular mind as well as in an increasing number of historical-theological publications has become increasingly common. The central place given to the use of baptism language for initiation into a new type of Christian experience by the current charismatic revival has generated a whole new review of pneumatology throughout Christendom. Catholic, Anglican, Reformed and almost all other traditions continue to seek new understandings in these areas. Most of this activity is specifically in response or often reaction to the Charismatic baptism terminology and claims.

In some of these traditions such discussions are relatively novel to them, but in our own case we face the prominent use by a highly visible movement of terminology very close to the terminology commonly used in the Holiness Movement by the beginning of the century. Even now some of our articles of faith utilize Spirit-baptism language. This certainly has encouraged if not necessitated our review of the biblical, historical and theological rationale for our use of the language especially in its relation to our second crisis commitments.

It is interesting, and moreover significant, to note that this is not the first time that an aggressive Pentecostal revivalism has forced such decisions upon the Holiness Movement. The very name Pentecostal adopted by the new movement within a decade after its founding over seventy years ago pragmatically forced the holiness churches to pull back from the pervasive use of the Pentecostal semantics which had by then become common place in the movement's representation of itself to the religious and secular worlds. Gradually the term "pentecostal" disappeared from the names of holiness papers and institutions and the so-called "tongues movement" from that point on was left to give content to the word Pentecostal in the public mind. The issue was a broad one and the impact of the holiness movement's understanding of itself and its mission may not have been great; although I suspect that further study of that development would indicate that it was much more significant than our histories have indicated up to this time. For example it would be interesting to investigate whether the slackening of the movement's activism in the promotion of faith-healing was not related to the deeper implications of that action. But the strong Holiness-Pentecostal polemics and attempts such as the above to radically disassociate the two movements have hardly been successful. Now a neo-Pentecostalism again forcefully reminds us that we really may not have understood the most basic relationship between the two movements. Along with the less visible Keswick deeper life movement we may be finding that our common inheritance in the tradition of the holiness revival of the last century, and even back to the Wesleys and Fletcher as well, is a lot stronger than the holiness movement in particular has been willing to acknowledge. The Pentecostal-Charismatic understanding of Spirit-baptism is distinctively different from the Holiness use of the term, and the Keswick understanding is at variance with both the above. But the Pentecostal-dispensationalist exegesis which allows for the use of the expression to identify a new and dynamic infusion of the Spirit distinct from any previous relationship of the Spirit to the believer is basically the same.

Therefore, how and on what premises the holiness movement continues to identify the second crisis experience with a Pentecostal hermeneutic, or how and for what reasons the movement relinquishes or radically reinterprets such identification, may mark a very significant development in the movement's self-understanding of future mission. It may tell more about the future of the movement and its relationship to Pentecostalism than did the earlier Holiness-Pentecostal encounter as to who would give content to the word "Pentecostal" in the second decade of this century. It seems to me that what may very well be at issue is who will continue to represent one of the most dynamic revival traditions to arise in modern church history-a tradition of two hundred years which came to some of its most creative expressions in the strong post-Civil-War proclamation of the Wesleyan-Holiness message in intimate relationship with its use of Pentecostal semantic. One has to ask, If any conscious shift is made, what other terminology can express equally well the fullness of life in the Spirit as the Pentecost motif? what motif can better represent the dynamic for genuine holy living which is at the heart of the Wesleyan tradition?

That leads me to the second significant inference in our current discussions. Not only do the issues have wrong implications for the future nature of our self-understanding in relation to movements which have relied on similar presuppositions underlying baptism language in relation to a "secondness" in Christian experience, but they have strong implications for our understanding of ourselves as heirs of the Wesleyan tradition. With Albert Outler I believe that Wesley's unique contribution to all of Christian tradition was his insistence that there is no biblical tension between salvation by faith alone, and holy living which issues in love. It is that which makes him more than the house theologian of Methodism.' Wesley would not acknowledge that either Lutheran solfideism as he called it or Catholic meritorious works were adequate expressions of the Biblical primitive Christianity which he sought to revive in the church. He probably was not aware that Luther's solfideism was not as exclusive as almost all of his authoritative and non-authoritative interpreters for various reasons have consistently portrayed it.2 He hardly was aware either that Luther had a concern for Pentecostal preaching. Luther once expressed it this way:

They may be fine Easter preachers, but they are poor Pentecost preachers, for they do not preach . . . "about the sanctification by the Holy Spirit," but solely about the redemption of Jesus Christ, although the Christ (whom they extol so highly and rightly so) is Christ, that is, He has purchased redemption from sin and death so that the Holy Spirit might transform us out of the old Adam into new men . . . Christ did not only earn gratia "grace," for us, but also donum, "the gift of the Holy Spirit" so that we might have not only forgiveness of, but also cessation of, sin.3

However, in spite of any modern modifications of Lutheran interpretation, it is recognized that Luther's strongest contribution was not at the point of a "faith alone"-"holy life of love" solidarity, but rather a "faith alone" polarity.

It was Wesley who brought the unity to the fore. He saw it in the covenant promises of the Bible. It represented a via media the understanding of which he fleshed partially out of the via media of his Anglicanism through Cranmer and even behind the English Reformation to the English mystics of the 14th century. He also built into it the strong balance which his study of the early church brought to his understanding of the nature of Christian truth and life. Along with these, his studies in the Eastern tradition freed him from slavishly interpreting the nature of God's redemptive dealings with men in the strongly forensic tones of those who adhered mainly to Western theological tradition rooted more exclusively in such theologians as Augustine and Tertullian. The strong creational-incarnational motifs of the equally ancient Eastern tradition, that of the Gregories and Basil, balanced him at this point. All these put him at some variance with the Augustinian Luther and the mentors of his early evangelical faith-the Moravians.

If we are to be true heirs of Wesley in current discussions, we should be aware of where true Wesleyanism really lies, or we will consciously or unconsciously succumb to the strong pressures by certain interpreters of the Reformation which would leave us no alternative between a theology of purely subjective experience and a rigid Reformation scholasticism or creedalism. The former has always been at our doorstep and sometimes has gotten more than a foot inside. Today the latter, which finds the whole of any meaningful relationship to the righteousness of God through Christ only in the "Christ for us" motif, is just as present a danger. In other words, there is the very real danger that in offering correction to the subjectivism inherent in the highly experiential emphases of either Pentecostalism, Neo-pentecostalism, our own holiness tradition or all American revivalism itself, we slide right past Wesley into the arms of Luther and Calvin. If we are to be true heirs of Wesley we have to understand what his commitments were and how he held them together. We too should develop a theology of "faith alone-holy living" in that same via media tradition adequate to the demands of this day and communicable to contemporary persons. If we are Wesleyan, it will be a biblically rooted theology of experience which through the fullness of the Spirit will again speak as to how the righteousness of God in Christ is made a living reality in the lives of men. If Wesleyanism continues, it might still walk the via media into an actual life of righteousness and true holiness.

A third important implication of our current discussions is that they call us to reaffirm our commitment to the final authority of an infallible Bible. The increasing emphasis upon careful exegesis and biblical theology which we are enjoying is a healthy and hopeful sign. But let a vigorous doctrine of the Holy Spirit, of His ministry of prevenient grace, of His personal ministry to the individual Christian (Wesley's palpable inspiration for which he was so strongly criticized by some as a rank enthusiast) be joined to a strong doctrine of sola scriptura lest we languish in a slough of despond created by some "pure exegesis." We must not restrict the preaching of the righteousness of God in Christ to a concept of justification which divorces itself from the sanctification of the Lord God in the hearts of live Christians-Christians at work witnessing to each other and the world by an intimate life of holiness and wholeness in active love. Our interpretation of the Word and our life should be in dialogue. In this we are not falling into the error of some in the neo-orthodox tradition. Our experience does not create the Word or deny its objective authority. With Wesley we simply affirm that the same Spirit who spoke the Word through inspired men is working out that Word in life in individual Christians and in the people of God with dynamic evidence of what grace can and wants to do. "By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, because ye love one another." Wesley would simply say that any pattern of biblical interpretation which does not have that practical result as its immediate goal in this life is per se suspect. Regardless of the tight logic of any theology which ignores the experiential realm of true righteousness and obedience, he would have insisted that its believers go back to Scripture and review their understanding of it. A brief quote from his Plain Account illustrates this concern. He said that if experience refutes the doctrine, "I should be clearly convinced that we had all mistaken the meaning of those Scriptures."4

A well known example of the dynamic of this principle comes from our own American history of the theology of revivalism. When a deterministic rigidly scholastic Puritanism had so hedged in the work of the Holy Spirit that congregations waited in either despair or indifference for a sovereign God to move upon them with gracious ability, when pessimism reigned in the churches of the founding fathers, the old Calvinism began to respond. It realized that, however strongly buttressed by Scripture the prevailing theology seemed to be, the church was lifeless and ineffective; the gospel itself was suffering. Out of these facts in the life of the Church, American Calvinism went back to the Bible and developed an understanding of God's ways with man which helped to release the dynamic evangelism which Kenneth Scott Latourette believes produced the greatest burst of Christian expansion since apostolic times.

This pattern of theological dialectric between faith and life carries strong implications for our procedures in current discussions. Back to the Bible! Exegesis and biblical understanding to the forefront! We are presently on that side of the dialectic between our theologizing and the life of the church. But neither side of the dialectic ever prevails exclusively or the dialectic itself is lost. The present experience of the church, of the movement in the last century, the history of its life must always be a part of the data. Any attempt to maintain Wesley's "faith alone-holy life" understanding must be careful not to divide that which Wesley believed Scripture clearly had made one. Wesley insisted that what God has joined together let neither exegetes, nor historical theologians put asunder. You cannot use Scripture against itself. Any understanding of Scripture which in practice denies the possibility of the fulfillment of the promises of the gracious covenant of full salvation in Christ, or which does not encourage and in some real way produce a life of holiness by faith here and now, is deficient and may even deny the gospel itself.

We cannot stand still; the experience of the people of God and the theological explication of that experience must go on-but always under the Spirit and the Word as the authoritative arbiters. In seeking any correction of deficiencies or mis-emphases in our theology or preaching, let us not fall under the apt description which as I recall was given by someone to theologians of the past generation: "In their rush to flee excesses they suddenly found out that they had left all their baggage behind." Let us be better stewards of our biblical, theological and historical tradition than that. After we have come to our best definitions and understandings, hopefully we still can worship and testify in sentiments like these.

An inward baptism of pure fire,

Wherewith to be baptiz'd, I have;

'Tis all my longing soul's desire:

This, only this my soul can save.

Straiten'd I am till this be done;

Kindle in me the living flame;

Father, in me reveal thy Son,

Baptize me into Jesus' name.

Transform my nature into thine;

Let all my powers thine impress feel;

Let all my soul become divine,

And stamp me with thy Spirit's seal.

Love, mighty love, my heart o'erpower:

Ah! why dost thou so long delay!

Cut short the work, bring near the hour,

And let me see the perfect day.5

Notes

1See Bengt R. Hoffman Luther and the Mystics (Minneapolis, Minn.: Augsburg Publishing House, 1976).

2See Albert C. Outler's essay, "The Place of Wesley in the Christian Tradition," Kenneth E. Rowe, ed., The Place of Wesley in the Christian Tradition (Metuchen, N. J.: The Scarecrow Press, 1976), pp. 11-38.

3Luther's Works, Vol. 41, Church and Ministry III (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1906), p. 114.

4John Wesley, A Plain Account of Christian Perfection (London, Epworth Press, 1952), p. 58.

5A Collection of Hymns for the Use of the Wesleyan Methodist Connection of America (Boston: Published by O. Scott, 1843), p. 198.

Edited by Brian Seidel