CELEBRATING GOD’S CALL AND OUR POTENTIAL

by

John N. Oswalt

I find myself increasingly glad to be identified with Wesleyan-Arminian theology. This is so because the more I study Scripture, the more I am convinced that the theology captures best the great themes of the Bible. In the Bible’s pages I find divine sovereignty and human freedom, the demands of law and the offers of grace, imputation and impartation, total depravity and human capacity for response. And when I look for a theology which holds all of these together, lovingly yet joyously, it is that of Arminius and Wesley.

But, perhaps most of all, in the Bible I see a ravishing picture of the beauty of the character of God and of His dream for sharing that character with us. This is what the Bible is about. It is a love story. The story of a tempestuous and stormy affair between a mighty Prince and the smudged servant girl He has chosen. It is about His faithfulness to death and her faithfulness, about His frustration and her fickleness, about the flickering dawning of her love and the infinite patience of her lover, about the beginnings of a faint understanding of what she might be in his love and of His gently disclosing more and more of Himself to her until, at first tentatively, and then with increasing assurance she could surrender herself to His love and come home to herself in His arms, and—yes—He could come home to her heart from which He had been so long barricaded.

It is the sense of this drama which Wesley and his followers have captured so superlatively. Have mistakes been made, especially by Wesley’s followers? Of course. Have some unfortunate detours been taken? No doubt. But the fact remains that in this theology the heart of the good news is caught. And that good news is not merely that God isn’t mad at us any more, it is also that we do not have to keep on doing what made Him mad in the first place. We may live lives like His. That is great news.

It has often been remarked somewhat condescendingly that Wesley was no systematic theologian. I wonder if it is not time we recognized that as one of his strong points. I do not mean to denigrate all systematizing. God has given us rational and logical minds that we might bring order into the diverse data of life. The problem comes when the system overrules the data. I believe it was precisely because Wesley was so deeply involved with the unsystematic data of life and of the Scripture, that he never came to create a system like Calvin’s Institutes. And that’s not bad. That means there is room in Wesley's thought for some of the paradoxes of God's creation and His Word, which, if honestly dealt with, blow holes in any humanly devised system.

For this reason I grow increasingly uneasy with the style of exegesis which is practiced today by both right and left in theology. It is a positivistic style. As you will remember, Positivism denied any reality to Spirit and exalted physical, material facts. This means that the reality of, for instance brotherly love, which cannot be weighed or measured, was denied and the "reality" of, say, pancreatic secretions was substituted. Positivism was, and is, a classic case of missing the forest for the trees. Now I do not want to deny the reality of pancreatic secretions, or whatever, or the importance of studying those, but I do want to deny that that level of being is all there is to reality.

The same kind of thing is done with scriptural exegesis. And the increasingly arid results as seen in scholarly meetings and publications ought to give pause to those of us who have a concern for the spirit of the biblical teaching. I am not calling for a return to an uncontrolled spiritualizing or allegorizing or typologizing exegesis. But I am questioning an exegesis which invalidates an evident thrust of the Scripture because that style of exegesis cannot find "scientific" support for it. I suggest this is analogous to that positivism which said that brotherly love did not exist because no "scientific" evidence of it existed. The conclusions were wrong because the method was inadequate. It forced the data to conform to a logical system whose logic was too small to comprehend the complexity of the data. I fear we do the same in some of our exegesis.

To be specific, does the Bible support the doctrine of entire sanctification as a second definite work of grace? Well, what method will you use to determine that? If you demand a concrete statement of that proposition at the beginning or the end of a chain of logic, you will be hard pressed to answer yes. But then so will you have difficulty finding conversion as a first definite work of grace. There is a lot of talk about people who have come to believe that Jesus is the Christ and are living different lives, but very little about an instantaneous crisis of conversion. Shall we then take the positivist approach and deny that there is such a thing? Absolutely not. For when you take all the teachings relating to the new life in Christ and plot the inferences of each you find them all converging on a point. That point is the crisis moment of faith.

Wesley was a master in the use of this inferential method. In his sermons is very little technical exegesis. But, oh my, his capacity to digest great chunks of Scripture and then to say, "Ah, here is the common element. Here is the central thrust. Here is what they mean!" Did he despise close, careful linguistic exegesis? Absolutely not! But he realized that when he finished the grammatico-historical task, he was not done, he had just started.

Some will say that such a method is hard to control and I will grant that. I will also grant that it does not result in the neatest system with which to beat your enemy over the head. But then, who wants to?

Now what about the concept of sanctification as being somehow completeable in a moment? First of all, there is the thrust of the entire Old Testament-"You must-you may!--be like me." If the Old Testament is about anything, it is about the unfolding character of the Holy God and the tragedy of a people's inability to do what they knew. Yet in the midst of that failure comes the Divine promise-repeated in so many particulars-"I will make you like myself." And the Old Testament closes on that note, "When, Lord?"

Now the question is whether the New Testament turns a corner and introduces a different motif. Does God in fact declare them holy by virtue of a relationship without producing any substantial change in character? This is where Wesley and Luther part company. Wesley could joyfully accept a new standing by grace but he also expected a new character by grace. So does the New Testament. Can any read Paul's letters and doubt that he offered his converts-expected of them-a holy character?

But was not the character Paul was talking about achieved in the moment of conversion? Look at his exhortations to a level of life not yet achieved. None is any clearer than that in Colossians: "Put to death therefore what is earthly in you-Put on what is heavenly." He is speaking to Christians. I Thessalonians is similar.

Yes, but what of the instantaneous element? Do not these passages admit of a progressive, never-quite-realized interpretation? But look at his figures and his language. They speak of something done, with continuing and increasing effect to be sure, but nevertheless something done. But beyond this what of the Old Testament promises? They too speak of something done. Are they fulfilled in the New Testament or not? The New Testament says they are. I believe so.

I ask you, is not the whole thrust of the Bible toward a life of holiness--godlikeness? Is it not offered, expected of, us? Is it not to be achieved by grace through faith? Is it not ours through Jesus' atoning death? Then why should we draw back from it?

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