A RESPONSE TO HAROLD BURGESS

The fundamental problem for Wesleyan ministry is really no different than for any other system of belief that invokes action. Theory and practice, doxis and praxis, may be a simple way to reduce the problem but it is the problem and it is no simple problem. In the setting of the church the problem is presumed to divide theology and ministry, and practically, too often does.

Theology is a rational function. It has to do with knowing. It has to do with the head. Ministry requires the affective and behavioral dimensions of human existence. In a world that can live neither with nor without its inheritance from rationalism, the division between theology and ministry in the church sounds like a philosophical echo of questions about the relationship between the mind and the body and the is and the ought.

No general announcement of the resolution of these issues in Western intellectual tradition is on the horizon, Process Thought notwithstanding. Furthermore, it is the consistent practice of those who think about the issue to seek for resolution by redefinition. The result is that the priority of head to heart is reasserted and the division is magnified.

From the other side of the division comes the worthy complaint that to wait until the head has its act together is to wait forever. What people are feeling and doing often cannot wait for some theological laboratory to run its tests. The people of God honor the judge and the prophet as well as the wise man. Charismata is as Biblical as sophia. Charismata is like pitch. It is sticky, picks up any loose dirt, and spreads with a touch. But it can also plug knotholes and keep the ark afloat.

The issue will only be more thoroughly pressed if our attempts at resolution involve only redefinition on the one hand and virtual ignoring of the issue on the other. We need another mode, another method to work with the problem. The whole problem involves the whole person, head and heart and hands.

This paper, which we have just heard, is a contribution to the continuing discussion about this division. In a significant footnote Mr. Burgess finds a lame man at the door of our pedagogical temples. "Perhaps," he says, "we tend to preserve this disjunction between theology and practice by the way we organize the learning experience of ministry students, i.e., theology is commonly taught as a classical discipline, ministry as a practical one." But again, the attempt to resolve the problem directs itself toward redefinition. And we cannot succeed at simply defining the problem away.

Nor is that really the intent of this paper overall. The intent of the paper is to direct us first to more critical perception of the linkage between a theology which is espoused and actual practices of ministry; and secondly, to establish a standpoint for evaluating the results of ministry. These two objectives are to be accomplished in a context of self-conscious Wesleyanism.

With regard to the first objective the author assures us that the options for establishing the linkage between theology and ministry are more articulate if not actually more numerous in our own time than in Wesley's. Names such as Freud and Jung suggest the theoretical distance between Wesley and us.

Because I think rather concretely, I looked for examples in which present Wesleyans are enlarging the breach between theology espoused and ministry practiced. I think I found one in the author's suggestion that we are too Rogerian. I am frankly not positive what that means. At first I thought it meant that we are too non-directive in our inculcation of theory and our encouragement to practice. But to correct that would be to tend in the direction of the very scholasticism that is condemned in the next several paragraphs. So I rejected that meaning. I decided that it must mean that we anticipate the healing of the soul from within, that the natural tendency of the human is to sound theology and true ministry and the role of the spiritual helper is to help the soul discover its own natural ability. Here is certainly a serious critique, a failure of theological nerve, and the grounds for a counterproductive ministry. Understood thus, our Rogerian tendencies are a good example of the distance between theology systematic and theology pastoral.

With regard to the second objective, I naturally wanted the author not just to say that we ought to establish a standpoint for evaluating the results of ministry, but to go right ahead and establish it. He did us the negating service of criticizing lip-service theology that considers its task complete once creedal words have been hung in the air. And there is the abstract "benchmark" statement drawn from the Book of Discipline of the United Methodist Church that . . . "the only infallible proof of a true church of Christ is its ability to seek and to save the lost, to disseminate the Pentecostal spirit and life, to spread scriptural holiness, and to transform all peoples and nations through the gospel of Christ." But the task is surely to press beyond the negative and/or the abstract and run up some flags emblazoned with standards concrete enough to be evaluated. This the author believes Wesley succeeded in doing. The standards may not be clear now. But the mutual accountability of theology to ministry and ministry to theology did seem to work in Wesley's life.

Finally, it is to be noted that these two objectives are to be achieved in the context of a self-conscious Wesleyanism. The frequent attempts to invoke Wesley as one who accomplished both the objectives desired by this paper can be considered only mildly successful for the reason that neither is dealt with in a clear and direct way by Wesley himself. The author confesses as much with regard to the second objective where he says (in a footnote) that "it would be difficult to prove that Wesley employed a formal hypothesis-making and testing procedure." What the author does help us to see is that Wesley might more properly be viewed as a model than a mentor. That he manages to unite theology and ministry is his major contribution. How he manages to unite theology and ministry remains for his followers to articulate and emulate.

That he was able to hold his theology accountable to his ministry and his ministry to his theology is important in the history of the Christian faith. How he did this is important right now.

There are certain standards bequeathed to us from Wesley that can give us guidance. They are not necessarily the standards that we most often admire in the churches of Wesley, either doctrinal or behavioral. With reflection and maturity, the doctrinal and behavioral standards are seen to be neither the most noble nor the most interesting inheritances. Rather the standards by which Wesley moves from question to answer, or, more practically from problem to resolution, appears to be far more interesting, and informative.

For example, it is a truism among Wesleyan scholars that Wesley was quite at home with the quadrilateral of theological authority propounded in the Anglican church. Debate may flourish about the degree of primacy accorded faith over reason in Wesley but reason remains valued, trusted, invoked. "It is a fundamental principle with us that to renounce reason is to renounce religion, that religion and reason go hand in hand, and that all irrational religion is false religion" (Letter to Dr. Rutherforth, Letters V, 364). Like emphasis could be adduced from his writings to support as well experience, tradition and the Scripture as sources of authority for theology. This coupling of experience especially with scripture or reason or tradition creates a sense of risk for both theology and ministry. A Wesleyan theology demands the risk and a Wesleyan ministry will bear it. It is a methodological standard and a guarantee that Doctrine and service belong together.

There are other standards of Wesleyan theology that can only be understood in the practice of people influenced by it. For example, a Wesleyan ministry is more concerned to see people "converted" than to see them "get saved." Wesleyanism appreciates the theological categories which accompany conversion that are common to evangelicalism in general. But emphasis creates a degree of difference. Two illustrations might help. The Wesleyan, along with other evangelicals, sees the experience of conversion as instantaneous, supernatural, and sometimes accompanied by tremendous emotional upheaval. Wesley's own experience of this in meetings where he preached occasioned at least one letter in which he deals with the relationship between emotional "peaking" and conversion. He simply acknowledges that such emotion whether silent and brooding or noisy and frenetic accompanies conversion. ". . . What influence sudden and sharp awakenings may have upon the body I pretend not to explain" (Works, I, 208). And, in fact, he could leave his reader wondering if such emotional upheaval is a product of the piercing of the sword of the spirit or the devil's work of distraction. What he does not leave his reader wondering about is the nature of the association of high emotion with true conversion. "The merciful issue of these conflicts in the conversion of the persons thus affected, is the main thing" (loc. cit.). Thus emotion is devalued. And the conversion, though perhaps accompanied by emotion, is not verified by emotion but by change. "The influence on some of these (people thus affected), like a landflood, dries up; we hear of no change wrought: But in others it appears in the fruits of righteousness, and the tract of a holy conversation (loc. cit.). These words of Wesley make it clear that the emphasis in a Wesleyan ministry must be entirely upon the fact of conversion and not upon the circumstances of conversion. And the fact of conversion manifests itself in positive change subsequently observed.

A second illustration of the Wesleyan interest in conversion rather than getting people saved may be seen in Wesley's understanding of assurance. That conversion is accompanied by a profound assurance for the convert many evangelicals would readily affirm. Wesley, however, is careful to distinguish in good Arminian fashion, that it is the assurance of present pardon and not the assurance of final perseverance and salvation that the convert receives (Works, I, 160, and IX, 32). Final salvation is the goal toward which conversion turns us. Between conversion and final salvation lies the project of love perfected.

The point of all this is that while the Wesleyan ministry identifies with the theological language of evangelicalism generally, a closer examination reveals that there are significant emphases that actually distinguish the Wesleyan idea of "conversion" from "being saved." A Wesleyan ministry understands the supernatural, emotional, instantaneous nature of conversion. A Wesleyan ministry understands assurance and its place in conversion. But this understanding, this theology, is nuanced in quite a different way from the rest of evangelicalism because of its demand for evidence in practice. The instant of conversion is not the objective of a Wesleyan evangelistic ministry because conversion is not simply a juridical and irrevocable adjustment of eternal destiny. The work of God for us which produces conversion is not an end in itself. The objective of the work of God for us is to commence His work in us. A Wesleyan ministry does not excite to "getting saved." Theologically and practically, a Wesleyan ministry can only understand conversion.

We ought to note along the way that Wesley demurred at using the word "conversion" because it is 90 "rarely used in the New Testament." That consideration gives an air of the hypothetical to all we have been saying about setting a standard for evaluating a Wesleyan ministry. But it is hypothetical only in the sense that Wesley never addressed the issues precisely as they are raised for us.

This consideration bears especially upon a second standard of a Wesleyan ministry which I would like to project. Howard Snyder has done a great deal of the groundwork for setting this standard. He reminds us that Wesley's view of ministry may be described as charismatic. While I do not wish to disagree that Wesley's view of ministry is something other than strictly institutional I would feel uneasy with a wholesale description of Wesley's view of the ministry as charismatic. In fact, I would want to argue that apart from suggesting that Wesley softens the institutionalism ordinary in his day and to his office in the church, the word charismatic obscures rather badly Wesley's view of ministry. The reason is that Wesley is so much more articulate in both theory and practice about spiritual discipline and so incomplete in his descriptions of the scriptural basis, history and function of spiritual gifts. In short, the second standard of a Wesleyan ministry is a preference for spiritual disciplines above spiritual gifts.

The structure with which John Wesley endowed the institution that was named in derision of that structure may be sufficient to remind us of the surpassing value placed upon the orderly transference between theology and practice. By contrast, as Howard Snyder points out, Wesley's attempt to distinguish between ordinary and extraordinary spiritual gifts simply bequeaths a confusion to Wesley's heirs. Wesley's judgment that the extraordinary gifts have not operated in the church from the fourth century to the present, for whatever reason, makes it impossible to speak meaningfully of him as charismatically inclined in the sense of modern hard-core charismatic theology. Even a soft-core charismatic interest suffers when Wesley balances against the extraordinary gifts of the spirit what he calls the ordinary fruits of the spirit ( Works, V, 38) in his sermon on "Scriptural Christianity" and what he calls "the ordinary gifts of the Holy Ghost" in his sermon "The More Excellent Way" (Works VII, 27). These "ordinary" gifts include:

1) "convincing speech, " in order to "sound the unbelieving heart;"

2) "persuasion" to move the affections, as well as enlighten the understanding. "

3) Knowledge both of the word and of the works of God, whether of providence or grace.

4) faith . . . which goes far beyond the power of natural causes.

"We may desire," he continues, "whatever would enable us, as we have opportunity, to be useful wherever we are." The element of the supernatural is not essential here. Furthermore, the recipient is in no sense passive and a gift simply visited upon him or her. These "ordinary gifts" could be attributed to talents quite as readily as to charismata.

But the really convincing argument that spiritual disciplines are more highly valued than spiritual gifts in a Wesleyan ministry is the dramatic shift in this very sermon from a rather cursory examination of spiritual gifts which concludes in a paean of praise to love in the style of I Corinthians 13 to a full-bodied presentation of the disciplines of holiness.

The quotation could be extended yet several paragraphs as Wesley works out in considerable detail the kinds of disciplines that will characterize the quest for holiness.

If these two standards are typical of Wesley and a Wesleyan ministry it is because they view man as an active participant in both his spiritual birth and nurture. The passivity implied in being saved and in popular notions of charismata are simply not characteristic of Wesley.

Harold Burgess began his paper with a story about his students. Let me conclude with a story about one of mine. As a Master's level student, he was very unhappy about the C he received on his major paper in a seminar on theology. He is a fine fellow and I suppose I must tell you that he is a firm pentecostal. When his understandable wrath had subsided at the grade he had received he explained that he was simply a preacher, that he hadn't an analytical mind and that he just "didn't have the gift of academic writing." What could I say? I have no experience of academic writing as a gift. I know it only as a discipline.

If theology and ministry are ever to be united, the proof will appear in the ability to activate the people of God in quest of their own spiritual well-being and that of others. That Wesley succeeded at this will continue to fascinate us. How Wesley succeeded at this will continue to challenge us.