THE INTERPRETIVE CONTEXT FOR STRUGGLE
A Response to R. Duane Thompson

by
Major John G. Merritt

"Because we are present to the world, we are condemned to meaning." So said French philosopher Maurice Merleau—Ponty. Whatever that meaning is, it is only open to those who interpretively grapple with it. Not everyone chooses to engage reality in this manner and that is one reason why so many find existence in the world to which they are "present" a meaningless experience. But even those who take up the challenge of being in the world by trying to interpret reality often find the effort painful and frustrating.

There are at least two reasons for this often excruciating experience: First, the context of our "condemnation to meaning" is history—and this means change: change in what trust is perceived to be (even though Truth itself may be unchanging), in the modes of penetrating it, and in the ways it is to be articulated and shared. Second, the change which history entails is experientially encountered—and this means ambiguity: ambiguity about how theological affirmation and existential nitty—gritty coalesce, how their sometimes polarized relations are to be understood, and the means whereby these two foci are to be jointly communicated in ways that are Biblically valid, doctrinally sound and theologically honest.

The problems inherent for Wesleyans in this interaction of change and ambiguity within a theological/historical context are seen and felt in the issues which Professor R. Duane Thompson has addressed in his provocative paper, "The Wesleyan and the Struggle to Forgive." In this essay, it appears to me that the matters which Dr. Thompson treats revolve, by implication, around such questions in the life of holiness as crisis and process, purity and maturity, holiness and humanity—questions so perennial in Wesleyan circles that they have become a bit wearisome. Fortunately, however, Dr. Thompson's approach is not a rehash of these issues, for he takes us at least one step beyond banal restatement toward resolution in a way that honors the mystery surrounding our relationship with God who is holy and the Lord who calls us to holiness. But in maintaining that sense of mystery in his discussion, he keeps any final answers at least one step beyond our reach.

Since I agree in many ways with Dr. Thompson's overall thesis, I would like, in my response, to suggest what, in part, may be involved in a theological and historical perceiving and an honest feeling of those concerns with which he is inviting us to interpretively grapple.

Picking up on my introductory comments, I believe that one of the basic factors which lies at the heart of the problems Professor Thompson pinpoints centers in change—doctrinal change. As Jaroslav Pelikan, the Lutheran historian of dogma at Yale University, and others 1 have so correctly noted, doctrinal change does occur, is quite complex and is doubtless inevitable. Thus the question which Professor Pelikan asks in both his Development of Christian Doctrine: Some Historical Prolegomena and Historical Theology: Continuity and Change in Christian Doctrine 2 is this: When is doctrinal change a healthy development and when does it exceed the limits of legitimate growth?

I know that this problem comes as no new revelation to any of you, but I call it to your attention because I think Mr. Thompson's analyses and tentative proposals involve doctrinal development, if not change. I perceive these developments and/or changes to be on at least two interlocking levels. First, there is the more surface (though not superficial) level of popular understanding and articulation of what is to be expected from the experience of entire sanctification. Here development and/or change involves trying to make sense out of the descent of darkness which may envelope an entirely sanctified believer, the struggle to forgive which may rage within a person who professes to be made perfect in love, and the unwelcome discovery that in the heart on which the image of God is supposed to have been deeply stamped there may be elements which are not exactly Christlike. Dr. Thompson expresses this dimension of his paper by saying: "As Wesleyans some of us may find it hard to acknowledge the reality of the struggles, darkness, and emotional tangles of our lives when we are supposed to be living on the victorious side with joy, peace, magnanimity, and success undiminished and unruffled" (page 81).

Professor Thompson's means of tackling these very real problems take us to a second, sometimes sub—surface, level of possible development and/or change. This is the level of theological presupposition and affirmation, which is reflected in at least three crucial statements: (1) "Entire sanctification does marvelous things. . ., however, not everything is done in the crisis" (page 81); (2) "Even though one is entirely sanctified, floating in one's psyche there are elements which one would want to recognize, deal with, grapple with, struggle with, work through, and come to some higher level of handling of those emotions, attitudes, views, and predispositions than one has achieved up to this point in time" (page 85); and /3) "What I am getting at may not be that different from what has been said by the general evangelist at the most popular levels in holiness circles: the deeper the death, the fuller the life. The only critical difference may be the emphasis in this paper upon the inability of the crisis to complete the depth of death and fullness of the resurrection" (page 85, italics supplied).

The factor which underlies these propositions is the concept of ressentiment which is articulated by Max Scheler in his slender volume by that title. Although an illuminating motif, the term, as explicated by Scheler and summarized by Lewis A. Coser, editor of the book.3 seems to combine elements which Wesleyans traditionally have associated, on explicit Biblical grounds, with indwelling sin and factors which, though perhaps not sin in the strictest sense of the word, are yet expressive of humanity marred by the Fall. Thus the idea of ressentiment must be employed with discretion and caution, which Dr. Thompson obviously has endeavored to do.

Together these two interlocking levels of concern raise questions about the perennial issues earlier indicated. The first is the matter of crisis and process in the fully sanctified life. Does the process before and after the crisis of holiness indicate that God's sanctifying intentions are not fully accomplished even in entire sanctification? That is, does something(s) remain to be done before and after the crisis of entire sanctification which must be realized along processive rather than punctiliar lines? If that is so—and I think it is—are the areas upon which Mr. Thompson touches those aspects that God's sanctifying act does not resolve in that crisis? Are these remaining elements, then, to be dealt with by means of death in the distinct sense that inbred sin is to be slain? If they are not, is Dr. Thompson accurate concerning the inability of the crisis to complete the depth of death to which he has referred? I suggest that, at this point, he may not be quite accurate. For, in trying to relate the correct observations he has made concerning the problems which remain after the experience of entire sanctification with the Wesleyan witness to the radical cleansing which does occur in the experience, I would question whether entire sanctification as a work of grace—that is, as an indispensable component in the process of salvation—does handle these kinds of issues or that it is even intended to do so. By asking these questions and proposing this answer, I would come down on Professor Thompson's side of the issue without, at the same time, limiting the depth of death that does occur in the moment of being wholly sanctified.

Intersecting with this focus on the aims of entire sanctification is the time—frame within which these goals are reached, with these two components always being inseparable in Wesleyan theology. It is at the point of this intersection that Dr. Thompson's analysis of forgiveness, which arises out of his utilization of Scheler's concept of ressentiment, is of particular concern for my response. Professor Thompson's use of the captivating study of forgiveness, Healing Life 's Hurts: Healing Memories through Five Stages of Forgiveness, by Matthew and Dennis Linn 4 is a crucial choice for a Wesleyan. I say that, for if the Linns are correct in placing the process of forgiveness through which a person must struggle in analogous parallel with Dr. Elisabeth Kubler—Ross's schema of the process through which a dying person usually gropes, then this question is raised for the Wesleyan believer: How do we relate the process which inheres in the fact of struggle—a struggle through which one may have to go many times throughout life because of the relational nature of interpersonal contacts—with the crisis liberation attributed to entire sanctification?

Perhaps an even more important question is how a heart made perfect in love could ever have such a struggle, let alone a conflict that is resolved in processive terms rather than in a crisic experience. It may be that an episode in the life of Paul is instructive at this point. In Acts 15:36—41, Paul has a "sharp contention" with Barnabas over Mark's aborted ministry—a kind of interpersonal relationship that Paul negatively evaluates in his Hymn to Perfect Love in 1 Corinthians 13 by stating that love "is not irritable or resentful." All of us know the outcome of this tense incident: two persons who doubtless had been made perfect in love went separate ways. Yet in 2 Timothy 4:11, Paul later requests the presence of Mark because "he is very useful in serving me." Obviously Mark eventually proved his true worth and Paul had forgiven him. Knowing the intensity of Paul's character, I strongly suspect that such forgiveness involved Paul in no little inward struggle over a period of time. Could this be an example of struggle—even to forgive—not being necessarily foreign to a believer with a holy heart?

In proceeding to the Wesleyan formula of purity and maturity, I wish to say that I believe this traditional distinction must be taken with utmost seriousness and must be kept near the surface of our theological, homiletical and didactic consciousness at all times in the ministry of Scriptural holiness. In light of this indispensable dichotomy, it is possible to suggest that the areas touched upon by Dr. Thompson do not constitute moral impurities or evidences of it. These elements may not be fully Christlike, but are they thereby to be classified as impurities? In fact, we may ask: Are Christlikeness and spiritual maturity fully synonymous? If they are not, then are these elements aspects of immaturity until they become moral issues in terms of the believer's sensing the need to rectify them by the assistance of God's grace? I think that the first question may be answered negatively and the second affirmatively, if we posit that areas of inadequacy, weakness and instability—which doubtless do not always refract the image of Christ—are not necessarily and always sin or evidences of moral impurity. I know that I may be walking on a bed of hot coals instead of solid ground in making this proposal, but I think the validity of such distinctions may be reflected in the life of Paul, whom we generally say knew the blessing of a clean heart.

This assertion brings me back to the Apostle's life for a second Biblical example in my argument. For several years, I have been intrigued by the response of Paul, as a supposedly sanctified believer, to a difficult situation preserved for us in 2 Corinthians 2:12—17. In this segment of the epistle, Paul witnesses to the door of service that God had opened for him in Troas. However, he could not bring himself to go through that door because of the inner turmoil of mind over the delay of Titus' arrival with news the Apostle desperately desired to receive. But immediately after saying that he could not go through the door because his anxiety sent him off looking for Titus, Paul—the anxious one who, in another context, admonished the Church to "have no anxiety about anything" (Philippians 4:6, RSV)—has the audacity to praise God for the triumph that he and other believers have in Christ. But, strangely, he does not confess any disobedience to God's guidance and providence. If I had been counseling Paul (!), I think I probably would have said: "Look, Brother, I know you are concerned (dare I say "worried"?)but you must learn to trust God and avail yourself of the opportunity for ministry He has provided. Just commit Titus and Macedonia to God's keeping and get on with the job at hand, which happens to be right here in Troas! "

I am sure that from a purely exegetical standpoint, this is not the main thrust of 2 Corinthians 2:12—17—even as my relating of Acts 15. 1 Corinthians 13 and 2 Timothy 4 does not express the primary concern of those portions of Scripture. However, does not such a reaction by Paul reveal that holy people at times also may manifest what could be called inadequate—and hence less than Christlike—responses in difficult situations and still be called holy people? Thus can we call these areas of inadequacy sin? The Bible does not give an explicit answer to this question; thus we must be cautious in our answer. However, the Bible does give possible examples of such an issue, which also requires us to be cautious in looking negatively at parallel situations. For when we compare the basic New Testament witness to heart purity which comes in a critical moment with the inadequacies of those who apparently possessed such purity, we do have grounds for suggesting that a clean heart and areas of personality which, through their inadequacy are less than Christlike, can exist in the same person—a situation which is doubtless best explained from the perspective of the Wesleyan distinction between purity and maturity.

But when this distinction ceases to be the vantage from which we view very human people as inwardly pure or liberated from inbred sin, at least three things happen: First, we bring the component of glorification in the structure of salvation to bear on the present life of the believer in a way that is foreign to its content and timing in the New Testament, thereby causing Biblical distortion. Second, we cloud the awareness of the believer's full liberation from inbred sin by a false sense of guilt, thereby creating spiritual confusion. And, third, because of the preceding two issues, we remove ourselves from the line of doctrinal continuity with our historical Wesleyan roots, thereby causing theological aberration.

This third statement, of course, turns us from any digression in which I may have indulged back to my basic concern with doctrinal development and/or change. But in returning to this central focus, I again yield to my propensity to be heavy on questions and light on answers, which I now will amply demonstrate with two questions! First, How are we to evaluate the components of Dr. Thompson's analysis of the problems he isolates in trying to relate the difficulties he perceives with the Wesleyan understanding of entire sanctification? Second, How are we to evaluate those emphases by some Wesleyans which seem to rule out struggle and darkness—calling them evidences of sin—in relation to our doctrinal roots in John Wesley? In the light of what I have said, such evaluations must be done within the context of the principles, processes and implications of doctrinal development and/or change. This is a broad context, for it reaches back to historical roots and theological presuppositions of our Wesleyan tradition and reaches forward to the present.

But in saying this, I must be careful to immediately emphasize that the historical roots and the presuppositions of a theological tradition are not to be construed as representing absolute norms which are exempt from criticism. Rather they are, indeed, susceptible to the evaluation of the Biblical revelation for the verification of their truth—claims—and constantly must be subjected to the judgment of Scripture if we are to remain among those who are heirs of the Reformation as well as sons and daughters of Wesley.

However, there are times when we may question the legitimacy of a doctrinal development which produces marked tension within the broader theological expression of a religious tradition. Thus, when the development of a certain major point within a theological tradition is reformulated in a way that is inconsistent with the implicit assumptions of that tradition and/or is not in harmony with one or more explicit expressions of the tradition, doctrinal integrity is thereby weakened. Therefore, any development which weakens doctrinal integrity may mean either (1) that the development is an aberration or (2) that the theological presuppositions which are challenged by the development are themselves in error.

This produces a dilemma: What does one do if one's Biblical reflections constrain one to take a road that leads to a doctrinal change or reformulation? If the development does not challenge the basic theological presuppositions of the tradition, then there is no radical or serious problem. But if the change does constitute an illegitimate development by the standards of the tradition, then one is faced with the further dilemma which may have ethical overtones: Should one persist with the development which, though sincerely held and honestly expressed, does weaken the doctrinal integrity of the tradition and thus over a period of time may transform the tradition into something else? If we are committed to Him who is the Truth, then we must be open to the possibility that such persistence may be a valid, hence, ethical course of action.

I pose these two dilemmas because of the fact that doctrine has a history (contrary to the unfounded assumption that it has no real historical rootage because the truth it expresses is of divine origin, from which it is deduced that doctrine does not and cannot change if it is to remain the truth). Because it does have an actual history, doctrine reflects the phenomenon of change across time. The history of the doctrine of holiness thus did not start with Wesley or Booth or Brengle—or with any of us; and it did not stop with them—nor will it do so with any of us.

However, for the creative involvement in this historical process, those who prefer the more traditional understanding and expression of the doctrine of holiness must make sure (1) that they do not equate their understanding of the truth of sanctification with the Truth as it is in Jesus, lest they become guilty of doctrinal idolatry and (2) that their desire to conserve this understanding and expression does not blind them to the reality of change inherent in history, thereby running the risk of unknowingly restricting their participation with Christ in the history of which He is Lord—the One who is continually doing a "new thing."

But this is not the only "however." For the creative involvement in this historical process, those who prefer newer understandings and expressions of the doctrine of holiness must make sure that they are not blind to the possibility that the changes they suggest may not be the legitimate outgrowth of the historical roots and theological presuppositions of the community of faith of which they are a part and in which they officially serve as ministers of the truth. And it is here that they confront the existential question within this historical/theological context by the necessity of asking themselves if the new tradition which they are helping to shape contributes more adequately towards molding us in the image of Christ than did the older tradition.

By raising the immediately preceding question, I am prepared to suggest that it could be that much of what Dr. Thompson proposes expresses refreshing fidelity to our theological and historical roots because the potential which those proposals have for an intellectually honest liberation from indwelling sin is more consistent with the spirit of the emancipating message of John Wesley than are other approaches within our tradition which, I think, often—though unintentionally—bind and confuse seekers after and possessors of entire sanctification.

I personally believe quite strongly that the interpretation of entire sanctification as a "second work of grace" which thoroughly cleanses the believer from inbred sin subsequent to conversion faithfully reflects the witness of Scripture—and it was primarily this which drew me to the holiness movement in general and The Salvation Army in particular at the age of 27 when I was a minister in a Keswick—oriented rather than Wesleyan-focused denomination. However, I have largely approached this problem of development in the doctrine of holiness from the perspective of historical and theological concerns rather than primarily Biblical ones, because there is much more involved in doctrinal development and/or change than new exegetical probings of Scripture. Consequently, the Biblical studies that raise the possible necessity for fresh formulations and expressions of the doctrine of Christian perfection within the holiness movement cannot be separated from the historical/theological context within which they have been carried out. To be unaware of or to ignore that context when arriving at new and perhaps different interpretations has ecclesiological and ethical ramifications, for Biblical exegesis does not happen in a vacuum. And whether we know it or like it, we all are involved in some way in the interaction of context and content. Thus we must try to keep in balance (even if not too successfully) the interplay between the shaping of Biblical interpretation by its historical/theological context and the possible reshaping of that context by Scriptural exegesis.

Facing these issues can be and is a very painful experience—one to which we are "condemned" if we at all think historically and theologically in the process of reflecting Biblically. Doubtless, we will encounter these dilemmas more than once. As we do so throughout our ministry of Scriptural holiness, let us in desperation depend upon the Spirit of Truth for His discernment and enablement in order that we may more adequately know, express and proclaim Him "who of God is made unto us . . . sanctification."

1See R. P. C. Hanson, The Continuity of Christian Doctrine. (New York: The Seabury Press, 1981); Peter Toon, The Development of Doctrine in the Church (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1979).

2Jaroslav Pelikan, Development of Christian Doctrine: Some Historical Prolegomena. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1969) and Historical Theology: Continuity and Change in Christian Doctrine. (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1971).

3Max Scheler, Ressentiment. Lewis A. Coser, ed.; William W. Holdheim, trans. (New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1961).

4Matthew Linn and Dennis Linn, Healing Life 's Hurts: Healing through Five Stages of Forgiveness (New York: Paulist Press, 1977).