MARXIST AND WESLEYAN ANTHROPOLOGY AND THE PROSPECTS FOR A MARXIST-WESLEYAN DIALOGUE

John C. Luik

Once the essential reality of man in nature, man as the existence of nature for man, and nature for man as the existence of man, has become evident in practical life and sense experience, then the question of an alien being, of a being above nature and man-a question that implies an admission of the unreality of nature and man-has become impossible in practice. Atheism as a denial of this unreality, has no longer any meaning, for atheism is a denial of God and tries to assert through this negation the existence of man; but socialism as such no longer needs this mediation; it starts from the theoretical and practical sense-perception of man and nature as the true reality. Karl Marx 1

From all these texts it manifestly appears, (1) That man was created in the image of God. (2) That this image consisted, not only in his rational and immortal nature, and his dominion over the creatures, but also in knowledge, actual knowledge, both of God and of his works; in the right state of his intellectual powers, and in love, which is true holiness. John Wesley 2

It is by now a theological common-place, if not quite yet a theological convention that Christians and Marxists ought to be engaged in some sort of dialogue with the view to either minimizing major methodological and substantive differences or indeed, eliminating such differences entirely. Whereas this proposition would have scandalized both nineteenth century Christians and Marxists, it is 90 routinely advanced by many of their twentieth century successors that at times it must appear as if only the most theologically primitive would offer any sort of objection to the process of reconciliation.

However, at the risk of appearing unreconstructed, we wish to suggest that this dialogue, at least from the Christian perspective (we do not have the space to explore the Marxist position), might well be misconceived and misguided; misconceived in its premises and intentions and misguided in terms of its fidelity to the central and orthodox claims of Christianity.

This is not to suggest that dialogue is by definition suspect. Christians, as committed hearers and doers of the truth that sets men free can hardly eschew the process of confronting divergent readings of reality. But there is dialogue and then there is dialogue. Dialogue as mutual commitment to clear and careful analysis, to critique, to question and answer, dialogue with a view to conceptual clarification, to resolving unnecessary ambiguity and contradiction, dialogue as enlightenment, is most certainly never amiss. But dialogue which proceeds on the underpinning of epistemological relativism, dialogue which assumes that any position is negotiable and amendable seems incompatible not in merely some peripheral but in some deeply fundamental sense with the essence of Christian belief.

But unfortunately, many of the Christian participants in the contemporary Christian-Marxist dialogue seem unaware that historic Christian belief contains any significant non-negotiables. 3 Indeed, one of the curiosities of the current state of Christian-Marxist relations, is that those in the centre, who actually engage in dialogues, whether exponents of liberation theology or defenders of the "young" humanist Marx, seem willing to go to extraordinary lengths to conceptually accommodate those who view reality in a fundamentally different way, while those on the outside of the dialogue, those who occupy the "extremes," whether fundamentalist Christians or Stalinist Marxists, seem unwilling to consider even dialogue, let alone a modification of their position. Both of these positions display a certain sort of ignorance. For those Christians and Marxists committed to dialogue it is most often an ignorance of their own tradition while for those Christians and Marxists opposed to dialogue it is generally an ignorance of their opponent's tradition.

Seen within this perspective the Wesleyan tradition, firmly rooted in Reformation Christianity and possessing both a sophisticated grasp of the non-negotiables of evangelical theology and a history which has sought to address many of at least the social and economic questions raised by Marx's account of man, seems peculiarly well-fitted to play a central role in the Christian-Marxist dialogue. This paper then is a modest effort at exploring the possibility for Wesleyan-Marxist dialogue through an examination of what is certainly a central element of both belief systems, anthropology. Both systems offer anthropologies which in their various aspects are conceptually normative for the system's entire range of claims. Thus if there is any possibility of a Wesleyan-Marxist dialogue which is to be more than simply a clarification of fundamentally incompatible positions, that possibility is most likely to begin with anthropology.

At the outset it is important to clarify precisely in what direction a comparison between Marx and Wesley should proceed. A good deal of the naivete which characterizes the positions of those who see few theoretical (as opposed to practical) difficulties in the reconciliation of Christianity and Marxism stems from a failure to differentiate between the ways in which opposing belief systems may be compared.

One sort of comparison might be termed structural, that is an analysis of the ways in which the conceptual components of the two systems function. Thus, with Christianity and Marxism, it might be argued that both belief systems have a similar structure. Both, for instance, are rooted in certain fundamental metaphysical and epistemological assumptions about the nature of reality, both offer reasonably comprehensive accounts of the nature of man, both offer analyses of the central problems of men and the societies and both suggest strategies of renewal and reform. When the two systems are compared in this fashion, a Christian-Marxist dialogue which will finally result in a fairly substantial amount of agreement appears quite likely, precisely because the systems seem to be so conceptually similar.

This, however, ignores a second sort of conceptual comparison which might be termed substantive. In a substantive comparison it is not the structural similarities of rival belief systems which are the centre of attention, but rather the actual truth claims that are advanced about knowing and believing, about ultimate reality, and about man and society. And it is these claims, which, though organized in intriguingly similar ways, may turn out to be quite surprisingly resistant to compromise. Far too many Christians seem to have championed the conceptual merits of Marxism on the basis of a superficial acquaintance with the young, humanistic Marx or a simplistic conflation of Marxist alienation with Christian sin, rather than with a clear understanding of the differences between patterns of belief and belief. This analysis of Marxist and Wesleyan anthropology, though not adverse to structural comparison, will concentrate primarily on substantive comparisons, for however structurally compatible Marxism and Wesleyanism may be, these structural similarities are finally valueless in terms of conceptual compatibility without substantive similarities.

III

One of the more difficult aspects in coming to terms with both Marxist and Wesleyan anthropology is that neither system lends itself to ready compartmentalization. Concepts and explanations must be seen not simply in their immediate context but in the larger framework of the entire belief system. This is true not simply about anthropology in general in the sense that in their anthropologies we have the essence of what Marx and Wesley believe about not only man, but the world in general, but also with respect to the components of anthropology itself in which each part stands to the whole as simply a miniature of the same.

This characteristic is particularly evident in the ontological and epistemological foundations of both anthropologies.

According to most standard works, the most fundamental claim that Marx advances is that reality is either wholly material, or that the most significant aspects of reality are determined by material elements, the most important of which is the mode of production. Any good commentator on Marx surely knows that "The mode of production of material life determines the social, political, and intellectual life process in general." 4 But this excessive concentration on the materialist foundation of the Marxist conception of reality has had the unfortunate consequence not only of distorting Marx's general claims (a good many interpretations of Marx which reduce his thought to a system of economic determinism, historical materialism or dialectical materialism - all labels that Marx never used in connection with his thought - are really caricatures) but in diverting attention away from what is surely Marx's central ontological presupposition, namely, that reality is relational. By relational Marx means that the existence of things is understood only through their qualities, which are nothing more than their relations with other things. Thus Marx tells us that "the thing itself is an objective human relation to itself and to man," 5 and he describes man as an "assemble to social relations." 6 Such a conception is even more apparent when Marx notes that "man's physical and spiritual life is linked to nature means simply that nature is linked to itself." 7

As is to be expected, this characterization of reality has important epistemological consequences. Most crucially, it means that our understanding of the world, our knowledge of reality is gained through concepts which are themselves products of the reality which they seek to describe. The qualities of things which we learn of through both common sense perception and scientific study are human products, products of man's needs. Reality, like man himself, is the product of the interaction of man and nature. The world, in effect, is determined through man's consciousness. This is not to say that man creates the objects of reality, but rather that he classifies and conceptualizes the world in an effort to give form to an otherwise formless and conceptually bewildering environment. There are thus no pre-existent forms which structure reality in precedence to human consciousness. Thus while Marx acknowledges that there is an external world and sense perception is generally reliable, he insists that the structure of the world is but another product of human creativity.

Here then is the basis for Marx's attack not simply on the substance but on the structure of bourgeois truth. Truth is not some constant agreement between a proposition and a state of affairs in the world, but rather the product of a particular set of relations understood through a particular construct of historical categories and the capitalist simply cannot perceive himself to be in error for his conception of truth is the product of "capitalist reality." It is not simply that man is a product, for Marx, of his own work, but that nature, indeed, reality in its entirety is a product of man's conceptual efforts.

Thus in the sketchy and oft dismissed ontology and epistemology is the conceptual foundation for Marx's radical attack on religion. Religion is false because it seeks to interject a new relational element into the man-nature relation. Whereas Marx sees man creating himself and nature through a constant tension between what each now is and will yet be, a relationship in which man, if not nature is within limits sovereign, religion seeks to account for both man and nature within a relationship of subordination in which God alone is sovereign and man and nature though important, have no independent intrinsic value. Marx's atheism is thus unlike most traditional forms of religious skepticism, which at least allowed that the question of God's existence could be legitimately posed, in its assertion that the proposition of a relation between nature, man and a being above both is incoherent. As he notes in the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts

Once the essential reality of man in nature, man as the existence of nature for man, and nature for man as the existence of man, has become evident in practical life and sense experience, then the question of an alien being, of a being above nature and man-a question that implies an admission of the unreality of nature and man-has become impossible in practice. Atheism, as a denial of this unreality, has not longer any meaning, for atheism is a denial of God and tries to assert through this negation the existence of man; but socialism as such no longer needs this mediation; it starts from the theoretical and practical sense-perception of man and nature as the true reality. 8

Historic Christianity, the Christianity of John Wesley, would, of course, dissent from this vision of both nature and man. Marx's humanism, which at bottom is the claim that man's construction of reality is the only construction and that the only coherent conception of truth is man's conception of truth, stands squarely opposed to Wesley's epistemology. For Wesley, truth like the reality to which it corresponds, is the product of God's creative activity, exercised either directly or indirectly through human capacities. While there might be something justifiably labeled

human truth, it is truth in the strong sense only as it corresponds with God's knowledge, a knowledge mediated to man through the Bible.

For Wesley it is not man in relation to a nature which he also shapes, who determines reality, but rather God who defines reality. This is not to suggest that Wesley ignores the role of man's needs in shaping reality, for Wesley would allow that man's need for God is determinative in his acceptance of the truth which liberates him from his false consciousness. But while man's needs might shape man's reality, man's needs are for Wesley, as they can never be for Marx, the product of God's purposes.

But it is not simply on epistemological grounds that Marx and Wesley appear incompatible: there is also a radical ontological incompatibility. Indeed, it is this ontological incompatibility which accounts for the epistemological differences. Wesley would agree with Marx that reality is fundamentally relational, but he would insist that it is relational in a very different sense from Marx. 9 For Wesley the only ultimately crucial relation is the relation of subordination and dependence between God and man. It is man's misperception of this relation and God's lengthy and costly efforts at correcting this misperception which comprise the central theme not only of Wesley's anthropology, but of his theology as a whole. For Saint Paul as for Wesley, the Christian is one who regards "no one from a human point of view." 10 For Marx, however, there simply can be no question of any other view, for man and nature are in the end the product of man's efforts alone. Marx is thus but the most recent heir of Protagoras' dictum that reality is nothing more than the sum of anthropology. To posit God is to make nature and man unreal. But for Wesley, man and nature inasmuch as they owe their existence and structure to God, make sense only in the context of their relation to God. In essence, Wesley will allow anthropology only in the context of theology, whereas for Marx the very question of such a relation is incoherent.

These differences for all of their abstractness, are hardly peripheral. Indeed, it could well be argued that these ontological and epistemological prolegomena to Wesleyan and Marxist anthropology are the most substantial examples of what we have above called the non-negotiables of the two belief systems. But on a merely structural comparison of the two systems, this can be easily overlooked. Structurally, both Marx and Wesley think of the world in terms of relations, and thus structurally there appears to be a certain degree of compatibility between the two systems at even the ontological and epistemological levels. But if we penetrate beyond the superficialities of structure to substance, we find that "relation," "know," and "true" are defined in such fundamentally different ways as to make any talk of compatibility seem decidedly curious.

It might, however, be argued that in concentrating on ontology and epistemology we have unnecessarily sharpened the differences while ignoring the very significant ways in which the systems of Marx and Wesley are similar enough to allow for useful dialogue. Both systems it might be suggested, for instance, offer surprisingly similar structural and substantive accounts of man's nature, man's predicament and man's recreation, and it is to an examination of these areas which we must now turn.

The key to understanding Marx's concept of man is Marx's ontology. As we observed above this ontology centers on the notion that reality is relational not in the sense that all things, men and objects, are defined by their relationship to some transcendent being, but in the sense that each element is defined by its relations with every other element. Understanding proceeds finally not on the basis of isolation and abstraction but through all-encompassing synthesis. Man, for Marx, then, cannot be made sense of apart from his relations with nature, fellow men, and himself. Man, as it were, can only be defined relationally. This does not mean, however, despite the fact that it has often been maintained, that Marx does not really have a theory of human nature, that what passes for human nature in Marx is really nothing other than a particular historical configuration of human needs and abilities. Marx implicitly rejects such a view in his criticism of Bentham where he notes that "he that would criticize all human acts, movements, relations, etc., by the principle of utility, must first deal with human nature in general, and then with human nature as modified in each historical epoch." l1 Human nature in general, is thus human nature outside of or more precisely at the beginning of history.

Man qua man, for Marx, is defined primarily in terms of his needs and his abilities which must themselves be viewed relationally. Needs are always viewed in the context of powers in the sense that it is through man's needs that his abilities come to fruition. Man's needs and powers are thus not mismatched in that man has the power to fulfil all of his needs. Marxist man may well suffer, but his suffering is not rooted in a radical disjunction between his needs and abilities and the character of reality.

Marx groups man's needs and powers under two headings, natural needs and powers and species needs and powers. 12 The former are those aspects of man which relate him to the natural world in general and the animal world in particular, and include his desires and capacities for work, sexuality and nourishment. The latter are those characteristics of man which separate man as a species from the rest of the natural world. They are, as it were, what makes man unique. Marx never compiled a definitive list of man's species powers but crucial to man as a species being are at least two capacities, man's ability to recognize himself as man, that is to say his self-consciousness, or the ability to distinguish himself as animals are unable to from his activity, and man's ability to shape himself and the world through his own efforts.

Man, then is not a tabula rasa, he enters the world with certain natural needs and capacities, but this does not imply that man is determined, for characteristic of his species nature is the ability to quite literally make himself in a fashion determined only by himself. There is quite simply no need for a transcendent creator in this model, for man can be fully accounted for, according to Marx, through this analysis of the relationships between needs, capacities and the objects in which those needs and capacities find expression. Human nature is finally the product of the interaction of man's natural powers with nature. Human nature is thus the third term in the relation of human and nature in that it is applied to a being who has both transformed nature and in turn been transformed by nature.

Man is essentially a child of nature . . . the objects of his impulses exist outside him, independently, but these objects are necessary to him to allow him to bring his energies into operation and to affirm them, and are indispensable and significant. To say that man is a being that is corporeal, has natural strength, is alive, real, sentient, and objective means that real, material objects are the object of his being and of the expression of his life, or that he is capable of expressing his life only in relation to real, material objects. 13

Marx does not then abandon 90 much as re-orientate teleology. His teleology is not derived from the transcendent purposes of God but from the immanent needs and powers of species man. Ends are not imposed except by man himself. While it is true that nature for Marx seems to assume many of the determining abilities that are exercised by the Christian God, nature itself is humanized in that it is finally simply another of man's constructs.

Marx's conception of history is quite obviously closely linked to this conception of man's essence. History, for Marx is the process by which man's general nature, his pre-historical character is modified. It is the framework within which man's species character is developed. Just as each historical epoch confronts man with the task of developing novel needs and capacities, so each period represents a new man-nature synthesis. While man retains his general nature, it is not the past which is normative for what he should yet become, but only the future, a future which according to Marx contains an ever richer realization of his species powers. Man's creation as ongoing thus differs substantially from the Christian vision of creation. Christian creation is properly recreation and though reaching its fulfillment in the future, it will in essence be only a recapitulation of the past. The Marxist future, it might be argued, is thus very open, for it will center on but the most recent of man's human natures, a nature which has yet to emerge. If this is correct, it is easy to understand why Marx was so vague in describing the future communist state and unalienated man. Precise accounts of human nature are possible only to a transcendental theology with an easily interpreted revelatory tradition. For the Marxist, the doctrine of man's self creation if taken seriously must logically rule out all but the vaguest generalizations about the future.

But most of Marx's conceptual efforts were directed not to the future, but to the present and the past, for it was there that man's crucial problem lay. The historical process has, according to Marx, produced a social and economic system which instead of furthering man's species capacities has rather atrophied them. Marx characterizes this condition as one of estrangement or alienation and while he describes this condition as one of estrangement or alienation and while he describes it in different ways, alienation in its most fundamental sense involves a disruption of the characteristically human relations between man and himself in the sense that man finally loses his conception of himself as a man. Alienation is thus both the process and the consequence of the destruction of man's species capacities.

. . . man . . . no longer feels himself to be freely active in any but his animal functions-eating, drinking, procreating, or at most in his dwelling and in dressing up, etc.; and in his human functions he no longer feels himself to be anything but an animal. What is animal becomes human and what is human becomes animal. Certainly eating, drinking, procreating, etc., are also genuine human functions. But in the abstraction which separates them from the sphere of all other human activity and turns them into sole and ultimate ends, they are animal. 14

Despite the parallels in imagery-the trading of human and animal nature-this is not the Christian conception of sin, in that the relations which are estranged are fundamentally different. In the Christian notion of sin it is the god-man relation which has been disrupted by man's rebellious re-ordering of the divine precedence of love, namely, God, fellows, and self, while in Marx's conception of alienation, it is primarily man's estrangement from himself, and from his species needs and powers which is central. This is to say that the sources and objects of Christian and Marxist alienation are distinct.

There is, however, one intriguing parallel in terms of sources. Although Marx is often represented as attributing the evils of alienation to ignorance, this is not strictly accurate. Alienated men, and in particular alienated capitalists appear to have genuinely evil dispositions which are not attributable to mere ignorance, but might be taken to represent a fundamental corruption of human capacities. But the ultimate origin or source for such evil dispositions is as conceptually unanswerable for Marx as it is for Christians.

But while unable to provide an ultimate source for alienation, Marx is certainly able to suggest its proximate origin in private property, money and the State itself. And it is this diagnosis that suggests the prescription for change. All of the sources of man's estrangement are firmly within his own powers to put right. The elimination of alienation for Marx does not hinge upon either supernatural knowledge or mediation, though it does require a correct reading of reality. Because man's nature is fashioned in relation to the institutional arrangements in which he participates, if those institutions are changed, then surely man's nature must also change. The task is to bring sensitivity, intelligence and skill to the re-ordering of society and thus indirectly to the reordering of man himself. All of this is not so much re-creation or re-construction as it is liberation, and it is significant that Marxist accounts of the future society and the future man center on the concept of freedom rather than recovery. Whereas the new Christian man is simply Adam restored, newness being essentially oldness recreated, the new Marxist man, man freed from alienation is not man restored to any past nature which is constitutive of humanness, but man once more aware of himself as man, and open to the fullest realization of his species needs and capacities, whatever that might entail, that the future might bring.

Just as Marx's conception of man derives from his ontology, so with Wesley. But inasmuch as the ontologies are radically different, it is not surprising that the images of man are also substantially different. Whereas man for Marx has an essence as a species being that he alone has brought into being, man for Wesley in what may be termed his species sense is a being who is the product of God's creative purposes, both initially in creation and subsequently in the new birth. Both Wesley and Marx are thus teleologists, but teleologists of a fundamentally different sort. Both history and man have an end for Marx, but the end is wholly immanent, it derives from nothing more than the characteristic purposes of man displayed in the historical process. Wesley, on the other hand sees man's end as his beginnings, as something wholly transcendental in the sense of finally conforming to God's purposes. This teleological ordering of man's end must not, however, be pushed too far, lest it entail a contradiction of Wesley's emphasis on freedom. Wesley's anthropology, like that of much of historic Christianity, exhibits a tension between God's teleological ordering and man's freedom to make himself in defiance of God's purposes. Wesley, of course, rejects the extreme teleological determinism of predestination, but it is not obvious that he thereby secures the libertarianism which he desires. As long as he insists on a traditional reading of the doctrine of original sin in which man enters the world with sinful dispositions derived from Adam, dispositions which are uniformly translated into sinful actions, then it is difficult to see how Wesley can avoid some form of soft determinism. Implicit then in a transcendental teleology is a limitation on freedom. Wesley's man has no role in his initial making, either in terms of the first man who was perfectly made or subsequently in his corrupt descendants. Man's freedom, for Wesley is strictly limited to consenting to and assisting with his remaking in the processes of regeneration and sanctification. But even this is a curiously qualified sense of freedom in that the shape of re-made man is determined not by man himself but rather by God. Freedom then for Wesleyan man is the freedom to either accept or to reject a divinely conceived teleology.

This is all the more important in Wesley's distinction between man as defined by the image of God and man "in a mere natural state." l5 Man defined by the image of God is the Wesleyan counterpart of Marx's species man; it is man in his distinctive sense, man with all of his needs and powers properly ordered.

Now, "man was made in the image of God." But "God is a Spirit;" So therefore was man. (Only that spirit, being designed to dwell on earth, was lodged in an earthly tabernacle.) As such, he had an innate principle of self-motion. And so, it seems, had every spirit in the universe; this being the proper distinguishing difference between spirit and matter, which is totally, essentially passive and inactive, as appears from a thousand experiments. He was, after the likeness of his creator, endued with understanding; a capacity of apprehending whatever objects were brought before it, and of judging concerning them. He was endued with a will, exerting itself in various affections and passions: And, lastly, with liberty, or freedom of choice; without which all the rest would have been in vain, and he would have been no more capable of serving his Creator than a piece of earth, or marble; he would have been as incapable of vice or virtue as any part of the inanimate creation. l6

Sharply contrasted to man in the image of God, however, is natural man, a being who is radically defective.

Accordingly, in that day he did die: He dies to God,-the most dreadful of all deaths. He lost the life of God: He was separated from Him, in union with whom his spiritual life consisted. The body dies when it is separated from the soul; the soul, when it is separated from the soul; the soul, when it is separated from God. But this separation from God, Adam sustained in the day, the hour, he ate of the forbidden fruit. And of this he gave immediate proof; presently showing by his behavior, that the love of God was extinguished in his soul, which was now "alienated from the life of God." Instead of this, he was now under the power of servile fear, so that he fled from the presence of the Lord. Yea, so little did he retain even of the knowledge of Him who filleth heaven and earth, that he endeavoured to "hide himself from the Lord God among the trees of the garden:" (Gen. ii. 8:). So had he lost both the knowledge and the love of God, without which the image of God could not subsist. Of this, therefore, he was deprived at the same time, and became unholy as well as unhappy. In the room of this, he had sunk into pride and self-will, the very image of the devil; and into sensual appetites and desires, the image of the beasts that perish.

While a man is in a mere natural state, before he is born of God, he has, in a spiritual sense, eyes but sees not; a thick impenetrable veil lies upon them - he has ears, but hears not, he is utterly deaf to what he is most of all concerned to hear. His other spiritual senses are all locked up: He is in the same condition as if he had them not. Hence he has no knowledge of God . . . either of spiritual or eternal things; therefore, though he is a living man, he is a dead Christian. But as soon as he is born of God, there is a total change in all these particulars....17

Notice what it is that characterizes natural man. It is not simply the natural processes the "sensual appetites and desires, the image of the beasts that perish," which natural man according to Wesley shares with the rest of the natural world, but rather the fact that natural man is" 'alienated from the life of God.' " Thus while it is true to observe that both Marx and Wesley have a theory of alienation, the substance of their respective theories is quite distinct. Here again, the differences derive from different ontologies. While Wesley would acknowledge other aspects to alienation, the root of all of man's estrangement is his alienation from the "life of God," from God's image. Whatever other sorts of alienation may exist, they are all subsequent to and dependent upon this fundamental alienation. Thus, while Wesley would allow that man is alienated from his fellow men, and that this has the most unfortunate consequences for the life of men together, this alienation is but an effect of man's primary alienation from God's purposes. Similarly, while Wesley might agree with Marx's contention about the estrangement of man from his work and the natural world, he would insist that these are but symptoms of a more profound incompleteness which inheres in his relationship with his creator. Moreover, Wesley would even allow, with Marx, that man is alienated from himself, from his species nature, but it is a species nature which is ordered by God. Thus even if we were to read Wesley as arguing that man's essential alienation is alienation from his true self, we would yet be obliged to note that man has no role in defining his true self. However construed, the doctrine of alienation will not bring us any closer to rendering Marx and Wesley compatible for alienation for Wesley is alienation from God's image, which is indisputably normative for what man is to be.

As is to be expected, the differences between Wesley and Marx regarding man's essential nature and defect do not disappear when we turn to prescriptions for reconstruction and renewal. Man's task, according to Wesley, is the recovery of his rightful image, God's image. Man's task is not the initiation, the creation of a distinctively human nature, but the imitation of the divine nature.

By salvation I mean, not barely, according to the vulgar notion, deliverance from hell, or going to heaven; but a present deliverance from sin, a restoration of the soul to its primitive health, its original purity; a recovery of the divine nature; the renewal of our souls after the image of God, in righteousness and true holiness, in justice, mercy and truth." 18

The process of recovery though a cooperative venture between man and God, is initiated and directed by God. It is begun, according to Wesley, by God's grace, which is both cognitive and affective, beginning as it were a reordering of both man's knowledge and his loves. In this sense, renewal again harkens back to epistemology, for renewal can begin only with man's recognition of his radical alienation and incompleteness before God. Knowing reality as it is, knowing the truth is the beginning of the recovery of the divine image. As Wesley noted: "So had he lost both the knowledge and the love of God, without which the image of God could not subsist." 19 Although

the truths which make renewal possible are radically different, both Wesley and Marx allow that it is truth which frees man from his false image of Renewal and recovery thus shape for Wesley as they do for Marx, the structure of history. History for Wesley, is not primarily the record of man's deeds, but the process of divine disclosure and redemption. In this sense both the past and the future are foreclosed. The future is as much given, in that it is determined by God's purposes, as the past has been. Man's recovery of God's image and God's recovery of the world though future are also past in that what man is to become is nothing more than what he once was. Thus while for Marx it is the future which is normative, the future communist society which is unalienated and in which man's species powers reach their fullest potential, for Wesley it is really the past which is normative. Man's goal is to be renewed which is nothing more than the recovery of his, read God's, lost image. History then for Wesley is moving towards its origins, towards its beginnings, in which Adam will once more inhabit Eden.

In light of this all too cursory examination of Marxist and Wesleyan anthropology what are the prospects for Marxist-Wesleyan dialogue? Certainly dialogue as a mutual mapping of unfamiliar conceptual terrain is to be welcomed. There are substantial areas of confusion and ignorance in both Marxist and Wesleyan perceptions of the other's positions which can only be eliminated through a close, sympathetic and sustained grappling with the alternative belief system. Then too, the process of dialogue may yield some quite genuinely novel insights into the structure and substance of one's own positions. There is, for instance, much in Marx's analysis of man's alienation from his fellows and from his creative capacities that might be "appropriated" by a contemporary Wesleyan seeking to be true to Wesley's vision of social reform and renewal. On the other hand, there is much in Wesley's account of man's original state of perfection that, shorn of its unacceptable ontological associations, could well provide the Marxist with the basis for a much richer notion of what unalienated man is to be. But the prospects for a dialogue which moves beyond a clearer understanding of the alternative belief system and a more creative interpretation of one's own tradition toward conceptual convergence is unlikely. It is unlikely because the most fundamental ontological claims of each position are simply non-negotiable. We noted above that one of the intriguing aspects of Marxism and Wesleyanism is their structural similarities. This is true not simply in the more obvious sense that both have certain key ontological and epistemological assumptions, that both present accounts of man's nature, that both point to a central defect within that nature and that both prescribe strategies of reform and renewal, but in the less obvious sense that the ontologies of both, and to a lesser extent, the epistemologies of both are structurally determinative of the other aspects of the theories. Thus, for instance, both Wesley's and Marx's conceptions of alienation are inextricably linked to their respective ontologies. Structurally neither system has any significant elements which are detachable and capable of independent conceptual employment within an alternatively conceived ontological framework.

If this is correct, then it is more than simply Marxist or Wesleyan ontology, which is incompatible; it is the entire range of substantive claims of each theory. And, as it is exceedingly unlikely that either system will alter its ontology, the prospects for a dialogue culminating in fundamental compatibility are exceedingly slight.

Notes

1Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts in Karl Marx's Early Texts, D. McLellan, Trans. & Ed., Oxford, Blackwell, 1971, pp. 156-157.

2John Wesley, Works. Third Edition, Grand Rapids, Baker, Vol. IX, p. 293.

3See, for instance, Jose Miranda, Marx Against the Marxists: the Christian Humanism of Karl Marx, J. Drury, Trans. New York, 1980.

4Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, N. Stone, Trans. Chicago, 104, p. 11.

5Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. M. Milligan, Trans. Moscow, 1959, p. 103.

6K. Marx & F. Engels, The German Ideology, R. Purcel, Trans. London, 1942, p. 118.

7 1844 Manuscripts, Milligan, p. 74.

8Economic & Phil. Manuscripts, McLellan, pp. 156-157.

9See Mildred Wynkoop, A Theology of Love, Kansas City, 1972, Chap. 6

10 II Corinthians, V:16.

11K. Marx, Capital I. S. Moore & E. Aveling, Trans. Moscow, 1958, p. 609.

12See Bertell Ollman, Alienation: Marx 's Conception of Man in Capitalist Society, Cambridge, 1971.

13K. Marx, National Economy and Philosophy in Marx, Early Writings, Stuttgart, 1953, p. 274.

141844 Manuscripts, Milligan, p. 73.

15Wesley, Works, VI, p. 70.

16Ibid, p. 242.

17Ibid, pp. 67-70.

18Wesley, Works, VIII, p. 47.

19Wesley, Works, VI, p. 68.

Edited by Brian Seidel