THEOSIS IN CHRYSOSTOM AND WESLEY:
AN EASTERN PARADIGM ON FAITH AND LOVE

by
Steve McCormick

Winds of change are blowing the sweet sounds of freedom throughout our world these days. Just a little over a year ago, we watched with both shock and joy as the Berlin Wall tumbled; and just a few weeks ago, we celebrated the reunification of Germany. Now, as the rest of the Eastern Bloc looks to the West for help in understanding its newly found freedom, the West must begin to rethink its own freedom and identity in a context which includes parts of the world which have for some time, until just now, been closed to its ideology. The Wesleyan tradition has not been untouched by these changes. As East looks to West and West to East, Wesleyans, who are for the most part Westerners, find themselves looking eastward, seeking to understand Wesley's relationship to Eastern Orthodoxy.

For a Wesleyan to make sense of Orthodoxy, the Wesleyan must listen as if to a fiddler playing a tune in which divine grace and human freedom are in perfectly balanced harmony. The tune is sweet, but it is unfamiliar to western ears. It is a tune which correlates the mysteries of incarnation and redemption, and it has not always been clearly heard, for the lyrics sound both western and eastern. Western in their crying out that the pardoning gift of the Cross is for me; eastern in their crying out that Christ reveals both God and my real self to me. Western in their words of justification and of the forgiveness of guilt; eastern in their words of sanctification, with its healing of corrupt nature and its restoration of the imago dei. The Wesleyan tradition's own lyrics pick up those of the East. The Wesleyan variation on the tune which balances divine grace and freedom harmonizes the mystery of the incarnation with the mystery of redemption in such a way that the western word of pardon and the eastern word of participation in the divine nature do not drown out each other.

To leave the figure, one begins to understand the theological differences between East and West by considering the theological anthropologies of each, most especially the way in which each correlates the doctrines of incarnation and redemption.1 The East, on the one hand, with its basic interest in sanctification, has understood humankind to be basically corrupt and in desperate need of healing. The incarnation is understood to be a recapitulation of humankind which makes possible our participation in God, our true and absolute healing. The West, on the other hand, with its fixation on justification, has understood humankind as absolutely powerless to atone for itself. The incarnation is understood in the light of the Cross, which juridically pardons one of guilt.

One of these two paradigms stubbornly resists the delicate and harmonious balancing of divine grace and human freedom; the other embraces it. An understanding of the incarnation which arises from some need to satisfy God's justice (Anselm) would seem to slight the possibility of that kind of participation in the divine nature which enables us to become 'like" God. Viewing the death of Christ primarily in terms of the pardoning of humankind tends to make redemption essentially forensic. An understanding of the incarnation which is based in the conviction that God became what we are in order to reveal what we might become, to the glory of God, looks to the Cross as therapeutic. Redemption is a recapitulative work, as we become like him who has become like us.

The eastern tradition maintains that theosis, the "way" into this deifying union or restoration of the imago dei, comes by way of the mysterious coinciding of a gift of divine energy and human freedom. This transforming union with God, "is not (says Lossky) the result of an organic or unconscious process: it is accomplished in persons by the cooperation of the Holy Spirit and our freedom."2 It is just such an understanding of theosis which Wesley seems to employ as the organizing principle of his ordo salutis. And, as Wesley wrote his ordo salutis to the tune of theosis, it is probably better to understand it as a via salutis: that is to say, we are becoming "like" God by the energy of love (coinciding with our freedom) as He was becoming what we are in condescending love.

Although these two perspectives are not mutually exclusive, they have quite often functioned that way. And many have attempted, sometimes quite deliberately, to overshadow the motifs of participation and pardon precisely at the point of the correlation (whether eastern or western) of the doctrines of incarnation and redemption. It was Albert Outler who first proposed the thesis that Wesley's legacy and "place" in the Christian tradition lay in his "third alternative," his synthesis of pardon and participation as "pardon in order to participation," a synthesis of sola fide and holy living.3

It is from this nexus that this essay takes its rise. It is an exploration of the possibilities of Outler's thesis, and it is an attempt to "bolt it to the bran" once and for all.

Wesley's lyrics of pardon and participation, with the conspicuous antinomial notes in his ordo salutis, prevenient grace and original sin, repentance and faith, justification (forensically understood) and sanctification, were sung to the (also) antinomous tune of divine energy (grace) and human freedom. The mysterium salutis serves as the continuo in harmony with which the antinomous notes are heard. It will be argued, therefore, that Wesley first heard this tune played within his own Anglican tradition, on the via media between that which was Roman Catholic and that which was Protestant.4 The Church of England heard this tune in the Greek fathers of the "Golden Age," most notably in John Chrysostom and began to play it in its own soteriology as a means of balancing the extremes of Protestantism and Roman Catholicism. She constantly faced the problematic of the faithworks debate and the tune from the East seemed to many to offer a greater possibility for harmonizing the systematic demands of that problematic presented by both evangelical and Roman Catholic traditions. It may be that the reestablishment of the eastern paradigm of theosis as the organizing principle for the ordo salutis in the Wesleyan tradition will enable that tradition once again to hear the fiddler playing the lines, as it were, of divine grace and human freedom in perfect harmony, and to hear the usually dissonant lyrics of pardon and participation as one text "pardoned in order to participate" with the amazing refrain, "faith filled with the energy of love."

I. THE QUEST FOR THE "PLACE" OF WESLEY: A WESTERN OR AN EASTERN PARADIGM?

The Predominance of Western Categories

For years, historians and theologians have faced a quandary in understanding John Wesley's "place" in the Christian tradition.5 In sampling the history of the theological assessment of Wesley, one quickly notices that the labels attached to him place him chiefly within the western theological spectrum. George Croft Cell, in his timeworn thesis, for instance, argues that Wesley held to a synthesis of the Protestant ethic of grace and the Roman Catholic ethic of holiness.6 While this thesis has been convincing and helpful in understanding the heart of Wesley 's thought, the simple fact that it operates exclusively from a western perspective has made it debilitating, too.7 It fails to reckon with the proposed thesis of synthesis.

Cell has aptly identified the "original and unique synthesis"8 at work in Wesley's thought, but he fails to understand the scope and genius of that thought because of his own enslavement to a western mindset. Cell insists that one cannot fully understand the Catholic "imitation of Christ" as the concrete meaning of Christian perfection in Wesley's work apart from understanding the synthesis of faith and works as "unequivocally monergistic."9, 10 Consequently, Cell has not established his own thesis of synthesis. Rather than showing that Wesley synthesized faith and works, as he claims to have done, Cell actually has Wesley simply conjoining the Catholic ethic of holiness (sanctification) to a Protestant ethic of grace justification). Cell's failure here lies in part in his failure to discern the sources from which Wesley himself drew in developing his synthesis. Rather than seeing Wesley's sources in the East's Golden Age, Cell assumes that Wesley goes primarily to western sources and accepts as fundamental the notion of grace as sovereign at the expense of any notion of divine-human interchange, a perfectly plausible assumption if one looks only at the surface of Wesley's thought. Cell's resultant thesis fails to establish a synthesis and has Wesley holding to nothing more than a Catholic ethic of holiness shored up by a Luther/Calvin bias. Cell's Wesley emphasizes the characteristic western doctrine of the absolute sovereignty of grace totally at the expense of the characteristic eastern emphasis on theosis- God becoming human so that humans might become divine. Thus, Cell misses what could be considered the most important link supporting his proposed thesis of synthesis.

Many who have made use of Cell's thesis have made mistakes similar to his. An exception is Cohn Williams. Williams rejects Cell's thesis outright on the grounds that "the Catholic view of holiness cannot be molded onto the Protestant view of grace."11 On the other hand, Williams falls into the same snare as Cell. The western, Protestant bias so dominates Williams that he cannot believe any synthesis of faith and works, justification and sanctification, grace and freedom, to be possible. "If it is true that Wesley accepted the Catholic ethic of holiness, it must also be true that he accepted the Catholic and abandoned the Protestant view of grace."12

Williams had "discovered" that for Wesley not only must justification be by faith alone, sanctification, too, must come sola fide. But Williams went on to interpret Wesley's doctrine of sanctification solely in Protestant (i.e., western) terms and therefore misunderstood him. It would seem that Wesley himself thought of justification/sanctification in terms of a synthesis which held together divine, sovereign grace and human participation, understanding holiness in terms not exclusively Protestant (and western).

Williams insists that Cell has misunderstood Wesley's doctrine of sanctification. Sanctification is not simply grafted on to justification nor is it the basis of justification, says Williams. Rather, says he, it is the purpose of our justification.13 If sanctification be seen in western terms, e.g., as related to the "ladder of merit,"14 or as "faith formed by love," Williams' critique of Cell is valid. And, Williams is correct in understanding Wesley to believe that holiness meant "unbroken relationship with Christ," rather than "unbroken ethical status."15 But Williams' understanding here is still a truncated one, for he says what he says from a strictly Protestant perspective and consequently impugns the whole idea of faith filled with the energy of love. It is this latter idea which in Wesley's thought overcame the usual Protestant bifurcation of faith and works and served as the theological means by which Wesley achieved a synthesis of the two- and thus gained his 'Place" in the Christian tradition. This is to say that Williams' insistence on reading Wesley's understanding of the role of grace in justification and sanctification as a strictly Protestant sola fide understanding left Williams unable to see how these twin doctrines function, theologically, in Wesley's thought. 16 Williams totally overlooked the eastern idea of theosis, the idea which would provide a way out of the impasse between divine grace and human freedom. It was sensitivity to this impasse which lay at the heart of Wesley's explicit response to the axial question of the faith/works debate: "Is thy faith filled with the energy of love?"

John L. Peters considers Cell's thesis to be a justifiable characterization of Wesley's thought but believes that the focus could be sharpened by understanding the Catholic tradition's concern for works as the goal in Wesley's perspective and Protestantism's concern for faith alone as its dynamic.17 Peters' concern to sharpen the Cell's focus reflects his western, and Protestant, perspective. He believes that Wesley rejected any notion of "works righteousness," any idea that human merit is factored into the salvific process. So, his Wesley, western and Protestant, avoids teaching "'works righteousness" by synthesizing justification sola gratia with works on the grounds of the sovereignty of divine grace. This western form of synthesizing creates anomalies. Wesley, seeing in the eastern notion of theosis a fundamentally different ontology from that which underlay western syntheses, developed a much richer, deeper one which avoids both the either/or option of the dynamic-of-Protestantism/goal-of-Catholicism paradigm or the divine-grace/human-freedom dilemma common to western schemes.18 Wesley's synthesis is not first Protestant then Catholic or first grace then free will; rather, it is one of faith filled with the energy of love. (This thesis will be argued later.)

William R. Cannon disputes what he calls the "Luther-Calvin" thesis of Cell primarily because of its claim that Wesley's doctrine of justification is monergistic. Cannon seeks to correct Cell's argument by appealing to Wesley's insistence upon the "free responsiveness of human nature" in the appropriation of justifying grace.19 The Wesleyan position, argues Cannon, is "neither merely an apportionment of justifying grace to man by God nor simply an appropriation of that same grace by man from God but both divine apportionment and human appropriation standing together in a single process."20 So far, so good. Cannon's Wesley avoids a soteriology in which divine grace is vitiated or at least qualified by human response. Cannon's Wesley insists that prevenient grace underlies all at this point.

But then, Cannon goes on to argue: "if understood properly, the conception of human initiative and divine response is likewise descriptive of [Wesley's] teaching and is not alien to his theology." 21 Here, even with his qualified insistence upon synergism, Cannon accepts a western, Protestant formulation of justification; he does not see (and therefore does not probe) the depths of the meaning of justification when it is seen in the context of the doctrine of prevenient grace. Not only do this unquestioned acceptance and this oversight put him in danger of advocating a theological anthropology already rejected and continually resisted (at least de jure) in western "orthodoxy" viz., semi-Pelagian22they also lead him away from understanding what Wesley saw as the real purpose of human responsiveness to grace i.e., theosis. Cannon's semi-Pelagian reading of Wesley corroborates Robert Chiles' thesis that in American Methodism Wesley's doctrine of free grace underwent a transition and became a doctrine of free will.23 Worse, it makes of Wesley's intriguing response to the grace/works dilemma, i.e., faith filled with the energy of love, a meaningless riddle.

Wesley's response begins with grace and ends with grace, but never at the expense of human responsibility. To explicate it exclusively or almost exclusively in terms of justification, setting aside the language of sanctification, is to complicate and confuse it.24 This is seen in the fact that Cannon's hermeneutical insistence on the doctrine of justification as the central concern of Wesley's thought would, ironically, make anthropology, not soteriology, its starting point.

Cannon recognizes that western theology's justification language does not readily lend itself to the idea of human responsiveness in the salvific process, and he seeks to show that Wesley corrected it by what Cannon calls a "synergism." But Cannon's Wesley (in contrast to the real Wesley) moves toward the opposite extreme. He eclipses the work of God's prevenient grace by insisting upon the initiative of "free human responsiveness."

Still, even with his thesis that Wesley's soteriology is synergistic, Cannon recognizes Wesley's emphasis on the sovereignty of grace.25 What he mistakenly believes of it is that it is a typically western understanding of that sovereignty, and he therefore assumes that Wesley would also understand justification to be the source and determinant of his entire theology. In developing Wesley's thought with these ideas in mind, Cannon misses entirely Wesley's insistence upon theosis and the eastern soteriological paradigm linking of faith and love. Of course, Wesley's synthesis does contain western as well as eastern emphases, but his predominant question was not Luther's. In ideological terms (though not always literally), rather than asking "How can I be justified or pardoned?" Wesley asked, "How can I be healed?" In his descriptions of sin the dominant metaphors are those of disease with subsequent metaphors of healing (sanctification) as the cure.26 Hence, although Wesley stands squarely with the Reformers' doctrine of justification, with its insistence on the sovereignty of grace at every point in the salvific process, his own doctrine of justification is informed and shaped by his accent upon the "fullness of faith" (sanctification). So it is that he insists on "free human responsiveness," but not as the soteriologically decisive factor. Rather, free human responsiveness is the vehicle by which sovereign grace, still preeminent, enables the human to participate with and in the Great Physician and be healed and be restored to the imago dei.

Cannon's misunderstanding of Wesley's insistence on "free human response" leads Cannon to misunderstand Wesley's refutation of Calvin's doctrine of predestination as well, and therefore to evaluate it wrongly.27 Again placing Wesley's understanding of the soteriological role of the human response in the context of justification (as fundamental), Cannon limits the options which his Wesley may use to reject predestination.

The Wesleyan repudiation of predestination... is without doubt one of the most important issues with which we have to deal, for at once it shifts the balance from an emphasis in which irresistible grace is supreme to one in which human response comes to occupy the chief position.28

But suppose that instead of all of this we take seriously Wesley's declaration that holiness is "the grand depositum lodged with the people called Methodists," and begin to look beyond the work of justification to what Wesley sees as the fundamental and ultimate purpose of human response.29 Suppose we, too, look at human response, as it is prompted by God's preeminently redemptive purpose and will, as the work of the Holy Spirit enabling us to become "sons of God."30 If we adapt this perspective, the doctrine of predestination does not simply pose a threat to the idea of "free human responsiveness," it "strikes a blow at the root of [the doctrine of] holiness."31 It limits that grace which enables humankind to participate in the very life of God, thereby to become like God, and thus it threatens the Wesleyan "optimism of grace."32

From Wesley's point of view, extreme Calvinistic predestinarianism, ironically enough, threatened the doctrine of the sovereignty of grace. This it did not simply by denying any synergism prior to justification,33 but by denying that humankind could participate in the divine life of God as the divine had participated in the life of humankind.34 Wesley answered the error of the doctrine of predestination with the eastern notion of theosis.

The Shift to an Eastern Paradigm (?)

Scholars continue to seek to locate Wesley in the Christian tradition. But what makes it so difficult to identify and place him?

Perhaps some of the labels and characterizations attached to this "Anglican in Earnest" do not stick because they are decidedly and exclusively western in tone and intent. Others do not fully delineate Wesley within his own Anglican tradition, with its attempt to establish a via media between Protestantism and Roman Catholicism. However, not a few have attempted to help us to see the profoundly eastern elements within the legacy of Wesley and the Methodists.

Alexander Knox (17571831), a close friend of John Wesley, claims to have discovered in Methodism "a stronger and purer principle of Christian piety to be in operation, than, I conceive ever appeared before in like circumstances."35 Knox writes of what he believed Wesley had rediscovered within the Anglican via media.

I observe (in Wesley) a Christianity far more elevated and enlarged than even the worthy pietists appear to have had. I see the necessity of converting grace insisted on with as much zeal as ever was shown by St. Augustan himself; and in addition to this, a subsequent progress and perfection of holiness maintained and urged in the very spirit of St. Chrysostom. What is more gratifying, I find this (I should almost think) unprecedented union of the doctrines of grace, and holiness, manifesting its efficacy in a way equally unexampled: . . . Still, however, to me who have read the various records of Methodism with a mind, as I take it, unbiased one way or other, numberless instances do present themselves of true Christianity, at once in its depths and in its heights;-of radical conversions, in which all the great truths of St. Augustine, respecting human depravity, and efficient grace, are experimentally recognized, followed by a progress, in which the sublime views of St. Chrysostom appear more substantially realized than, I am apt to think, they were before, in a number together, or in that class of society, the untaught and the laborious.36

In the process of discovering and declaring this "principle of Methodism" to be a synthesis of Augustine's notion of efficient grace and Chrysostom's understanding of perfection or holiness, Knox isolated both the hermeneutical problem and its solution: justification had been the rubric for understanding sanctification rather than sanctification's being the determining category for understanding justification.37 Hence, Knox also identified the patristic categories at work in this "leading principle" of Wesleyanism and considered Wesley's fusion of western (Augustine) and eastern (Chrysostom) emphases to be his most serious response to questions raised concerning his understanding of the nature of the Christian life. Knox also observed that Wesley's fusion works from its eastern side, its eastern framework, in that it understands the goal of the Christian life to be that of becoming like God (I. e., sanctification) and takes sanctification as both goal and starting point for the Christian life.

He [Wesley] talks often and earnestly to be sure of justification as well as of sanctification or of regeneration: but his justification, though he did not clearly see it to be so, was a very different thing from the justification spoken of by Calvinists: theirs is a transaction done in heaven, from which the soul derives consolation by a kind of strong affiance or confidence; his justification, whether rightly or erroneously conceived by him, is much rather a transaction which takes place in the soul itself, a matter not of affiance but experience, identical with the first consciousness of that peace which passes all understanding. His view of this point, therefore, might lead him into enthusiasm, but it could not lead him from inward religion, his justification being nothing else than initiation into the inward mystery of godliness. He was even jealous of giving to the idea of justification more weight than belonged to it; and was anxious to rescue certain texts which had been supposed to apply to this, but, as he believed, without warrant. Thus, in his explanatory note on Philip. iii.8, 9, where St. Paul declares his contempt of every thing in comparison with the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus his Lord, Mr. Wesley's words are, "The inward experimental knowledge of Christ, as my Prophet, Priest, and King, teaching me wisdom, atoning for my sins, and reigning in my heart. To refer this to justification only, is miserably to pervert the whole scope of the words; they manifestly refer to sanctification also, yea, to that chiefly: and be found by God, engrafted in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is of the law, that merely outward righteousness prescribed by the law, and performed by my own strength, but that inward righteousness, which is through faith, which can flow from no other fountain; the righteousness which is from God, from his Almighty Spirit, not by my own strength, but by faith alone. Here, also, the Apostle is far from speaking of justification only." I give you this passage at large, because I conceive it draws the clearest possible line of distinction between John Wesley and the whole class of Protestant Dogmatists: I value it, also, as an excellent specimen of the true method of explaining those numerous passages of Scripture which have been thought by so many to maintain an imputed righteousness; an idea which has, of course, become a kind of keystone in the arch of modern theology; but which, I dare say, must be taken out, and a solider substance put in, before the structure will fully bear the weight of man's spiritual and eternal interests. I think my old friend makes no bad beginning here, toward replacing the word with stone from that Rock which our Savior has described in the conclusion of his Divine discourse as alone to be rested on.38

Albert Outler repeatedly makes use of Knox's undocumented thesis in giving content to his own label for Wesley's theological spirit and position, namely, "evangelical catholicism."39 Outler frequently refers to this fusion as a "third alternative," which is, perhaps, among the best of paradigmata for understanding Wesley's place in the Christian tradition.40 The genius of this dynamic corrective was the careful correlation of the "foundation of faith" (justification) with the "fullness of faith" (sanctification the goal).41

At least one modern Reformed theologian, Hendrikus Berkhof, has also acknowledged the significance of Wesley's having teleologically oriented the Christian life from within the context of Christian perfection. Moreover, Berkhof considers Wesley to be an exception to the common bias of the West in giving attention not only to the objective fact of renewal in the life of the believer but in seeing the goal of the Christian life as its activating source and as a source of insight on the way to that goal.42

Knox, Outler, and Berkhof, among a few others, would help us to understand that Wesley is remarkable among western Christian thinkers (and hence quite unwestern) in understanding that the goal of the Christian's life (Christian perfection, renewal of the imago Dei) is inseparably linked to the way (faith filled with the energy of love, divine-human participation, theosis). Knox, in fact, if not Outler and Berkhof as well, considered this to be the very essence of the "principle of Methodism."

But what has John Wesley done? In my mind, in a manner unprecedented, he has not overlooked the forgiveness of sins, but he has, indeed, looked much above it, and beyond it. No Platonic, or mystic Christian, ever inculcated a more inward and spiritual salvation; and, all he says of the operation of Divine grace on the heart, from first to last, is but an expansion of that single position of St. Peter, "Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises that by them we might become partakers of the Divine nature." ... The faith, therefore, which my friend urged his hearers to implore from God, had not one great fact only for its object. It did not merely relate to the propitiation for our sins, but it was an influential, vital apprehension of all the Divine facts which are placed before us in the Gospel. An apprehension so strong as to bring us within the predominant attraction of the objects apprehended, and, consequently making them excite in us, according to their respective natures, a fear and a love, rising above all other fears and all other loves, and thus producing a reigning spirituality of mind and heart. God, in John Wesley's Christian philosophy, is all in all; Christ is Emmanuel, God with us; God united to our nature, that in that nature, and by means of the most impressive and most penetrating of its possible features, He might make every fair and rational principle of the mind~very susceptibility of the imagination, and every tender fiber of the heart, his apt and able auxiliary in the infinitely gracious plan of "redeeming us from all iniquity, and purifying unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works." Faith, therefore, in John Wesley's view, is the spiritual sense, the divinely produced organ of the inner man, which holds commerce with those glorious objects, and transmits the impression to the imagination, the affections, and the judgment, as the eye transmits the image formed on its retina to the sentient principle. It is a poor resemblance, but what sensible image can do justice to the highest work of God in our higher nature? Such, however, in substance, is John Wesley's leading principle 43

At the very core of such discourses on the fusion of Augustine and Chrysostom, on third alternatives, or on the correlation of justification and sanctification is the issue of the divine-human exchange. This aspect of the mysterium salutis was best expressed and preserved by the eastern Fathers through their idea of deification (theosis) or participation in God. Athanasius encapsulated it best in his De incarnatione Verbi Dei: "For He was made man that we might be made God."44 Not only does this soteriological perspective connote the differences between eastern and western christological formulations, it is the axiomatic formulation of the mystery of salvation in the cast and highlights what has perhaps been the most notable hallmark of eastern soteriology: salvation is not just what God does "for us"; it is also what God does "in us." Just as the mystery of the incarnation expresses the humanization of God, so likewise, the mystery of salvation expresses the divinization of humankind. God became human so that we might become divine.

Forever in the minds and hearts of the eastern Fathers was not just an obsession with the juridical remission of sins but rather with participation in the divine life of God. John Meyendorff underscores this dominant motif of eastern thought:

Whether one deals with Trinitarian or Christological dogma, or whether one examines ecclesiology and sacramental doctrine, the main stream of Byzantine theology uncovers the same vision of man, called to "know" God, to "participate" in His life, to be "saved," not simply through an extrinsic action of God's, or through the rational cognition of propositional truths, but by "becoming God."45 There is then no mystery in the fact that as they conceive salvation they perceive its goal and its process as inseparable. The "foundation of faith" is inseparable from the "fullness of faith" because the goal (which is to "know God," to be renewed in the imago dei) is that which shapes the process (which is a matter of divine-human participation, of theosis). And the goal is attainable only because of what has been established by God's having become human. The via salutis hinges an the pivot of the incarnation. That is to say, in becoming human, God has laid the foundation of faith; in the fullness of that faith we may became divine. Such is the goal, the telos, of the process.

It is this axiomatic motif of divine-human participation in eastern Christian soteriology which would become most basic to Wesley's own formulation of the Christian life. It would be noted by Knox as the "principle of Methodism" and by Outler as the Wesleyan "third alternative." It would be most succinctly expressed as faith filled with the energy of love.

II. THEOSIS IN ANGLICANISM AND CHRYSOSTOM

From the very beginning of his theological and spiritual pilgrimage to the very end of his life, Wesley was obsessed with the question, "How do I become a Christian and how do I remain a Christian?"46 Outler describes this all-consuming question as the source of another of Wesley's third alternatives: "Wesley's driving passion was to find a third alternative to Pelagian optimism and Augustinian pessimism with respect to the human flaw and the human potential."47 C. F. Allison's study, entitled The Rise of Moralism, presents two paradigms which are most helpful for examining the soteriological debate within Anglicanism and also for understanding the very heritage absorbed by Wesley which aided him in finding his third alternative during those formative years.

Allison's two paradigms show how the later Carolines (such as Jeremy Taylor, Henry Hammond, George Bull, etc.) abetted by certain non-Anglicans (such as Richard Baxter), and motivated by a strong fear of antinomianism, radically abridged classical Anglicanism (represented by Richard Hooker, Beveridge, Danne, Andrewes, etc.) with their new gospel of moral rectitude.48 The pivotal soteriological question which underscored the axial motif of divine-human interchange was focused upon the formal cause of justification. To put it another way, the later Caroline Divines' basic question was, "As recipients of the Gospel, what causes our new relationship with God to be what it is?"49

The radical abridgement of classical Anglicanism is most detectable in the way in which the question of the formal cause of justification was answered. While classical Anglicanism said that the "imputation of Christ's righteousness" is the formal cause of justification, the later Caroline divines modified their responses and said, instead, that the formal cause of justification is "the imputation of faith." The Carolines' response implied that the emphasis would now fall on the human response rather than on divine grace. This shift would result in another novelty: a gospel of moral rectitude. The later Carolines maintained that justification came "by God's acceptance of our inadequate strivings and sincere endeavors on account of the more lenient terms of the new covenant purchased for us by Christ."50 Allison contends that this imputation of faith was defined so as to "include repentance, amendment of life, and sincere endeavors."51 In other words, the later Caroline belief in an imputation of faith seemed to translate itself practically as a harsh moralism which echoed a works righteousness similar to that which the Reformers had stubbornly resisted.

Now, again, however, the theme of divine-human participation begins to emerge from the swirling discussions of soteriology. And now, again, the old Reformation dialectic of faith and works comes into play. But this time Anglicanism's concern to be a true via media awakens, and it turns eastward rather than to the western branch of Christianity to answer its axial soteriological question. The Greek Christian idea of theosis, neglected within the Reformation debates, is recovered. As Anglicanism aims to be a middle way it begins to draw from Chrysostom for its composite response to the question of the formal cause of justification. His note of divine-human participation, until now a "forgotten strand" for Anglicanism, provides a rationale for its appropriation of him in its faith/work debate. And it is there that Wesley finds him.

During those years in which the problematic of soteriology, with its age-old antinomies of sin and grace, justification by faith alone and holy living, faith and works- each with its deep chasm between its terms, plagued Wesley's mind and heart, he began to read voraciously works from many traditions and perspectives, most notably works from his own and the eastern Orthodox traditions.52 And so it was that he came upon the two paradigms treating the question of the formal cause of justification.53 After intense study and careful synthesis, Wesley realized that he had found within his own "classical" Anglican heritage what was later to be called a "third alternative."

Classical Anglicanism had long labored to bridge the old chasms between Protestants and Roman Catholics, especially those having to do with the mystery of salvation. Here, the question of divine-human participation loomed large, but Anglican thinkers thought they had found the means of maintaining a via media in appealing to the "golden age," the period of the early Church, a period in which the eastern Fathers had contributed significantly to the thought of the Church as a whole. This~specially the thought of Chrysostom supplied Anglicanism in general and Wesley in particular with a second paradigm for understanding soteriology; more precisely, a second paradigm for responding to the question concerning the formal cause of justification.54 Anglicans developed a special love for Chrysostom as they discovered his version of divine-human participation. Here was a better composite response to the question of the nature of the Christian life than anyone in the West could provide. So, says Knox, the Church of England came to call Chrysostom "the great clerk" (i.e., cleric) and "godly preacher."55

It was his father who first personally introduced John Wesley to the importance of Chrysostom. Samuel reinforced that importance in a series of letters in which he recommended carefully selected sources for John to read as he was preparing to enter Holy Orders. In the first of these, he instructed his son to secure a copy of Thirlby's edition of Chrysostom's On the Priesthood (De sacerdotia). "Master it: digest it," he wrote.56 In July of that same year (1725), he writes in a similar vein: "Master St. Chrysostom, our Articles and the form of Ordination. "57 And two and half weeks later he is again reminding John that some of the best instruction for preparing for orders (as deacon) is found in these works.58 Samuel's timely instruction to his son is much the same as that given to Mr. Hoole in Advice to a Young Clergyman.59 Samuel suggested a rather lengthy bibliography for his son, but it is clear that his true favorite was Chrysostom. "Master St. Chrysostom," he had written.60 And he frankly admitted, "If I were to preach in Greek, St. Chrysostom should be my master."61

John Wesley's love for the early church fathers had arisen early in his life and had never abated. Throughout his work, one may find allusions to and quotations from them, most especially Chrysostom.62 Samuel's insistence that John master Chrysostom simply affirms an early and deep patristiceastern patristicstrain that would become a permanent feature in John Wesley's formulation of the Christian life.63 To be sure, some of Wesley's earlier exposure to the eastern Fathers came by way of Anglican sources, but there is much within Wesley's own writings to suggest that the indirect exposure led to firsthand reading and even direct borrowing from John Chrysostom at least. If Green's bibliographical treatment of Wesley's Oxford diary is correct, Wesley was reading Chrysostom as early as 1726-1727.

Direct evidence that Wesley read Chrysostom appears in his Advice to Clergy (1756). There, Wesley poses a set of questions.

Can any who spend several years in those seats of learning, be excused if they do not add to that reading of the Fathers? the most authentic commentators on Scripture, as being both nearest the fountain, eminently endued with that Spirit by whom all Scripture was given. It will be easily perceived, I speak chiefly of those who wrote before the council of Nicea. But who could not likewise desire to have some acquaintance with those that followed them? with St. Chrysostom, Basil, Austin, and above all, the man of a broken heart, Ephraim Syrus?65

Wesley probably came to understand the significance of Chrysostom during his earlier period in Oxford and in Georgia, thanks to William Beveridge. Wesley probably first "met" Beveridge in Samuel Wesley's "Advice" to Mr. Hoole.66 Perhaps weighing more in John Wesley's mind than his father's suggestion that Beveridge be read was the recommendation of his mother. Susanne pushed John in Beveridge's direction as he moved through his personal struggles with the meaning of faith.67

Wesley took his parents' advice. While he was in Savannah and Frederica, Georgia, he read a two-volume folio edition of Beveridge's Pandectae, which, as it happens, is a vast array of eastern liturgical texts.68

Beveridge was a prolific writer and evidenced an impressive knowledge of patristics, including extensive use of John Chrysostom. Page after page of his Exposition of the Thirty-Nine Articles is full of Chrysostom, supporting Beveridge's his, Beveridge's, position.

Wesley's intensive exposure to Beveridge exposed him indirectly as well to Chrysostom. In fact, probably none gave Wesley the indirect exposure to Chrysostom that Beveridge gave. But Beveridge was not alone in Wesley's bibliography. Wesley's father had, as we have seen, insisted that John "master and digest" Chrysostom; and he had, of course, recommended Beveridge.69 He also recommended such writers as Cave,70 Pearson,71 Bull,72 Grabe,73 Wake,74 and Baxter.75 John Wesley's list of books read while at Oxford suggests substantial compliance with the demands of his parents.

Interestingly, the majority of the specific sources used by John Wesley make frequent appeals to Chrysostom for a variety of reasons. Samuel Wesley, his father, scholar that he was,76 had seen the significance of the eastern Fathers in general and of Chrysostom in particular and had alerted his son to it in a context in which Anglicanism, seeking a via media on the nature of the Christian life between the fideist tendencies of Protestantism and the works righteousness of Roman Catholicism, would (or at least could) find the early eastern perspective congenial.

III. THEOSIS AS THE ORGANIZING PRINCIPLE OF THE ORDO SALUTIS

The Theological Significance of Theosis in Chrysostom and Wesley

By Wesley's day, three hundred years of ongoing faith-work debate had sharpened the terms of both principle Anglican soteriological paradigms that developed from a western perspective, and the one developed from an eastern point of view. Wesley had early become totally immersed in both, which meant that his axial question was twofold: How do I both become and remain a Christian? Eventually, moving from this center, he would recover some of the "forgotten strands inherent in the fundamental motif of divine-human interaction. Meanwhile, he was discovering the "classical "Anglican appeal to Chrysostom, and this would lead to the recovery of the "classical" Anglican "foundation of faith." In Chrysostom, he recovered the "forgotten strand" of theosis, which he came to declare was the "grand depositum lodged with the people called Methodist." In rediscovering the (eastern) notion of divine-human interaction, he recovered the "foundation of faith." Rediscoveries and recoveries in place, Wesley was able to meld the two paradigms on the basis of a truly synthetic principle: a faith filled with the energy of love.

Obviously, much needs to be explicated concerning Wesley's processes in coming to and developing the notion of theosis. Equally obvious are our limitations of time and space. Suffice it to say, there's more where that came from. Both the construction of the principle and its implications bear detailed study.

What we can state as a thesis here is that Wesley's most comprehensive response to the question of the nature of the Christian life was that it was faith filled with the energy of love; and we can also state it as an aspect of our thesis that this description was a result of the discovery of the strand of theosis within his own Anglican heritage, a strand borrowed from the eastern Fathers, most notably John Chrysostom. Wesley in fact made that eastern motif of theosis the organizing principle for his understanding of the ordo salutis. Early on, he took his Anglican tradition to task, but eventually the glimpses into the mysterium salutis provided by that tradition induced him to make it his own. And he came to see that ordo salutis was via salutis: they were faith filled with the energy of love. Again, the eastern paradigm of theosis was the organizing principle of his ordo salutis as via salutis. This would forever be "bolted to the bran."

Wesley's rediscovery of the importance of Chrysostom, given his commitment to Anglicanism's via media at the point of the faith-works debate, had important consequences along two lines: first, the discovery of theosis as the organizing principle of his ordo salutis; and second, his specific correlation of faith and love as a synthesis of pardon and participation.

For Chrysostom, the mystery of the incarnation corresponded to the mystery of redemption. The incarnation not only revealed God to humankind; it also revealed authentic humanity to humankind. Any view of grace which did not entail the divine-human interaction in the processes of incarnation and salvation would have been meaningless to Chrysostom in particular and to the eastern tradition in general. For Chrysostom, it made no sense to speak of God as becoming flesh if humankind could not become divine. Further, if humanity could not enter into God, there could be no meaningful communion with God, shrouded in mystery as it way be. on the other side of that coin, Chrysostom asked how God could enter humanity if humanity could not enter into God. Of what value would it be to speak of salvation in forensic terms at the expense of the idea of union of God? Chrysostom's notion of theosis was an attempt to declare that because of the incarnation "real" change (sanctification) takes place in human nature, not merely the "relative" change (justification), as was commonly believed in the West. The eastern notion of theosis entailed the means by which humanity could partake of God's nature just as God could partake of human nature.77

Chrysostom's soteriology is marked by the eastern monastic ideal of deification. Consequently his question was not How can I be pardoned?" but, rather, "How can I 'know' God?" or "How can I participate in God?" Often, this idea of "divinization" was expressed in terms which eloquently explained in the language of deification how the goal of the Christian life (restoration in the image of God) provides the means (theosis) by which one partakes of God's nature:

"As many as received Him, to them gave He power to become sons of God." ... all, He saith, are deemed worthy the same privilege; for faith and the grace of the Spirit, removing the inequality caused by worldly things, hath molded all to one fashion, and stamped them with one impress, the King's. What can equal this lovingkindness? . . . the Only-Begotten Son of God did not disdain to reckon among the company of His children both publicans, sorcerers, and slaves, nay, men of less repute and greater poverty than these, maimed in body, and suffering from ten thousand ills. Such is the power of faith in Him, such the excess of His grace. And as the element of fire, when it meets with ore from the mine straightway of earth makes it gold, even so and much more Baptism makes those who are washed to be of gold instead of clay, the Spirit at that time falling like fire into our souls, burning up the image of the earthy," and producing the "image of the heavenly," fresh coined, bright and glittering, as from the furnace mould.

Why then did he say not that "He made them sons of God," but that "He gave them power to become sons of God"? To show that we need much zeal to keep the image of sonship impressed on us at Baptism, all through without spot or soil; and at the same time to show that no one shall be able to take this power from us, unless we are first to deprive ourselves of it. For if among men, those who have received the absolute control of any matters have wellnigh has much power as those who gave them the charge; much more shall we, who have obtained such honor from God, be, if we do nothing unworthy of this power, stronger than all; because he who put this honor in our hands is greater and better than all.78

Very early on, Wesley began to intromit this eastern notion of theosis into his understanding of the Christian life. So it was that his soteriological question was not one characteristic of the West. Rather, he asked, "How can I be healed so that I may be happy and holy?'' In his sermon, "The Circumcision of the Heart," Wesley develops an anthropology which delineates the idea of deification in terms of a Biblical eudaemonism.79 Once again, Wesley presents an eastern idea of incarnation which teaches us about God and ourselves. For Wesley, holiness is happiness, happiness holiness, because humanity was created by God and for God. So, only in communion with God does one truly find happiness holiness. Our humanity reaches its full potential only in joyous communion with God.

"The desire of thy soul shall be to his name"is none other than this. The one perfect good shall be your ultimate end. One thing shall ye desire for its own sake, the fruition of him that is all in all. One happiness shall ye propose to your souls, even an union with him that made them, the having fellowship with the Father and the Son," the being "joined to the Lord in one Spirit." One design ye are to pursue to the end of time- the enjoyment of God in time and in eternity. Desire other things so far as they tend to this. Love the creature, as it leads to the Creator. But in every step you take be this the glorious point that terminates your view. Let every affection, and thought, and word, and work, be subordinate to this. Whatever ye desire or fear, whatever ye seek or shun, whatever ye think, speak, or do, be it in order to your happiness in God, the sole end as well as source of your being.

Have no end, no ultimate end, but God. Thus our Lord: "One thing needful."80

Wesley found Chrysostom's notion of having received the power at baptism to become "sons of God," i.e., the potential of entering into the joyous state of communion with God, echoed in Anglicanism's Book of Common Prayer, e.g., in the "Collect for Purity," with its petition for a heart made pure and filled with love. Repeatedly, Wesley would tie the "Collect for Purity" to his doctrine of Christian perfection. In fact, so important was this to him that he berated George Bull for not seeing that the Collect petitioned for both "inward" and "outward" holiness.81 Moreover, Wesley saw the divine-human motif at work in the Collect. By speaking of the goal as perfectly loving God, Wesley followed the Collect and made it clear that this communion with God was not passive and private only. This love is active, both inwardly and outwardly.

But in speaking of our loving God, Wesley did not in any way intend to indicate that the initiative lies with us. It does not. The divine initiative, the energy of love, is the very means by which one is "renewed in the image of God."82 Wesley found this notion, which is, again, the eastern idea of theosis, of divine-human participation, a characteristic note in the homilies of Chrysostom, and in the liturgy, the homilies, and the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion of the Church of England. Wesley was to take that motif of divine-human participation in the via salutis and weave it throughout his ordo salutis.

Theosis in the Ordo Salutis

Chrysostom's theological anthropology is inextricably tied to his correlation of incarnation and redemption. And all other rubrics governing his ordo salutis are developed out of that correlation. This is demonstrated in the following examples: creation is seen as an act of grace which fills the created order with gracious energy so that the created order may reciprocate; humankind, fallen though it be, is not fallen to the extent that it cannot reciprocate God's sovereign initiative. In fact, the fall seems to be more relational than ontological, more existential than essential, because the sovereign uncreated energy of grace maintains that point of contact with humankind. Redemption is not simply external to humanity; it also penetrates humanity. Thus, salvation is not simply the remission or pardon of sins but it is also the sanctification from sins which enables us to participate in God's nature or partake of God's nature i.e., to become "sons of God."

A number of foundation stones in Chrysostom's correlation of incarnation with redemption clearly bear elements of the idea of theosis. And, since his insistence on the necessity of divine-human interaction is quite bold, it should suffice to highlight the prominent antinomies of his ordo salutis which preserve the notion of uncreated energy of grace coinciding with human freedom in the context of the idea of the correlation of incarnation and redemption. As we do this highlighting, it should become clear beyond cavil that Wesley wove Chrysostom's thread of theosis into the complex tapestry of his ordo salutis. We shall proceed by looking at the idea of theosis in the rubrics of the ordo salutis of each man.

The theme of theosis is dominant in Chrysostom's thought and it constantly defines the antinimous rubrics of his via salutis, keeping them polarized. Yet, to view each element as exclusive of its antinomy would distort the meaning of both. For example, creation, though it is an act of grace that reveals the Creator, would be meaningless if it did not proceed in such a way as to enable humankind, the fallen creature, to "know God," to participate in Him. Here, creation and redemption are inseparable; creation cannot be, should never be, seen apart from grace. Chrysostom sets forward his understanding in his exposition of Romans 1:20:

All things abiding in order and by their beauty and their grandeur, preaching aloud of the Creator. . .. And yet it is not for this [that] God hath made these things, even if this came of it. For it was not to bereave them of all excuse, that He set before them so great a system of teaching, but that they might come to know Him....83

Similarly, Wesley speaks of a gracious teleology in the creation which corresponds to the nature of the Creator. He writes to Dr. Conyers Middleton:

He is happy in knowing there is a God, an intelligent Cause and Lord of all, and that he is not the product either of blind chance or inexorable necessity. He is happy in the full assurance he has that this Creator and End of all things is a Being of boundless wisdom, of infinite power to execute all the designs of His wisdom, and of no less infinite goodness to direct all His power to the advantage of all His creatures. . . .84

And, in his sermon, "God's Approbation of His Works," Wesley argues that the telos of all created things reaches us zenith in the fulfilled purpose for humankind.

Such was the state of the creation, according to the scanty ideas which we can now form concerning it, when its great Author, surveying the whole system at one view, pronounced it "very good"! It was good in the highest degree whereof it was capable, and without any mixture of evil. Every part was exactly suited to the others, and conducive to the good of the whole. There was "a golden chain" (to use the expression of Plato) "let down from the throne of God"an exactly connected series of beings, from the highest to the lowest: from dead earth, through fossils, vegetables, animals, to man, created in the image of God, and designed to know, to love, and enjoy his Creator to all eternity.85

Chrysostom argues for the initiative of grace in creation, that creation is providential, which ensures the means by which the creature may participate.86 He also argues that, given that graciousness, humanity is continually responsible and morally inexcusable. Moral responsibility is written into the nature and purpose of the creation.

He [God] set before them [the ancients], for a form of doctrine, the world; He gave them reason, and an understanding capable of perceiving what was needful. None of these things did the man of that day use unto salvation, but they perverted to its opposite what they had received.87 In other words, creation not only revealed God, it was a providential means by which humankind were to come to "know God." Thus, no one could deny moral responsibility,88

In Chrysostom's day, Manichaeanism posed a very grave threat to Christian understandings of the creation, especially to such ideas as theosis. In particular, it corrupted the idea of "knowing God" in the creation. That is to say, Manichaeanism disputed the idea that humans could participate in and with God on earth, which negation undercut the Christian basis for social and moral responsibility. Manichaeanism led all too many to reinterpret the first petition of the Lord's Prayer"Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done an earth as it is in Heaven' 'in strictly "other worldly," "spiritual" terms, thereby to deny the possibility of any real union with God in this life and thereby to deny as well the gracious initiative and providence in the creation. Manichaeanism threatened orthodoxy's soteriology, especially as Chrysostom understood and taught it.

The note of the necessity of divine-human reaction so prevalent throughout Chrysostom's doctrine of creation is even more pronounced in his anthropology. And, again, as in the case of his development of his doctrine of creation, Chrysostom responds to the menace of Manichaeanism as well as to his own desire to construct a soteriology of divinization. Especially to be rejected, as he saw it, was the Manichaean use of human frailty and corruptibility as an excuse for moral irresponsibility. This rejection is clearly seen as Chrysostom describes the original creation of humankind.

For what we said of creation . . . we may see take place also in the case of the body. For with respect to this too there are many among the enemies to the truth, as well as among those who belong to our own ranks, who make it a subject of inquiry, why it was created corruptible and frail? Many also of the Greeks and heretics affirm, that it was not even created by God. For they declare it to be unworthy of God's creative art, and enlarge upon its impurities, its sweat, its tears, its labors, and sufferings, and all the other incidents of the body. But, for my part, when such things are talked of, I would first make this reply. Tell me not of man, fallen, degraded and condemned. But if thou wouldest learn what manner of body God formed us with at the first, let us go to Paradise, and survey the Man that was created at the beginning. For that body was not thus corruptible and mortal; but like as some statue of gold just brought from the furnace, that shines splendidly, so that frame was free from all corruption. Labor did not trouble it, nor sweat deface it. Cares did not conspire against it; nor sorrows besiege it; nor was there any other affection of that kind to distress it....89

Nor could one plead that humankind is ignorant of God and God's laws and therefore incapable of participation in the divine nature. Rather, creation is an act of grace in which God makes himself known and ensures the possibility of knowing him. That initial act of grace makes it impossible to plead ignorance; and, it enables participation in him.

Chrysostom's reaction to the Manichaeans' positions is quite unambiguous. We are God-created by an act of grace and we are therefore morally responsible and accountable.

... we shall direct our discourse to another point which is itself also demonstrative of God's providence . . . when God formed man, he implanted within him from the beginning a natural law. And what then was this natural law? He gave utterance to conscience within us; and made the knowledge of good things, and of those which are the contrary, to be self-taught. 90

Conscience seems to function in the thought of Chrysostom in much the same way that prevenient grace functions in the thought of John Wesley. It is in Chrysostom's understanding of conscience that one finds his antidote to the Manichaean menace; but it must be recalled that the context is God's gracious providence, not merely nature. It is in John Wesley's doctrine of conscience understood as prevenient grace that one finds his antidote to the antinomian menace. So he writes in his sermon, "On Working Out Your Own Salvation":

Yet this is no excuse for whose who continue in sin, and lay the blame upon their Maker, by saying, "It is God only that must quicken us; for we cannot quicken our own souls." For allowing that all the souls of men are dead in sin by nature, this excuses none, seeing there is no man that is in a state of mere nature; there is no man, unless he has quenched the Spirit, that is wholly void of the grace of God. No man living is destitute of what is vulgarly called natural conscience. But this is not natural: It is more properly termed, preventing grace. Every man has greater or less measure of this which waiteth not for the call of man. Every one has some measure of that light, some faint glimmering ray, which, sooner or later, more or less, enlightens every man that cometh into the world. And every one, unless he be one of the small number whose conscience is seared as with a hot iron, feels more or less uneasy when he acts contrary to the light of his own conscience. So that no man sins because he has not grace, but because he does not use the grace which he hath.91

In his sermon, "On Conscience," Wesley repeats this emphasis on the nature and function of conscience in the context of grace.

Conscience, then, is that faculty whereby we are at once conscious of our own thoughts, words, and actions, and of their merit or demerit, or their being good or bad, and consequently deserving either praise or censure. .

Can it be denied that something of this is found in every man born into the world? And does it not appear as soon as reason begins to dawn? Does not everyone then begin to know that there is a difference between good and evil, how imperfect soever the various circumstances of this sense of good and evil may be? .

This faculty seems to be what is usually meant by those who speak of "natural conscience," an expression frequently found in some of our best authors, but yet not strictly just. For though in one sense it may be termed "natural," because it is found in all men, yet properly speaking it is not natural; but a supernatural gift of God, above all the endowments. No, it is not nature but the Son of God that is the "true light which enlighteneth every man which cometh into the world". So that we may say to every human creature, "He," not nature, "hath shown thee, 0 man, what is good." And it is his Spirit who giveth thee an inward check, who causeth thee to feel uneasy, when thou walkest in any instance contrary to the light which he hath given thee.92

Manichaeanism argued for the moral excusability of humankind on both cosmological and anthropological grounds. The world itself is evil and the human body, being natural, is also evil, therefore, we are not morally responsible. Both Chrysostom and Wesley argued that creation was an act of grace; that our creation was an act of incarnational grace, and that conscience is an integral ingredient of incarnational grace. Chrysostom countered the Manichaean argument, with its ethical implications, by speaking of conscience as "natural." Our God's gracious creating initiative and provision have etched into the creation and the human conscience the capacity to "know God" naturally. This is to say that creation and conscience providentially ensure our capacity to become "sons of God." And, given this capacity, with its providential character, all of creation is made able to respond (responseable) and morally responsible.

Moreover, since the providentially implanted conscience functions to make God known, what is "vulgarly called natural conscience" is really a continuing act of grace. Chrysostom's doctrine of creation and his anthropology repeatedly accent the necessary antecedence of grace to the functioning (as to the very existence) of conscience. The conscience is a prior work of grace which speaks of our capacity to participate in the divine nature.

For the knowledge of virtue He hath implanted in our nature; but the practice of it and the correction He hath entrusted to our moral choice. . . . In order to know that it is a good thing to exercise temperance, we need no words, nor instruction; for we ourselves have the knowledge of it in our nature, .. . So also we account adultery to be an evil thing, and neither is there here any need of trouble or learning, that the wickedness of this sin may be known; but we are all self-taught in such judgments; . And this hath been an exceeding good work of God; that he hath made our conscience, and our power of choice already, and before the action, claim kindred with virtue, and be at enmity with wickedness. As I said then, the knowledge of each of these things resides within the conscience of all men, and we require no teacher to instruct us in these things; but the regulation of our conduct is left to our choice, and earnestness, and efforts. And why was this? but because if He had made everything to be of nature, we should have departed uncrowned and destitute of reward; and even as the brutes, who receive no reward nor praise for those advantages which they have naturally, so neither should we enjoy any of these things; for natural advantages are not for the praise and commendation of those who have them, but of the Giver. For this reason, then, He did not commit all to nature; and again, He did not suffer our will to undertake the whole burden of knowledge, and of right regulation; lest it should despair at the labor of virtue. But conscience suggests to it what ought to be done; and, it contributes its own exertions for the accomplishment. . . .93

The menace of antinomianism in Wesley's day made him more cautious in calling conscience "natural" than the menace of Manichaeanism had made Chrysostom 1,300 years earlier. Wesley preferred to speak of "preventing grace. ' Nonetheless, Chrysostom's natural conscience and Wesley's conscience as an expression of preventing grace functioned in the same way. The conscience is an integral part of the human constitution and it enables one to "know God." Wesley's exegesis of Romans 2:1416 speaks of humanity's capacity for doing the things of law without having the law.94 This is because of the conscience, properly called "preventing grace." Yet, it is "natural" to all of creation because everyone seems to have some previous knowledge of good and evil without the written law. It is natural because it is universal. Conscience works in the same way that external law does i.e., it either condemns or excuses. Consequently, conscience as a form of prevenient grace leaves no one without excuse because the Son of God, the full expression of incarnational grace, is the "true light which enlighteneth every man that cometh into the world."95 The fact that conscience is a continuation of grace makes one always able to respond (response-able) and morally responsible. This is the point at which the notion of theosis in the thought of both Chrysostom and Wesley shapes their understandings of the via salutis.

This eastern idea of incarnation grace colors Chrysostom's doctrine of grace and conscience, and it also affects his understanding of humanity's fall. Contrary to the plan of providence etched into its creation and its conscience, humanity, through "indolence"96 and a "listless will,"97 chose to disobey the voice of conscience and sinned. Hence, humanity took on mortality.98

For Chrysostom, the fall is more existential than essential.99 And, it is more relational than ontological. Missing from the homilies of Chrysostom is any idea of the total obliteration of the imago Dei. Understanding the fall to have been ontological could lead off into Manichaeanism and it would destroy the notion of the potential of joyous communion with God.

For Chrysostom, the sole serious setback of the fall was mortality; and even then, he would minimize the effects of death. 100 That he held an understanding that the fall was existential rather than essential is most discernible in his treatment of sin and its causes. In his homily on Romans 5:12, he contends that sin is certainly not a consequence of our being natural but of the weakness of our free will.

He came not to destroy our nature, but to set our free choice aright. Then to show that it is not through any force or necessity that we are held down by iniquity, but willingly; he does not say, let it not tyrannize, a word that would imply a necessity, but let it not reign. For it is absurd for those who are being conducted to the kingdom of heaven to have sin [as] empress over them, and for those who are called to reign with Christ to choose to be the captives of sin, as though one should hurl the diadem from off his head, and choose to be the slave of a frantic woman, who came begging, and was clothed in rags. Next, since it was a heavy task to get the upper hand of sin, see how he shows it to be even easy, and how he allays the labor by saying, "in your mortal body." For this shows that the struggles were but for a time, and would soon bring themselves to a close. At the same time he reminds us of our former evil plight, and of the root of death, as it was from this that, contrary even to its beginning, it became mortal. Yet it is possible even for one with a mortal body not to sin. Do you see the abundancy of Christ's grace? For Adam, though as yet he had not a mortal body fell. But thou, who has received one even subject to death, canst be crowned. How then, is it that "sin reigns"? he (Paul) says. It is not from any power of its own, but from thy listlessness. Wherefore after saying, "let it not reign," he also points out the mode of this reigning, by going on to say "that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof." For it is not honor to concede to it (i.e., to the body) all things at will, nay, it is slavery in the extreme, and the height of dishonor; for when it doth what it listeth, then is it bereft of all liberties; but when it is put under restraints, then it best keeps its own proper rank.101

Chrysostom's optimism of grace would not let him formulate a pessimistic view of humanity.102 As humanity was created provisionally for the purpose of becoming "sons of God," not even the fall and original sin can deny that potential. The overriding theme of theosis defined Chrysostom's view of creation, anthropology and hamartiology. And these enter into the optimism of his anthropology, though, as is seen in his exposition of the fall and original sin, that anthropology is determined more specifically by his incarnational understanding of grace. More narrowly yet, his optimistic anthropology is derived from the prevenience of grace, as depicted in creation. The idea of deification predominates in such a way as not to allow for a pessimistic anthropology derived from certain understandings of the fall.103

Such is the anthropological optimism of Chrysostom and much of eastern thought. How does John Wesley relate to it?

As Wesley links prevenient grace to original sin by his distinction between the "natural" and the "moral" images of the human being he departs from Chrysostom's tone of anthropological optimism.104And yet, though he continually maintains the Latin accent on total depravity,105 he does not do so at the expense of an understanding of theosis such as that of Chrysostom.106 This is most noticeable in his distinction between the ideas of the "natural" and "moral" image of the human being, a distinction which clearly resembles that of some of the eastern Fathers between the image" and "likeness" of God. 107 The teleological significance of theosis for Chrysostom and Wesley alike demonstrates the function of this distinction. As God, through and because of the constant energy of his gracious provision, made humankind for the explicit purpose of participating of the divine life, the fall did not result in the loss of capacity for communion with God (i.e., loss of the "image of God"). The constant sovereign energy of grace would not allow such a consequence. Rather, the fall resulted in the loss of an actualized or deified communion with God (i.e., loss of the "likeness of God"). The "image of God" is essentially humankind's ability to respond responsibly, given the fact that the telos of creation is communion with God. And, although the "likeness of God," i.e., the actuality of communion with God, has been lost in the fall the constant energy of God's grace is not impaired. Chrysostom's theological anthropology, then, begins with creation-grace and its telos rather than with the fall with its abuse of grace. Likewise, Wesley's theological anthropology always begins with grace and the human being is never considered independently of it.

Wesley's anthropology is rooted in grace, and that nuances his doctrine of original sin (its meaning and function), linked to the idea of prevenient grace as it is. The prior presence and work of grace is accented in Wesley's doctrine of original sin and this helps him create his "third alternative": a doctrine of the fall which speaks clearly of total depravity but which avoids the ontic degradation of humanity and opens the way for an optimistic view of humanity under grace.108 This is to say that because grace is antecedent to human choice, the divine-human capacity for participation remains even after the fall; prevenient grace is forever making humankind responsible for its total depravity and making humankind able to respond to its own never-ending presence. So it is that Wesley uses the eastern understanding of theosis to tie together (prevenient) grace and original sin, and in so doing, he avoids both a Pelagian optimism and an Augustinian pessimism.109

Since Chrysostom's anthropology looks to the constant energy of grace inscribed in the telos of creation rather than to the fall of creation, his response to the question as to how fallen humanity could participate in joyous communion with God escapes the Pelagian overtones that constantly plagued western responses to that same question. The anthropology of the West looked to the fall as a picture of "natural" humanity and therefore saw the idea of participation smacking of merit. The West's response to the question as to how fallen humanity could participate in communion with God was always from the perspective of forgiveness for guilt, since the natural person is powerless to reciprocate. Chrysostom, with his idea of conscience as the "natural" apparatus by which one has knowledge of one's capacity for and need to participate in God, focuses on the "natural" picture of humanity as forever able to respond to and responsible to the constant energy of love. Conscience is "natural" because it is universal and is part of the imago Dei that is not lost in the fall. Hence the antinimous relation of repentance and faith in Chrysostom's via salutis becomes the "natural" means by which humankind may be healed and restored to the "likeness of God."

As Chrysostom sees it, repentance, as taught by conscience, provides both the self-knowledge one needs for healing and the capacity to cooperate with the divine energy of grace.

Beloved, God being loving towards man and beneficent, does and contrives all things in order that we may shine in virtue, and as desiring that we be well approved by Him. And to this end He draws no one by force or compulsion; but by persuasion and benefits He draws all that will, and wins them to Himself. Wherefore when He came, some received Him, and others received Him not. For He will have no unwilling, no forced domestic, but all of their own will and choice, and grateful to Him for their service. Men, as needing the ministry of servants, keep many in that state even against their will, by the law of ownership; but God, being without wants, and not standing in need of anything of ours, but doing all only for our salvation, makes us absolute in this matter, and therefore lays neither force nor compulsion on any of those who are unwilling....110

For Chrysostom, condescending love always precedes repentance:

"God is faithful, by whom ye were called unto the fellowship of His Son." Wonderful! How great a thing saith he (Paul) here! How vast is the magnitude of the gift which he declares! . . . Again, "ye have been called;" ye did not yourselves approach His gifts, and the calling of God," are without repentance."111

For Chrysostom, repentance without the precedence of love would be scandalous, as may be clearly seen in those homilies in which he talks of a repentance before baptism and that which comes after baptism.

Repentance is part of a process by which one is healed and restored to the likeness of God. It is therefore to be seen as a constant in the human response to the unceasing energy of love.

Repentance before baptism is related to entrance through the portal of grace. As the catechumen stands before the "laver of grace." he is exhorted to say: "I renounce thee, Satan." Here is a returning from Satan to God with a declaration of covenant with God.112 It is a turning away from Satan and evil habits which are alien to human nature (i.e., unnatural) and a returning to God, who restores that which is "natural" to human nature. This entrance by repentance, through washing from the "laver of grace," was considered to be once and for all,113 but continued participation in grace would from time to time necessitate confession. Confession thus was simply another provision of God's constant energy of love. Repentance, for Chrysostom, is not only a constant attitude in the human response to the divine initiative, it is one of the "many medicines to heal our wounds."114

Faith is the other side of the coin of human freedom from repentance. While repentance emphasizes the negative side of the human response, faith emphasizes its positive side. This is to say that repentance is the rejection of all of that which is unnatural while faith is the acceptance of the energy of love which restores one to health. Faith is the grace-empowered human response of acceptance to the constancy of grace.

"For by grace," saith he (Paul), "have ye been saved." In order then that the greatness of the benefits bestowed may not raise thee too high, observe how he brings thee down: "By grace ye have been saved," saith he, "through faith." Then, that, on the other hand, our freewill may not be impaired, he adds also our part in the work, and yet again cancels it, and adds, "And that not of ourselves." Neither is faith, he means, "of ourselves." Because had He not come, had He not called us, how had we been able to believe? For "how," saith he, "shall they believe, unless they hear?" ... So that the work of faith itself is not our own. "It is the gift," said he, "of God." It is "not of works." Was faith then, you will say, enough to save us? No; but God, saith he, hath required this, lest He should save us, barren and without work at all. His expression is, that faith saveth, but it is because God so willeth, that faith saveth. Since [this be true], how, tell me, doth faith save, without works? This itself is the gift of God. "That no man should glory." That he may excite in us proper feeling touching this gift of grace. "What then?" saith a man, "Hath He Himself hindered our being justified by works in order that the grace and lovingkindness of God may be shown?" He did not reject us as having works, but as abandoned of works He hath saved us by grace; so that no man henceforth may have whereof to boast....115

For Chrysostom, the human capacity to respond in acceptance (faith) of God's mercy and love is always preceded by the initiative of grace.116

As repentance was one aspect of the human response that allowed one to pass through the portals of grace, faith was another. Moreover, just as repentance was one of the perpetual means of healing and one aspect of a constant attitude of responsiveness to the constant energy of love, faith was another.

For even in these mystical blessings, it is, on the one hand, God's part to give the grace, one the other, man's to supply faith; and in after time there needs for what remains much earnestness. In order to preserve our purity, it is not sufficient for us merely to have been baptized and to have believed, but we must, if we will continually enjoy this brightness, display a life worthy of it.. 117

So Chrysostom. Wesley, too, works with the antinomies of repentance and faith. As he threads his ordo salutis with theosis, the latter brings the two together as a via salutis. But it is here that he meets fierce opposition. The West struggled over the tendency to consider repentance a meritorious work. It looked at repentance in terms of the fall and humanity's consequent "natural" inescapable bondage and utter powerlessness to reciprocate. The notion of repentance as a meritorious work never became an issue for Chrysostom and the East, for it was there believed that the constant energy of love ensured a constant human capacity for response and responsibility. The East taught that the energy of love made humankind aware of its "natural" capacity to reciprocate or respond to the constant energy of condescending love and that it also made humankind aware of its need (responsibility) to respond.

Amid much controversy, John Wesley sought to accommodate his eastern paradigm of repentance and faith to western categories. He seems to adopt Chrysostom's understanding of repentance as the self-knowledge of a capacity and a need to return to that which is "natural."118 But Wesley does try to accommodate this understanding to the classical Lutheran idea of repentance, which is governed by the law-gospel dialectic. He puts the eastern paradigm into play by insisting that the gift of prevenient grace (the constant energy of love enables the Holy Spirit to evoke an active response of repentance. He negates the usual western understanding that our "nature" since the fall is without means for responding to the beckoning of the Spirit. But he tries to build his case by working from Luther's understanding of the twofold use of the law.

But it is the ordinary method of the Spirit of God to convict sinners by the law. It is this which, being set home on the conscience, generally breaketh the rocks in pieces. . . . By this is the sinner discovered to himself. All his fig leaves are torn away, and he sees that he is "wretched, and poor, and miserable, and blind, and naked." The law flashes conviction to every side. He feels himself a mere sinner. He has nothing to pay. His "mouth is stopped," and he stands "guilty before God."

To slay the sinner is, then, the First use of the law; to destroy the law and strength wherein he trusts, and convince him that he is dead while he liveth; not only under the sentence of death, but actually dead unto God, void of all spiritual life, "dead in trespasses and sins." The Second use of it is, to bring him unto life, unto Christ, that he may live. It is true, in performing both these offices, it acts the part of a severe schoolmaster. It drives us by force, rather than draws us by love. And yet love is the spring of all. It is the spirit of love which, by this painful means, tears away our confidence in the flesh, which leaves us no broken reed whereon to trust, and so constrains the sinner, stripped of all, to cry out in the bitterness of his soul, or groan in the depth of his heart.

I give up every plea beside, Lord, I am damn'd; but thou hast died.119

Wesley's approbation of the twofold use of the law is closely related to his twofold understanding of repentance.120 The first use of the law is the convincing and convicting of sinners, implying a legal understanding of repentance. The second use of the law is to turn one outward to Christ rather than inward to one's own idolatrous heart, implying an evangelical understanding of repentance. The sinner would move from the first to the second use, from the legal to the evangelical. Here, Wesley satisfied both the Lutheran and the eastern paradigms. Criticism came, however, when Wesley nuanced the meaning of repentance by accenting the idea of "fruits meet for repentance," i.e., the necessity of doing good before faith.121 The eastern paradigm, in which the constant energy of love ensures in the human being a constant attitude of response, came into obvious and inevitable conflict with the western paradigm. To the west, the eastern point of view seems to make repentance meritorious, a good work. Wesley responds:

God does undoubtedly command us both to repent, and to bring forth fruits meet for repentance; which if we willingly neglect, we cannot reasonably expect to be justified at all. Therefore both repentance and fruits meet for repentance are in some sense necessary to justification. But they are not necessary in the same sense with faith, nor in the same degree. Not in the same degree; for those fruits are only necessary conditionally, if there be time and opportunity for them. otherwise a man may be justified without them, as was the "thief' upon the cross. . . . But he cannot be justified without faith: this is impossible. Likewise let a man have ever so much repentance, or ever so many of the fruits meet for repentance, yet all this does not at all avail: he is not justified till he believes. But the moment he believes, with or without those fruits, yea, with more or less repentance, he is justified. Not in the same sense: for repentance and its fruits are only remotely necessary, necessary in order to faith; whereas faith is immediately and directly necessary to justification. It remains that faith is only the condition which is immediately and proximately necessary to justification.122

Wesley insisted no less than Chrysostom did that it was the constant energy of love which makes possible the human response to the offer of salvation. Wesley and Chrysostom both rejected any attempt to understand either repentance or faith as meritorious. Rather, they argued that in the human response to the constant energy of grace, the active side of repentance is completed in the passive response of faith.123 Wesley's consistent description of faith, the other side of human response, as the gift of the Holy Spirit, rules out any thought of faith as meritorious.124 Moreover, this twofold movement in the human response of saving faith was considered to be the "condition of justification":125 i.e., repentance is the negative movement of renouncing evil by actively returning from Satan to God and producing "fruits meet for repentance"; faith is the positive movement of passive "trust" or "reliance on the merits of Christ."

One can trace the basic understanding of faith as trust, the predominant understanding in Wesley's thought, to the three homilies of Thomas Cranmer which comprise the standard Anglican soteriology: "Of Salvation," "Of the True, Lively and Christian Faith," and "Of Good Works Annexed Unto Faith." The noted homily, "Of Salvation," provides the best exposition of what Anglicanism was to mean by 'justification," and it underscores the meaning of faith as trust as well as the eastern motif of divine-human participation.

... upon God's part, his great mercy and grace; upon Christ's part, justice, or [the] price of our redemption, by the offering of his body and shedding of his blood, with fulfilling of the law perfectly and thoroughly; upon our part, true and lively faith in the merits of Jesus Christ, which is not ours, but by God's grace working in us. 126

Cranmer continues his exposition of justification, which is built on the "foundation of faith," in the second homily, "Of the True, Lively, and Christian Faith." Here, he carefully defines "faith alone." He expands upon that point in his Notes on Justification, appealing to the "golden age," especially to Chrysostom. The point of his definition of faith is that fact that faith is not an "inherent virtue," but a "sure trust and confidence of the mercy of God through our Lord Jesus Christ, and a steadfast hope of all good things to be received at God's hand."127 Faith in its primary function is passive (trust) so that the human response of participating in the salvific process is always dependent upon the divine initiative, always dependent upon the "foundation of faith," which is the mercy of God and the sacrifice of Christ.128 Cranmer does not stop with the passivity of faith, however. Insistent on barring the entry of any form of antinomianism or solafidianism, he gives equal emphasis to the necessity of good works as a result of faith. He again turns to Chrysostom: "Faith is full of good works: as soon as a man doth believe, he shall be garnished with them."129 Cranmer turned to the "golden age" to balance the dialectic of faith and works and he found Chrysostom to be a major source as he developed what would become the basic stance of classical Anglicanism.130

In 1738, Wesley published his first doctrinal manifesto, an abridgment of the three soteriological homilies of Cranmer. Here, Wesley scores a resounding victory in the matter of the faith/works dilemma. In Outler's judgment, he reduces Cranmer's accent on the necessity of "good works annexed to faith" in the direction of a more explicit emphasis upon their spontaneous character as the fruits of faith.131

Wesley explicitly reappropriates this idea of the spontaneous character of works as fruits of faith for his reading of the Anglican heritage in his emphasis upon faith filled with the energy of love.132

Chrysostom filled his homilies with practical examples of how to validate one's faith. And since the ultimate source of these works of faith is condescending love,133 one understands faith to be filled with the continuous enabling, strengthening, assisting, and motivating energy of love. Chrysostom wrote of this motivation in his exegesis of Phil. 2:1216; and Wesley gave us what is perhaps his most complete exposition of theosis in his sermon, "On Working Out Our Own Salvation," which is on the same text.

Here is how Chrysostom expresses the motivation for the human response to the constant energy of love:

"Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.". . . Be not affrighted, thou are not worsted; both the heart desire and the accomplishment are a gift from Him: for where we have the will, thenceforward He will increase our will. For instance, I desire to do some good work: He has wrought also the will. Or he says in the excess of his piety, as when he declares that our well-doings are gifts of grace.134

Chrysostom's homilies are filled with metaphors of the power and energy of love which enable one to enter joyous communion with God.

For just as the earthen vessel is formed from clay and fire, so also the body of these saints being clay, and receiving the energy of the spiritual fire, becomes an earthen vessel. But for what reason was it thus constituted, and so great a treasure, and such a plenitude of graces entrusted to a mortal and corruptible body? "That the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us." For when thou seest the Apostles raising the dead, yet themselves sick, and unable to remove their own infirmities, thou mayest clearly perceive, that the resurrection of the dead man was not effected by the power of him who raised him, but by the energy of the Spirit.135

In turn, these metaphors for theosis would become grist for Wesley's mill in his own paradoxical exposition of the mystery of human reaction to divine prevenient action.

The necessity of the co-inherence of human and divine in Chrysostom's soteriology would become even more pronounced in Wesley's ordo salutis. Wesley explicates this relationship most completely and systematically in his sermon, "On Working Out Our Own Salvation." Here, he explicitly accents the point by nuances, variations, and interrelatings of the various features of that ordo. Especially important is his polarizing of prevenient grace and original sin, repentance and faith, and justification and sanctification.

The mystery of the incarnation continues in the mystery of redemption. As the paradox of the incarnation brought about the divine penetration into the human, the paradox would continue in salvation with the penetration of the human into the divine. And all would bear a certain necessity: How could God dwell in humanity if humanity could not dwell in God? Doctrines related to soteriology would have to be developed in terms of participation, that is to say, in terms of the divine in the human and the human in the divine, for the paradox of divine-human interaction in the incarnation continues in redemption.

Wesley carefully sketches an ordo salutis which is motivated by the "necessity" of the co-inherence of the human and the divine.

Salvation begins with what is usually termed (and very properly) preventing grace; including the first wish to please God, the first dawn of light concerning his will, and the first slight transient conviction of having sinned against him. All these imply some tendency toward life; some degree of salvation; the beginning of a deliverance from a blind, unfeeling heart, quite insensible of God and the things of God. Salvation is carried on by convincing grace, usually in Scripture termed repentance; which brings a larger measure of self-knowledge, and a farther deliverance from the heart of stone. Afterwards we experience the proper Christian salvation; whereby, "through grace," we "are saved by faith;" consisting of those two grand branches, justification and sanctification. By justification we are saved from the guilt of sin, and restored to the favor of God; by sanctification we are saved from the power and root of sin, and restored to the image of God. All experience, as well as Scripture, show this salvation to be both instantaneous and gradual. It begins the moment we are justified, in the holy, humble, gentle, patient love of God and man. It gradually increases from that moment, as "a grain of mustard seed, which, at first, is the least of all seeds," but afterwards puts forth large branches, and becomes a great tree; till, in another instant, the heart is cleansed from all sin, and filled with pure love to God and man. But even that love increases more and more, till we "grow up in all things into Him that is our Head;" till we attain "the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ."136

Wesley goes on to articulate an understanding of theosis in conjunction with his doctrine of prevenient grace: "First, God works, therefore you can work: Secondly, God works, therefore you must work."137 Here, then, he moves to his version of Chrysostom's understanding of theosis.

First, God worketh in you; therefore, you can work otherwise it would be impossible. If he did not work it would be impossible for you to work out your salvation. . .. Seeing all men are by nature not only sick, but "dead in trespasses and sins," it is not possible for them to do anything well till God raises them from the dead.

Yet this is no excuse for those who continue in sin, and lay the blame upon their Maker. . . . For allowing that all souls of men are dead in sin by nature, this excuses none, seeing there is no man that is in a state of mere nature; there is no man, unless he has quenched the Spirit, that is wholly void of the grace of God. No man living is entirely destitute of what is vulgarly called "natural conscience. But this is not natural; it is more properly termed "preventing grace." Every man has a greater or less measure of this, which waiteth not for the call of man. . . . Therefore inasmuch as God works in you, you are now able to work out your own salvation. Since he worketh in you of his own good pleasure, without any merit of yours, both to will and to do, it is possible for you to fulfill all righteousness. It is possible for you to "love God, because he hath first loved us," and to "walk in love," after the pattern of our great Master. . You can do something, through Christ strengthening you.

Secondly, God worketh in you; therefore you must work: you must be "workers together with him" ... otherwise he will cease working.... He will not save us unless "we save ourselves from this untoward generation"; ...

"Labor" then, brethren,..."My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." In consideration that he still worketh in you, never "weary of well doing." Go on, in virtue of the grace of God preventing, accompanying, and following you.

Wesley recovered Chrysostom's strand of theosis, forgotten or overlooked in the West. And he did it by making explicit that which was implicit in the "middle way" of his own "classical" Anglican heritage. He did this in unambiguous fashion in his sermon, "The Catholic Spirit," asking and responding to the axial question of the faith-work debate and Chrysostom's notion of condescending love: "Is thy faith filled with the energy of love?"139 He also answered the question in a series of three sermons on faith and love: "The Original, Nature, Property and Use of the Law," "The Law Established by Faith, Discourse I," and "The Law Established by Faith, Discourse II. "140

Consequently, as Wesley made explicit this notion of theosis in his ordo salutis, he would further articulate that motif in his correlation of faith and love. And as he wove the forgotten strand into this correlation, he made faith subservient to love. Faith is not an end in itself. It is a means. Love is not the product of faith. Faith exists only because of love. On the other hand, faith, which is a gift of grace, exists in order to love. Hence, faith is a grace-empowered response which leads to a holy love of God and neighbor.141

Faith filled with the energy of love was Wesley's answer to the mystery of redemption and it was an answer which avoided either a Pelagian optimism or an Augustinian pessimism. 142 "Is thy faith filled with the energy of love?"

And what of Wesley's understanding of the possibilities of our participation in the very life of God? Here, we must return for a time to Chrysostom and then come back to Wesley.

In harmony with his doctrine of creation and his theological anthropology, Chrysostom's idea of theosis is most pronounced in his explication of the doctrine of redemption. Responding to the question as to why fallen humanity should be allowed to participate in joyous communion with God, Chrysostom's response was quite simple: the condescension of divine love. Here, in this love, was preliminary grace, the grace seen in creation and conscience, the grace necessary to the definition and functioning of them all. This is best seen in his doctrine of predestination.

God's original plans for humanity to "become sons of God," plans vouchsafed initially in creation and in the conscience, would not, could not be, lost in the fall. The constant energy of grace in creation and conscience even after the fall guarantees the active presence of a potential for joyous communion with God. It should be obvious, therefore, that theosis is vital to God's absolute will for us. Of course, the energy of God's love is always contingent upon the divine-human interaction, and the greatest of these interactions was the incarnation, in which God became human not simply to remove the sin of Adam which has been imputed to us but to "restore [us] to the likeness of God"143 so that we could truly become "sons of God." As Chrysostom expounds on God's foreordination of the incarnation of God's foreordained will to become human so that humans might become divine, he speaks of God's preliminary love, the condescending love etched into the creation and into conscience, which preserves the potential for deification or theosis.

Having thus spoken of the good works of these, [Paul] again recurs to His grace. "In love," saith he, "having predestinated us." Because this comes not of any pains, nor of any good works of ours, but of love; and yet not of love alone, but of our virtue also. For if indeed of love alone, it would follow that all must be saved; whereas again were it the result of our virtue alone, then were His coming needless, and the whole dispensation. But it is the result neither of His love alone, nor yet of our virtue, but of both; "He chose us" saith the Apostle; and He that chooseth, knoweth what it is that He chooseth. "In love," he adds, "having fore-ordained us;" for virtue would never have saved anyone, had there not been love. For tell me, what would Paul have profited, how would he have exhibited what he has exhibited, if God had not both called him from the beginning, and, in that He loved him, drawn him to Himself? But besides, His vouchsafing us so great privileges, was the effect of His love, not of our virtue. Because our being rendered virtuous, and believing, and coming nigh unto Him, even this again was the work of Him that called us unto Himself, and yet, notwithstanding, it is ours also. But that on our coming nigh unto Him, He should vouchsafe us so high privileges, as to bring us at once from a state of enmity, to the adoption of children, this is indeed the work of a really transcendent love.144 Although this divine-human interaction is God's foreordained plan by which humanity partakes of God, Chrysostom makes it clear that the condescending love which brought about the incarnation is the sole "cause" of salvation (deification).

"In love," saith he (Paul), "having foreordained us unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ unto Himself."

Do you observe how that nothing is done without Christ? Nothing without the Father, the one hath predestinated, the other hath brought us near. And these words he adds, by way of heightening the things which have been done, in the same way as he says also elsewhere, "And not only so, but we also rejoice in God, through our Lord Jesus Christ." (Rom. V.11) For great indeed are the blessings bestowed, yet are they made far greater in being bestowed through Christ; because He sent not any servant, though it was to servants He sent, but the Only-begotten Son Himself.

"According to the good pleasure," he continues, "of his will."

That is to say, because He earnestly willed it. This is, as one might say, His earnest desire. From the word "good pleasure" everywhere means the precedent will, for there is also another will. As for example, the first will is that sinners should not perish; the second will is, that, if men become wicked, they shall perish. For surely it is not by necessity that He punishes them, but because He wills it. . .

...What he means to say then is this, God earnestly aims at, earnestly desires, our salvation. Wherefore then is it that He so loveth us,whence hath He such affection? It is of his goodness alone; For grace itself is the fruit of goodness. And for this cause, he saith, hath He predestinated us to the adoption of children; this being His will, and the object of his earnest wish, that the glory of His grace may be displayed. 145

For no other reason than the goodness and mercy of God is fallen humanity constantly given the possibility of participating in God through Christ. The very nature of God is the initiating "cause" of joyous communion with him. 146 The merciful nature of God is the only basis of condescending love. Thus, the incarnation is the objective reality in (or the objective side to) what God does "for us" in making us to become his sons i.e., "sons of God."147 Chrysostom best expressed this in his description of the cross.

Let no man therefore be ashamed of the honored symbols of our salvation, and of the chiefest of all good things, whereby we even live, and whereby we are; but as a crown, so let us bear about the cross of Christ. Yea, for by it all things are wrought, that are wrought among us. Whether one is to be newborn, in baptism the cross is there; or to be nourished with that mystical food, or to be ordained, or to do anything else, everywhere our symbol of victory is present. Therefore both on house, and walls, we inscribe it with much care.

For of the salvation wrought for us, and of our common freedom, and of the goodness of our Lord, this is the sign.148

As Chrysostom sees it, the work of the incarnation and of the cross are continuations of the earlier workings of preliminary grace in creation and in the human conscience. They are objective acts of God's mercy, of his condescending love.149 Condescending love is meaningless, however, unless it can penetrate humanity to the extent that humanity can reciprocate. And here we must consider the subjective side of participation in the divine, that which is done "in us" at baptism 150

"And such were some of you, but ye were washed, but ye were sanctified, but ye were justi