by
Michael Lodahl

In one of the classes I teach annually my students and I study John Wesley's A Plain Account of Christian Perfection. The repeated reading of this fascinating little volume has had the effect of pushing a certain question to the surface of my thinking: Why did Wesley show so little sympathy and have so little patience with eschatological fervor, which he tended to identify with "enthusiasm"?

Eschatology is not a prominent theme in A Plain Account. In his strictures against enthusiasm, however, Wesley occasionally deals with eschatological issues. These issues come to prominence in section 22. There Wesley writes:

About the same time [1762J, five or six honest enthusiasts foretold the world was to end on the 28th of February. I immediately withstood them, by every possible means, both in public and private. I preached expressly upon the subject. . . . I warned the society, again and again, and spoke severally to as many as I could; and I saw the fruit of my labor. They made exceeding few converts. . . . Nevertheless, they made abundance of noise,... and greatly increased both the number and courage of those who opposed Christian perfection (1966, 69-70).

What strikes me about this brief excerpt is that Wesley does not tell us on what grounds he opposed these enthusiasts or why he was so adamant about his denying the validity of their prediction. Undoubtedly one reason was the pastoral motivation of desiring to avoid the unpleasant task of having to "pick up the pieces" of shattered hopes, and even faith, after a failed prediction. At the end of Wesley's account, however, we find a theological clue that shall be pursued more thoroughly later in this paper. These eschatological enthusiasts stimulated opposition to "Christian perfection." Wesley's concern for protecting and promulgating this doctrine of perfection may provide a key for understanding his reservations about eschatological fervor.

In 1788 Wesley wrote a letter to Christopher Hopper reflecting the traditional Wesleyan reservation about eschatological "enthusiasm." It read:

Particularly here we catch Wesley's typical impatience with speculative matters. In fact, his dismissal of Bengel's date-setting has the same tone one finds in his journal when he responds to a lecture he had heard concerning the possibility of life on other planets: "I know the earth is [inhabited]. Of the rest I know nothing" (1978, 2:515). Wesley tended to dismiss speculation, especially as it touches on sensationalistic matters, as being unimportant, even delusive in that it occupies the mind with issues not rooted in soteriology. How different this is from our modern-day apocalypticists, ranging from the traveling evangelists with their detailed charts to the Hal Lindseys,¹ all of whom trade on human curiosity and fear addressed by their end-time scenarios. They thereby encourage their hearers to reserve a place in a future age. Wesley teaches a different attitude, one which is concerned that preoccupation with eschatology may cloud the issues central to salvation. Perhaps one could suggest that Wesley's approach encourages us to do what we can to serve the present age, indeed to preserve it, rather than to flee it or hope for its soon demise.

In what follows I offer a theological rationale, arising directly from the Arminian-Wesleyan tradition, for Wesley's usual reticence to engage in eschatological sensationalism. I do not argue that Wesley had in mind all that I shall say, but I hope to demonstrate that suspicions against traditional eschatological fervor are inherent in his understanding of the divine-human relationship and are applied appropriately to all that I suggest.

Perfecting Grace in This Life

The obvious place to begin is with the recognition that eschatology is, in fact, at the very heart of Wesley's doctrine of entire sanctification. It is, to be sure, a realizable eschatology, since Wesley insists that it is possible in this life to be brought to a perfection of love for God and neighbor. Theodore Runyon spoke helpfully of this perfection: "This doctrine is distinctive from notions of sanctification in other Christian traditions in that it expects the finite equivalent of eschatological fulfillment (i.e., entire sanctification) as something which can happen in history rather than beyond it" (2). By differing with those who taught that Christian perfection occurs only after death, at the point of death, or perhaps immediately prior to death, and by holding out for the possibilities of divine grace to perfect us in love in this life, Wesley was making room for an eschatological hope that could become more than a hope, but rather a gracious reality in the here and now.

The Wesleyan insistence upon the possibility of entire sanctification in this life testifies not only to the transforming power of God's love and grace, but also to the potential of this present world to become an arena of authentic goodness and love, or what the Hebrew prophets called shalom. One might even surmise that the same impatience Wesley showed toward those who testified of being in the "state" of perfection, because they tended to rest in a past experience, he might extend toward those who tend to look ahead to some future moment of eschatological perfection. The crucial nature of the "now" before God-"that we need not stay another moment . . . that 'now,' the very 'now is the accepted time .

now is the day of this 'full salvation'" (1966, 34)-was obscured by moments either remembered or anticipated, moments other than the "now" of sanctifying grace and human responsibility.

Wesley took a certain delight in quoting Augustine's words, "He who made us without ourselves will not save us without ourselves," because this sentiment runs counter to much of the rest of Augustine's decidedly unilateral soteriology which, at its most logical extreme, embraced an unmitigated predestinationism. Wesley also delighted in these words precisely because he so thoroughly agreed with them. The God who created us without our aid² is, for Wesley, not interested in redeeming us apart from our cooperation.

But does not eschatological doctrine, particularly (though not only) as it is flavored by apocalypticism, continually veer toward the idea that God indeed will, and must, "save us without ourselves"? Obviously I here mean "save us" in a larger, cosmic sense, by God intervening in human history and essentially putting an end to the historical process. I~o the extent that eschatology concerns itself with what God is going to do to put an end to history, specifically in the coming again of our Lord Jesus Christ, then it seems that we do believe that God will "save us without ourselves." And to the extent that many traditional eschatological scenarios either imply or encourage a certain hopelessness about the project of history, do they not to that extent mitigate against Wesley's doctrine of Christian perfection as a realizable eschatology? Obviously the post-millennialism that was popular among Christians in the late 19th and early 20th centuries placed emphasis upon human cooperation in history toward God's eschatological telos, but few of us are officially or intentionally post-millennial anymore, and even in that end-time scenario Christ's coming presumably brings about the end of history. But what if the real "end" of history is the gracious (re)creation of human beings to become, "in this life," lovers of God and neighbor?

Indeed, it is precisely this kind of vision that surfaces in Wesley's sermon entitled "The General Spread of the Gospel." After surveying the world as he knew it, and admission that, humanly speaking, the prospects for winning the world to Christian faith were not encouraging, Wesley nonetheless insists that "the loving knowledge of God, producing uniform, uninterrupted holiness and happiness, shall cover the earth; shall fill every soul of man" (1978, 6:279). But such will not come about by God acting irresistibly because then, man would be man no longer:

his inmost nature would be changed. He would no longer be a moral agent, any more than the sun or the wind; as he would no longer be endued with liberty-a power of choosing, of self-determination. . .

The pattern of divine activity that Wesley finds in human experience, "God's general manner of working," is that of gracious assistance, not force. It is an enlightening and strengthening of human understanding and affections, not their deletion or destruction. This gracious synergism provided Wesley with a model not simply for divine-human interaction, but for the entirety of the God-world interaction. "Now in the same manner as God has converted so many to himself without destroying their liberty, he can undoubtedly convert whole nations, or the whole world; and it is as easy to him to convert a world, as one individual soul" (1978, 6:281).

Writing out of this optimism of grace, Wesley predicts the triumphal spread of the gospel from one nation and people to another as God gradually renews the face of the earth until the vision of the Revelator is fulfilled and "the Lord God omnipotent reigneth!" Today we tend not to share Wesley's naive-sounding optimism, but do we have good reason to reject his interpretation of God's mode of activity as persuasion and gracious enablement in contrast to a unilateral, manipulative, apocalyptic inbreaking of history?

Wesley's insistence on human cooperation with divine grace raises profound questions about our understanding of the role and importance of human activity in the direction(s) history takes. It stands in direct contrast to notions of absolute sovereignty, whether understood on the individual or the cosmic level, notions that view God bringing about (or soon to bring about) divine intentions unilaterally. Of course, it is apocalypticism that is most insistent on the notion of divine foreclosure. It also is apocalypticism that provided the eschatological milieu for Christianity in its birth pangs, provides much of the traditional Christian doctrine concerning end-times, and is a common expectation of many Christians filling today's pews.

Thus the question is worth asking again: How does belief in the return of Christ, particularly as framed in terms of an apocalyptic conclusion to human history, fit with Wesley's understanding of divine-human interaction as the dynamic and purpose of history? Can we not, indeed ought we not interpret the idea of synergism in categories that are larger, more encompassing and more cosmic than simply an u~derstanding of the individual's relationship to God? Indeed, is it consistent or coherent to insist upon synergism on the level of individual spiritual experience and yet hold to an eschatological hope of unilateral divine intrusion on the historical or cosmic level?

Pannenberg and Apocalypticism

Probably no contemporary theologian has used as comprehensively and creatively the apocalypticism of Christianity's historical roots as has Wolfhart Pannenberg. Pannenberg, with his characteristic emphasis on the future, argues that God's reality and lordship will become evident only in the end of all things. But God has proleptically revealed the divine self as the God of history in Jesus' resurrection, which is the fulfillment of the Jewish apocalyptic hope of resurrection as well as the promise of future resurrection. Pannenberg argues that Jewish apocalyptic hopes were anchored in the symbol and hope of the resurrection of the dead as the sine qua non of final judgment, the end of the world, and God's self-vindication (1968, Revelation).

Pannenberg insists that to understand any event is to see it within its own contexts of tradition, expectation or meaning. This has important implications for what he has to say about Jesus' resurrection and its significance. If one interprets Jesus' resurrection from within the prevailing worldview of apocalypticism in first-century Palestinian Judaism, then "resurrection from the dead" implies the end of the world, the final judgment, and the full revelation of God. No wonder the early Christians expected Jesus' imminent return! The day of the Lord was already inbreaking. The fact that their expectation went unfulfilled, and is yet unfulfilled two millennia later, is not lost on us. Thus, Pannenberg's claim that "with the resurrection of Jesus, the end of history has already occurred" (1968, Jesus, 142), while almost a cliche among theologians of hope, suffers from oversimplification and a failure to understand the ongoing, interwoven processes of history and nature as the realm of God's covenantal activity with humanity and all of creation. I agree with Paul van Buren when he writes:

Further, I believe that it is precisely Pannenberg's apocalyptic reading of history that comes into conflict with the Wesleyan eschatology of a perfect love for God and neighbor that is realizable in this life. The latter has much more in common with the prophetic understanding of history than the apocalyptic. In the words of D. S. Russell:

Jewish apocalypticism, then, tended toward a denial of the world and of the real significance of human activity within history. It anticipated the full revelation of God in terms of the vengeful, sword-bearing messiah who would eliminate Israel's oppressors and establish justice and peace throughout the earth. But the one whom Christians acknowledge as God's messiah, God's uniquely anointed one, did not (and I argue does not and will not) fit the description of the world-conquering apocalyptic lord. Christian theological tradition often has not seen the profound implications of its own central claim that it was in a suffering servant, a humble Jewish peasant, that God has visited and is redeeming creation. Christians have tended traditionally to castigate the Jews of Jesus' time for not perceiving his messiahship, while making the same mistake in maintaining and anticipating an apocalyptic eschatological scenario.

The doctrinal position of the Wesleyan Theological Society is that "our Lord Jesus Christ . . . will personally return in power and great glory." The paradox is that the Society also believes that our Lord Jesus Christ is the paradigm for how God reveals the divine character in all of human history and how God works in covenantal partnership with human beings. If God has revealed the divine character and intentions in the man Christ Jesus, then we can say confidently that God chooses to come to us, to labor toward God's own ends for history, in and through human cooperation. I suspect that apocalypticism, born as it inevitably is in historical contexts of extreme suffering and oppression, is a religious expression of the desire to be rid of human responsibility for history. Is it possible that the revelation in Christ, rather than validating the apocalyptic understanding of history as Pannenberg has tended to argue, is actually a judgment and negation of apocalypticism?

The Wesleyan message of perfect love for God and neighbor in this life provides an optimism about the possibilities of grace in human existence, societies, and history that belies any apocalyptic despair. The fact that, for Wesley, Jesus is the great model and exemplar of such love supports my contention that what God reveals to us in Christ, both about God and about ourselves, is a direct challenge to apocalyptic scenarios that write off history. The synergism of grace underlying Wesley's doctrine of Christian perfection points to the validity and importance of history.

One may object by insisting that the apocalyptic vision does indeed reflect God's intentions for creation, and that the Wesleyan interpretation of history as offered here is incorrect. I offer a threefold response. First, it is obviously the case that, to this point in our history as human beings on this planet, the apocalyptic vision is not correct and in fact has led many sincere believers into profound disappointment and even disillusionment. Second, if the apocalyptic vision does turn out to be correct and is vindicated at some future moment in time, all arguments for or against really will not matter. Third, the popular Christian fixation on apocalyptic scenarios tends often to be self-defeating, in that people so engaged often disengage themselves from responsibility in this life and world.

This third point deserves development. A Korean Christian sect that believed the widely-publicized prediction that Christ would return on October 28, 1992, provides a tragically fitting example. Shortly before midnight of October 28, four of the sect's followers committed suicide in anticipation. Others sold their homes and all their goods and gave the money away, leaving them with nothing for themselves and their families. On the other hand, the person committed to a covenantal cooperation with God for the redemption and healing of others and the world as a whole is the person who is truly ready for whatever future God brings. One is reminded of Jesus' parable of the talents, in which the stewards are praised who actively and responsibly invest the master's property. The one who stewed over the imminent return of the demanding master, hiding in the ground the one talent entrusted to him, is chastised and punished.

Creation and Eschatology

Eschatological anticipations of a divinely-ordained closure to the processes of history seem to exist in tension with, if not contradiction to, the Biblical doctrine of creation as offered in Genesis. If the created order is God's "other" called into existence and sustained by God, whose "otherness" finds its highest expression in intelligent beings of moral agency, then such considerations cannot be alien to God's original intention in creating. The question of why God created the world is one of the great issues of theology. Whatever view one takes, it is difficult to sustain if one also believes that God shall, at some future point, undo or foreclose this project of creating that which is other than (and sometimes even opposed to) God's own self. What would have been the point? Jose Migeuz-Bonino has framed the dilemma well:

Again, is it not the case that most eschatological scenarios do indeed crown God as the "substitute subject" par excellence, whose foreclosure on the processes of human action and responsibility in history renders those processes null and void? What then becomes of God's venture to create? In response to such a consideration, I argue that a thoroughly Wesleyan eschatology does posit an "end" for creation and history, but fundamentally in the sense of an inner telos: God's end is that human beings, those creatures fashioned to image God and thus to be God's representatives in the world and in history, would join God in covenantal relationship and cooperation toward the redemption and healing of creation. God's creative activity is an ongoing task. While humanity as a whole has not thus far done an effective job of contributing to the wellness or shalom of creation, there is no reason to assume that God is yet ready to give up on the project of covenantal freedom and responsibility vis a vis human beings.

It is noteworthy that Scripture tells a powerful story of a time early in the human saga when God nearly did give up on the project of human freedom and responsibility. In the words of Genesis, "Then Yahweh saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, . . . and Yahweh was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart" (6:5, 6). Yet God chose to begin anew with Noah and his family. In fact, in the aftermath of the flood, God covenanted with Noah and all his descendants (i.e., us) "and with every living creature... even every beast of the earth," that "all flesh shall never again be cut off by the water of the flood, neither shall there again be a flood to destroy the earth" (Gen 9:10-11). Of course there is a popular tradition of interpretation arguing that God only promised never to destroy the world with a flood. But the intent of the text, it seems to me, i~ to underscore the Creator's commitment to sustain the created order in covenantal faithfulness. God establishes this covenant with all of creation precisely in the face of' and even as a response to, human sin and failure. Smelling the soothing aroma of Noah's offering, God responds, "I will never again curse the ground on account of man, for the intent of man's heart is evil from his youth; and I will never again destroy every living thing, as I have done" (Gen 8:21).

The Genesis doctrine of creation, particularly as it is re-creation in the flood narrative, is a profound affirmation of God's underlying predisposition toward maintaining the possibilities of adventurous relationship that this created order provides. Such an understanding of creation goes hand-in-hand with Wesley's optimism of grace, which insists that it is possible in this life (and hence, in this world) to love God and neighbor with all one's being. If such love is possible for one, it is in principle possible, by God's transforming, empowering grace, for all. Hence, individuals and societies, graced and enabled by God's prevenient presence, can yet move, at least in principle, toward the divine vision of shalom. This perspective has obvious implications for developing a Christian, and particularly a Wesleyan commitment to social and economic justice as well as to the ecological health of the planet. Good stewardship of the created order, human responsibility as those created in God's image to tend to creation, is stewardship for the long haul! One might ask, then, whether the purpose or purposes of God's venture in creating get shortchanged by eschatological scenarios in which human activity and responsibility are brought to closure.

Even if our Creator truly is committed to the venture and risk of freedom exercised by the creature, there is no guarantee that this grand "experiment" will end satisfactorily. While the prevenient grace of God's presence in human life and societies is faithful and true (Ps 146:6-9), that grace is persuasive rather than coercive. The great majority of eschatological scenarios that Christians have envisioned are coercive in nature. But if grace is persuasive, and thus an indication of God's desire to lure us toward answerability for history, then the underside is that We might enact our own apocalypse. There "unfortunately is no absolute guarantee against the blood-chilling possibility that the human race will finally destroy itself as the present threat of nuclear war attests" (Dunning, 296).

Eschatology and Modern Cosmology

Eschatology need not be restricted to the real possibility of the self-annihilation of the human race. Even if, by the grace of God, we should be enabled to avoid total nuclear warfare or the slow death of ecocide, we can be fairly confident that the world as we know it will not go on forever. Eschatology has made a new place for itself in the thinking of some of the theologians currently working in the dialogue between religious Faith and scientific theory. Particularly when one reflects on creation from within a Big Bang paradigm, in which "the universe is walking a one-way street from hot to cold," and where "our cosmic house is moving from centralized heating to decentralized freezing" (Peters, 51), there is an inevitable conclusion to the universe as we know it. The Big Bang scenario, which presently is the dominant description among scientists of the universe's genesis, postulates a cosmos with a beginning, a relatively straight arrow of time, and an inevitable conclusion. Thus, even should we avoid planetary suicide either by nuclear war or by ecological asphyxiation, our sun will finally burn out in a universe that will have gradually expanded away all its heat.

Many if not most cosmologists, in other words, offer us a secular version of the end-time vision of the book of Hebrews, compiled as it is by a string of quotations from the psalms and the prophets:

This text and others like it join with the secular eschatology of Big Bang cosmology to remind us that our universe is finite. The phenomenon of space-time, presumably begun in an unimaginable explosion of power, will come to an end. The vital question is whether such a conclusion to the universe will also mark the conclusion of God's commitment to covenantal relationship, to the divine-human synergism of grace. A partial answer is that the New Testament echoes Isaiah's prophecy of a "new heaven and a new earth" in which righteousness dwells (2 Pet 3:13; Rev 21:1-5). Christian eschatology presents the promise of a new reality from the God who makes all things new-a reality not dependent on or threatened by the apparently inevitable winding down of this present order.

Ted Peters, one of those contemporary theologians working in consonance with the categories of modern cosmology, suggests that we need to envision creation as God's ongoing act, a continuing process yet to be completed. Its completion is, for Peters, what eschatology is all about. "God is constantly in the process of creating the world in light of its forthcoming end" (104). If a Wesleyan understanding of God's "end" in creating is that responsible relationship might be sustained, then whatever "new heaven and earth" God might create would also include the adventurous risk of freedom.

Most traditional eschatology, however, is uncomfortable with the expectation of such a new creation. Eschatology traditionally tends to focus on closure, on God finally saying "Enough!" to the project of creaturely otherness and freedom. Paul van Buren, struggling to understand Paul's eschatological vision of God finally becoming "all in all" (1 Cor 15:28), suggests that it "seems unlikely, having made the commitment and self-limiting move entailed in having begun this creation, that His final goal were to be rid of it; but who knows? Perhaps for God, too, enough can be enough" (200). But can God forget rainbows?

In the vision of the book of Revelation, the new heaven and new earth are no longer plagued by the sea (21:1), that recurring Biblical symbol of the chaotic elements that threaten the stability of the created order. The Revelator seems to be suggesting an entirely secure re-creation in which all contingency, threat, and danger will be removed. It is difficult to picture such a scenario that would still have any room for the possibilities of covenantal relationship rooted in human freedom and responsibility. On the other hand, it is difficult to imagine the God who is Love ever denying or negating the human capacity for authentic love made possible by response-ability.

Perhaps the best Wesleyan solution to this problem is wrapped up in the theme of eschatological love as addressed in I John, which was of paramount importance for Wesley: "By this, love is perfected with us, that we may have confidence in the day of judgment; . . . there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves punishment, and the one who fears is not perfected in love. We love, because He first loved us" (4:17-19). Such love is possible only in the atmosphere of authentic freedom. Moreover, such love is also the deepest meaning and fulfillment, or end, of human freedom. Such a consideration sheds light, I think, on the concluding sentence of Wesley's sermon "The New Creation." It reads: "And, to crown all, there will be a deep, an intimate, an uninterrupted union with God; a constant communion with the Father and his Son Jesus Christ, through the Spirit; a continual enjoyment of the Three-One God, and of all the creatures in him!" (1978, 6:296).

Perhaps the eschatological experience in God's new heaven and earth-presumably an inexplicable and unimaginable experience of divine love, light and presence-will truly liberate us to love in ways unknown to us now, and thus paradoxically to make us more truly free than we can ever experience in this life.³ For in the glory that is to be revealed, we shall be truly free to love, free to serve one another in love. And that, according to Paul, is what authentic freedom is (Gal. 5:1, 13).

Summary

By taking such an approach, one can argue the following about a Wesleyan orientation to eschatology:

¹See, for instance, Lindsey's best-selling The Late Great Planet Earth.

²Of course, if one thinks of creation more in terms of God's ongoing activity, the fact is that God creates each of us with the procreating aid of others. Hence, even the act of creation becomes a partnered, synergistic labor of God.

³The opposite presumably would hold in the experience of hell.

WORKS CITED

Edited by Michael Mattei for the
Wesley Center for Applied Theology
at Northwest Nazarene University
© Copyright 2000 by the Wesley Center for Applied Theology

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