BIBLICAL THEOLOGY AND WESLEYAN
THEOLOGY:
1994 WTS Presidential Address
by
George Lyons
Biblical theology is an historical and theological discipline in
the throes of an identity crisis. For the past two decades it has been increasingly
uncertain of its subject-matter and an appropriate method for addressing it. This is not
merely to repeat the alarm sounded in 1970 by Brevard S. Childs' Biblical Theology in
Crisis.1 He referred to the demise of a post-World War II
neo-fundamentalist trend in American systematic theology which had alleged to depend upon
the Bible and the supposed biblical world view as its primary, if not sole norm.2 By
biblical theology I mean the synthetic and integrative exegetical enterprise that attempts
to inform, not replace, systematic theology. For the most part, I restrict my remarks to
New Testament theology.
The so-called "biblical theology movement" of which
Childs wrote was only one of many victims of the social and theological upheavals is of
the 1960s. The antiphilosophical and antirational tendencies of its "biblicist view
of revelation" could not exclude "the rest of human knowledge from Christian
accounts of God and tie world."3 Robert Morgan correctly insists that even
if the NT provided a uniform doctrinal system (which it does not), contemporary belief
could not simply repeat it because belief in a God who relates to the world invokes (in
principle) all human experience and knowledge, and that varies from age to age. Biblicism
denies this problem and positivistic historicism ignores the question of God.4 Wesleyan
theology, which acknowledges the normative Status of Scripture, tradition, reason, and
experience, would seem to be well suited to the task of biblical theology.
History. Biblical theology as a discipline has its roots in
the Protestant Reformation. The Reformer emphasis on Scripture as the sole source and norm
for all matters of faith provided the soil from which biblical theology sprang. From its
beginnings in the sixteenth century it has self-consciously defined itself as over against
dogmas and traditions that were perceived as inadequately biblical in character. The
designation "biblical theology" did not appear until the seventeenth century.
Old and New Testament theologies as distinct disciplines came into existence toward the
end of the eighteenth century. The earliest biblical theologies were essentially topically
arranged Scriptural proof-texts listed under the headings of dogmas of Protestant
theology. Due primarily to the influence of German Pietism and the Enlightenment, during
the eighteenth century the orientation of biblical theology shifted from dogma to history.5
And its opponent was no longer Roman Catholicism, but Protestant scholasticism.
Pietism "was primarily concerned with the temporal and
sequential unfolding of revelation in the Bible." It emphasized personal experience,
moral living, and the edifying message of the Bible "set forth in its own right and
according to its own categories."6 Biblical theology was also aided by
Enlightenment rationalism's "aversion to dogmatic religion" and its belief in a
religion "in conformity with the demands of reason."7
The discipline of biblical theology is the historical offspring
of the unlikely marriage of the Pietism and Rationalism in a chapel constructed jointly by
the Protestant Reformation and the Scientific Revolution. Most scholars date its birth in
1787 and identify Johannes Gabler as the attending midwife. Gabler's 1787 lecture,
"On the Proper Distinction between Biblical and Dogmatic Theology and the Specific
Objectives of Both," was the birth announcement. Toward the end of the eighteenth
century, G. L. Bauer set a precedent, customary to the present, by publishing the first
works to bear the names Old Testament theology (1797) and New Testament theology
(1800-1802).8
During the nineteenth century biblical theology increasingly
shifted from a presentation of the theological concepts of the Bible, systematically
arranged, to the history and evolution of the religion of Israel and the early church.
This was accompanied by a de-emphasis on the Bible as special revelation and a greater
emphasis on its parallels with other religions. Liberated from the constraints of church
dogma, biblical theology frequently has become an unwitting slave to the current
"philosophical assumptions and cultural presuppositions of its own age."9
New Testament theology is the child of both modern biblical
scholarship and Christian theology, originating in the tense environment of
eighteenth-century German Protestant theology faculties of secular universities. These
professors, "whose standards of truth were dictated by critical reason," saw
their mission as training clergy "to think and preach theologically from an
authoritative scripture."10 As a by-product of its origins, biblical
theology is less a sub-discipline of biblical and theological studies than "one of
the fields in which the forces of faith and reason meet. It is Christian theology engaging
with an area of modem knowledge that is of central importance for its own identity, and
biblical studies wrestling with its material's own definition of its subject-matter."11
The original aims and ingredients of New Testament theology are
now largely ignored by academic biblical scholarship. But these goals remain indispensable
for any Christian theology that depends heavily on Scripture. New Testament theology
survives as a precariously endangered species. Neo-conservative theologians have blunted
its critical edge, while secular influences have dulled its religious and theological
aims. The deepening hostility between traditional Christianity and modern rationalism has
placed New Testament theology at risk from both sides. It is a stepchild that neither
parent-discipline seems disposed to claim.
For nearly eighteen hundred years Christians saw no need for the
discipline of New Testament theology. But it is as surely the product of Pietism as is
Wesleyanism. If New Testament theology disappears as a discipline, will Wesleyans attend
its funeral? Will it be missed? Or will we read its obituary with the same dispassion with
which we read those of total strangers?
Definitions. What is New Testament theology? In one sense its
subject-matter should be obvious. It is the New Testament, of course. But in another sense
its subject-matter is problematic. Even the question, "What is the New
Testament?" requires a nuanced answer. It is at once a collection of historical
documents and sacred Scripture. Christian tradition understands the New Testament to be
the Word of God preserved in human words in history. But the contents of the New Testament
are not obviously theology. There are four accounts of the life and work of Jesus, a
selective account of the earliest period of the Christian church, a disparate collection
of pastoral letters, and an assortment of visions, hut noting like theology in the usual
sense of the word.
Is the significance of the New Testament to be found in the
events the New Testament reports--particularly the Christ-event? Or is it to be found in
the earliest oral stages of reflection on these events, in the Gospel narratives of the
life and teachings of Jesus? Or is the significance of the New Testament to be found in
Paul's and others' self-consciously theological reflections on and applications of these
events and narratives? Is it in the canonical combination of all of these? Is it in the
scholarly reconstructions of the foundational events or the "theology" of the
founders of the Christian movement? Or is it in the preacher's announcement of them as
good news on Sunday morning? Or is it rather in believers who live out of their trust in
God on a daily basis in the marketplace?
The crucial issue in contemporary biblical theology remains the
problem posed by Gabler from its beginning, that is, distinguishing the descriptive and
normative dimensions of its task. Does its subject matter merely describe what the
earliest Christians believed, thought, taught, hoped, and required? Or does it also
prescribe what all subsequent Christians must believe, etc.? Do the convictions and
experiences of Christians expressed in the New Testament still inform contemporary
concerns in any nonnative sense? Our answer shapes our understanding of New Testament
theology. If we take seriously both the past and the present, New Testament theology
presupposes both exegesis and hermeneutics. It depends on the tools and techniques of both
historians and literary critics. Its concern must be to discover what ancient authors
intended to communicate to their original hearers.12 But what of contemporary
hearers for whom the Bible still exercises a constitution-like authority? How are we to
discern the manner in which the results of historical exegesis are relevant to modem
readers who stand in continuity and discontinuity with the earliest Christians?
We must be self-conscious about what we mean by New Testament
theology. Do we refer to theology contained in the New Testament or theology that is
somehow derived from the New Testament? Gabler's concern was the latter. He distinguished
theology based on and rooted in the New Testament from dogmatic theology based on church
tradition. Conservative scholars tend to refer to New Testament theology as a theology
contained within the New Testament. This presumes the existence of an underlying
theological unity inherent beneath its surface. Does such a unity exist?
Although we usually speak of New Testament theology, it might be
more appropriate to speak of several New Testament theologies. If we presume a coherent
New Testament theology, where it is to be found? Of what does it consist? What is its
unifying center? Inevitably, works that identify themselves as New Testament theology are
predetermined by their authors' preconceptions of their subject matter.13 If
one believes in the constitution-like authority of the Bible, no Christian theologian has
the option of simply ignoring it and being inventive, even if the Bible cannot provide the
formal categories for constructing a theological system.14
John Wesley considered the Bible to be neither the product of nor
the presentation of a coherent theological system. Its concern was not with theoretical
abstractions, but with practical, holy living. And so was his. Wesley considered the
historical meaning of Scripture the necessary foundation for its practical, edifying,
authoritative, contemporary application. But the primary role of Scripture, for Wesley and
the Wesleyan tradition, has been with what we would call today "spiritual
formation."
In the Reformation and Enlightenment traditions, Wesley
recognized the necessity of historical biblical interpretation. But Wesley refused to make
biblical study a merely academic exercise, a game for antiquarians. He recognized that
biblical theology and religion are inseparable. So also the descriptive task identifying
what biblical writers believed and how they behaved--and the prescriptive
task--identifying what is requisite tot contemporary Christian faith and practice--were
distinguishable but interdependent. Wesley wrote, "I apply no Scripture phrase either
to myself or any other without carefully considering both the original meaning and
secondary sense, wherein (allowing for different times and circumstances) it may be
applied to ordinary Christians."15 Wesley was not content with the purely
antiquarian interest in what the Bible meant originally. His main concern was to discover
the contemporary significance of the ancient text. He insisted that the continuity between
the two periods had to be discovered inductively by attentive listening to what Scripture
said, and not merely deduced from what Church tradition said, often ingeniously read back
into Scripture by means of allegorical interpretation. Wesley and Wesleyans insist that
whatever is not found in Scripture is not to be made an article of faith.
In conservative theological traditions the general truth and
authority of the New Testament have been taken for granted and the contemporary task seen
as identifying and communicating its theological content. The problem is, of course, that
different theological traditions disagree fundamentally on what that crucial content is
and how it is to be communicated.16 As a theological discipline, New Testament
theology must be a synthesizing account of the religious and theological message of the
New Testament. It must seek to integrate the beliefs that come to expression in varied
ways throughout the New Testament. "Theology is all about the great wholes, the
world-views which determine and dominate the day-to-day handling of varied issues."17
Synthesis, integration, and coherency are crucial goals of New Testament theology. But
where is the organizing center of the New Testament?
Center: Unity and Diversity. The most obvious identification
of an organizing center is the consistent preoccupation of most New Testament books with
Jesus Christ.18 Upon closer inspection, however, it becomes apparent that even
the Christological understanding of the various New Testament authors is hardly uniform.
The New Testament apparently offers not one, but many Christologies. The life and ministry
of Jesus of Nazareth prompted various attempts to interpret his relationship to God and
God's ancient people, utilizing various Jewish and Hellenistic paradigms in the process.19
Among the other unifying biblical themes proposed have been:
grace, God's love and kingdom, justification by faith, reconciliation, life "in
Christ," holiness, life in the Spirit, new covenant--community new age--eschatology,
resurrection, promise-fulfillment, salvation, "salvation history," shalom
("peace and well-being" in Hebrew), kerygma (from the Greek word for
"preaching" or "proclamation"). None of these is without foundation in
some New Testament passages or in the experience of Christians. In fact, denominations
have defined their reason for existence around such answers.20
It was not modem biblical scholars who first recognized the
diversity of early Christianity and the New Testament it produced or the difficulties this
presents contemporary interpreters. We may take the two leading apostles as examples.21
Paul does not hesitate to take Peter to task for failing to act "consistently with
the truth of the gospel" (Gal. 2:14). Nor does the author of 2 Peter hesitate to take
issue with Paul's view of the immediacy of the parousia (2 Pet. 3:1-13). And, although he
finds parts of Paul's letters "hard to understand," he recognizes them as
"other scriptures" alongside the Old Testament (2 Pet. 3:15-16, NRSV).
James D. G. Dunn insists that "the unifying and distinctive
core of Christianity in the beginning centered irreducibly on Jesus Christ. Nevertheless,
"the fact of diversity [is] something inescapable in every attempt to bring that
unifying core to concrete expression."22 Dunn continues: "Any and
every Statement of the gospel in the New Testament is historically conditioned and context
specific. The word of God speaks to the human condition in its diverse specificity."23
Hans Kung notes that "because the New Testament was never intended to be a summa
theologiae, we must reject any harmonization of the texts that dissolves the
differences in a violent manner."24
There is a considerable breadth in the canon. Diverse statements
on the same issue are allowed to stand side by side within the New Testament, suggesting
that Christians did not consider such diverse views contradictory, but rather
complementary--the ingredients of a larger whole.25 The latest books of the New
Testament offer something of "a catholic synthesis of several strands and tendencies
(and factions) within earliest Christianity."26 The ecumenical creeds
expose the theological assumptions and accommodations that motivated the canonical
process.
The diversity of the New Testament is a reflection of a number of
dominating individuals--Peter, Paul, John, James, and others--and geographical
influences-in particular Syria, Asia Minor, Greece, Rome, North Africa, and Egypt. John
Reumann aptly compares the putting together of the canon to the assembling of a
freight-train in a railroad yard, with cars bearing the identifying marks of their various
companies of origin strung together in one train, headed on the same mainline for a common
destination.27 The inclusion of a book within the New Testament canon tended to
mute, or at least soften, its distinctive voice much as a choir absorbs the voices of its
individual members into a harmonious unity, which is not to be confused with monotonous
unison. The church’s insistence on the plenary inspiration of Scripture locates the
divine authority of the Bible in its wholeness, not in its individual parts.
John Wesley recognized the Bible as a collection of books
produced by and for various Jewish and Christian communities in different times and
places. Its books were accepted as authoritative by these communities, not in isolation,
but as parts of a normative collection. This collection represented not merely the
consensus, but also the diversity of these communities. Wesley knew that the Bible did not
speak with one voice on every subject. Different biblical emphases as well as different
interpretations accounted for the coexistence of such disparate theological traditions as
Arminianism and Calvinism within the Anglican Church of Wesley's day. His catholic spirit
disposed him to tolerate, even celebrate, such diversity. Wesley vigorously protested
against the distortion in later ages of the Scriptural meaning of the words
"heresy" and "schism." He insisted, "Both heresy and schism, in
the modern sense of the words, are sins that the Scripture knows nothing of: but were
invented merely to deprive mankind of the benefit of private judgment, and liberty of
conscience."28
Wesley was not personally ambivalent in his theology--he was an
Arminian, a "liberal" by contemporary standards. And, of course, Wesley believed
that his personal notions were correct and depended upon the Bible. But he knew that, as a
human, he was subject to ignorance and errors. Thus, he wrote, "I impose my notions
upon none: . . . I make no opinion the term of union with any man: I think and let think.
What I want is holiness of heart and life. Those who have this are my brother, sister, and
mother"29
Any discussion of the biblical canon raises several difficult
questions: How is the New Testament to maintain its stability as a fixed text while
retaining its adaptability as a text that is meaningful in new situations? Is the New
Testament's origin as a book produced by the church to be taken as seriously as its
officially acknowledged status as the church s rule of faith and practice? If the New
Testament is such a rule, who determines how it is to be interpreted and applied? The New
Testament books did not arrive with authoritative exegeses attached, nor have heavenly
yearbooks been published regularly since to keep it up to date.
Because the New Testament is literature, it has at least two
contexts, the historical and the literary. As a historical discipline, New Testament
theology concerns itself with the contingent30 as well as the coherent. It
takes seriously the fact that the New Testament emerged within history in response to a
host of real-life historical situations. As a discipline driven by preoccupation with a
defined body of literature, New Testament theology also takes seriously the literary
character of the canon. Because it considers both the historical and the literary, it
asks, Why did a New Testament author write what and as he did? What occasioned his writing
and what purpose did he hope to achieve by doing so?31
Scholars who focus on the New Testament as a historical document
tend to see it as a window. Their interest is behind the text in the sources, oral
traditions, and events the New Testament presumes. Those scholars who focus on the New
Testament as literature tend to see it as a mirror. Their interest is the meaning that
lies on this side of the text in the narrative, plot, characters, and values that impact
contemporary readers The choice is whether to go to the looking-glass (with all its
threats of narcissism) or through the window opened by historical criticism (with all the
problems of an antique world behind it)."32
Alongside the central focus of the New Testament on Jesus--from a
variety of perspectives--is the even greater prominence of the New' Testament's calls for
its readers to respond in faith to him--in a variety of ways. A Wesleyan New Testament
theology need not be dogmatic even in its theological reflection upon faith in Jesus
Christ because its real concern is to give an account of the foundational encounters with
Christ, which may serve as the basis for judging the faithfulness of contemporary
encounters with him. The object of its study is early Christian religion as much as it is
New Testament theology. It is also to part company with a central tenant of our Protestant
heritage.
Canon Within the Canon. The Protestant Reformation became
inevitable when Martin Luther discovered that church dogma and Scripture were
contradictory in fundamental ways. Reformation theology arises from the conviction that
Scripture alone-not church tradition, or experience, or reason--is to be the
authoritative, normative, legitimizing focus for contemporary church life and belief.33
Prior to the eighteenth century, there seemed to be little, if
any, awareness of the difference between dogmatic and biblical theology. The church toward
the end of the second century began to accept as canon authoritative and normative those
"apostolic" writings we now know as the New Testament. Yet the church came to
realize at the same time that these writings were subject to a variety of interpretations.
Even heretics laid claim to them. Therefore, the church identified the content of the
canon with tradition in particular, the catholic creeds. These creeds were the church's
"rule of faith," the interpretive grid that determined what the authoritative
documents could be taken to mean. Church tradition was equated with apostolic tradition.
What was believed everywhere, always, by everyone, was identified with the correct
interpretation of Scripture. "This standard held a firm position for more than a
thousand years in opposition to all claims of heretics to the scripture."34
The church was oblivious to the subtle changes that had occurred
in its theology over time. It tended to domesticate and harmonize the New Testament to
support church tradition. Although the Reformers called this practice into question, they
could not ignore the reality that the Bible was subject to varying interpretations. Luther
attempted to resolve the problem by proposing that Scripture was its own interpreter and
Christ its center. Classical Protestantism reads the New Testament through the filter of a
"canon within the canon." The "canon within the canon" allowed Luther
to identify those parts of the New Testament that were judged more inspired and
authoritative than the others. But his criteria were scarcely objective. Luther's negative
experiences with the Roman Church and his rediscovery of justification by faith alone,
apart from works disposed him to read all of the Bible from the perspective of Romans and
Galatians and to relegate to secondary status, books like James and Revelation that could
not easily be reconciled with his central canon.35
It is true that the four Gospels and the letters of Paul were the
earliest books to be canonized, and that they, in turn, became norms by which other books
were tested and eventually included in or excluded from the canon. This was analogous to
the situation of the Old Testament canon, in which the place of the Law and the Prophets
was secured well before the Writings. But does this mean that "the gospels, like the
Pentateuch, are foundational? It is the case that "the epistles of Paul are like the
prophets in applying and advancing the significance of the great redeeming event"?36
Are the remaining books in both collections, which appeared much later and are obviously
more diverse than the foundational canon,37 of secondary canonical status? Or
are the later canonical books the synthetic integrative, and corrective glue that gives
this diverse collection its cohesive character? Or, once the canon has been decided, are
such distinctions in rank of any significance? If later is better, why not include the
so-called Apostolic Fathers and the ecumenical creeds as virtual canonical authorities?
But if earlier is better, should we not be waiting with baited breath for the latest
pronouncement from the "Jesus Seminar"?
What compels us to draw the boundaries of New Testament theology
at the limits of the New Testament canon? No early Christian document appeared
historically with the label "canonical" attached. It is not likely that any New
Testament author wrote with the intention or expectation of adding his work to the
existing body of Jewish scriptures. Nor did these authors write with an awareness of some
grand synthesis of which their works become integral parts. The criteria by which
Christian documents were later included in or excluded from the canon probably tell us
more about the tastes of the church of subsequent centuries than about the earliest
church.38 The existence of the canon reflects decisions--arbitrary and
political or divinely arranged and providential, depending on ones presuppositions--of the
church of a much later period. Judging from the excluded literature that survives, we
cannot claim that die canonical books were either representative of earliest Christianity
or of the earliest of the Christian books written. It is futile to speculate concerning
the character of the books that we know once existed, but have since been accidentally
lost or deliberately purged.
Although Wesley was a Protestant, the influence of Catholic
tradition mediated through the Church of England led him to avoid some of the extreme
positions of the Reformation tradition on the subject of Scripture. Whereas Protestants in
principle insisted that Scripture alone was to be the source of all Christian faith and
practice, Wesley self-consciously included tradition, reason, and experience as
complementary sources. They confirm, illuminate, and apply the message of Scripture. In
actual practice, of course, no religious tradition depends solely on Scripture. Subtly and
often unconsciously, other factors inevitably exercise their influence.39
Wesley also avoided the presumption that there exists a
"canon within the canon." Wesley's canon included even the Apocrypha. Wesleyans,
of course, hold to the narrower, Protestant, sixty-six-book canon. But, like Wesley, the
intent of our articles of faith with respect to the plenary inspiration of Scripture is to
guard against the danger of taking individual books of the Bible as normative alone.
"Any major hook of the Bible taken by itself and pressed to its logical conclusion
will lead to heretical distortions."40 Wesley's insistence on attending to
the entire canon partly accounts for the prominence he assigns to sanctification--holy
living, not as a competitor to justification, but as its necessary complement.
The early Protestant Reformers produced no biblical theologies.
Their Protestant successors institutionalized the Reformation into a scholasticism that
was easily as dogmatic as that of Roman Catholicism. Biblical theology emerged from
Pietism as an attempt to reform the Reformation, to call Protestantism to experience the
spirituality of the ancient Christian tradition. Wesleyan theology is an expression of
these same eighteenth-century influences--both pietism and rationalism--that gave birth to
the discipline of New Testament theology. Wesley insisted that Christian experience was
the necessary test of sound biblical interpretation. "Experience is not sufficient to
prove a doctrine unsupported by Scripture." But, "experience is sufficient to
confirm a doctrine grounded in Scripture."41
Goal. In 1787 Gabler defined the goal of New Testament
theology as arriving at a proper dogmatic theology, one that was firmly based on biblical
theology. To achieve this end he believed that it is necessary to distinguish carefully
the various aspects of the theological task: religion from theology, biblical theology
from dogmatic theology, biblical theology in the broad (true) sense from biblical theology
in the narrow (pure) sense. He argued that "if the Bible was to be reestablished as
the…basis of theology, it would have to be investigated by a discipline that was
independent of dogmatic theology, with accountability only to the biblical material which
it had to interpret."42 His goal in all of this was "to contribute to
church renewal rather than sanction stagnation."43
In 1972 Ernst Kasemann identified the goals of New Testament
theology as the movements from analysis to synthesis and from theory to practice.44
Because of the increasingly complex nature of New Testament studies and related
disciplines, no one can hope to master the entire field any longer A division of labor and
specialization has become necessary. But the required analysis of minutiae should aim
toward collaborative synthesis, lest the forest be lost among the trees.45
Likewise, unless the conjunction of theory and practice is the goal of New Testament
theology, "the discipline loses its distinctive character, its concrete roots, and it
ceases, too, to be indispensable and binding."46 Kasemann acknowledged
that these necessary tasks are extraordinarily difficult--perhaps unachievable in this
world.
In 1976 James Robinson defined the goal of New Testament theology
as the analysis of the texts of primitive Christianity, historically and philologically,
"in such a way as to bring to expression their valid content so that it emerges as a
serious alternative for modem times, capable of being decided for or against, without
being falsified in the process of translation into modem alternatives."47
The goal of New Testament theology is to express the message of the New Testament "so
that…the average [person] can once again either reject angrily or accept happily the
theology of the New Testament."48
But cynicism has settled in. In 1990 Heiki Raisanen urged
biblical scholarship to go "beyond New Testament theology,"49 which
he characterizes as both misguided and impossible. He seeks to rehabilitate William
Wrede's nineteenth-century liberal agenda, producing a history of the development of early
Christian religion.50 But, as Wrede recognized, our knowledge of early
Christian history is filled with such large gaps that "a relatively complete history
of early Christianity cannot be reconstructed" apart from extensive speculation.51
Method. If we join the optimists in the pursuit of New
Testament theology, fully achievable or not, the question remains as to the proper method
for doing it. Is it appropriate for New Testament theology to follow Gabler's lead in
distinguishing between divine revelation and human contingencies within the New Testament?
Is it possible to sift what is true and eternally valid from what is time-bound and
temporary, the essential from the incidental?
Many contemporary New Testament scholars have little interest in
the traditional agenda of New Testament theology. The New Testament does not function as a
vital authority within their world-view. Their interests in the New Testament are purely
antiquarian. The results of their biblical studies are not personally compelling, but only
historical curiosities. They have no interest in rehabilitating the normative claims of an
ancient collection of documents by means of the pseudo-scholarly discipline of New
Testament theology. They operate on the historicist assumption that only history, not
theology, is academically respectable. Their interests lie in identifying the history of
early Christian religion and theology. They suppose that the consistent application of
historical methods imply a purely historical aim.52
For such scholars, New Testament theology is a purely descriptive
exercise. For conservative-evangelical scholars, "New Testament theology will
inevitably have a prescriptive role in the larger discipline of Christian or dogmatic
theology."53 Our task as Wesleyans is not simply to choose sides and
retreat into the safe confines of our ecclesially defined sanctuaries and ignore or snipe
at those on either side. As James Dunn reminds us, "The more demanding task is to
recognize that there is truth, or at least potential truth in both ways of viewing New
Testament theology, and to attempt some kind of rapprochement or positive interaction
between them."54
Conclusions. Loyalty to the primacy of Scripture gives
Wesleyans a deep dissatisfaction with the easy conclusions of church dogma, even Wesleyan
dogma. To be Wesleyan is to read the Bible with no prior constraint as to what it may
mean. But it is also to submit biblical interpretations to the tests of tradition,
experience, and reason. In these and other ways, Wesleyan theology and biblical theology
have much in common.
Are there any lessons Wesleyan theology learn from the history of
biblical theology? Is there only one theology that is legitimately Wesleyan? Must we
choose between Wesley and the nineteenth-century Holiness Movement? Can we ignore all that
has transpired since the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including our own
experience? How should we approach the diversity among and the tensions within the various
contributors to our tradition? How are we to decide whether new solutions to old questions
may legitimately claim to be Wesleyan? What place may we give to contributions from beyond
our tradition--from Fundamentalism, Liberalism, Neo-Orthodoxy, etc.? What are the
tolerable limits to Wesleyan pluralism?
When I set out to do this presidential address, my original
ambition was to give a detailed account of the changes in the approach to biblical studies
within the Wesleyan-Holiness tradition as reflected in the thirty years of the Wesleyan
Theological Journal. But the task of digesting the more than fifteen inches of journal
pages proved to be more formidable than I had imagined. What became obvious in this
abortive effort, however, was that there has been a marked hermeneutical shift during the
history of the Society. Despite the frequent appeals to the doctrine of biblical inerrancy
and to proof-texts supporting the doctrine of entire sanctification in the early years of
the Journal, systematic theological and philosophical presuppositions were often more
determinative than were exegetical conclusions. We have, in my judgment, made significant
progress toward a more exegetically based theology. But we have also become more
descriptive and less normative in our approach to the Bible. Have scholarly sophistication
and objectivity made us reluctant to move from descriptions of what biblical writers
said-or what Wesley and nineteenth-century holiness figures thought-to normative
conclusions? Have we traded holiness scholasticism for Wesleyan antiquarianism?
If we are to avoid the inevitable distortions of individual
biases, preconceived ideas, and the subjectivity of personal experience. Wesleyan
theology, like New Testament theology, should be a corporate task. We should hold
ourselves accountable both to responsible scholarship and to the community of faith. Our
efforts should be increasingly collaborative. This is not an appeal for jointly authored
scholarly tomes, but for renewed dialogue with Wesleyans who are not biblical scholars,
systematic theologians, or church historians. The academy should be given a voice in the
sanctuary. But we also should reckon wit the reality that many who occupy the pews in our
churches are uncomfortable with what they think we academics are saying and doing. It is
not enough for us to bemoan the Fundamentalist leavening that has subverted our heritage
in many quarters. Our task is to build bridges of understanding, not to make targets of
others.
It is my conviction that the mission of the Wesleyan Theological
Society is to wed intellectual rigor and spiritual fervor in the spirit of John Wesley,
who was both an traveling evangelist and an Oxford don. Some today find it hard to imagine
a professor in one of the finest universities in the world being instrumental in the
revival of vital Christianity in eighteenth century England. "Both the Opponents and
the partisans of complicated people like [Wesley] tend to deal with them by flattening
them out, reducing them to one-dimensional figures. It is in fact easier to deal with a
one-dimensional [Wesley], easier to put him in his place and keep him there, under
control."55
As the theological and spiritual heirs of the evangelical
revivals of the eighteenth century and the holiness revivals of the nineteenth century, we
dare not ignore the legacy of John Wesley. We cannot follow the path of blind zeal of
those followers of Wesley who, after his death, deliberately destroyed a good portion of
his personal library, uncomfortable with the breadth of his reading. Nor can we follow
those who still call themselves Wesleyans, but wander in the pathless wilderness of
pluralism or inhabit the desert of sterile scholarship. We cannot be truly Wesleyan and
think of our tradition with the guarded reserve that antique dealers exercise when they
happen upon well-preserved examples of quaint, even beautiful eighteenth and
nineteenth-century furniture. If we are truly Wesleyan we will not assign canonical
authority to the works of either John Wesley or nineteenth-century holiness authors. If
the Bible is indeed our norming norm, Wesleyan theology must be fundamentally informed by
biblical theology.
Footnotes
1. Philadelphia: Westminster Press.
2. See Werner Lemke, "Theology (OT)," Anchor Bible
Dictionary (ABD), 6 vols., gem ed. David Noel Freedman (New York: Doubleday. 1992).
6:453: and Henning Graf Reventlow, "Theology (Biblical), History of," trans.
Frederick Cryer, ABD, 6:490.
3. Robert Morgan, "Theo1ogy (NT)," ABD, 6:474.
4. Ibid, 6:475.
5. Lemke, 449; i.e., "The meaning of Scripture was to be
ascertained with careful attention to the historical context out of which it arose and to
the specific nuances of biblical words and concepts" (p. 450).
6. Ibid, 450.
7. Ibid.
8. See Lemke, 451; Robert Morgan. "Theology (NT)," A
Dictionary of Biblical Interpretation [DBI], eds. R. J. Coggins and J. L. Houlden
(Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1990), 690: idem. ABD, 476.
9. Lemke, 451-52 (quotation from 452); Morgan, ABD, 476-77.
10. Morgan, DBI, 689.
11. Morgan, DBI, 689. Lemke (456) refers to Old Testament
theology as "boundary discipline." Morgan (ABD, 6:474) suggests that New
Testament theology contributes to the "bridging operation . . . necessary to relate
the Scriptures to modern theology."
12. "Only a literary theory which insists on textual
determinacy. . . is likely to meet the needs of NTT, because without that, Scripture could
mean anything and would lose its capacity to challenge and perhaps redirect the
interpreter and the Church" (Morgan, ABD, 6:481).
13. This, of course, includes their definitions of theology. Some
use the term so broadly as to apply to "every pronouncement concerning God" or
"every religious expression." Others define it so narrowly as to limit it to
"a coherent, logical, necessary system of general ideas in terms of which every
element of our experience concerning matters relating to God can be interpreted."
Hendrikus Boers (What is New Testament Theology? The Rise of Criticism and the Problem
of a Theology of the New Testament [Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979], 13) considers the
first view inappropriate. Based on this narrow definition, there is obviously no theology
in the New Testament, although there is a great deal that may appropriately be called
theological.
14. Boers, 19.
15. John Telford, ed., The Letters of the Rev. John Wesley,
AM., 8 vols. (London: Epworth, 1931), 2:206—" To Thomas Church, Vicar of
Battersea and Prebendary of St. Paul's, concerning his Remarks on the Reverend Mr. John
Wesley's Last Journal," February 1745, 3.5.
16. Morgan, DBI, 690.
17. N. T. Wright, The Climax of the Covenant: Christ and the Law
in Pauline Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), 3.
18. C. F. D. Moule indicates that the "common factor holding
all together is the person of Jesus Christ the historical Jesus acknowledged as continuous
with the one now acknowledged as the transcendent Lord" (The Birth of the New
Testament, 3rd ed., Harper's New Testament Commentaries [San Francisco: Harper &
Row, 1981], 17. James D. G. Dunn makes essentially the same claim in his Unity and
Diversity in the New Testament: An Inquiry into the Character of Earliest Christianity,
2nd ed. (Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1990) passim: as does John Reumann, Variety
and Unity in New Testament Thought, Oxford Bible Series (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1991), 290.
19. The church's convictions about the decisiveness of the
Christ-event in the history of salvation compelled it to read the Hebrew Scriptures in
novel ways wending its way through paradigm shifts and hermeneutical accommodations.
Christological diversity is not an artificial problem created by modern critical scholars
to justify their existence. Already in the first century Paul complained of those whose
divergent message of Jesus threatened to lead his converts astray (2 Cor. 11:1-6). How
would the apostle assess the various Christologies canonized in the New Testament? Are all
of the various New Testament Christological titles complementary? What larger unity gives
them coherency?
20. Reumann, 4. Chapter 4 (pp. 27-34) explores "Ways
Proposed Toward New Testament Unity." Chapter 17 (pp. 288-292) assesses them.
21. Ibid, 4-6, cites these and others.
22. Dunn, xxi-xxii
23. Dunn, xxi.
24. Hans Küng, Theology for the Third Millennium: An
Ecimenical View, trans. Peter Heinegg (New York: Doubleday, 1988), 72.
25. What eventually came to be considered heresy in the early
church was not the tolerance of diversity within canonical limits, but intolerance.
"The biggest heresy of all is the insistence that there is…only one
orthodoxy" (Dunn. 366). Nevertheless, the canon does not truly represent "the
full diversity of first-century Christianity" (Dunn, xxx). On the contrary, it
reflects the breadth of acceptable diversity" that emerged over time as an informal
consensus of early Christian leaders and just ordinary believers (Dunn. xxxi). Dunn's
"inquiry into the character of earliest Christianity," Unity and Diversity in
the New Testament, persuasively demonstrates the canonized diversity the New Testament
tolerates on the role of tradition, the use of the Old Testament, concepts of ministry,
patterns of worship, sacraments, the Spirit and Christian experience, and even at the very
center on the person and work of Christ.
26. Dunn, xxix.
27. Reumann, 20. For a fuller discussion of the canon, see Harry
Gamble, The New Testament Canon: Its Making and Meaning, Guides to Biblical
Scholarship (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985).
28. John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament, on 1
Cor.11:17-22.
29. John Wesley, The Works of John Wesley, 14 vols. (Grand
Rapids. Baker; reprint of the 1872 ed.), 13:238-41; cited in Roy Nicholson, "John
Wesley’s Scriptural Catholicity," The Preachers Magazine, 52 (Sept.
1977), 21. Wesley insisted that, apart from a commitment to certain basic doctrines, he
was willing to think and let think (Works, 8:101). I write as a biblical scholar
within the Wesleyan tradition, not as a Wesley-scholar. Thus, I make no attempt to cite
the recent critical editions of Wesley's works, preferring instead the more widely
available popular edition.
30. That is what Dunn (xxi) means by "historically
conditioned and context specific."
31. Wright, 8. Within the New Testament literature, arguments
should be distinguished from assertions, proofs from rationalizations. New Testament
theologians cannot assume that the argument a biblical author used to make a point to his
readers was the same route by which he came to hold the position he espoused. Pragmatic
motives determined that authors choose "arguments likely to be understood and seen to
be valid" by those they hoped to convince (11).
32. Reumann, 285-86.
33. See Leonhard Goppelt, New Testament Theology, 2 vols.
(Grand Rapids Eerdmans, 1981), 1:256.
34. Goppelt, 1:252.
35. Reumann (21) notes that claims of inspiration played little
role in shaping the NT canon, because many books that were eventually excluded claimed for
themselves or were claimed by their advocates to possess the same inspiration as those
that were included.
36. Reumann, 98.
37. See Reumann's general discussion of "The Rest of the New
Testament Books" on pp. 97-103 and in more detail by grouping on pp. 105-275.
38. Appeals to the apostolic origins and inspiration of the NT
documents are obviously secondary justifications. Not everything apostles wrote came to be
considered canonical (witness Paul's earlier [Cor. 5:9] and intermediate [2 Cor. 2:4; 7:8]
letters to Corinth and the Laodicean letter [Col. 4:16]). And not only books by apostles
are included in the NT. Among the names of non-apostles attached to NT books are Mark,
Luke (Luke-Acts), James, and Jude. Contemporary NT scholarship, which challenges the
traditional ascriptions of a majority of the remaining books, only complicates matters
further. Appeal to the alleged apostolic teaching of a NT book, regardless of the identity
of its author, is an obviously circular argument.
39. Robert Johnston, Evangelicals at an Impasse: Biblical
Authority in Practice (Atlanta: John Knox, 1979).
40. Raymond Brown, The Critical Meaning of the Bible (New
York: Paulist, 1981), 32.
41. Works, 5:132-33.
42. Boers, 24-25.
43. Boers, 26. Biblical theology was not "designed to
replace systematic theology, only to make it more biblical" (Morgan, ABD, 6:475).
44. Ernst Käsemann, "The Problem of a New Testament
Theology," New Testament Studies 19(1972/73), 235.
45. "Something like an intelligible and organized whole must
he mirrored even by the part" (Kasemann, 236).
46. Käsemann, 236.
47. "The Future of New Testament Theology." Religious
Studies Review 2, 1(1976), 17.
48. Robinson, 22.
49. Beyond New Testament Theology: A Story and a Programme
(Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1990).
50. This is, according to Käsemann. "unattainable"
(237).
51. Käsemann, 238.
52. Morgan, DBI, 690.
53. James Dunn, "The Task of New Testament Theology," New
Testament Theology in Dialogue: Christology and Ministry, eds. James Dunn and James
Mackey (Philadelphia: Westminster. 1987), 2-3.
54. Dunn, "Task," 3.
55. Said of the Apostle Paul by Victor Paul Furnish, "On
Putting Paul in His Place," Journal of Biblical Literature 113(1994), 4.
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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