JOHN WESLEY:
MENTOR FOR AN EVANGELICAL REVIVAL
by
Henry H. Knight III
The issue addressed by Mark Noll in his The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind is that evangelicals no longer know how to think Christianly about science, art, culture, and history. Because evangelical thought is "bereft of self-criticism, intellectual subtlety, or an awareness of complexity,"[1] it eschews careful analysis and deep reflection and lives in the thought world of the shallow and superficial.
The reasons for this, though complex, involve two central factors according to Noll, revivalism and Scottish common sense philosophy. Together these prompted evangelicals to believe tradition was unnecessary, supplant community with individualism and immediatism, and adopt a dangerously naive method of biblical interpretation. The fruit of all this was dispensationalism and the Holiness and Pentecostal movements, who in Noll's view bear much of the blame for the contemporary intellectual crisis among evangelicals. When looking for historical models of evangelicals who did honor the life of the mind, Noll identifies Jonathan Edwards, John Wesley, and even Francis Asbury. But, in spite of the intellectual achievements of Edwards and Wesley, they are said to also bear responsibility for the ensuing scandal through their endorsement of revivalism.
In contrast to Noll's assessment, I argue that Wesley was entirely correct to vigorously support the religious awakening. To attend carefully to Wesley's approach to revival could alleviate some of the ambiguity Noll himself feels when he concludes that revivalism
was able to mobilize great numbers for the cause of Christ. But also. . .- with its scorn for tradition, its concentration on individual competence, its distrust of mediated knowledge-American revivalism did much to hamstring the life of the mind.[2]
While Wesley mobilized great numbers for Christ, none of Noll's indictments sound true of Wesley's theology. Could it be, then, that the problem is not so much Wesley's advocacy of revival, but his descendants' failure to heed more carefully his approach to revival?
In response to Noll's critique, the following is a discussion of three aspects of Wesley's approach to theology: (1) how he serves as a mentor for the doing of theology; (2) how he offers a model for revival; and (3) how he engages intellectually with science and culture. I do not intend to be comprehensive, but only lift up those relevant aspects of Wesley which address Noll's concerns and claims.
1. Wesley as Mentor for Doing Theology
It is clear that John Wesley's message and ministry focused on the benefits of Christ-on "pardon, holiness, and heaven," with a special emphasis on holiness. But what must be remembered (and indeed Wesley continually emphasizes) is that this gospel is rooted in the character, activity, and promises of God. Wesley's theology is fundamentally theocentric, not anthropocentric, and theocentric in a distinctively trinitarian manner.
In terms of God's character, Wesley's is preeminently a theology of love. It is God's love which orients and governs all the other attributes of God. Wesley says:
God is often styled holy, righteous, wise; but not holiness, righteousness, or wisdom in the abstract as he is said to be love, intimating that this is. . .his reigning attribute, the attribute that sheds an amiable glory on all his other perfections.[3]
To know that God is love is of the greatest import to humanity and to the future of creation. The character of God has a christological focus: it is revealed most fully and ultimately in Jesus Christ. It is what God has done in Christ that defines "God is love."
As to God's activity, what God has done in Christ is made a reality in human life through the activity of the Holy Spirit. Wesley's emphasis on love does not diminish his concern for God's freedom and initiative-God always takes the initiative, God's grace is freely given, and it is God who enables a human response through faith.
Wesley's theology is also a theology of promise, focusing on the grand purpose of God to restore fallen creation, and especially the imago dei. It affirms God's faithfulness without presumption - God is faithful to promises in God's own time and manner. Thus, Wesley maintains a vision of both God's faithfulness and freedom as expressions of the character of God who is love.
This affirmation of who God is and what God is intends is at the heart of Wesley's theology. What orients his theological reflection is not human reason or experience, or even the human need for salvation. It is God and God's purposes. This explains Wesley's rootedness in Scripture and concern for faithful interpretation. It also puts him at odds with the more anthropocentric theologies of the nineteenth century which placed an inordinate emphasis on reason or experience.
The very nature of these theological claims required that they be shared, and shared in such a way that people could understand. Of course Wesley sought more than cognitive assent, but a response of the heart as well as of the mind involves clarity in communication. Thus he was, as Albert Outler said, a "folk theologian;" he sought to speak "plain truth to plain people."[4] In so doing Wesley was sharing theological ideas across lines of class and education. Wesley wanted to make available to the widest popular audience the riches of scripture and tradition.
There was an educative impulse in Wesley's ministry, as witnessed by his Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament and A Christian Library. The former was a commentary which drew upon established scholars such as Johannes Bengel. Wesley notes that it was
not principally designed for men of learning, ...much less for men of long and deep experience in the ways and word of God.... But I write chiefly for plain, unlettered men, who understand only their mother tongue, and yet reverence and love the word of God, and have a desire to save their souls.[5]
To accomplish this, Wesley endeavors to make the comments "as plain as possible, in pursuance of my main design,-to assist the unlearned reader." He therefore avoids "all use of the learned languages" as well as "such methods of reasoning and modes of expression, as people in common life are unacquainted with...."[6]
His Explanatory Notes Upon the Old Testament had a similar goal. While lauding the great commentary of Matthew Henry, Wesley recognizes that "everyone cannot have this exposition. It is too large a purchase...."[7] Nor, because of its great size, does everyone have time to read it.
It is not possible for men who have their daily bread to earn by the sweat of their brows, who generally are confined to their work from six in the morning till six in the evening, to find leisure for reading over six folios, each containing seven or eight hundred pages.... As excellent as it is in its kind, it is not for their purpose; seeing they have neither money to make the purchase, nor time to read it over.[8]
Consequently, Wesley proposes to made an abridgment and alteration of Henry's commentary, with the goal of making it simultaneously "shorter" and "plainer" (and, in places, deeper in exposition).[9]
His A Christian Library was in like manner an attempt to make available an inexpensive, clearly written collection of selected devotional and spiritual writings. Including extracts, abridgments, and translations (with, at times, additions or corrections), Wesley sought to put the riches of the Christian tradition into the hands of ordinary people.[10] This is in sharp contrast to the New England clergy who guarded their prerogatives against the common people, and viewed with disdain the upstart Baptist and Methodist preachers of the awakenings. Nathan Hatch has shown the populist nature of Christian movements which grew out of the awakenings, including their suspicion of clergy, lawyers, and doctors, whose education was a sign of class privilege.[11]
The tragedy in all of this is that those clergy educated in the Christian tradition sought to use their knowledge as a reason to suppress the uneducated preachers, while the preachers in turn insisted they had no need of that education because they had the Bible. Noll blames revivalism for the resulting bibliolatry; I suggest that the fault lies more with clergy attempting to maintain a position of privilege than with uneducated preachers who refused to stay in their place.
Wesley himself was no populist-he warned of "enthusiasm" and insisted that theological claims be rooted in Scripture. Yet he was no intellectual elitist either-an Oxford or Cambridge education was not the prerequisite for faithful theological reflection. What he did was try to make accessible to common people the resources needed to ground and test their theology in God's revelation.
2. Wesley as Mentor for Evangelical Revival
John Wesley offers insight as well concerning both the practices and the purposes of revival. Central to Wesley's approach to religious awakening is the linkage of "doctrine" and "discipline." For Wesley, doctrine was more than concepts; it was the experienced reality of the promises of God, especially justification and sanctification. Discipline was the spiritual disciplines of doing no harm, doing good, and attending to the ordinances of God such as prayer, Scripture, and eucharist which enable one to grow in the knowledge and love of God. Doctrine is then the goal, God's purpose for human life; discipline is the practical means to that end.[12]
Accountability to Christian discipline was found in the classes and bands. By maintaining this discipline, a believer was enabled to remain in a right relationship with God and with the neighbor, in the face of all that would pull one away. What is striking in this insistence on nurture as well as proclamation is how it avoids the dangers of individualism and immediatism. Persons become participants in communities of faith, and the goal is not simply an experience, but maturity in a relationship.
In addition to a union of proclamation and nurture in the practice of revival, Wesley also helps us rethink the purposes of revival. He does this (in a way much like Edwards) through conceiving of the Christian life in terms of religious affections or "holy tempers." These affections are both dispositional (they give content and direction to our character) and relational (they exist only when we are in relationship to God and the neighbor).[13] By focusing on the affections, Wesley emphasizes the purpose of revival as a transformed life manifested as fruit of the Spirit. Thus the purpose of revival is not simply to generate "feelings," nor are "feelings" by themselves an evidence that God is at work. Likewise, Wesleyan revival does not focus on isolated "blessings" apart from a dynamic, ongoing relationship with God.
The affections are also a way of avoiding the Enlightenment disjunction between the heart and the mind, a gulf presupposed by both rationalist critics and enthusiast advocates of revival. What we believe about God is inescapably related to the affections and thereby to the life we live, for our lives are in response to the God we envision. Thus, theology and experience are essentially linked, and the importance of spiritual disciplines, which continually root believers in Scripture and tradition, is underscored.
What we see in both the practices and purposes of revival, according to Wesley, is a strong affirmation of the transforming power of God tied to an aversion to individualistic enthusiasm. Whether and to what extent nineteenth century revivalism may have moved away from Wesley's pattern of revival are issues yet to be demonstrated, issues separable from the teaching and practice of Wesley himself.
3. Wesley as Mentor for the Life of the Mind
John Wesley was quite clear concerning the priorities of his ministry (which he took to be God's priorities). They are to reform the nation and spread scriptural holiness across the land. His central motivation was not the scholarly search for truth, but the evangelical imperative to proclaim the truth of the gospel. This passion for the gospel did not foster an anti-intellectualism. Wesley deeply respected the power of reason, even in unbelievers. Without faith they are unable to reason rightly concerning spiritual realities, and might thereby be led into wrong conclusions, even concerning the physical realm. Nonetheless, reason even then remained a powerful tool in understanding the ways of God's creation. In other words, Wesley had a strong sense of what scholarship is for. It is not (as Mark Noll seems to suggest) purely doxological-the worshipping of God with the mind. For Wesley, it is centrally missiological-the serving God and God's purposes with the mind.
With this in mind, we can briefly examine Wesley's attitude to science and medicine. A recent article by J. W. Haas, Jr., provides a careful account of Wesley's relationship with the science of his day.[14] While Wesley was not a participant in scientific research and thus limited in his understanding, he was nonetheless appreciative of science. What Wesley objects to is science which leaves out God-the kind of science more compatible with Deism than orthodox theism. Although he may not have always done so with scientific accuracy, Wesley does model a kind of theological critique of science which at the same time honors the contribution of science.
The missiological and doxological can be seen in Wesley's A Survey of the Wisdom of God in the Creation: Or, A Compendium of Natural Philosophy, in five volumes. Again, his goal was to produce a work that is accurate, short, and inexpensive. But in addition, he says,
I wished to see this short, full, plain account of the visible creation directed to its right end: Not barely to entertain an idle, barren curiosity; but to display the invisible things of God, his power, wisdom, and goodness.[15]
Such a presentation would not only invite praise to the Creator, but a commendable recognition of our own finite limitations as human beings.[16]
The missiological impulse is made clear in another way in Wesley's The Disideratum: Or, Electricity Made Plain and Useful. While "indebted to Mr. Franklin for the speculative part, and to Mr. Lovett for the practical,"[17] Wesley is "not greatly concerned for the philosophical part, whether it stand or fall." He is "much more concerned for the physical part, knowing of how great importance this is; how much sickness and pain may be prevented or removed, and how many lives saved, by this unparalleled remedy.[18] Enamored, as were many others, with the curative power of electricity, Wesley's interest was motivated not by the scientific search for truth, but the usefulness of science in endeavoring to love our neighbor.
Wesley's appropriation of medical knowledge in his Primitive Physick: Or, an Easy and Natural Method of Curing Most Diseases and in his clinics is well-known.[19] His decision to diagnose and prescribe, in person and in print, in order to provide care for those too poor to pay a physician led him to familiarize himself with medical research. Many of his proposed cures-including those which seem odd today-were standard at the time. He was also the first to espouse in popular print what we now know as mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Here again, preeminence is given to the theological perspective. All healing, whether miraculous or through medicine, is of God. Wesley refuses to allow medicine a pure domain without God, and insightfully notes the linkages between physical, emotional, and spiritual maladies.
We do not have to endorse every conclusion reached by Wesley to appreciate his pattern of engagement with science and medicine. He attempted as best he could to understand the research of his day, neither dismissing out of hand nor blindly endorsing its conclusions. He readily adopted all that seemed helpful for human well-being. Above all, he placed science and medicine in a theological perspective, addressing them from a distinctively Christian standpoint.
The disciplines of science, medicine, and the various social sciences are far better established in our day than in Wesley's. We perhaps have less excuse than he for shallow analysis or careless misrepresentation. But, beyond a genuine attempt to understand, we share with Wesley the obligation to reflect theologically on these disciplines, examining their conclusions in light of the revelation of God. Such a stance is far from anti-intellectualism.
Endnotes:
