John Wesley's Pneumatology: Perceptible Inspiration (Routledge Methodist Studies Series) [1 ed.] 1409457346, 9781409457343

Citation preview

John Wesley’s Pneumatology Perceptible inspiration, a term used by John Wesley to describe the complicated relationship between Holy Spirit, religious knowledge, and the nature of spiritual being, is not unlike the term ‘Methodist’ which was also coined by critics of Methodism during the eighteenth century in Britain. John Wesley’s adversaries, especially the pseudonymous John Smith with whom Wesley exchanged letters for a period of three years, frequently challenged the plausibility of direct spiritual sensation, which Wesley defended. What does Wesley mean by perceptible inspiration? What does the teaching reveal about the nature and existence of God in Wesley’s thinking? What does it suggest about the spiritual nature of humankind? In John Wesley’s Pneumatology, it is argued that ‘perceptible inspiration’ more than a sidebar of Methodist thought, offers a useful model for considering the various features of Wesley’s views on the work of the Spirit in relation to human existence, participatory religious knowledge, and moral theology.

Ashgate Methodist Studies Series Editorial Board Dr Ted Campbell, Associate Professor, Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, Texas, USA. Professor William Gibson, Director of the Oxford Centre for Methodism and Church History, Oxford Brookes University, UK. Professor David Hempton, Dean, Harvard Divinity School, Harvard University, USA. Dr Jason Vickers, Associate Professor of Theology and Wesleyan Studies; Director of the Center for Evangelical United Brethren Heritage at the United Theological Seminary, Dayton, Ohio, USA Dr Martin Wellings, Superintendent Minister of Oxford Methodist Circuit and Past President of the World Methodist Historical Society. Methodism remains one of the largest denominations in the USA and is growing in South America, Africa and Asia (especially in Korea and China). This series spans Methodist history and theology, exploring its success as a movement historically and in its global expansion. Books in the series will look particularly at features within Methodism which attract wide interest, including: the unique position of the Wesleys; the prominent role of women and minorities in Methodism; the interaction between Methodism and politics; the ‘Methodist conscience’ and its motivation for temperance and pacifist movements; the wide range of Pentecostal, holiness and evangelical movements, and the interaction of Methodism with different cultures.

John Wesley’s Pneumatology Perceptible Inspiration

Joseph W. Cunningham Saginaw Valley State University, USA

First published 2014 by Ashgate Publishing Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © 2014 Joseph W. Cunningham. Joseph W. Cunningham has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for. IsBn 978-1-409-45734-3 (hbk)

Contents Preface   1

Perceptible Inspiration as Pneumatological Model: A Critical Appraisal of John Wesley’s Correspondence with ‘John Smith’ (1745–48)  

vii

1

2

Grace as Pneumatological Operation  

27

3

Faith as Pneumatological Operation  

55

4

Witness of the Spirit as Pneumatological Operation  

79

5

The Fruits of the Spirit as Pneumatological Operation  

109

Conclusion  

135

Bibliography   Index  

139 153

This page has been left blank intentionally

Preface

Pneumatology – here defined as an orderly understanding of God’s spiritual nature in relation to human existence – is an important dimension of John Wesley’s theology. While this definition might seem unusual, it nevertheless reflects Wesley’s twofold use of spirit language. On the one hand, he wrote of the Holy Spirit who proceeds from the Father and the Son. On the other, he also conceived of the Godhead as a holy spirit. ‘Spirit’, in other words, denoted metaphysical substance as well as personhood in Wesley’s doctrine of God. As he put it, ‘God is a Spirit – Not only remote from the body, and all the properties of it, but likewise full of all spiritual perfections, power, wisdom, love, and holiness. And our worship should be suitable to his nature.’1 While Wesley’s pneumatological nomenclature was variegated,2 his underlying concern was uniform. He held that God is the foundation of all spiritual reality, and the Holy Spirit our source of empowerment for life in the divine.3 Mildred Wynkoop identified this theme as   J. Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament [originally published in 1755], reprint edn (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1986). See Wesley’s entry for John 4:24. His understanding of the term ‘God in’ or ‘as a Spirit’ reflected the Authorized King James Version (of 1611) translation of John 4:24: ‘God is a Spirit, and they that worship him must worship in spirit and in truth.’ 2   This is especially true of his language regarding the Holy Spirit, which includes the terms: ‘Holy Ghost’, ‘God’s Spirit’, ‘Spirit of God’, ‘Divine Spirit’, and ‘Spirit of Christ.’ Different usage depended on the context and occasion of his writing. The following terms – God’s Spirit, Holy Spirit, and Spirit of God – refer to the power of God’s relational grace, personified by the Spirit in the economy of salvation. The names Holy Ghost and Spirit of Christ, however, were used in a more specific manner. Wesley refers to the Spirit of Christ when expounding his views on the meritorious work of Jesus. He employed the term ‘Holy Ghost’ (as in, ‘having’ or ‘receiving the Holy Ghost’), when discussing one’s actuation of the Spirit’s fruits of peace, joy, and love. 3   Even a cursory glance at Wesley’s bibliography shows the importance of pneumatology for his theology. Wesley published four sermons in 1746 concerning the Holy Spirit and God’s relationship to human experience and salvation (‘The First Fruits of the Spirit’, ‘The Spirit of Bondage and of Adoption’, ‘The Witness of the Spirit [Discourse I of 1

viii

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

one of Wesley’s main contributions to Christian spirituality.4 However, aside from Lycurgus Starkey’s monograph published in 1962, few works have focused on the question of Wesley’s pneumatology.5 Ironically, one reason is due to the increased breadth of scholarship on Wesley occurring over the past century.6 Randy Maddox II]’, and ‘The Witness of Our Own Spirit’). From 1745 through 1748, he was engaged in correspondence with ‘John Smith’ over the issue of ‘perceptible inspiration’. In the 1760s, Wesley defended his theology of inspiration and spiritual experience against Bishop William Warburton of Gloucester (1763), who claimed that Wesley was an enthusiast. See J. Wesley, A Letter to the Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of Gloucester, Occasioned by his Tract on the Office and Operations of the Holy Spirit (Dublin, 1763), as well as the work that occasioned it, Bishop William Warburton, The Doctrine of Grace, or the Office and Operation of the Holy Spirit Vindicated from the Insults and Abuses of Fanaticism (London: 1763). 4   ‘Wesley’s profound and dynamic religious insight and emphasis was the power of the Holy Spirit in the life of the Christian’, Mildred B. Wynkoop, A Theology of Love: The Dynamic of Wesleyanism (Kansas City, MO: Beacon Hill Press, 1972), 78. 5   See Lycurgus Starkey, The Work of the Holy Spirit: A Study in Wesleyan Theology (New York: Abingdon Press, 1962). For a historical appraisal, see Howard Watkins-Jones, The Holy Spirit from Arminius to Wesley: A Study of Christian Teaching Concerning the Holy Spirit and His Place in the Trinity in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (London: Epworth Press, 1929). Jones observes that ‘Wesley’s principal contribution to this subject [viz., pneumatology] is found throughout his emphatic teaching on the work of the Spirit, which rests upon an assumption of His Deity … [that is,] the saving and sanctifying operations of the Spirit as being necessarily the operations of God himself. The Divine character of such operations presupposes the Divine nature of their Author’ (pp. 70–71). Thus, although Jones’s work is an analysis of the transmission of a doctrine – rather than Wesley’s distinctive understanding of the subject itself – he does highlight Wesley’s emphasis on the Spirit’s economic person and mission. In addition to Starkey and Jones, four other works deal with Wesleyan theology and the Holy Spirit, all of which are unpublished theses. See Sherman P. Young, ‘The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit in Relation to Methodist Theology’ (Drew University: Doctoral Thesis, 1930);. Forest T. Benner, ‘The Immediate Antecedents of the Wesleyan Doctrine of the Witness of the Spirit’ (Temple University: Doctoral Dissertation, 1966); Norman L. Kellett, ‘John Wesley and the Restoration of the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit to the Church of England in the Eighteenth Century’ (Brandeis University: Doctoral Thesis, 1975), and Richard Kevin Eckley, ‘Pneumatology in the Wesleyan Tradition and Yves Congar: A Comparative and Ecumenical Study’ (Duquesne University: Doctoral Thesis, 1998). Young’s work attempts to relate the Holy Spirit to broader church history and Methodist theology, while Benner’s thesis explores the historical sources that gave rise to the doctrine of the Spirit’s witness embraced by Wesley. Eckley’s dissertation is a comparative study of Wesleyan theology and Yves Congar’s ecclesio-centred pneumatology. Finally, Kellett’s work functions less as a study of the Holy Spirit, than an examination of ‘Methodist’ origins and development in relation to contextual and theological adversity. 6   Recent interest in Wesley’s theology can be traced back to the work of Roman Catholic theologian and religious historian, Maximin Piette. Interpreting Wesley’s 1738

Preface

ix

has observed that what began as an avocation of some has emerged as an academic field in its own right.7 As a result, much attention has been given to Wesley’s system of theology, his place amongst other eighteenth-century intellectuals engaged in philosophical and theological debates, and his eclectic interests represented by his diverse publication record.8 While Lycurgus Starkey’s monograph affirms the experience at Aldersgate, traditionally understood as a watershed moment in Wesley’s own personal religious awakening, Piette claimed, ‘Had it not been entered in the first extract of the Journal, it is quite possible that Wesley would have forgotten all about it.’ See La réaction wesléyenne dans l’évolution protestante (Bruxelles: Lecture au Foyer, 1925). Cf., Maximin Piette, John Wesley in the Evolution of Protestantism, trans. (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1937), 306. Piette’s work led to an important theological dialogue on soteriology, Wesleyan theology, and Wesley’s self-understanding. See George Croft Cell’s The Rediscovery of John Wesley (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1935). Cell argued that John Wesley was a protestant reform-minded revivalist who believed that faith is neither a work of righteousness nor contingent upon human effort, but instead a pure gift from God. In this sense, Cell interpreted Wesley as heir to the continental reformation whose theological concerns reflected those of Luther and Calvin. See also Henry Bett, The Spirit of Methodism (London: Epworth Press, 1937). Bett (along with Cell) considered Aldersgate the apex of Wesley’s journey toward saving faith, and a lasting feature of his religious sojourn. Collectively, the works of Piette, Cell, and Bett gave rise to a second wave of theological scholarship in the 1960s, which included Colin Williams, John Wesley’s Theology Today (London: Epworth Press, 1960); Starkey, The Work of the Holy Spirit, and Albert Outler, John Wesley (New York: Oxford University Press, 1964). 7   See Randy Maddox, ‘A Decade of Dissertations in Wesley Studies: 1991–2000’, in Wesleyan Theological Journal, 37 (2) (2002): 103: ‘Over the second half of the twentieth century scholarly consideration of John and Charles Wesley underwent a dramatic transformation. Coming into this period as a side avocation of a few scholars, it ended the century as an area of academic focus in its own right – with dedicated academic chairs, degree programs, and publishing imprints.’ 8   See Randy Maddox, Responsible Grace: John Wesley’s Practical Theology (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1994); Thomas Oden, John Wesley’s Scriptural Christianity: A Plain Exposition of His Teaching on Christian Doctrine (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1994); Kenneth Collins, The Theology of John Wesley: Holy Love and the Shape of Grace (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2007). These works adopt a systematic approach to John Wesley, seeking a comprehensive picture of his thought with respect to classical Christian doctrines (that is, creation, humanity, sin, grace, Trinity, incarnation, redemption, and eschatology). See also John Cobb, Jr, Grace and Responsibility: A Wesleyan Theology for Today (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995); Theodore Runyon, The New Creation: John Wesley’s Theology Today (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1998); Michael Lodahl, God of Nature and of Grace: Reading the World in a Wesleyan Way (Nashville, TN: Kingswood Books, 2004). In recent years, a number of studies have dealt with the question of John Wesley’s religious epistemology in relation to eighteenthcentury theology and philosophy. For example, see Mitsuo Shimizu, ‘Epistemology in the Thought of John Wesley’ (Drew University: Doctoral Thesis, 1980); Don Marselle Moore,

x

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

importance of assurance, faith, and the testimony of the Spirit as crucial features in Wesley’s theology of the Holy Spirit, what’s needed is a constructive model for incorporating these features into a more complete picture, capable of engaging past and contemporary criticisms of Wesley’s theology of spiritual experience. The other reason is more philosophical. Many of Wesley’s contemporaries disagreed with his belief in the possibility of direct spiritual experience.9 That God should personally draw near to people of faith, ostensibly fostering first-hand religious participation, was philosophically dissatisfying to many early-modern critics. Drawing attention to the oppositional relationship between Wesley and many of his interlocutors on the question of spiritual experience, as well as the complicated nature of Wesley’s views on the subject, Henry Rack has given him the appellation, ‘reasonable enthusiast’,10 which David Hempton has recently reinforced.11 To suppose that God’s Spirit testified personally to human beings was to conflate the natural with super-nature, to posit a divine punctuation of the physical; this would not do in a post-medieval context, wherein, as Hume might well have put it, the idea of direct spiritual perception of God’s Divine presence ‘Immediate Perceptual Knowledge of God: A Study in the Epistemology of John Wesley’ (Syracuse University: M.Phil. Dissertation, 1993); Timothy Crutcher, ‘“The Crucible of Life”: The Role of Experience in John Wesley’s Theological Method’ (Catholic University of Leuven: Doctoral Thesis, 2003); Laura Bartels Felleman, ‘The Evidence of Things Not Seen: John Wesley’s Use of Natural Philosophy’ (Drew University: Doctoral Thesis, 2004).  9   See J. Wesley, ‘A Letter to the Reverend Mr. Baily of Cork’, in The Methodist Societies: History, Nature and Design: The Bicentennial Edition of the Works of John Wesley, vol. 9, Rupert E. Davies, ed. (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1989), 304. This edition will hereafter be abbreviated as ‘Works [BE]’. See also Thomas Church, Some Farther Remarks on the Rev. Mr. John Wesley’s last Journal (1746), 64. 10   Rack’s title of ‘reasonable enthusiast’ suggests just how paradoxical a figure Wesley was in terms of his theology and personal interests. For example, Wesley’s Primitive Physick (1761) was a standard text of home medicinal remedies adopted widely by early-modern readers in Britain and America. He published The Desideratum, or Electricity Made Plain and Useful (1760), and A Compendium of Natural Philosophy (1763) that expressed his views on the emerging sciences of biology, physiology, and physics. Yet, he also believed in ghosts, spiritual apparitions, and their contact with the physical world – a fascination that continued throughout his life. See John Wesley’s letters to Susanna from 1 November and 18 December 1724, as well as his ‘Extract from Mr. Baxter’s Certainty of the World of Spirits fully evinced by Unquestionable Histories of Apparitions and Witchcraft’ in The Arminian Magazine, VI (1785). 11   David Hempton, Methodism: Empire of the Spirit (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005), 41: ‘[Wesley was] in a peculiar sense, a reasonable enthusiast, but an enthusiast for all that.’

Preface

xi

is both unsophisticated and intellectually bankrupt.12 This philosophical critique, rightly identified by Rack and Hempton, born of real social tensions during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Britain,13 has shaped the intellectual reception of Wesley’s pneumatology during the modern period. In terms of theological coherence, Sherman Young has remarked that Wesley’s understanding of the Spirit is ‘neither systematic nor precise.’14 In a more recent study, Mark Mealey has also drawn attention to the apparent contradictions in certain areas of Wesley’s thinking on the topic.15 In response to this problem, this study develops a model for interpreting Wesley’s pneumatology, able to account for its complicated, even paradoxical nature. Wesley held that believers experience the Spirit by faith, and are transformed for holiness through inward perception of the divine. Rather than a narrow theme in his theology, ‘perceptible inspiration’ – a practical doctrine, which Wesley defended in a series of letters with a pseudonymous writer

12

  See J.B. Schneewind, ‘Toward Enlightenment: Kant and the Sources of Darkness’, in The Cambridge Companion to Early Modern Philosophy, ed. Donald Rutherford (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 334. While Hume’s theology did not necessarily exclude the possibility of a single deity acting as first cause of the universe, Hume was convinced nevertheless that the ‘rich variety of religious belief beyond this is caused by ignorance, hope, and fear.’ 13   David Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s, reprint edn (London: Routledge, 1993), 22. Enthusiasm was a socio-political issue: ‘To hear faith lauded to the skies aroused suspicions of fanaticism, the “enthusiasm” that the eighteenth century shunned because its seventeenth-century version had killed a King.’ Oliver Cromwell galvanized a mainly puritan army by playing especially upon its soldiers’ religious affections; he eventually overthrew the English monarchy and had Charles I executed. See also M.J. Kürschner, ‘The Enthusiasm of the Rev. John Wesley’, in Wesleyan Theological Journal, 35 (2) (Fall 2000): 120–21. Kürschner notes that Wesley and the Methodists stoked the coals of hostility with their (especially John Wesley’s) openness to charismatic manifestations of God’s work, such as convulsions, spiritual possessions, and fainting. 14   Young, ‘The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit’, 126. 15   See Mark Mealey, ‘Taste and See that the Lord is Good: John Wesley in the Christian Tradition of Spiritual Sensation’ (Toronto School of Theology: Doctoral Thesis, 2006), 255: ‘The apparent identity between faith as spiritual sensation and the witness of the Spirit as spiritual sensation presents a significant problem of coherence and integrity for Wesley’s theology.’ For a similar critique regarding the inconsistency of Wesley’s use of pneumatological expressions (‘receiving the Holy Spirit’, ‘the baptism of the Holy Spirit’, and being ‘filled with the Holy Spirit’), see William Arnet, ‘The Role of the Holy Spirit in Entire Sanctification in the writings of John Wesley,’ in Wesleyan Theological Journal, 14 (2) (Fall 1979): 26.

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

xii

called ‘John Smith’ between 1745 and 1748 – shows promise as a model for incorporating the various theological features of his pneumatology into a more complete picture.16 Indeed, a much wider theme than contemporary scholarship suggests,17 it provides a useful framework for conceptualizing his theology of the Spirit’s economic person and mission in response to the charges of enthusiasm and incoherence. What are the major features of this model? Wesley viewed God as a relational Spirit-Being, whose gracious witness to human beings enlightens our understanding, while moving the heart to happiness and holiness in Christ. As he succinctly expressed it in ‘A Letter to a Roman Catholic’ (1749): I believe the infinite and eternal Spirit of God … to be not only perfectly holy in himself, but the immediate cause of all holiness in us; enlightening our understandings, rectifying our wills and affections, renewing our natures, uniting our persons to Christ, assuring us of the adoption of sons, leading us in our actions; purifying and sanctifying our souls and bodies, to a full and eternal enjoyment of God.18

Wesley’s understanding of the Holy Spirit’s movement (via Spiritus) in the economy of salvation can be described in these terms.19 By grace through faith, 16   According to Arnet, ‘Wesley used the term “inspiration” or “perceptible inspiration” for the general ministry of the Holy Spirit in the life of a Christian’: Arnet, ‘The Role of the Holy Spirit in Entire Sanctification’, 18. 17   Three studies have dealt with the concept of ‘perceptible inspiration’ specifically. The first is Daniel Luby, ‘The Perceptibility of Grace: in the Theology of John Wesley’ (Rome: Angelicum, 1984). Luby’s thesis couples Wesley’s theology of perceptible inspiration with his doctrine of grace, considering the merits of the Wesleyan perspective in relation to the Roman Catholic view of grace and inspiration. The second is Rex Dale Matthews, ‘Religion and Reason Joined: A Study in the Theology of John Wesley’ (Harvard Divinity School: Doctoral Thesis, 1986). Matthews considers Wesley’s doctrine of perceptible inspiration, but within the wider context of Wesley’s religious epistemology. Finally, see Mark Mealey, ‘Taste and See that the Lord is Good’. Mealey’s thesis is an exegesis of Wesley’s use of ‘spiritual sensation’ language in relation to faith, assurance, and the witness of the Spirit. 18   J. Wesley, ‘A Letter to a Roman Catholic’, in Selections from the Writings of John Wesley, ed. Herbert Welch (New York: Eaton and Mains, 1901), 227. 19   The use of ‘via Spiritus’ as a heuristic builds upon Albert Outler’s observation regarding the need for further analysis of Wesley’s theology of the Spirit: ‘What remains

Preface

xiii

believers sense the witness of the Spirit of adoption or assurance, as the fruits of holy living begin to germinate in practice. Wesley’s doctrine of perceptible inspiration points to God’s nearness to humankind in the economy of salvation and the benefits of life in the Spirit for us. Chapter 1 begins by examining Wesley’s correspondence with ‘John Smith’ and then evaluates the concept of perceptible inspiration as a model for naming the salvific movements of the Holy Spirit in the economy of salvation. The model is suitable because it draws together at least four crucial ministries of the Holy Spirit in relation to the believer, namely grace, faith, the testimony, and the fruits of the Spirit. By grace, inspirants are empowered to perceive, by faith, the testimony of the Holy Spirit, as the fruits of holiness take shape with respect to practice. Although Wesley’s use of the term ‘perceptible inspiration’ is no new discovery, when extrapolated as pneumatological model, it sheds new light on Wesley’s understanding of key features of his religious worldview and their respective theological, soteriological, epistemological, and moral implications. Chapter 2 explores Wesley’s understanding of grace as a twofold gift – the gift of created being and the soteriological gift of life and freedom in the Spirit. It has been frequently observed that to Wesley, grace is not a static substance. Rather, grace signifies God’s relationality extended toward his creatures in the very act of creation itself, the space in which the story of salvation unfolds. Wesley’s theology of grace as a function of the Holy Spirit’s person and mission not only illustrates this truth, but also suggests the pneumatological character of being itself, especially with respect to all forms of conscious life. To Wesley, God is pure Spirit and worthy of the classical predicates associated with the divine nature. As pure Spirit, God is the source of all life and motion in the universe, and the uncaused cause that fashions material being from nothing. The term ‘Spirit’ also refers to the Holy Spirit’s personhood, whose agency of grace is united with the person of Jesus Christ in whom the work of salvation is accomplished. Grace is both Spirit-endued and Christological. When understood as pneumatological [to be seen] – and has not yet been studied in requisite depth – are the pneumatological overtones, which develop into a sort of theme … throughout the corpus and provide a ground-tone in Wesley’s version of the ordo salutis.’ See Albert Outler, ‘A Focus on the Holy Spirit: Spirit and Spirituality in John Wesley’, in The Wesleyan Theological Heritage, Thomas Oden and Leicester Longden, eds (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing, 1991), 167.

xiv

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

gift, grace specifies empowerment for participation in the life of the divine, which occurs in the midst of God’s created order, in cooperation with the work of Christ. Grace is pure gift and stems from God’s nature as pure Spirit, in whose image human beings were originally fashioned for love, glorification, and enjoyment of God. Chapter 3 then considers Wesley’s theology of faith as a sensorium for spiritual encounter. To Wesley, faith enables human beings to perceive God directly; it refers to the human agent’s unmediated perception of the divine essence. Wesley emphasized this using the images of new birth, divine consciousness, and heart circumcision. Faith as pneumatological gift refers to our faculty for spiritual knowledge awakened by the Spirit as believers respond to God’s grace. This lays groundwork for Chapter 4, which explores the relationship between faith and the witness of the Spirit, or the subject perceived by faith. Wesley described the witness of the Spirit as a dual witness. He held that believers directly perceive the witness of the Spirit by faith and subsequently, the human agent responds in conscious acknowledgement through the use of his or her natural faculties, affirming the event as direct religious encounter, which Wesley referred to as the indirect witness. Wesley’s theology of the witness of the Spirit as subject perceived by faith or spiritual sensation, suggests that assurance, a virtual synonym for the dual witness in Wesley’s writings, admits of numerous degrees. Repentance paired with what Wesley called the ‘spirit of bondage’ represent ‘a low species of faith, that is, a supernatural sense of an offended God.’20 Human agents may experience some measure of spiritual sensation without being fully cognizant of it. Wesley’s theology of spiritual perception was severely criticized by his contemporaries. Wesley did not assume the natural priority of reason over faith, nor did he presume that religious experience required empirical evidence for epistemic justification, suggesting a possible parallel between his theology of faith as spiritual sensation and elements of Reformed epistemology and postfoundationalism. Finally, Chapter 5 addresses the moral implications of Wesley’s pneumatology, or how the practical fruits of righteousness, peace, joy, and love result from personal encounter with the Holy Spirit. Wesley’s pneumatology of perceptible inspiration draws together numerous features of his theology, but it also contributes to wider discussions of ethics from the Wesleyan perspective. 20   Henry Rack, ed., ‘The London Conference of June 25–29, 1744’, in The Bicentennial Edition of the Works of John Wesley, vol. 10 (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2011), 126.

Preface

xv

Wesley’s theology of entire sanctification or perfect love, which highlights the importance of the Holy Spirit’s work in the economy of salvation in terms of stimulating growth and spiritual renewal in the lives of believers, is teleological. To encounter the Holy Spirit, to Wesley, is to be refashioned as creatures in the image of God, to be set free for enjoyment of the divine, the end or purpose of our existence as created beings. Similarities exist between Wesley’s view of happiness in Christ as humanity’s highest good and the classical tradition of eudaimonia. Wesley held that we are made to flourish. We flourish when we sense God’s peace, joy, and righteousness, and when we cultivate these through acts of compassion, mercy, and love. Wesley’s pneumatology of perceptible inspiration affirms the teleological nature of his religious ethics, especially with respect to his teaching on perfect love. Accomplishing these tasks should provide a tighter framework for addressing the apparent inconsistencies in Wesley’s theology of the Spirit, as well as to secure his conception of ‘perceptible inspiration’ as a salient dimension of his theological worldview that describes the operations of the Holy Spirit in the economy of salvation in relation to questions of epistemology and religious ethics. Also, connections will be explored between Wesley’s pneumatology and early evangelical thought. Evangelicalism, defined by David Bebbington, ‘is a popular movement that has existed in Britain since the 1730s.’21 It was sparked by pietists and puritans in the century antecedent,22 and fanned in England by George Whitefield and the Wesley brothers during their field-preaching ministries in Bristol. Coupled with ‘The Great Awakening’ in North America, fostered in part by Jonathan Edwards, British evangelicalism matured into a global religious movement, which expanded during the subsequent century and beyond. According to Bebbington, in terms of its theological outlook, virtually all strains of evangelicalism placed heavy emphasis upon conversion, which was understood to be the work of the Holy Spirit in the heart of the believer.23 This was a main feature of evangelical spirituality. As such, it raises a pertinent question. Since John Wesley played a decisive role in shaping evangelicalism, to what extent did his emphasis upon perceptible

  Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, 1.   See Mark A. Noll, The Rise of Evangelicalism: The Age of Edwards, Whitefield and the Wesleys (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2003), 53–65. 23   Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, 8. 21 22

xvi

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

inspiration influence the movement’s overall theological development? That is, how did Wesley’s theology of the Spirit’s economic person and mission contribute to the wider evangelical phenomenon of which it was part? To be certain, while the focal point of this book is the concept of perceptible inspiration as model for Wesley’s pneumatology, such consideration will also shed light on eighteenthcentury evangelical theology in general, to which we will return briefly in the Conclusion.

Chapter 1

Perceptible Inspiration as Pneumatological Model: A Critical Appraisal of John Wesley’s Correspondence with ‘John Smith’ (1745–48)

From May 1745 to March 1748, John Wesley was engaged in correspondence with a pseudonymous figure named ‘John Smith’.1 Henry Bett has claimed that Smith was really Thomas Secker, Bishop of Oxford (1747–50) and Archbishop of Canterbury (1758–68).2 However, recent scholarship has suggested otherwise. According to Albert Outler for instance, while ‘Secker’s theological stature and outlook would match those of the man who wrote these letters … other internal details leave the question open.’3 Regardless of Smith’s historical identity, it is clear from the letters that he was both pious and well-informed in theological matters.4 Why did Smith initiate contact? Evidence within the sources suggests that consternation with Wesley’s Earnest Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion (1743), along with selections from his Farther Appeal (1744–45), was partially 1

  See Joseph W. Cunningham, ‘Pneumatology through Correspondence: The Letters of John Wesley and “John Smith” (1745–48)’, in Wesley and Methodist Studies, 1 (2009), 18–32. This chapter was adapted from the previous publication. 2  Bett, The Spirit of Methodism, 36. 3   Albert Outler, John Wesley, 3. Most notably, ‘Smith’ hinted at being reared in the Church of England, and Thomas Secker conformed during adulthood. Another suggestion for the identity of ‘John Smith’ is Thomas Herring, Archbishop of York (1743–48) and Canterbury (1748–57). Herring is unlikely, however, given his preference for politics rather than theological debate; an extended exchange over the question of ‘perceptible inspiration’ with John Wesley would have been extremely uncharacteristic. 4   Twelve letters number their exchange, with each participant contributing six letters apiece. Frank Baker saw fit to publish the complete correspondence between the two figures, citing the following reason: ‘Because of their continuing (though inconclusive) interplay upon issues of crucial importance for Wesley’s ministry, all the letters are presented in their entirety, in regular alternation’: Letters [I–II]: The Bicentennial Edition of the Works of John Wesley, vols 25–6, Frank Baker, ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), 26:138.

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

2

responsible. In addition, a brush with practising Methodists in or around the Bristol area may have led him to write – a claim made by Frank Baker.5 Nevertheless, regardless of what prompted it, Smith’s impetus for writing is clear. He possessed deep misgivings about Wesley’s theology and wished to give its proponent a chance to clarify. While Smith’s manifold critique ranged from the issue of laypreaching to that of present-day miracles, much of his concern centred on the issue of perceptible inspiration – the idea that men and women might directly encounter or sense the Holy Spirit. Smith pressed Wesley for a viable answer to the perplexing problem of perceptible inspiration: The question then is this, does God’s Spirit work perceptibly on our spirit by direct testimony … by such perceivable impulses and dictates as are as distinguishable from the suggestions of our own faculties as light is discernible from darkness … or does he imperceptibly influence our minds to goodness by gently and insensibly assisting our faculties, and biasing them aright?6

Amidst a busy itinerancy filled with preaching and publication, Wesley accepted the challenge extended by Smith, and responded to each of his letters with care, precision, and at length. In some respects, the two had met their match in one another. Both men were knowledgeable of the Church and her theology, both were well-educated and articulate, both were adept at critically analysing opposing positions, and both expressed a sincere interest in seeking the truth. However, unlike his opponent, John Wesley embraced the possibility of direct spiritual knowledge. Wesley believed that, in the economy of salvation,7 the Holy Spirit   Works [BE], 26:138.  Ibid., 188. Approximately one year earlier, Bishop Edmund Gibson put the same question to Wesley and the Methodists. See Observations upon the conduct and behaviour of a certain sect, usually distinguished by the name of Methodists, second edn (London: 1744), 10. Gibson asks if ‘Whether a gradual improvement in grace and goodness, is not a better foundation of Comfort, and of an assurance of a gospel new birth, than that which is founded on the doctrine of a sudden and instantaneous change; which, if there be any such thing, is not easily distinguished from fancy and imagination; the workings whereof we may well suppose to be more strong and powerful, while the person considers himself in the state of one who is admitted as a candidate for such a change, and is taught in due time to expect it?’ 7   The term ‘economy’ signifies God’s relationality, extended toward human beings, as the foundation of creaturely spiritual existence, and the means of our participation in God’s 5

6

Perceptible Inspiration as Pneumatological Model

3

stirs the hearts of believers to faith and assurance as the fruits of righteousness, peace, joy, and love are germinated in Christian practice. Wesley’s espousal of this teaching was emphatic: ‘For this I earnestly contend; and so do all who are called Methodist preachers.’8 What are the specifics of his teaching? Wesley held that God enables humans to perceive, by faith, the witness of the Holy Spirit. Subsequently, as the Spirit renews our mind and moral character, the fruits of inspiration (peace, joy, love, and righteousness) begin to proliferate. Each of these distinctive movements, as well as their inter-relatedness with respect to humanity’s experience of God, is fundamental to Wesley’s theology of the Spirit’s person and work in the economy of salvation, and implicit within the concept of perceptible inspiration, when

life. It can be found in the writings of eighteenth-century linguists, political philosophers, and religious figures alike, all of whom were contemporary with John Wesley. Samuel Johnson nuanced the term theologically, describing it as the ‘disposition of things’ – or all ‘the divine and infinitely wise ways … that God could use towards a rational creature, [to] oblige mankind to that course of living which is most agreeable to our nature’: Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language (London, 1755). According to James Burgh, God is the ‘infinite Author’ of the ‘universal oeconomy’, which is suitable to God’s ‘necessary nature and character’: James Burgh, The Dignity of Human Nature (London, 1754), 207. Burgh (1714–75) was a political philosopher, with deep roots in the Church of Scotland. Pierre Poiret writes that the ‘Divine Economy’ indicates the ‘universal system of the works and purposes of God towards men’: Pierre Poiret, The Divine Economy, English trans., 6 vols (London, 1713). Poiret (1646–1719) was a French theologian, influenced by Dutch Mennonite Hendrik Jansz van Barneveldt, as well as Thomas à Kempis and Johannes Tauler. According to all three, the term ‘economy’ denotes the creaturely space in which God’s salvific operation shapes our nature as human beings. Constituted by creation, mercy, forgiveness and regeneration, God’s economy is an economy of grace – space for salvation – in which humanity’s response to the divine initiative unfolds. Staunch Methodist critic, William Warburton, outlined ‘the economy of Grace’ in pneumatological terms: ‘[The] blessed Redeemer, on leaving the world, promised to his followers his intercession with the Father, to send amongst them another divine Person on the part of man, namely, the Holy Ghost, called the Spirit of Truth, and the Comforter; who, agreeably to the import of these appellations, should co-operate with man in establishing his faith, and in perfecting his obedience; or, in other words, should sanctify him to redemption’: William Warburton, The Doctrine of Grace: or, the Office and Operations of the Holy Spirit Vindicated from the Insults of Infidelity, and the Abuses of Fanaticism … (London, 1763), 2. Among John Wesley’s contemporaries, ‘economy’ was a theological term signifying God’s care and provision over all things, and more specifically, God’s work of drawing humanity unto God’s self, within the space of created being. 8   Works [BE], 26:182.

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

4

appropriated as a pneumatological doctrine.9 Although the teaching has primarily been read in terms of his theory of religious knowledge,10 when extrapolated, it exposes Wesley’s understanding of via Spiritus, the way of the Spirit in relation to humankind and salvation. Indeed, during Wesley’s exchange with John Smith, Wesley consistently defined perceptible inspiration in terms of saving faith and its fruits (peace, joy, righteousness, and love), or inward and outward holiness manifested in the lives of believers by the power of the Holy Spirit. We are now at length come to the real state of the question between Methodists (so called) and their opponents. Is there perceptible inspiration or is there not? Is there such a thing … as faith producing peace and joy and love, and inward (as well as outward) holiness? Is that faith which is productive of these fruits wrought in us by the Holy Ghost, or not? And is he in whom they are wrought necessarily conscious of them, or is he not?11

Becoming conscious of God’s gracious activity, believers gain confidence and trust in God as saviour and sanctifier. In its widest sense, perceptible inspiration refers to God consciousness and the panoply of the Spirit’s work wherein believers feel and seek to express the peace, joy, righteousness, and love of God in Christ. More particularly however, perceptible inspiration was Wesley’s term for the Spirit’s direct testimony of assurance and humanity’s perception of it. [Perceptible] inspiration … be pleased to observe what we mean thereby. We mean that inspiration of God’s Holy Spirit whereby he fills us with righteousness, peace, and joy, with love to him and all mankind. And we believe it cannot be, in the nature of things, that a man should be filled with this peace and joy and love by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost without perceiving it, as clearly as he does the light of the sun.12   John Telford, ed., The Letters of the Rev. John Wesley, A.M., 8 vols (London: Epworth Press, 1960), 4:253. Hereafter this edition will be abbreviated as Letters. ‘He is not a God far off; He is now hovering over you with eyes of tenderness and love!’ 10   Albert Outler defined perceptible inspiration as Wesley’s ‘theory of religious knowledge’. See John Wesley, 3. 11   Works [BE], 26:183. 12   Ibid., 182.  9

Perceptible Inspiration as Pneumatological Model

5

Wesley was insistent that spiritual consciousness is essential for salvation. Relational, affective, and moral knowledge of God, along with the outward expression of Christ’s love to humankind based upon the inward testimony communicated to the inspirant by the Divine, are imperative for Christian living. That Wesley defined perceptible inspiration in part by pointing to the fruits of holy living raises a theological problem, however. Wesley held that righteousness, love, peace, and joy are the immediate fruits of spiritual knowledge, as well as characteristics of the event itself. John Smith, on the other hand, insisted that these constitute the natural effects of God’s operation, but not the event itself. While ‘good things … wrought in [humans],’13 wrote Smith, the ‘question to be debated … [is] not whether the fruits of inspiration are things perceptible, but whether the work of inspiration itself be so; whether the work of God’s Spirit in us be as easily distinguishable from the workings of our own spirit as light is from darkness.’14 In response to this problem, skewing the line between physics and metaphysics Wesley maintained that inspiration was both perceptible and supernatural. If not through our natural faculties, reason, or physical sensation, then how is inspiration known? Wesley’s answer was faith.15 As he explained in his Earnest Appeal: You cannot reason concerning spiritual things if you have no spiritual sight, because all your ideas received by your outward senses are of a different kind; yea, far more different from those received by faith or internal sensation than the idea of colour from that of sound … [The] ideas of faith differ toto genere from those of external sensation.16 13

 Ibid., 188.   Ibid. 15   See Maddox, Responsible Grace, 129. ‘Given Wesley’s empiricist epistemology, one might well ask how humans could perceive the effects of the Holy Spirit’s inspiration, since these are internal or spiritual realities. His answer, of course, was that we have graciously restored spiritual senses that enable us to be sensible of Divinely-fostered peace, joy, and love. Indeed, “faith as spiritual experience” is precisely such restored sensory capability.’ Maddox makes an important observation here, that faith, for Wesley, functions as a spiritual conduit for God knowledge. 16   J. Wesley, ‘An Earnest Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion’, in The Appeals to Men of Reason and Religion, and Certain Related Open Letters: The Bicentennial Edition of the Works of John Wesley, vol. 11, Gerald Cragg, ed. (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1975), 57. 14

6

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

By faith, men and women internally perceive God’s testimony of peace, joy, righteousness and love. To witness the Spirit’s presence, which is both above and immanent with respect to our physical being, one must have faith, a supernatural gift endowed to human beings. As Wesley remarked to Smith, ‘over and above those other graces which the Holy Spirit inspires into or operates in a Christian, and over and above his imperceptible influences, I do intend all mankind should understand me to assert … every Christian believer hath a perceptible testimony of the Spirit that he is a child of God.’17 The inspiration of the Spirit, which comforts and assures newly born sons and daughters of God in Christ, is a gift beheld through direct perception of the Spirit’s inspiring energy.18 In addition to the visible fruits borne of practice, believers do experience by faith an inward consciousness of God’s presence – a consciousness of intimate spiritual participation.19 Perceptible inspiration signifies Wesley’s view of the inward illumination of the Spirit directly known by human agents (through faith) accompanied by the fruits of peace, joy, righteousness, and love. As he explained to John Downes in response to the latter’s 1759 polemical work, ‘We do speak of grace (meaning thereby that power of God which worketh in us both to will and to do of his good pleasure), that it is “as perceptible to the heart” (while it comforts, refreshes, purifies, and sheds the love of God abroad therein) “as sensible objects are to the senses”.’20 The Spirit’s work, which Wesley identified with the power of grace, is 17   Works [BE], 26:232: ‘I use the phrase, “testimony of the Spirit”, rather than “inspiration”, because it has a more determinate meaning.’ 18   Smith denied finding in Wesley’s Farther Appeal any reference to the direct witness of the Spirit: ‘[Of] the perceptibility of the ordinary operations, as directly felt to be worked by him, there is not one word said’, ibid., 211. Wesley cited specific examples from the work for his opponent: ‘it will follow that this witness of the Spirit is the private testimony given to our own consciences, which consequently all sober Christians may claim without any danger of enthusiasm.’ ‘Everyone that is born of God, and doth not commit sin, by his very actions saith, “Our Father in heaven”, “the Spirit itself bearing witness with their spirit that they are the children of God”.’ See Part I, Section V of the Farther Appeal, or Works [BE], 11:146–50 and 156–9. 19   ‘God may give [us] such a peace or joy and such love to Himself and all mankind as we are sure are not “the motions of our own [rational] nature”’: J. Wesley, ‘To Mr. Potter’, in Letters, 4:42. This letter was a response to Potter’s 1758 Sermon on the Pretended Inspiration of the Methodists, which Wesley claimed to have read on 4 November of the same year. 20   J. Wesley, ‘A Letter to the Reverend Mr. Downes’, in Works [BE], 9:359–60. Cf., John Downes, Methodism Examined and Exposed: or the Clergy’s Duty of Guarding their Flocks against False Teachers (London, 1759).

Perceptible Inspiration as Pneumatological Model

7

as perceptible to the heart as texture is to touch – though each represents a distinct faculty directed at categorically distinct realities. Wesley’s doctrine of perceptible inspiration points to God’s self-disclosing Spirit who breathes filial confidence, peace, joy, and love into the souls of faithful believers. It was so vital to his theology that he called it ‘the main doctrine of the Methodists’, ‘the substance of what we all preach.’21 He even went so far as to state that ‘none is a true Christian [until] he experiences it,’22 and furthermore, ‘I cannot believe [God] will receive any man into glory (I speak of those under the Christian dispensation) “without such an inspiration of the Holy Ghost as fills his heart with peace and joy and love”.’23 Surfacing in his correspondence with John Smith, Wesley’s doctrine of perceptible inspiration highlights God’s gracious initiative to refashion and renew human beings into God’s image and likeness through the Spirit of holiness. Against this notion, Smith raised the following criticisms. You seem then to me to contend with great earnestness for the following system, viz., that faith (instead of being a rational assent and moral virtue for the attainment of which men ought to yield the utmost attention and industry) is altogether a divine and supernatural illapse from heaven, the immediate gift of God, the mere work of Omnipotence, given instantaneously and arbitrarily, not with any regard to the fitness of the recipient, but the absolute will of the Donor. That the moment this faith is received the recipient’s pardon is signed in heaven, or he is justified. This pardon or justification is immediately notified to him by the Holy Ghost, and that not by his imperceptibly working a godly assurance, but by such a perceptible, such a glaring attestation as is as easily discernible from the dictates of reason or suggestions of fancy as light is discernible from darkness.24

  Works [BE], 26:182.   Ibid. 23   Ibid., 198. However, Wesley added the following proviso: ‘unless in the case of invincible ignorance. In this case, many thousands are doubtless saved who never heard of these doctrines.’ See also his journal entry for 1 December 1767. Here he claimed that men and women could experience salvation without conceptual knowledge of key doctrines: ‘clear conceptions … are not necessary to salvation; yea, it is not necessary to salvation to use the phrase [‘imputed righteousness’ or ‘justification by faith’] at all’, Journals and Diaries [I–VII]: The Bicentennial Edition of the Works of John Wesley, vols 18–24, Reginald Ward and Richard Heitzenrater, eds (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1988–97), 22:114–15. 24   Works [BE], 26:139. 21

22

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

8

Instead of a dispassionate assent to the truth of revelation accompanied by virtuous living, Wesley, according to Smith, had reduced faith to an ecstatic event in which the believer is instantly forgiven and assured of it directly by the Holy Spirit. If this were true, held Smith, justification by faith would be dependent exclusively on the sovereign will of God without any regard for the recipient and his or her fitness for its reception. It is possible that Smith may have feared that Wesley’s position could be construed to promote antinomianism – the view that one may wilfully continue sinning and at the same time be counted among the elect because of the grace of God that shields one from God’s judgment. Given the unrest characteristic of early-modern Britain with respect to the relationship between religion and politics following the Protestant Reformation, Elizabethan Settlement, and the English Civil War, concern for socio-political and religious stability may have been at the heart of Smith’s critique as well as concern to safeguard reasonable religion from religious enthusiasm, which he perceived Wesley to represent. Smith built his case on three sources: experience, Scripture, and reason. Smith argued that faith is not given in a single moment, but is a gradual trust in God that develops naturally and in accordance with the light of reason.25 Smith wrote, ‘I hope and believe myself to have as steady a faith in a pardoning God as you can have; but my faith came by hearing, by hearing the Word of God soberly and consistently explained, and not from any momentous illapse from heaven.’26 Faith, according to Smith, emerges gradually, by the imperceptible workings of God. Reading Scripture, praying regularly, partaking of the Eucharist, listening to the homilies – this was how the Spirit operates, not by sudden fits of religious ecstasy. That Wesley seemed to maintain otherwise, and to claim the full support of Scripture, was in Smith’s view, irresponsible exegesis. ‘[We] must not single out a few texts of Scripture of one

25

  Smith defined ‘natural’ and ‘supernatural’ in the following way: ‘“Natural”, “ordinary”, and “common”, when spoken of God’s actions, I take to be entirely synonymous terms. “Supernatural”, “miraculous”, and “uncommon” are likewise synonyms’: ibid., 168. 26   Ibid., 140. Smith’s critique resonates with that of Bishop Edmund Gibson. See Gibson, Observations upon the conduct and behaviour of a certain sect, (London,10: ‘[The question is … ] Whether a gradual improvement in grace and goodness, is not a better foundation of Comfort, and of an assurance of a gospel new birth, than that which is founded on the doctrine of a sudden and instantaneous change; which, if there be any such thing, is not easily distinguished from fancy and imagination?’

Perceptible Inspiration as Pneumatological Model

9

particular cast or sound, and then call these the Word of God’, wrote Smith.27 The best interpretation of Scripture reflects the ‘general tenor and consistent meaning of the whole.’28 When rightly interpreted, according to Smith, Scripture ‘speaks of growth in grace, in faith, and in religious knowledge, as owning to the slow methods of instruction, not to momentaneous inspiration.’29 Smith’s critique aimed to show the flaws in Wesley’s exegetical method. He believed that Wesley used selective passages of Scripture to justify his belief in direct religious experience. In addition, Smith challenged the reasonableness of Wesley’s view of faith. He wrote that it ‘is the nature of faith to be a full and practical assent to truth. But such [an] assent arises not momentaneously, but by the slow steps of ratiocination; by attending to the evidence, weighing the objections, and solving the difficulties.’30 In other words, to define faith as an immediate experience is to misdefine the term. Smith held that faith is a species of assent – a trust that the truths of revelation are in fact true. By faith, individuals progress in varying degrees toward holiness, but only after careful consideration of the evidence for God in creation, tradition, and Scripture. Trust in God first requires thoughtful consideration and intellectual acceptance of the deposit of faith and the creeds which preserve it. By claiming that believers forgo ‘ratiocination’ and acquire faith instantly, Wesley seemed to undercut faith’s reasonable character. Thus, argued Smith, ‘experience, the Word of God, and the nature of the thing itself plainly evince the contrary.’31 Wesley’s definition of faith as an instantaneous gift accompanied by direct spiritual testimony was suspect. Worse, to Smith, Wesley seemed to hold this teaching as normative for all Christians. ‘[These] singularities,’ as Smith put it, ‘are your most beloved opinions and favourite tenets, more insisted upon by you than the general and uncontroverted truths of Christianity.’32 From Smith’s perspective, Wesley’s teaching held dangerous implications. During an age of religious enthusiasm, as well as palpable fear of Britain’s forced return to the Roman Catholic Church by 27   The passages he had in mind were Galatians 4:6 and Romans 8:15–16, which Wesley had already preached on during at least thirteen different occasions prior to his exchange with Smith. See Works [BE], 1:249. 28   Works [BE], 26:141. 29   Ibid. 30   Ibid. 31   Ibid. 32   Ibid., 141.

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

10

neighbouring Catholic countries, Wesley’s emphasis on faith in relation to direct religious experience, should it gain popular favour among the more superstitious in society, could potentially impact Britain and her social, ecclesial, and even political stability.33 How did Wesley respond to Smith’s critique? His initial letter was prefaced with kindly remarks, as was Smith’s opening letter, which suggests mutual respect despite serious disagreement.34 Wesley’s first move was to clarify his understanding of saving faith and to correct what he saw as Smith’s caricature. He explained that while ‘a rational assent to the truth of the Bible is one ingredient of Christian faith’ and ‘that men ought to yield the utmost attention and industry for the attainment of it’; still, ‘this, as every Christian grace, is properly supernatural.’35 In other words, Wesley explained that faith is ‘an immediate gift of God, which he commonly gives in the use of such means as he hath ordained.’36 However natural it may seem, faith exceeds intellectual assent to statements concerning God’s existence. Faith must be given. Apart from God’s grace, we cannot acquire it, nor can we sense assurance which accompanies saving faith. In claiming that faith and inspiration are supernatural gifts, wrote Wesley, ‘I only mean that they are not the effect of any or all of our natural faculties, but are wrought in us (be it swiftly or slowly) by the Spirit of God.’37 Wesley believed that in order to enjoy saving faith, it must be confirmed by assurance – that is, sealed by direct perception of the Holy Spirit, which was ‘generally given in an instant,’ though not arbitrarily, ‘not without any regard to the fitness … of the recipient.’38 Saving faith belongs to those who

33

  On the topic of superstitions, popular religion, and enthusiasm, along with their cultural and political impact during the early-modern period in Britain, see R.A. Knox, Enthusiasm: A Chapter in the History of Religion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977). See also Jane Shaw, Miracles in Enlightenment England (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006). 34   ‘Methinks I can scarce look upon such a person, on one who is a “contender for truth, and not for victory”, whatever opinion he may entertain of me, as any adversary at all. For what is friendship, if I am to account him my enemy who endeavors to open my eyes or to amend my heart’, Works [BE], 26:154. 35   Ibid., 157. 36   Ibid. 37   Ibid., 179. 38   Ibid., 157.

Perceptible Inspiration as Pneumatological Model

11

express repentance, humility, and contrition, and is demonstrated through outward moral expression in the name of Christ.39 It is a supernatural gift. John Smith explained faith as the natural result of our intellect applied to revealed theology: ‘It is the nature of faith to be a full and practical assent to truth.’40 To Wesley, however, this definition was too limited. Wesley’s definition underscores the importance of relational trust and spiritual participation in addition to rational assent. ‘Christian, saving faith,’ wrote Wesley, is ‘a divine conviction of invisible things, a supernatural conviction of the things of God, with a filial confidence in his love.’41 As Wesley described it in a letter to a friend nearly thirty years after his correspondence with Smith, ‘this is your calling, to sink deeper and deeper into Him, [and] out of His fullness to receive more and more, till you know all that love of God that passeth knowledge.’42 Trusting in God transcends one’s ability to accept truth statements about God’s existence. Trust places the believer in direct spiritual communion with God. Faith is our means of participation in God’s life. This definition clashed with Smith’s view, which understood faith primarily in terms of assent to revelation accompanied by acts of charity and mercy. How did Wesley justify his views of faith and direct inspiration in light of Smith’s criticism? He appealed to Galatians 4:6 and Romans 8:15–16 as passages which instruct believers to expect direct testimony from God to confirm their faith.43 Wesley was adamant that these texts should be read literally: ‘The Spirit which God hath sent into my heart, and which now cries in my heart, Abba, Father, now beareth testimony with my spirit that I am a child of God. How can these

39   See J. Wesley’s letter to Revd Horne from 10 March 1762: ‘Repentance absolutely must go before faith; fruits meet for it, if there be opportunity. By repentance I mean conviction of sin, producing real desires and sincere resolutions of amendment’: Letters, 4:162. 40   Works [BE], 26:141. 41   Ibid., 159. 42   J. Wesley, ‘Letter to Elizabeth Ritchie’, in Letters, 6:110–11. 43   Galatians 4:6: ‘And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father’; Romans 8:15-16: ‘For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The same Spirit beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God.’ In addition to these passages, Wesley appealed to a number of others for support in response to a similar charge by Bishop Richard Smalbroke. See J. Wesley, ‘A Farther Appeal – Part I’, in Works [BE], 11:146–59.

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

12

words be interpreted at all but of an inward perceptible testimony?’44 Wesley claimed shared testimony as evidence for his interpretation. Many ‘truly pious [individuals] … have severally testified … with their own mouths that they do know the day when the love of God was first shed abroad in their hearts, and when his Spirit first witnessed with their spirits that they were the children of God.’45 Elsewhere in the correspondence he stated, ‘I know hundreds of persons whose hearts were one moment filled with fear and sorrow and pain, and the next with peace and joy in believing, yea, joy unspeakable, full of glory … the same moment they experienced such a love of God.’46 In his view, instantaneous faith and the direct witness of the Spirit are supported by the authority of personal testimony and shared experience, which align with the promise – that God’s Spirit bears witness with our own when our spirit is joined with Christ by faith – found in Scripture. To be sure, Wesley did acknowledge the possibility of other patterns of religious experience through which to arrive at faith and assurance: ‘I do not deny that God imperceptibly works in some a gradually increasing assurance of his love.’47 However, Wesley remained convinced that the dominant mode of experiencing saving faith and assurance is through direct spiritual encounter.48 Wesley secured what he believed was a strong defence against Smith’s argument, but was he reasonable in his exegesis? Melvin Dieter maintains that for Wesley, ‘true biblical Christianity finds its highest expression and ultimate test of authenticity in the practical and ethical experience of the individual and the church.’49 This is especially true of the Smith correspondence, in which Wesley   Works [BE], 26:248.   Ibid., 158. Similar remarks can be found in Wesley’s reply to Thomas Church in 1746: ‘[The] truth of these facts is supported by the same kind of proof as that of all other facts is wont to be, namely, the testimony of competent witnesses; and that the testimony here is in as high a degree as any reasonable man can desire. Those witnesses were many in number; they could not be deceived themselves, for the facts in question they saw with their own eyes, and heard with their own ears. Nor is it credible that so many of them would combine together with a view of deceiving others, the greater part of being men that feared God, as appeared by the general tenor of their lives’: J. Wesley, ‘The Principles of a Methodist Farther Explained’, in Works [BE], 9:214. 46   Works [BE], 26:180. 47   Ibid., 157. 48   Ibid.: ‘Yours may be another of those exempt cases which were allowed before.’ 49   Melvin E. Dieter, ‘The Wesleyan Perspective’, in Five Views on Sanctification, Stanley N. Gundry, ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1987), 11. 44

45

Perceptible Inspiration as Pneumatological Model

13

relied heavily on the stories and experiences of his followers as a source for justifying his theological truth claims. On the other hand, Wesley also claimed that no amount of experience or testimony can ever warrant the holding of a belief which is directly at odds with scriptural teaching. He expressed this succinctly in his twelfth discourse ‘Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount’ (1750): ‘Believe nothing … unless it is clearly confirmed by plain passages of Holy Writ. Wholly reject whatsoever differs therefrom, whatever is not confirmed thereby.’50 This hermeneutical assumption was also at work in Wesley’s correspondence with Smith. For example, the belief held by Smith that God does not communicate directly to believers in the current age (given the orderly structure of nature, the epistemological chasm between physical and metaphysical reality, as well as the problematic phenomenon of religious fanaticism) was untenable to Wesley, who insisted instead that experience may illumine our understanding of Scripture, but Scripture alone is the un-normed norm with respect to religious truth and practice. In what sense, then, was Wesley’s interpretation justifiable? Thomas Oden intimates the promise in Wesley’s exegesis, by suggesting that, from Wesley’s perspective, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, such as having the mind of Christ, personal spiritual encounter, and being filled with the fruits of the Spirit are essential for the Church in all ages of history.51 Indeed, if the Bible speaks of a God who enters into relationship with human beings in history, and who enables human beings to overcome the predicament of sin in order to achieve holy living through faith in Christ, then the inference that humanity’s redemption occurs in relational ways with respect to God’s agency is reasonable. Wesley affirmed God’s personhood and relationality as a guiding theological and hermeneutical principle.52

50   J. Wesley, ‘Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount – Discourse the Twelfth’, in Sermons [1–IV]: The Bicentennial Edition of the Works of John Wesley, vols 1–4, Albert Outler, ed. (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1984–87), 1:683–4. 51   ‘That is scriptural Christianity in all ages’: Oden, John Wesley’s Scriptural Christianity, 222. 52   Works [BE], 26:248: ‘“Are not these words Scripture, The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God?” … the words immediately preceding prove to a demonstration that it speaks of an inward testimony: “Ye have not received the spirit of bondage unto fear;” (is not fear an inward thing?) “But ye have received the Spirit of adoption whereby we cry, Abba, Father”. The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God – even the same Spirit which “God hath sent forth into our hearts, crying Abba, Father.”’

14

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

Precedent for Wesley’s views on spiritual illumination can be found in English Church tradition. One example is John Pearson, whose work, on the Exposition of the Creed (1659),53 Wesley excerpted and appended to his Farther Appeal (1744).54 Wesley thought highly of Pearson’s work, writing in a letter from 13 May 1764: ‘In order to be well acquainted with the doctrines of Christianity you need but one book (beside the New Testament) – Bishop Pearson On the Creed. This I advise you to read and master thoroughly: it is a library in one volume.’55 From Pearson, Wesley gleaned the following insights concerning the Spirit’s person and mission. The same Spirit which revealeth the object of faith generally to the universal church … doth also illuminate the understanding of such as believe, that they may receive the truth. For ‘faith is the gift of God’, not only in the object, but also in the act … And this gift is a gift of the Holy Ghost working in us … And as the increase [and] perfection [sic.], so the original of faith is from the Spirit of God … by an internal illumination of the soul … .56

According to Pearson, the Spirit of God reveals faith to ‘the universal church,’ and illuminates our minds through a personal ‘act’ of grace. Such is the ‘gift of the Holy Ghost working within’ the souls of human beings. Both Pearson and Wesley understood the Holy Spirit’s practical agency in terms of the work of fostering spiritual knowledge or personal illumination, which Wesley emphasized using the language of the witness of the Spirit. Wesley’s views on faith and direct spiritual encounter also shares sentiment with the language of the Book of Common Prayer. ‘The whole of it’ according to Wesley ‘is beautifully summed up in that one, comprehensive petition, “Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love thee, and worthily magnify thy holy

53   John Pearson (1612–86) was an English scholar and theologian. In 1661, he was appointed to the position of Lady Margaret’s Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, and the following year, Master of Trinity College. Pearson was also Bishop of Chester from 1673 until his death in 1686. 54   J. Wesley, ‘A Farther Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion, Part 1’, in Works [BE], 11:164. 55   Letters, 4:243. 56   J. Wesley, ‘A Farther Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion, Part 1’, in Works [BE], 11:164. See also John Pearson, An Exposition of the Creed (London, 1676), 327–30.

Perceptible Inspiration as Pneumatological Model

15

name.”’57 On many occasions, Wesley affirmed the significance of the prayer in rebuttal to critics of his theology of perceptible inspiration: ‘You pray God to “cleanse the thoughts of your heart by the inspiration of his Holy Spirit”: but you assure your neighbour there is no such thing as inspiration now, and that none pretend to it but enthusiasts. What gross hypocrisy is this!’58 It is important to note that Wesley and Smith would have both agreed that the Book of Common Prayer and the teachings of John Pearson were important guides for practical divinity. Thus, the point here is not to claim that Wesley was somehow right and the other wrong, but that both writers had thoughtful reasons for developing their respective doctrinal positions based upon the sources of Scripture, tradition, and experience. Like his opponent, Wesley’s exegesis, which teemed with the experience of his community and reflected English Church teaching, was justifiable.59   J. Wesley, ‘On Laying the Foundation of the New Chapel’, in Works [BE], 3:586.   J. Wesley, ‘A Farther Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion, Part 2’, in Works [BE], 11:239. In addition, see J. Wesley, ‘Hypocrisy in Oxford [English]’, in Works [BE], 4:398. See also ‘A Letter to the Reverend Mr. Downes’, in Works [BE], 9:364. Here, Wesley rebuked his opponents for denying the possibility of perceptible inspiration: ‘In the desk they prayed God to “cleanse the thoughts of their hearts by the inspiration of his Holy Spirit”. In the pulpit they said there was “no such thing as inspiration since the time of the apostles”.’ 59   Wesley appealed to the early Church fathers in ‘A Farther Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion’, in Works [BE], 11:156–7. He claimed that Origen, Athanasius, and John Chrysostom support the possibility of direct spiritual knowledge. Wesley argued that Chrysostom, in his commentary on John’s Gospel, shows that while the apostles were the initial and primary percipients of God’s Spirit, direct (or participatory) knowledge of the divine was not confined to the early Church era. In ‘a secondary sense it belongs to all Christians; to all spiritual men, all who keep the commandments.’ From Origen, Wesley cited the following excerpts: ‘“When the Spirit of truth is come, he will guide you into all truth”, and “he will teach you all things” … The sum of all good things consists in this, that a man be found worthy to receive the grace of the Holy Ghost. Otherwise, nothing will be accounted perfect in him who hath not the Holy Spirit.’ See In Librum Jesu Nave (On the Book of Joshua), iii.2, in Opera, Vol. II, p. 403 of Charles Delarue’s 4-volume work, Paris, 1733–59; and also: ‘The fullness of time is come …when they who are willing receive the adoption, as Paul teaches in these words, “Ye have not received the spirit of bondage again unto fear; but ye have received the spirit of adoption whereby we cry, Abba, Father!” And it is written in the Gospel according to St. John, to “as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe in his name.”’ See De Oratione (On Prayer), xxii.2, Vol. I, 231–2. Based upon Wesley’s transcription of excerpts from Athanasius’ Four Letters to Serapion and Oration against the Arians, Wesley concluded the following: ‘Is it not easy to be observed here, (I), that Athanasius makes that testimony 57

58

16

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

How did Smith and Wesley each understand the nature of inspiration and in what sense do their respective views reflect their shared theological and historical context? Smith embraced the idea of inspiration, but purged of supernaturalist language, as the following example from his letters suggests: [Believers] do remember the day when hearing the love of God preached in a more impetuous and energetic manner than they ever heard before … [and] were more affected than they ever were before, so that this was the first time they ever so warmly felt the divine love shed abroad in their hearts, and the first time they so seriously attended to the witness of [God‘s] Spirit with their spirit, that they [were] the children of God.60

Although Wesley defined inspiration as a supernatural testimony from the Holy Spirit, Smith explained it as an emotional stir, excited by zealous preaching, to love for God. Smith held that the experience of faith is not supernatural, but a natural step in the process of becoming Christian.61 He held that direct perception of the Holy Spirit’s testimony is theologically redundant, given that the fullness of God’s truth has been canonized in Scripture. Smith suggested an alternate view of inspiration: ‘True believers are the children of God – there is the witness of his Spirit. We are now true believers – there is the witness of their spirit. Ergo, we are now the children of God – a conclusion drawn from both the premises in a natural and logical, not a supernatural or miraculous way.’62 Witness of the Spirit language, according to Smith, signifies cognizance of one’s filial relationship with God occurring through the ordinary operation of the Holy Spirit, whose voice of the Spirit common to all the children of God; (2), that he joins “the anointing of the Holy One” with that seal of the Spirit wherewith all that persevere are “sealed to the day of redemption”; and (3), that he does not, throughout this passage, speak of the extraordinary gifts at all?’ Wesley was convinced that his position was supported by the teachings of the early Church fathers. The extent to which interpretation is valid is another question. 60   Works [BE], 26:168. 61   Smith’s critique of supernaturalism reflects the dominant assumptions of the majority of English clergy during the period. According to Jeremy Gregory, the education of parishioners out of superstition was one of the chief concerns of clergyman in Wesley’s context. See ‘The Eighteenth-Century Reformation: the Pastoral Task of Anglican Clergy after 1689’, in The Church of England: c. 1689–c. 1833 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 67–85. 62   Works [BE], 26:168.

Perceptible Inspiration as Pneumatological Model

17

we encounter in the Christian Scriptures. Smith did not reject the supernatural dimension of life wholesale. He simply believed that the spiritual phenomenon advocated by Wesley belonged to the early Church during the initial spread of the gospel. That is, as he explained it, Christ’s apostles may have experienced something quite like instantaneous faith or immediate perceptible inspiration, although experiences of direct religious encounter ceased to occur now. Smith identified three different ways in which the Spirit had likely witnessed to believers in history, which he associated with distinctive periods related to Scripture and its canonical development. There are three ways in which the Holy Spirit may be said to bear witness: first, by external, miraculous, sensible attestations (as by an audible voice from heaven, by visible signs, wonders, etc.); or secondly by internal, plainly perceptible whispers (‘Go not to Macedonia’, ‘Go with these men’, ‘Join thyself to this Christ’, etc.); or third [and] lastly, by his standing testimony in the Holy Scriptures.63

According to Smith, the first way – the supernatural punctuation of the ordinary – was common in the time of the apostles and early fathers. Following the spread of the gospel, this became less prevalent. Direct perception of the Spirit became tantamount to internal acknowledgments of the guidance and comfort of the Spirit, which Smith referred to as the second way. Finally, subsequent to the canonization of Scripture, inspiration began to occur exclusively in and through the written Word. According to Smith, God no longer needs to reveal himself directly to us, because the Bible conveys the fullness of God’s revealed truth. Smith’s position was common in the eighteenth century.64 A similar perspective can be found in Thomas Dockwray’s widely read work, The Operations of the Holy Spirit Imperceptible, and How Men may Know when they are under the Guidance and Influence of the Spirit (A Sermon Preached in Newcastle on May 22, 63

  Ibid., 240.   See Kellett, Norman L., ‘John Wesley and the Restoration of the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit to the Church of England in the Eighteenth Century’ (Brandeis University: Doctoral Thesis, 1975), 173. Kellett suggests that among Wesley’s contemporaries, ‘There seemed to be general agreement that these extraordinary dealings between [human beings] and Holy Spirit took place in the distant past.’ 64

18

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

1743). Dockwray held that before the canonization of the Scriptures, God inspired believers directly through signs and miracles. As the early Church gained political and social traction, miracles became less necessary. Finally, once the Bible took its final form, supernatural inspiration ceased to occur. It is possible that Smith was familiar with Dockwray’s work, but given Smith’s anonymity and the fact that he does not mention it in his letters, this would be impossible to verify. Smith’s position also resonates with certain early-modern philosophical assumptions, particularly with prominent English spiritual writers of the seventeenth century. The Latitudinarians and Cambridge Platonists, whose work Smith may have known, would have agreed that if a demonstrated truth or fact clashes with a particular interpretation of the Bible, then the latter must be re-evaluated in light of the former.65 Appropriating the principle that truth is unified, and finding no empirical evidence to support Wesley’s claims, Smith rejected the possibility of perceptible inspiration in his contemporary historical context. Wesley, on the other hand, believed that the Holy Spirit continued to witness to human beings in a direct way.66 This view is not without precedent either. Moravian August Spangenberg, for instance, whose theology impressed Wesley during the latter’s missionary trip to Georgia, held that faithful men and women could directly experience the witness of the Spirit, and pressed Wesley personally on the issue in 1736.67 Wesley’s theology of direct inspiration was consistent with elements of Quaker spirituality too. George Fox and Robert Barclay heavily

65   H.R. McAdoo, The Spirit of Anglicanism: A Survey of Anglican Theological Method in the Seventeenth Century (London: Adam & Charles Black, 1965), 62. To be sure, Wesley was influenced by the Caroline divines as well. He read Jeremy Taylor during his Oxford years. He was also fond of John Norris’s work, and he abridged and published selections from the writings of John Smith (of Queen’s College, Cambridge) in his Christian Library (1750). 66   For Wesley’s distinction between the nature of inspiration in the early Church and at present, see his letter to Lady Cox written on 7 March 1738: ‘[“Methodists”] they learn from the oracles of God that “the inspiration of the Holy Spirit” which every Christian is to expect is different in kind as well as degree from the inspiration of the apostles. It does not enable him to speak new tongues, or to work outward miracles … But … they believe the change wrought by it in the heart to be equivalent to all outward miracles, as implying the selfsame power which gave eyes to the blind, feet to the lame, and life to the dead … The language wherein they talk of these mighty works is that of the Spirit whereby they are wrought’: Works [BE], 25:534. 67   See Wesley, Works [BE], 18:146.

Perceptible Inspiration as Pneumatological Model

19

emphasized spiritual illumination and the inner, guiding light of the Holy Spirit.68 Furthermore, Wesley’s theology of inspiration allies with non-conformist John Owen, whose work, Of Communion with God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost (originally published in 1657). Wesley published this work in A Christian Library (1750–55) with little alteration. Owen writes that ‘[the Spirit] immediately works the minds of men to a rejoicing and spiritual frame filling them with exultation and gladness; not that this arises from our reflex consideration of the love of God, but rather gives occasion thereunto.’69 Elsewhere in the work, Owens states: ‘He sheds abroad the love of God in our hearts … ’ The Comforter gives a sweet and plentiful evidence of God to us, such as the soul is delighted, satiated with. This is his work, and he doth it effectually. To give a poor sinful person a comfortable persuasion, affecting it throughout, in all its faculties and affections that God in Jesus Christ loves him, delights in him, is well pleased with him, has thoughts of tenderness and kindness towards him: to give him, I say, an overflowing sense hereof, is an inexpressible mercy. This we have, in a peculiar manner, by the Holy Ghost; it is his proper work. As all his works are works of love and kindness, so this of communicating a sense of the love of the Father, mixes itself with all the particulars of his actings. And as we have here in peculiar communion with himself, so by him we have communion with the Father, even in his love, which is thus shed abroad in our hearts: so not only do we rejoice in, and glorify the Holy Ghost which doth this work; but in him also whose love it is.70

The Spirit offers sinners a ‘comfortable persuasion,’ and affects our knowledge of God’s ‘inexpressible mercy.’ To Owen, this, ‘in a peculiar manner,’ represents the present work of the Holy Spirit within believers, which is distinct from our ‘reflex considerations,’ or ideas produced through the natural light of reason. The Spirit, in other words, communicates the testimony of God’s love directly to our hearts.   See Hugh Barbour, The Quakers in Puritan England, Yale Publications in Religion, vol. 7 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1964). See also Geoffrey Nuttall, The Holy Spirit in Puritan Faith and Experience (Oxford: Basil & Blackwell, 1946), 29. 69   John Owen, ‘Of Communion with the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost’, in A Christian Library, Vol. XI (London: 1821), 102. 70   Ibid., 94. 68

20

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

Like his opponent, Wesley’s views reflected prominent trends in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century theological thinking, especially those of the German Moravian and Puritan traditions. Although slippage in language likely accounts for some disagreement between Smith and Wesley, it would be incorrect to reduce the whole matter to semantics alone. Wesley was firmly convinced that God graciously offers a personal, direct witness of faith and assurance, while Smith confined such activities to the early Church. More than a misunderstanding of language, it was also real theological disagreement. Both had sound reasons to support their positions. Wesley emphasized the collective experience of the Methodists and its embodiment of key New Testament texts, and Smith interpreted the Scriptures in light of his own experience and rationally grounded, theological hermeneutic. Much disagreement also stemmed from the fact that the two held different views on the nature religious experience. Smith required firmer evidential support than personal testimonies and select passages of Scripture to justify believing in perceptible inspiration.71 As Smith put it, ‘[if] the Holy Spirit, the moment a person is justified, certifieth this justification by an “attestation” as plainly discernible from the suggestions of reason and fancy as light is discernable from darkness,’ 72 then at the very least, it should be beyond dispute by the percipient, but Wesley made no such distinctions.73 Although Smith was far more generous than other contemporaries with respect to applying the charge of enthusiasm,74 he 71   Works [BE], 26:241. ‘[As] the enthusiast seems as confident of his inspiration as one really inspired is of his, a third person hath a right to call for other proof than confident assertion … .’ 72   Ibid., 185. 73   In Wesley’s view, all who perceived inspiration would be confident of it during the experience. However, he also claimed that many ‘afterwards [could] doubt whether they ever had it or no’. Moreover, he stated, some might even ‘wholly deny all that God has ever done for their souls … they cannot believe they ever saw the light.’ To Smith, this presented a significant problem to the coherence of Wesley’s position. See Works [BE], 26:199. 74   William Warburton called him a ‘religious fanatic’ pretending irrationally to knowledge of the supernatural. Bishop George Lavington of Exeter explained the Methodists’ doctrine of perceptible inspiration as ‘phantoms of a crazy brain’, ‘the true Spirit, and the very Essence of Enthusiasm’. Thomas Church claimed that Wesley’s ‘[or the enthusiast’s] brain appears to have been too much heated’ with visions of the supernatural. The Reverend Mr Baily of Cork dubbed Wesley a ‘hair-brained enthusiast’ whose notion of perceptible inspiration disrupted the Church of England and her socio-political status quo. See William Warburton, The Doctrine of Grace, or the Office and Operation of the

Perceptible Inspiration as Pneumatological Model

21

nevertheless insinuates it in his letters. Indeed, Wesley’s position seems odd for a theologian whose method supposedly emphasizes the importance of reason and empiricism in relation to Scripture and experience.75 When faced with Smith’s question, ‘[in] what sense is that attestation of the Spirit infallible,’76 Wesley gave the following response: In no sense at all. And yet, though I allow that some may fancy they have it when in truth they have it not, I cannot allow that any fancy they have it not at the time when they really have. I know no instance of this. When they have this faith they cannot possibly doubt of their having it, although ’tis very possible, when they have it not, they may doubt whether ever they had it or no.77

Wesley held that false inspiration could occur, along with later doubt or denial. As Wesley put it, ‘many receive from the Holy Ghost an “attestation” of their acceptance as “perceptible” as the sun at noonday; and yet those same persons at other times doubt whether they ever had such “attestation”.’78 Even so, according to Wesley, none who truly perceive the Spirit’s salvific witness could think otherwise in the moment God bestows it. It is clear that Smith and Wesley held different views of what warrants the holding of a religious belief concerning spiritual experience. Smith’s critique reflects the widely held philosophical assumption that beliefs are justified by empirical observation. For Wesley however, direct inspiration does not require Holy Spirit Vindicated, 119; George Lavington, The Enthusiasm of Methodists & Papists Compar’d, 49; Thomas Church, Some Farther Remarks on the Rev. Mr. John Wesley’s last Journal (London, 1746), 64; J. Wesley, ‘A Letter to the Reverend Mr. Baily of Cork’, in Works [BE], 9:304. 75   Much work has been done on Wesley’s implicit method in theology and the authoritative role of reason that functions within it. Cf., Donald Thorsen, The Wesleyan Quadrilateral: Scripture, Tradition, Reason, and Experience as a Model of Evangelical Theology (Nappanee, IN: Francis Asbury Press, 1990); Rebekah Miles, ‘The Instrumental Role of Reason’, in Wesley and the Quadrilateral: Renewing the Conversation (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1997), 77–106. 76   Works [BE], 26:177. 77   Ibid., 178. Smith cited the case of Hannah Richardson, ‘who for above a year after this attestation of justification continued almost in despair, fancying she should be damned’: ibid., 167–8. 78   Ibid., 199.

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

22

evidential corroboration. That is, spiritual knowledge is participatory; it resonates with inward feeling and spiritual sensation. Wesley’s epistemic theology does not assume the priority of natural reason over faith. Instead, his theology of perceptible inspiration is based on ‘divine participation,’ or ‘spiritual sight,’ which may have stemmed from the Augustinian tradition.79 Wesley’s response to Smith suggests that he was uninterested in the kind of epistemology which asserts foundational presuppositions normative for all rational beings. According to Stephen Long, ‘Wesley is less of a modernist theologian than we may have assumed. He is not concerned with epistemological matters. He did not seem burdened by the need to come up with some theory that would relate our mind to the world.’80 Although many scholars suggest that Wesley had adopted empiricism,81 his convictions regarding the witness of the Spirit and instantaneous faith evince a broader vision, at least in terms of his epistemology of religious experience.82

  D. Stephen Long, John Wesley’s Moral Theology: The Quest for God and Goodness (Nashville, TN: Kingswood Books, 2005), 13. Wesley ‘presents us with a “spiritual sensorium” that uncritically mixes an Augustinian theory of illumination (mediated through Cambridge Platonism) with the sensibility of knowledge plundered from Locke, which Wesley assumed did not conflict with Aristotle.’ Wesley’s empiricism also bears traces of Irish Bishop Peter Browne and his work, The Procedure, Extent, and Limits of Human Understanding (London, 1737). Umphrey Lee identifies parallels with Plato as well, claiming that the ‘trend of the Platonic theory is disclosed in his [Plato’s] treatment of philosophical inspiration. The philosopher is taken for a madman as he becomes rapt in the divine, for the vulgar “do not see that he is inspired”’: Umphrey Lee, The Historical Backgrounds of Early Methodist Enthusiasm (New York: Columbia University Press, 1931), 15. Cf., Plato, Phaedrus, 244b–e. 80   Long, John Wesley’s Moral Theology, 13. 81   Richard Heitzenrater writes that Wesley had adopted a ‘generally empirical approach to questions of knowledge. He had quite early settled upon a Lockean approach to matters of this sort’: Mirror and Memory: Reflections on Early Methodism (Nashville, TN: Kingswood Books, 1989), 109. See also Henry Rack, John Wesley and the Enlightenment (Tyndale Conference, 2005), 3: ‘It is now fairly recognized that, at least in philosophical terms, Wesley was an empiricist and his affinity with this and other aspects of the Enlightenment has come to be recognized in varying degrees.’ Finally, see Richard E. Brantley, Locke, Wesley and the Method of English Romanticism (Gainsville, FL: University of Florida Press, 1984), 2: ‘Locke’s theory of knowledge grounds the intellectual method of Wesley’s Methodism.’ Rex Matthews uses the language of ‘transcendental empiricism’ to describe his epistemology (See ‘Religion and Reason Joined’, 308–9), a phrase which originates in Cell’s earlier study, The Rediscovery of John Wesley, 93. 82   See Maddox, Responsible Grace, 27: ‘Wesley’s … divergence from contemporary empiricists dealt specifically with the issue of knowledge of God. Most contemporary 79

Perceptible Inspiration as Pneumatological Model

23

Although Smith challenged Wesley’s ability to empirically verify instances of inspiration, as well as the consistency of his theological rationale, Wesley was convinced that direct spiritual experience, even if dismissed as nonsense afterward by the religious percipient him or herself, was justifiable.83 Richard Heitzenrater observes the influence that John Smith had on Wesley’s theology, noting that during their exchange, Wesley began to examine more carefully the nature of the Spirit’s witness or assurance and its connection to faith. This reflection manifested in the Methodist Conference Minutes of 1746, as well as in subsequent discussions with his brother Charles.84 The conclusion that Wesley ultimately arrived at, and which was solidified in his ongoing dialogue with Smith, was that assurance and faith, although distinctive soteriological realities, were consummately related. For this Wesley contended until the end of his life. In ‘The Scripture Way of Salvation’ (1765), Wesley explains that ‘it is certain that … faith necessarily implies an assurance (which is here only another word for evidence, it being hard to tell the difference between them) that “Christ loved me, and gave himself for me.”’85 Although his views on assurance and the testimony of the Spirit developed over the course of his ministry,86 he remained empiricists assumed that knowledge of God was available only by inference from our experience of the world or by assent to the external testimony of Scripture.’ 83   Consider the following comment made by Wesley (quoting his father, Samuel) to Smith: ‘“the inward witness … is the proof, the strongest proof, of Christianity” … I cannot therefore doubt but that the Spirit of God bore an inward witness with his spirit that he was a child of God.’ See Works [BE], 26:289. 84   Richard Heitzenrater, Wesley and the People Called Methodists (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995), 159: ‘The problems pointed out by John Smith, apparent also in these indecisive Minutes, soon began to appear more clearly in Wesley’s own thinking, as he stated the case in a letter to his brother a month after the conference: “It is flatly absurd. For how can a sense of our having received pardon be the condition of receiving it?”’ See also Works [BE], 26: 254–5. 85   J. Wesley, ‘The Scripture Way of Salvation’, in Works [BE], 2:161. 86   See especially Kenneth Collins, The Scripture Way of Salvation: The Heart of John Wesley’s Theology (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1997), 131–50. According to Collins, of key significance were the years during and leading up to his encounter with the Moravian Brethren. During this period, he viewed assurance as a necessary feature of justification by faith. However, after separating with the Brethren in the 1740s, his understanding of assurance changed. He began to include those who, being justified by God’s grace, were ostensibly delayed in their experience of assurance. Finally, in his later years, Wesley had completely distinguished ‘full assurance’ from ‘initial assurance’, which corresponded to, respectively, the ‘faith of a son’ and the ‘faith of a servant’. However, Wesley seems to have

24

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

convinced that personal awareness of pardon is essential for salvation and the best available evidence for confirming, at least psychologically, life in the Spirit. How did Wesley define salvation? For Wesley, it is both a present and future reality. As Frank Baker puts it: Heaven was a relationship between God and man, a relationship summed up in the word ‘love’, just as the Person of Christ was summed up as ‘Love’, and just as the perfect life of the Christian was summed up as ‘love’. In other words, heaven was in some sense present in the Christian’s earthly communion with God, and the real heavenliness of the after-life was the enlargement and enrichment of this communion.87

This definition of salvation was present in Wesley’s thinking as early as 1738, when he explained salvation as ‘something attainable, yea, actually attained here on earth, by those who are partakers of this faith.’88 Indeed, his 1765 sermon on the matter was but a reaffirmation, that salvation ‘is not [only] what is frequently understood by that word, the going to heaven, eternal happiness’; ‘[it] is not something at a distance: it is a present thing, a blessing which, through the free mercy of God, ye are now in possession.’89 Wesley connected the fullness of present salvation with his theology of perceptible inspiration. As he understood it, in order to love our neighbour we must love God; but ‘this love cannot be in us till we receive the “Spirit of adoption, crying in our hearts, Abba, Father”.’90 Wesley believed that none could fully embody the Christian life, here and now, without having directly perceived the Holy Spirit. When extrapolated as a model, perceptible inspiration (via Spiritus) calls attention to God’s agency in the economy of salvation with respect to the been inclined toward the idea of degrees of assurance as early as 1738. See, for example, ‘Journals and Diaries II’, Works [BE], 19:19: ‘ … upon the whole, although I have not yet that joy in the Holy Ghost, nor that love of God shed abroad in my heart, nor the full assurance of faith, nor the (proper) witness of the Spirit with my spirit that I am a child of God … I nevertheless trust that I have a measure of faith and am “accepted in the Beloved”.’ 87   Frank Baker, Charles Wesley’s Verse: An Introduction (London: Epworth Press, 1964), 16. 88   J. Wesley, ‘Salvation by Faith’, in Works [BE], 1:121. 89   J. Wesley, ‘The Scripture Way of Salvation’, in Works [BE], 2:156. 90   J. Wesley, ‘Justification by Faith’, in Works [BE], 1:193.

Perceptible Inspiration as Pneumatological Model

25

Spirit’s person and mission: God’s gracious initiative to redeem fosters relational consciousness of the Spirit’s witness, and results in practical holiness. As Kenneth Collins notes, ‘there is no responding without first of all receiving.’91 The way of the Spirit begins with grace, the luminous expanse in which inspiration becomes perceptible, and the ground of the Spirit’s self-disclosure to human beings. Seven years prior to the John Smith correspondence, in his 1738 sermon on ‘Salvation by Faith,’ Wesley remarked, ‘It was free grace that “formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into him a living soul”, and stamped on that soul the image of God, and “put all things under his feet”.’92 God’s manifold grace is foundational for knowledge of the Sprit and participation in the divine life. Secondly, the Spirit awakens believers from spiritual slumber to consciousness. By faith, humans perceive God’s spiritual reality and sense assurance. If grace is the relational foundation of perceptible inspiration, then faith is our faculty for consciousness of God. In his Earnest Appeal, Wesley describes it in this way: It is necessary that you have the hearing ear, and the seeing eye, emphatically so called; that you have a new class of senses opened in your soul, not depending on organs of flesh and blood, to be ‘the evidence of things not seen’ as your bodily senses are of visible things, to be the avenues to the invisible world, to discern spiritual objects, and to furnish you with ideas of what the outward ‘eye hath not seen, neither the ear heard.’93

By faith, believers perceive the Spirit’s testimony and experience filial confidence or assurance. Subsequently, having witnessed the Spirit, believers germinate the fruits of righteousness, peace, joy, and love. According to Wesley, these comprise the physical evidence of the inward life of holiness. Lasting knowledge of God’s Spirit shows itself in the fruits of righteousness, peace, joy, and love. In his Earnest Appeal, Wesley expressed the following the moral dimension of spiritual life: This is the religion we long to see established in the world, a religion of love and joy and peace, having its seat in the heart, in the inmost soul, but ever showing  Collins, The Theology of John Wesley, 143.   Works [BE], 1:117–18. 93   Works [BE], 11:56–7. See Collins, The Theology of John Wesley, 142. 91 92

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

26

itself by its fruits, continually springing forth not only in all innocence – for ‘love worketh no ill to his neighbour’ – but likewise in every kind of beneficence, in spreading virtue and happiness all around it.94

John Wesley’s theology of perceptible inspiration broadly conceived provides a framework for engaging the question of his concept of the Spirit’s person and mission in the economy of salvation.

94

  Ibid., 46.

Chapter 2

Grace as Pneumatological Operation

In the previous chapter, Wesley’s doctrine of perceptible inspiration and its possibilities with respect to exploring the question of pneumatology was considered. To Wesley, inspiration is perceived as the assurance of faith is known by the inspirant – a knowledge that sin has been forgiven, and that one has become a child of God. Once the witness of the Spirit is perceived by faith, then peace, joy, love and righteousness (or inward and outward holiness) are its moral and spiritual effects. However, prior to the fruits of the Spirit proliferating in one’s life, and before the testimony of the Spirit is perceived by faith, grace is present to us. To Wesley, grace is the core of the Spirit’s existential operation. Grace is not an abstract substance, but rather God’s relationality extended toward human beings, and the foundation of our response to the divine initiative. How should Wesley’s doctrine of grace be understood as a feature of his pneumatology, with respect to the model of perceptible inspiration? From God’s ontological fullness, creaturely existence is brought forth as gift, and, in the midst of creation, the Holy Spirit empowers human beings for participation in God’s life. Creation bears the impress of God’s spiritual nature, both in terms of God’s divine essence and the Holy Spirit’s person and mission. God is thus the source of grace, and the Holy Spirit is the principle of God’s relational manifestation. This chapter analyses Wesley’s pneumatological understanding both of God’s essence and the Holy Spirit’s person with respect to grace and perceptible inspiration (via Spiritus), and further, Wesley’s theology of spiritual nature itself, especially as it relates to created being. Wesley’s theology of God’s spiritual nature indicates his reception of High Church doctrinal standards.1 He viewed God as the gracious Giver and Sustainer of all things, and affirmed that God is eternal, immutable and perfect in every 1

  For an extensive analysis of Wesley’s theology of God, see Jung Yang, ‘The Doctrine of God in the Theology of John Wesley’ (University of Aberdeen: Doctoral Thesis, 2003). Yang’s work emphasizes the biblical and orthodox nature of Wesley’s doctrine, as well as its continuity with early-modern English Church tradition.

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

28

respect, as the following examples from certain later sermons written between 1788 and 1789 illustrate.2 This ‘one, eternal, omnipresent Being’ is ‘all perfect. He has from eternity to eternity all the perfections, and infinitely more than it ever did or ever can enter into the heart of man to conceive.’3 The metaphysical personification of perfection itself, God ‘is omnipotent as well as omnipresent: there can be no more bounds to his power than to his presence.’4 Furthermore, God is all-knowing – a de facto consequence of the former: the ‘omniscience of God is a clear and necessary consequence of his omnipresence’; for if ‘he is present in every part of the universe, he cannot but know whatever is, or is done there.’5 God’s perfect existence – his power, benevolence, ubiquity and infinite knowledge – reflects the sublime nature of God as ‘a spirit’.6 To be sure, Wesley’s doctrine of God is thoroughly pneumatological, which is to say that God’s attributes, in Wesley’s view, were characteristic of God’s pure, spiritual existence. God as Spirit is the Lord and giver of life, who exists from everlasting to everlasting, and who fashions and animates creaturely being. Spirit-hood is not accidental to the Divine nature, nor does it refer exclusively to the person and mission of the Holy Spirit. God alone is all perfect, just as God alone is perfect spirit. Such a being, to Wesley, is worthy of praise and adoration, or spiritual worship. In Part 4 of his manifold discourse ‘Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount’ (1748), Wesley detailed his understanding of spiritual worship, which is the duty of every faithful Christian: “What is it to worship God, a Spirit, in spirit and in truth?” It is to believe in him as a wise, just, holy being, of purer eyes than to behold iniquity; and yet merciful, gracious, and longsuffering, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin; casting all our sins behind his back, and accepting us in the beloved. It is to love him, to delight in him, to desire him, with all our heart and mind and soul and strength; to imitate him we love by purifying ourselves, even as he is pure; 2

  To be sure, this view is present in his earlier sermons as well; cf. ‘Salvation by Faith’ (1738) and also ‘Free Grace’ (1739) especially. Both of these sermons attest to Wesley’s understanding of God in Spirit as the gracious source and sustainer of created being. 3   J. Wesley, ‘The Unity of the Divine Being’, in Works [BE], 4:62. 4   Ibid.. See also J. Wesley, ‘On Faith’, in Works [BE], 4:193: ‘He [God, the great Creator] is every moment above us, beneath us, and on every side.’ 5   J. Wesley, ‘The Unity of the Divine Being’, in Works [BE], 4:62. 6   Ibid., 63. The term ‘God in Spirit’ was synonymous with God as, or as a, Spirit. Wesley used both prepositions (in/as [a]) interchangeably.

Grace as Pneumatological Operation

29

and to obey him whom we love, and in whom we believe, both in thought and word and work.7

To worship God as a Spirit is to praise God as a ‘wise, just, [and] holy being’ who forgives humanity of its sin, who is ‘merciful, gracious, and longsuffering’, ever ‘accepting [of] us in the beloved’,8 and who ceaselessly in-breathes creation with the gifts of being and salvation. What are the relational dynamics with respect to God’s existence as pure spirit and physical reality? In other words, what is the nature of God’s existence in relation to all that is not God or pure spirit? First, Wesley held that God relates to material reality as Creator to creature. That God is the source and progenitor of all being is a key feature of Wesley’s wider pneumatology. As Wesley described it, God as Spirit exists ‘from everlasting and world without end’, filling the entirety of ‘heaven and earth’.9 ‘In a word’, expressed Wesley, ‘there is no point of space, whether within or without the bounds of creation, where God is not.’10 God in Spirit is ‘infinite in power, in wisdom, in justice, in mercy, and holiness’; God ‘created all things, visible and invisible, by the breath of his mouth, and still “upholds” them all, [and] preserves them in being, “by the word of his power”’, governing ‘all things that are in heaven above, in earth, beneath, and under the earth.’11 In this respect, Wesley believed that God as ‘Infinite Spirit’ who inhabits ‘both the one end and the other’ of ‘boundless duration and boundless space’12 is the source and foundation of creaturely existence. Wesley further nuanced this feature of his theology in his 1786 sermon ‘On Divine Providence’: the ‘eternal,  7

  J. Wesley, ‘Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount – Discourse the Fourth’, in Works [BE], 1:544. Cf., John 4:24: ‘He is a Spirit, and they that worship him, must worship him in spirit and truth.’  8  Ibid.  9   J. Wesley, ‘On the Discoveries of Faith’, in Works [BE], 4:31. 10   J. Wesley, ‘On the Omnipresence of God’, in Works [BE], 4:42. 11   J. Wesley, ‘On the Discoveries of Faith’, in Works [BE], 4:31. Furthermore, in his 1786 sermon, ‘On Eternity’, Wesley acknowledged that God ‘is “from everlasting to everlasting”: his duration alone, as it had no beginning … cannot have any end’: Works [BE], 2:359. See also, J. Wesley, ‘The Unity of the Divine Being’, in Works [BE], 4:61. Here he stated: ‘God is an eternal being: “His goings forth are from everlasting,” and will continue to everlasting. As he ever was, so he ever will be; as there was no beginning of his existence, so there will be no end.’ 12   J. Wesley, ‘On Eternity’, in Works [BE], 2:360.

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

30

almighty, all-wise, all-gracious God, is the Creator of heaven and earth. He called out of nothing by his all-powerful word the whole universe, all that is.’13 Creation is brought forth from non-being; creation is the gift of the Spirit God, spoken by ‘his all-powerful word’.14 Wesley also used the term ‘Prime Mover’ to illustrate God’s relationship to created being.15 In Part 6 of his discourse ‘Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount’ (1748) for instance, he explained that God is the primary cause of all being, the one thing real, from which material objects derive their ontological status. The Divine nature is the ‘only agent in the material world’, or in other words, the fundamental source of reality, the ground of existence, and the life-power undergirding all that is seen and unseen. Nothing in the physical world moves without being moved upon by God in Spirit: [God’s] ‘fullness of being’ … is indeed the only agent in the material world, all matter being essentially dull and inactive, and moving only as it is moved by the finger of God. And he is the spring of action in every creature, visible and invisible, which could neither act nor exist without the continued influx and agency of his almighty power … .16

God’s creative activity is here allied with God’s spiritual nature. Wesley understood the Spirit God to be the ‘spring of action’ that moves each creature. The ‘Almighty Spirit’ is ‘the source of all the motion in the universe’.17 With respect to Wesley’s pneumatology, God in Spirit functions as the sustainer of being   J. Wesley, ‘On Divine Providence’, in Works [BE], 2:537.  Ibid. 15   See J. Wesley, A Survey of the Wisdom of God in the Creation: or a Compendium of Natural Philosophy, Vol. 2 of 2 (Bristol: 1763), 162: ‘God is the First and Universal Cause of Motion as well as of all things.’ See also J. Wesley, ‘A Thought on Necessity’, in The Works of Rev. John Wesley, 14 vols, Thomas Jackson, ed. (London: Wesleyan Methodist Book Room, 1829–31; reprinted Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1978), 10:476-7. Hereafter, this edition will be abbreviated as Works: ‘[In] Him all things live and move, as well as have their being; seeing, he is not only the true primum mobile, containing the whole frame of creation, but likewise the inward, sustaining, acting principle, indeed the only proper agent in the universe.’ Humanity can do nothing ‘right, nothing wise, nothing good, without the direct, immediate agency of the First Cause’. 16   J. Wesley, ‘Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount – Discourse the Sixth’, Works [BE], 1:580–81. 17   J. Wesley, ‘What is Man?’, in Works [BE], 4:23. 13 14

Grace as Pneumatological Operation

31

as well as the progenitor of being. Without God’s continuous presence, creaturely existence would cease to be. For Wesley, the fullness of God’s spiritual being is the source of our existence as materially embodied creatures: ‘as this all-wise, allgracious Being created all things, so he sustains all things. He is the preserver as well as the creator of everything that exists.’18 Our existence is inextricably tied to God’s nature as pure spirit. Creation has being only in so far as it ontologically participates in the existence of something more (or most) real: ‘What is all this, if thy soul cleaves to the dust?’19 Apart from God’s spiritual existence, nothing has being. The Infinite Spirit ‘[sustains] all things, without which everything would in an instant sink into its primitive nothing’.20 Thus, God’s superintendence extends to every facet of physical existence, from the sun’s shining to the creature’s basking beneath its rays: ‘God acts in heaven, in earth, and under the earth, throughout the whole compass of his creation … by governing all, every moment superintending everything that he has made.’21 ‘[The] eternal, omnipresent, almighty, all-wise Spirit … continually superintends all that he has created. He governs all, not only to the bounds of creation, but through the utmost extent of space … from everlasting to everlasting.’22 ‘The omnipresent God [as Spirit] sees and knows all the properties of all the beings that he hath made. He knows all the connections, dependencies, and relations, and all the ways wherein one of them can affect another’; as ‘the Creator and Preserver of the universe’, God ‘knows all the hearts of the sons of men, and understands all their thoughts’.23 The Spirit God orders the universe, and sustains everything within and outside its boundaries. All things are governed and orchestrated with providential wisdom. Nothing falls short of God’s purview. Nothing is left to chance. Wesley’s comments from his journal for 6 July 1781 are pertinent in this regard: ‘So far as fortune or chance governs the world, God has no place in it.’24 God attends to all things:

18

    20   21   22   23   24   19

J. Wesley, ‘On Divine Providence’, in Works [BE], 2:538. J. Wesley, ‘Dives and Lazarus’, in Works [BE], 4:15. J. Wesley, ‘On the Omnipresence of God’, in Works [BE], 4:43. Ibid., 42–3. J. Wesley, ‘The Unity of the Divine Being’, in Works [BE], 4:69. J. Wesley, ‘On Divine Providence’, in Works [BE], 2:539. J. Wesley, Works [BE], 23:214.

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

32

God orders all things: he makes the sun shine, and the wind blow, and the trees bear fruit. Nothing comes by chance: that is a silly word: there is no such thing as chance. As God made the world, so he governs the world, and everything that is in it … And as he governs all things, so he governs all men, good and bad, little and great. He gives them all the power and wisdom they have. And he overrules all.25

Wesley believed that creation is preserved by the continuous presence of the Almighty Spirit, the Father of all flesh, whose inhabitance spans space and time.26 While God is fully transcendent with respect to material being, God is also fully immanent. Thus, ‘although God dwelleth in heaven, yet he still “ruleth over all” … his providence extends to every individual in the whole system of beings which he hath made.’27 In terms of Wesley’s pneumatology, God’s essence as pure spirit is both the creative force behind creaturely existence, as well as the ontological principle of its continued subsistence.

  J. Wesley, ‘On the Education of Children’, in Works [BE], 3:353.   Concerning Wesley’s view on God’s spiritual dwelling, see his 1785 sermon on ‘The New Creation’. Here, he explained that God in Spirit occupies a heavenly abode or spiritual palace. Wesley postulated a three-tiered concept of ‘the heavens’, based upon his reading of Second Corinthians 12:2 – ‘I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, (whether in the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth) such an one caught up to the third heaven.’ According to Wesley, God in Spirit resides in the highest heaven, ‘if we may speak after the manner of men’, where he sits upon his spiritual throne, surrounded by heavenly hosts: ‘It is this, the third heaven, which is usually supposed to be the immediate residence of God – so far as any residence can be ascribed to his omnipresent Spirit, who pervades the whole universe. It is here (if we speak after the manner of men) that the Lord sitteth upon his throne, surrounded by angels and archangels, and by all his flaming ministers’: J. Wesley, ‘The New Creation’, in Works [BE], 2:502. For Wesley, the expression ‘immediate residence of God’ was figurative with respect to God’s everlasting existence – in other words, as God is immutable and eternal. Whatever metaphysical space God inhabits, it shares in the divine substance, because like God, it subsists unchanging. However, since nothing aside from God exists eternally or ubiquitously, it follows that God’s eternal dwelling must be in union with God’s self. Literally speaking, God dwells as God dwells. To Wesley, God in Spirit resides from everlasting to everlasting: ‘“The great God, the eternal, the almighty Spirit, is as unbounded in his presence as in his duration and power…”’: J. Wesley, ‘On the Omnipresence of God’, in Works [BE], 4:42. 27   J. Wesley, ‘A Farther Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion, Part 2’, in Works [BE], 11:227. 25 26

Grace as Pneumatological Operation

33

Wesley’s views on God’s agency in the material world with respect to the movement of creaturely beings resemble features of occasionalism. Like French philosopher Nicolas Malebranche, one of Wesley’s favourite authors, and whose work, The Search After Truth (1674–75), had been read by the Holy Club and incorporated into the curriculum at the Kingswood School, Wesley asserted that God is the primary cause of all motion (both volitional and non-volitional) existent in the universe.28 Unlike Malebranche, however, Wesley did not attempt a complete theory to integrate human and divine agency in terms of primary and secondary causality. Wesley’s reception of God’s universal sovereignty with respect to the motion of embodied beings suggests an uncritical theory of compatibilism, in which God is the primary cause of all occasions of movement, and simultaneously, creatures, especially volitional agents, are fully responsible for the actions in which they engage. Wesley’s views on the subject were decisively pastoral. Creaturely existence is fashioned, loved and sustained by the Spirit God’s constant presence. Human beings are circumscribed by God’s relationality. As Wesley put it: ‘Certain as it is that he created all things, and that he still sustains all that he has created, so certain it is that he is present at all times, in all places; that he is above, beneath; that he “besets us behind and before”, and as it were “lays his hand upon us”.’29 Along with the classical predicates, Wesley added God’s relationality as a foundational characteristic of God’s essence as pure spirit. How did Wesley conceive of spiritual nature broadly speaking? Wesley believed that all intelligent beings resemble in likeness their spiritual progenitor. Intelligence is a main feature of spirit-hood. Wesley suggested that anything possessing even the faintest degree of consciousness has spiritual nature. As Wesley explained in his sermon ‘On Dissipation’ (1784): ‘God created all things for himself; more especially all intelligent spirits … And indeed it seems that intelligence, in some kind or degree, is inseparable from spiritual beings, that intelligence is as essential to spirits as extension is to matter … .’30 Wesley explained that spiritual being amongst creatures is marked by the potential or capacity to acquire knowledge. No matter how faint or limited, consciousness is a reflection of God’s nature as spirit. Wesley illustrated the dependence of materially embodied consciousness   See Outler’s comments in Works [BE], 1:59.   J. Wesley, ‘On Divine Providence’, in Works [BE], 2:538. 30   J. Wesley, ‘On Dissipation’, in Works [BE], 3:117. 28

29

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

34

upon God’s spiritual essence using the notion of heliocentricity: ‘As the sun is the centre of the solar system, so (as far as we may compare material things with spiritual) we need not scruple to affirm that God is the centre of spirits.’31 But what does it mean to say, as Wesley did, that God is the centre or source of all spiritual existence? In terms of human spirituality, Wesley held that since we possess the ability to think and understand, we, like God, have spiritual being. This is an important feature of Wesley’s pneumatological anthropology, as well as his theology of religious consciousness. As Wesley explained in his 1781 sermon, ‘The End of Christ’s Coming’: ‘“The Lord God” … “created man in his own image” – in his own natural image (as to his better part) that is, a spirit, as God is a spirit: endued with understanding, which, if not the essence, seems to be the most essential property of a spirit.’32 Furthermore, as he explained in an earlier sermon, entitled ‘The Good Steward’ (1768): God has entrusted us with our soul, an immortal spirit made in the image of God, together with all the powers and faculties thereof – understanding, imagination, memory; will, and a train of affections either included in it or closely depended upon it; love and hatred, joy and sorrow, respecting present good and evil; desire and aversion, hope and fear, respecting that which is to come.33

To Wesley, humans are embodied spirits, imbued with the properties of understanding and volition, which can be used to effect goodness or evil. The epistemic capacity for making choices is a central component of our spiritual existence, and likewise of what it means to be created in the image of God.34 Wesley’s pneumatological anthropology was based on a form of philosophical dualism. The ‘body is not the man’, he explained, for ‘man is not only a house of clay, but an immortal spirit; a spirit made in the image of God, an incorruptible picture of the God of glory.’35 Wesley distinguished between the spirit (eternal 31

 Ibid.   J. Wesley, ‘The End of Christ’s Coming’, in Works [BE], 2:474. 33   J. Wesley, ‘The Good Steward’, in Works [BE], 2:284. 34   This notion will be further examined in Chapter 5. 35   J. Wesley, ‘What is Man?’, in Works [BE], 3:460. For an earlier example of Wesley’s dualism, see his 1730 sermon, ‘The Promise of Understanding’, in Works [BE], 4:283 and 288: ‘Who knoweth how God holdeth his soul in life? How he encloseth spirit 32

Grace as Pneumatological Operation

35

soul) and the body (its physical dwelling).36 While the latter grows frail as life takes its toll, our spirit remains immune to dissolution and decay: Consider, that the spirit of man is not only of a higher order, of a more excellent nature than any part of the visible world, but also more durable, not liable either to dissolution or decay. We know all ‘the things which are seen are temporal’, of a changing, transient nature; ‘but the things which are not seen’ (such as the soul of man in particular) ‘are eternal.’ ‘They shall perish,’ but the soul remaineth … [and] when heaven and earth shall pass away, the soul shall not pass away.37

As he expressed it, each human being was ‘an everlasting spirit which came forth from God, and was sent down into an house of clay’.38 The body is composed of sensuous organs, which enable our spirit to sense, perceive, understand and form intellectual concepts: ‘He has entrusted us with the organs of sense, of sight, hearing, and the rest.’39 For Wesley, these ‘physical organs’ are the material basis of sensation, a joint movement between body and spirit. Knowledge, then, is a in matter? How he so intimately joins two substances of so totally different natures?’ And a farther example: ‘[Our understanding cannot comprehend] How he [God] effected and maintained that amazing union between the body and the soul of a man, that astonishing correspondence between spirit and matter, between perishing dust and immortal flame!’ 36   Wesley supported this metaphysical distinction in his Compendium of Natural Philosophy (1763). The soul or spirit, according to Wesley, is an immaterial thinking substance fastened to human beings at creation: ‘That the Soul is immaterial is clear from hence that it is a thinking Substance’ (vol. 1, 90); ‘God made the Body of Man out of the Earth, and breathed into him the Breath of lives: Not only an Animal Life, but a Spiritual Principle, created to live forever’ (vol. 1, 93). The body, on the other hand, is an extended thing, whose properties included: ‘solidity’, ‘impenetrability’, ‘hardness’, ‘divisibility’, ‘motion and rest’ (Vol. 2, 161–2). Extended things – or bodies – may only occupy one space at one time and are capable of being divided, separated, moved, or static. However, the question of the union of these two substances – of how the body and spirit (or soul) commingled in the human person – was thought by Wesley to be unanswerable: ‘The Union of the Soul and Body is another of those things which human Understanding cannot comprehend. That Body and Spirit can’t be implicated or twisted together like two Bodily Substances, we know. But how two Substances of so widely different Natures can be joined at all, we know not’ (Vol. 1, 92). 37   J. Wesley, ‘What is Man?’, in Works [BE], 3:460. 38   J. Wesley, ‘Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount – Discourse the Thirteenth’, in Works [BE], 1:692. 39   J. Wesley, ‘The Good Steward’, in Works [BE], 2:285.

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

36

function of the spirit carried out in cooperation with the body. Wesley suggested that with respect to the body, knowledge has its seat in the brain, ‘on which’, he contends, ‘the soul more directly depends.’40 He believed that the connection between the human spirit and the brain was inferentially demonstrable, since, from ‘a disordered brain’ could arise ‘confoundedness of apprehension, showing itself in a thousand instances’.41 If the brain suffers any form of inhibiting trauma (due to disease, laceration, and so on), one’s ability to reason would be hindered. Since knowledge, the distinguishing mark of our spiritual nature, might be impaired by cerebral injury, it followed that the brain and spirit are somehow linked.42 Nevertheless, despite how body and spirit coalesce in yielding knowledge, to Wesley, the former is but ‘an earthly tabernacle’, which, apart from its ‘principle of self-motion’, remains completely inanimate. As he stated in his 1781 sermon, ‘The General Deliverance’: Now ‘man was made in the image of God.’ But ‘God is a spirit.’ So therefore was man. Only that spirit being designed to dwell on earth, was lodged in an earthly tabernacle. As such he had an innate principle of self-motion. And so, it seems, has every spirit in the universe; this being the proper distinguishing difference between spirit and matter, which is totally, essentially passive and inactive.43

Physical matter is lifeless apart from spiritual animation. Without habitation by spirit, all things are inert. Of what is the spirit or soul comprised? While Wesley offered no constructive response to this question, he was convinced of what it was not: namely, some ‘ethereal’ combination of physical elements:   J. Wesley, ‘Heavenly Treasure in Earthen Vessels’, in Works [BE], 4:165.   With respect to the spirit’s exact place of connection with the brain, Wesley suspected the pineal gland as one possibility. See J. Wesley, ‘Heavenly Treasure in Earthen Vessels’, in Works [BE], 4:165. Elsewhere, Wesley referred to the relationship between body and spirit as the ‘vital union’. See J. Wesley, ‘The Principles of a Methodist Farther Explained’, in Works [BE], 9:208. 42   ‘And where is the soul lodged? In the pineal gland? In the whole brain? In the heart? In the blood? In any single part of the body?’: J. Wesley, ‘The Imperfection of Human Knowledge – The Case of Reason Impartially Considered’, in Works [BE], 2:576. To be sure, such a notion was not original to Wesley, but had already been established in earlymodern science. See René Descartes, ‘Treatise of Man’, in The Philosophical Writings of Descartes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 106. 43   J. Wesley, ‘The General Deliverance’, in Works [BE], 2:438–9. 40

41

Grace as Pneumatological Operation

37

I cannot in any wise believe this. My reason recoils at it. I cannot reconcile myself to the thought that the soul is either air, earth, water, or fire, or a composition of all of them put together, were it only for this plain reason: all of these, whether separate or compounded in any possible way, are purely passive still. None of them has the least power of self-motion; none of them can move itself.44

Since physical matter, unless actuated by spirit, is void of self-motion, Wesley concluded that the latter is not constitutive of anything corporeal. The spirit must be immaterial, just as its divine source is immaterial. Though substantively distinct one from the other, body and spirit cohere, in the human person: ‘at present this body is so intimately connected with the soul that I seem to consist of both. In my present state of existence I undoubtedly consist both of soul and body.’45,Wesley remained convinced of the duality of body and spirit. However, in 1786, he elaborated his two-tiered understanding, integrating the terms ‘spirit’, ‘body’ and ‘soul’ into a more complicated philosophical picture. He explained that the spirit is ‘the highest principle in man … made in the image of God, endued (as all spirits are, so far as we can conceive) with self-motion, understanding, will, and liberty’.46 ‘The soul’, he contrasted, is ‘the immediate clothing of the spirit, the vehicle with which it is connected from its first existence, and which is never separated from it, either in life or in death.’47 In other words, the ‘spirit’ fosters our capacities for self-motion, understanding, freedom and volition. The ‘soul’, on the other hand, functions as its immortal casing. In his view, the soul-filled spirit animates the body and quickens physical existence and motion. Though insoluble within the human person, ‘body’, ‘soul’ and ‘spirit’ function as distinct metaphysical categories with respect to Wesley’s later pneumatological anthropology. For Wesley, the human spirit’s capacity for knowledge bears the impress of God’s likeness. But in what ways is our spiritual being distinct from God’s nature? Unlike God, our spirits are fashioned for the physical world; we are ‘designed to dwell on earth’.48 God in Spirit, who subsists from ‘everlasting to everlasting’,   J. Wesley, ‘What is Man?’, in Works [BE], 4:22.   Ibid., 23. 46   J. Wesley, ‘Some Thoughts on an Expression of St. Paul, in the First Epistle to the Thessalonians’, in Works, 11:447. 47   Ibid., 447–8. 48   J. Wesley, ‘The General Deliverance’, in Works [BE], 2:438–9. 44 45

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

38

having the essence of pure Spirit-hood, is unlike humanity in this respect: ‘This God is a spirit … pure spirit … totally separate from all matter.’49 Humans are bound by physicality, God is transcendent. Furthermore, Wesley distinguished between human spiritual nature and the divine in another significant respect. Not only are we contingent (that is, dependent upon and fashioned into existence by God’s Spirit), but also, we are unable to exact self-sufficient righteousness. To be holy, we must be made holy. God’s perfection and holiness are necessary attributes of God’s spiritual nature; our holiness is evoked when in relationship with God. We cannot merit righteousness for ourselves, nor for anyone else, independent of God’s merciful agency. As Wesley stated in his sermon on ‘Dives and Lazarus’ (1788): It is certain that no human spirit, while it is in the body, can ‘persuade’ another ‘to repent’; can work in him and entire change both of heart and life, a change from universal wickedness to universal holiness. And suppose that spirit discharged from the body, it is not more able to do this than it was before. No power less than that which created it at first can create any soul anew. No … human spirit, whether in the body or out of the body, can bring one soul from darkness to light, from the power of Satan unto God … God alone can raise those that are ‘dead in trespasses and sins’.50

Our holiness is rooted in God’s holiness. Salvation does not result from our spirit’s independent ability to be righteous, but from God’s holy presence manifested in the lives of human beings.51 In Wesley’s theology then, human spiritual nature reflects elements of God’s spiritual nature. However, although we resemble God in terms of having epistemic   J. Wesley, ‘The Unity of the Divine Being’, in Works [BE], 4:63.   J. Wesley, ‘Dives and Lazarus’, in Works [BE], 4:16. 51   However, while God in Spirit alone is the Author of salvation, ministry to the world is a cooperative endeavour. John Wesley alluded to this in an earlier sermon (composed in 1731), which was first published under the authorship of his brother Charles: ‘And no small part of the good it [viz., the winning of a soul for God] brings to himself is the honour of … sharing in the office of those superior natures who continually minister to the heirs of salvation; of working with God, of being a fellow-labourer with the ever blessed Spirit, and Jesus Christ the righteous!’ Later in the homily, Wesley referred to such ‘fellow-labourers’ as ‘instrument[s] of … conversion’: J. Wesley, ‘The Wisdom of Winning Souls’, in Works [BE], 4:309 and 310. 49 50

Grace as Pneumatological Operation

39

and volitional capacities, our spirits are constrained by the physical. Our existence ontologically depends upon God’s spiritual nature, both to be and to be saved. Though we cannot merit holiness for ourselves, still, as spiritual beings created in the image and likeness of God, we are already oriented toward the centre of our spirituality. Humanity’s telos is singular. We are ‘above all’ as he expressed it, ‘creatures capable of God.’52 Our spirit is fashioned for ‘knowing, and loving, and enjoying the Author of [our] being’.53 Our capacity for God consciousness is what distinguishes men and women from other species,54 and because of which, the human spirit is to God ‘of infinitely more value than the whole of the earth; of more value than the sun, moon, and stars put together; yea, than the whole material creation.’55 As distinct from all other beings, the human spirit is created to seek and love its Creator, empowered by God’s Spirit: ‘Man alone of all the inhabitants of this world can acknowledge and praise him that made it; can raise his thoughts and affections from sensible objects to him “whom no man hath seen nor can see”.’56 To Wesley, our cognitive and volitional faculties are unique to us. Consciousness is meant to be exercised in accordance with humanity’s end or purpose: to love God with our whole person, and to find happiness in eternal relationship with God. Our highest good is enjoyment and union with our Creator. True fulfilment cannot be achieved outside of this. As he put it, ‘God alone is the centre of all created spirits; and consequently … a spirit made for God can have no rest out of him.’57 The distinguishing mark of the human spirit, for Wesley, is that we may know and enjoy God in Spirit. Aside from human beings, what other spiritual beings did Wesley identify? In his 1783 sermon ‘Of Evil Angels’, Wesley observed the following: It has been frequently observed that there are no gaps or chasms in the creation of God, but that all the parts of it are admirably connected together, to make up one universal whole. Accordingly there is one chain of beings, from the lowest   J. Wesley, ‘The Deceitfulness of the Human Heart’, in Works [BE], 4:153.   J. Wesley, ‘The General Deliverance’, in Works [BE], 2:448. 54   ‘It is this, and this alone, which puts the essential difference between men and brutes’: J. Wesley, ‘The Deceitfulness of the Human Heart’, in Works [BE], 4:153. 55   J. Wesley, ‘What is Man? – Psalm 8:3-4’, in Works [BE], 3:460. 56   J. Wesley, ‘The Wisdom of Winning Souls’, in Works [BE], 4:307. 57   J. Wesley, ‘Of Hell’, in Works [BE], 3:35. 52 53

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

40

to the highest point, from an unorganized particle of earth or water to Michael the archangel … We cannot accurately trace many of the intermediate links of this amazing chain, which are abundantly too fine to be discerned either by our senses or understanding.58

The chain of being is a Platonic term, designating a hierarchy of existence among created things with respect to consciousness and intelligence.59 It was also the early precursor to what is now known in evolutionary science as the ‘fossil record’.60 Wesley’s understanding suggests an early-modern view of biology and natural psychology. He believed that God is most exalted on the chain, followed by angelic spirits, humans and other animal creatures. More intelligent beings are higher on the chain of being, and less intelligent spirits occupy lower links. Wesley believed that non-human species were originally created with a greater level of intelligence, which was diminished subsequent to original sin. He wrote that each non-human animal once possessed ‘a will, including various passions’, as well as a measure of liberty and understanding which no longer remains to the original extent.61 As a result, animals are now incapable of knowing God as humans do. Above humans and other non-human species are angelic spirits. Wesley believed that angels, like humans, are spirits endued with understanding, freedom and volition. Unlike us, however, they exist as supernatural beings uninhibited by corporeality: Unquestionably [angels] were the highest order of created beings. They were spirits, pure, ethereal creatures, simple and incorruptible; if not wholly immaterial, yet certainly not encumbered with gross earthly flesh and blood. As spirits they were endued with understanding, with affections, and with liberty, or a power of self-determination; so that it lay in themselves either to continue in their allegiance to God or to rebel against him.62

  J. Wesley, ‘Of Evil Angels’, in Works [BE], 3:16.   See John Hildrop, Two Letters to a Lady, which Wesley included in twelve instalments in the Arminian Magazine throughout 1783. See Albert Outler’s introductory comment to ‘The General Deliverance’, in Works [BE], 2:436. 60   See Arthur Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea, 6th edn (New York: Harper and Row, 1960). 61   J. Wesley, ‘The General Deliverance’, in Works [BE], 2:440–41. 62   J. Wesley, ‘Of Evil Angels’, in Works [BE], 3:17–18. 58 59

Grace as Pneumatological Operation

41

According to Wesley, angels possess the will to either love or disobey God.63 The former are ambassadors or messengers of God that comfort, protect and aid humanity. The latter, on the other hand, continuously seek to destroy us through manifold temptation and subterfuge. Good or bad, an angel’s capacity for knowledge greatly exceeds that of humankind. Angelic perception, as Wesley put it, is not limited by the slow process of ‘ratiocination’ as ours is; they ‘take in at one view the whole extent of the creation … [and] they see at one glance whatever truth is presented to their understanding.’64 Moreover, they have the unique ability to read the thoughts of human beings: ‘It seems therefore an unquestionable truth … that angels know not only the words and actions, but also the thoughts, of those to whom they minister.’65 The existence of angels has a significant place in Wesley’s metaphysical hierarchy. He believed that angels were powerful spiritual entities capable of aiding or hampering human beings. Although angelic knowledge is limited in comparison to God’s knowledge, Wesley believed it far exceeds that of humanity. Thus, how does Wesley conceive of spiritual nature, broadly speaking? He believed that God in Spirit is the centre of all created spirits, from the physically embodied to the non-corporeal. God is also the ground of being in which all created things exist. God’s nature is pure spirit-hood and perfection. God as Spirit is both creator and sustainer. Anything endued with the principles of self-motion or intelligence possesses a spiritual quality resembling its creator. Having been cast in God’s image, our spirits are fashioned for loving our Creator. The purpose of our existence is to know and love God. Our spirits are restless until we find our centre. As Wesley expressed it, humanity is formed to ‘[know] God: his Father and his friend, the parent of all good, the centre of the spirits of all flesh, the sole happiness of all intelligent beings’; for ‘this is the end of man: to glorify him who

63   ‘I believe part of them [angels] are holy and happy, and the other part are wicked and miserable. I believe the former of these, the good angels, are continually sent of God “to minister to the heirs of salvation”; who will be “equal to angels” by and by, although they are now a little inferior to them. I believe the latter, the evil angels, called in Scripture, “devils”, united under one head … “Satan” … [to] either range the upper regions … or like him “walk about the earth as roaring lions, seeking whom they may devour”’: J. Wesley, ‘On the Discoveries of Faith’, in Works [BE], 4:31. 64   J. Wesley, ‘Of Good Angels’, in Works [BE], 3:7. 65   Ibid., 7.

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

42

made him for himself, and to love and enjoy him forever.’66 God in Spirit, the source of all life, movement and existence, gratuitously extends spiritual nature to human beings, so that we might partake in the divine life. Given Wesley’s views on God’s spiritual nature, what are the implications for Wesley’s doctrine of God in Trinity? He also firmly assented to the Anglican Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, which included an article on the doctrine of the Trinity affirming the Nicene formula. Though fully upholding the orthodox English view, his views were decisively pragmatic. Although attempts have been made by contemporary scholars to locate his theological allegiances,67 Wesley was relatively uninterested in the question of Trinitarian dynamics. To be sure, he affirmed the significance of the Christian doctrine in accordance with English Church teaching,68 but his writings suggest little concern for unpacking its paradoxical nature. Albert Outler has commented ‘that for Wesley … abstruse doctrines are better believed devoutly than analysed rationally’,69 and the doctrine of the Trinity seems to be no exception. Wesley emphasized relational experience of God over technical debates on the divine nature.70 His homily ‘On the Trinity’ 66

  J. Wesley, ‘Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount – Discourse the Thirteenth’, in Works [BE], 1:692. 67   Scholars have debated the question of Wesley’s loyalty to Trinitarian creedal language, specifically in terms of the Holy Spirit’s procession. Lycurgus Starkey (in The Work of the Holy Spirit, 32) and Kenneth Collins (in The Theology of John Wesley, 144) both place Wesley squarely within the Western tradition (that the Holy Spirit proceeds through the Father and the Son). Randy Maddox, however, has argued that while Wesley espoused the traditional English Church language of filioque, his unwillingness to subordinate the work of the Spirit to the person of Christ evinces a much broader vision. Maddox tends to read Wesley through the lens of Eastern theology, which laments the Western tendency to ‘depersonalize’ and ‘unduly restrict’ the work of the Holy Spirit in the economy of salvation. See Responsible Grace, 137. 68   See no. 1 of the 39 Articles of Religion: ‘There is but one living and true God, everlasting, without body, parts, or passions; of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness; the Maker, and Preserver of all things both visible and invisible. And in unity of this Godhead there be three Persons, of one substance, power, and eternity; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.’ 69   J. Wesley, ‘On the Trinity’, Works [BE], 2:373. 70  See Letters, 6:253. Wesley’s excerpt from the papers of Charles Perronet suggests Wesley’s fascination with the possibility of Trinitarian religious experience: ‘“Just after my uniting with the Methodists, the Father was revealed to me the first time; soon after, the whole Trinity … After this I had equal intercourse with the Son, and afterwards with the Spirit, the same as with the Father and the Son … Of late I have found the same access to the Triune God … [However, if] it be asked how or in what manner I beheld the Triune

Grace as Pneumatological Operation

43

(1775) is a practical reflection. Rather than an exposition of the nature of God as three-in-one, Wesley invited the reader to a stance of intellectual humility with respect to the teaching. He considered the dogma’s referent ineffable: ‘I know not that any well-judging man would attempt to explain [the Trinity] at all.’71 Echoing Jonathan Swift,72 Wesley held that no exhaustive explanation has ever been offered on the doctrine: ‘[All] who endeavoured to explain it [the Trinity] at all have utterly lost their way; have above all persons hurt the cause which they intended to promote … I insist upon no explication at all; no, not even on the best I ever saw – I mean that which is given us in the creed commonly ascribed to Athanasius.’73 Since the doctrine surpasses the rational mind’s ability for circumscription, any effort to eliminate the mystery or paradox surrounding God’s Trinitarian existence of God is futile and potentially detrimental to the life of faith, as well as hubristic. A true and faithful understanding of the Trinity means accepting it as mystery. Wesley also believed that since the term ‘Trinity’ itself is nowhere in Scripture, those who refuse to use it should not be rebuked, so long as they affirm God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as well as the language of Scripture: I dare not insist upon anyone’s using the word ‘Trinity’ or ‘Person’. I use the term myself without any scruple concerning them, who shall constrain him to use them? I cannot; much less would a man burn alive – and that with moist, green wood – for saying ‘Though I believe the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God, yet I scruple using the words “Trinity” and “Persons” because I do not find those terms in the Bible.’74

Wesley held that believers should not be coerced to embrace technical theological language regarding the mystery of the Trinity, only to embrace the fact of God’s God, it is above all description. He that has seen this light of God can no more describe it than he that has not … It may be asked ‘Was the appearance glorious?’ It was all divine, it was glory. I had no conception of it. It was God … I was overwhelmed by it; body and soul were penetrated through with the rays of Deity.”’ 71   J. Wesley, ‘On the Trinity’, Works [BE], 2:376–7. 72   Cf., Jonathan Swift, On the Trinity (1744). Swift (1677–1745) was Dean of St Patrick’s, Dublin. 73   J. Wesley, ‘On the Trinity’, Works [BE], 2:377. 74   Ibid., 377–8.

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

44

being so, a subtle distinction which Wesley explained in a letter to Mary Bishop from 17 April 1776: After all the noise that has been made about mysteries, and the trouble we have gotten ourselves into upon that head, nothing is more certain than that no child of man is required to believe any mystery at all. With regard to the Trinity, for instance, what am I required to believe? Not the manner wherein the mystery lies. This is not the object of my faith; but the plain matter of fact, ‘These Three are One.’ This I believe, and this only.75

It is not necessary, nor is it possible, for Christians to fully grasp intellectually the manner of God’s nature, nor is use of the term ‘Trinity’ required. Rather, the believer’s responsibility is to be receptive to the ‘plain matter of fact’ itself – that three bear record in heaven, and these three are one.76 For Wesley, God’s nature is ‘interwoven with all true Christian faith, with all vital religion’.77 True knowledge of Father, Son and Holy Spirit emerges from holy living and communion with God, not philosophical speculation. How did Wesley characterize the Holy Spirit’s relational mission specifically? For Wesley, God in Spirit is the ontological foundation of all life and existence. In the midst of creation, the person and work of the Holy Spirit functions as the power enabling intimacy with God. Wesley addressed the Holy Spirit in a host of ways. In terms of nomenclature, he frequently employed the titles ‘Spirit of God’,78 ‘God’s Spirit’,79 and the ‘Holy Ghost’,80 which he used to describe the power of God appropriated to humanity in the relational form of grace, the means by which communion with God is achieved. Wesley’s primary focus on the person and work

  Letters, 6:213.   Cf. 1 John 5:7. 77   J. Wesley, ‘On the Trinity’, Works [BE], 2:385. 78   For example, J. Wesley, ‘God’s Love to Fallen Man’, in Works [BE], 2:426; J. Wesley, ‘On Patience’, in Works [BE], 3:172; J. Wesley, ‘On Schism’, in Works [BE], 3:66. 79   For example, J. Wesley, ‘Free Grace’, in Works [BE], 3:549; J. Wesley, ‘The Witness of the Spirit – Discourse I’, in Works [BE], 1:270. 80   For example, J. Wesley, ‘Salvation by Faith’, in Works [BE], 1:123; J. Wesley, ‘The Means of Grace’, in Works [BE], 1:383; J. Wesley, ‘The Marks of the New Birth’, in Works [BE], 1:425. 75 76

Grace as Pneumatological Operation

45

of the Holy Spirit, although inclusive of orthodox doctrinal standards,81 was the Spirit’s economic mission. The concept of grace, in its soteriological sense, as such points to the Spirit’s work in the economy of salvation which empowers human agents to experience God. Power and grace are twin themes in Wesley’s pneumatology. In his 1746 sermon on ‘The Means of Grace’, he explained that humanity cannot be saved ‘by any power, wisdom, or strength’, but only ‘through the grace or power of the Holy Ghost which worketh all in all’.82 That is, unless a person receives the grace of God in Spirit, through the Holy Ghost, he or she remains powerless for salvation. In Wesley’s 1742 publication of Charles Wesley’s sermon, ‘Awake, Thou that Sleepest’, he further connected grace, power and the Spirit’s work: ‘… a Christian is a man that is “anointed with the Holy Ghost and with power”.’83 Unless the Holy Ghost and power are active in human agents, believers cannot know Christ in the fullest sense. To take part in God’s transformative reality, one must be refashioned by the Holy Spirit. The connection between power, grace and the Spirit in Wesley’s thinking is further shown in his 1746 sermon on ‘The Spirit of Bondage and of Adoption’. Here, he claimed that anyone who is ‘under grace’ has found ‘favour in the sight of God, even the Father, and … has the “grace”, or power of the Holy Ghost, reigning in his heart’.84 Again, the ‘power of the Holy Ghost’ is a synonym for ‘grace’. Whenever the latter reigns in the heart, Wesley held that the former does as well. For Wesley, ‘grace … meaning thereby the power of God which worketh in us both to will and to do of his good pleasure … confirms, refreshes, purifies, and sheds the love of God abroad therein.’85 Grace, then, symbolizes the 81   See J. Wesley, The Sunday Service of the Methodists in North America, 307: ‘The Holy Ghost, proceeding from the Father and the Son, is of one Substance, Majesty, and Glory, with the Father and Son, very and eternal God.’ See also J. Wesley, ‘A Letter to a Roman Catholic’, in Selections from the Writings of John Wesley, 227: ‘I believe the infinite and eternal Spirit of God … to be not only perfectly holy in himself, but the immediate cause of all holiness in us; enlightening our understandings, rectifying our wills and affections, renewing our natures, uniting our persons to Christ, assuring us of the adoption of sons, leading us in our actions; purifying and sanctifying our souls and bodies, to a full and eternal enjoyment of God.’ 82   J. Wesley, ‘The Means of Grace’, in Works [BE], 1:383. 83   C. Wesley, ‘Awake, Thou that Sleepest’, in Works [BE], 1:150. Cf., Acts 10:38. 84   J. Wesley, ‘The Spirit of Bondage and of Adoption’, in Works [BE], 1:260. 85   J. Wesley, ‘A Letter to the Reverend Dr. Rutherforth’, in Works [BE], 9:384. See also J. Wesley, ‘A Letter to the Reverend Mr. Downes’, in Works [BE], 9:359–60.

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

46

Spirit’s power acceded by human agents. It is the means by which God operates within and transforms believers, and it functions as the relational expression of God’s divine energy facilitating spiritual change and renewal. Consider Wesley’s sermon on ‘The Witness of Our Own Spirit’ (1746). Again he identified grace with the power of the Holy Spirit: ‘By “the grace of God’’ is sometimes to be understood that free love, that unmerited mercy, by which I, a sinner, through the merits of Christ am now reconciled to God. But in this place it rather means that power of God the Holy Ghost which “worketh in us both to will and to do of his good pleasure”.’86 For, he continued, as ‘soon as ever the grace of God (in the former sense, his pardoning love) is manifested to our soul, the grace of God (in the latter sense, the power of his Spirit) takes place therein.’87 Grace as pardoning gift makes way for grace as power of the Spirit which refashions our hearts. God’s love and power are two aspects of the same gracious reality, conjoined in the work of the Spirit. How did Wesley describe personal religious encounter of the Spirit’s power and grace? In his 1730 sermon on ‘The Promise of Understanding’, Wesley stated ‘[this] indeed we know, that when the passions are laid, and our souls are calm and still, then chiefly the Spirit of God loves to move upon the face of the waters’.88 In Wesley’s view, such is typical of an inspirant’s experience – to be transformed instantly, to be stirred from spiritual slumber to awareness in one ecstatic moment. However, while he indicated that spiritual experience follows this pattern, he also claimed that ‘yet are we not able to explain how he moves.’89 The Holy Spirit is both knowable and mysterious – a paradox that Wesley had taken pains to justify in his correspondence with John Smith. Although Wesley thought it was impossible to circumscribe the meta-mechanics of the Holy Spirit’s agency, he remained convinced of the biblical certainty that wherever goodness, charity and devotion to God are present, so too is the Spirit’s power: as ‘it is the Divine Spirit “who worketh in us both to will and to do of his good pleasure”.’90   J. Wesley, ‘The Witness of Our Own Spirit’, in Works [BE], 1:309.  Ibid. 88   J. Wesley, ‘The Promise of Understanding’, in Works [BE], 4:284. 89   Ibid.. See also Wesley’s letter to Thomas Taylor from 6 January 1791: ‘With regard to the powerful workings of the Spirit, I think those words of our Lord are chiefly to be understood: “The bloweth where it listeth; Thou hearest the sound thereof” (thou art sure of the fact), “but canst not tell whence it cometh, or wither it goeth”’: Letters, 8:254. 90   J. Wesley, ‘The Promise of Understanding’, in Works [BE], 4:284. Cf., Philippians 2:13. 86

87

Grace as Pneumatological Operation

47

Whenever the grace of God and the love of Christ are enjoyed by human agents, the Spirit of God is already operative. Grace, as such, is always already present to human beings – preventing, sustaining, preserving and sanctifying: ‘Whatsoever good is in man, or is done by man, God is the author and doer of it.’91 For, it ‘is God alone who is the giver of every good gift, the author of all grace; that the whole power is of him, whereby…there is any blessing conveyed to our soul’;92 ‘[If] ever we either think, speak, or act aright, it is through the assistance of that blessed Spirit.’93 The work of the Holy Spirit also held Christological significance for Wesley. He believed that encountering the Holy Spirit means encountering the Spirit of Christ. He indicated this in his 1770 homiletic epitaph ‘On the Death of George Whitefield’: And ‘except a man be thus born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.’ But all who are thus ‘born of the Spirit’ have ‘the kingdom of God within’ them. Christ sets up his kingdom in their hearts – ‘righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost’. That ‘mind is in them which was in Christ Jesus’, enabling them to ‘walk as Christ also walked’. His indwelling Spirit makes them both holy in heart and ‘holy in all manner of conversation’ … all this is a free gift through the righteousness and blood of Christ … .94

According to Wesley, when believers are born of the Spirit, ‘Christ sets up his kingdom in their hearts’, and ‘His indwelling Spirit’ makes them ‘holy in heart’ and life. In other words, Christ’s Spirit and the Holy Spirit are the same. Another example highlighting the Christological character of Wesley’s pneumatology is found in his sixth discourse, ‘Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount’ (1748). He explained that when men and women are adopted into God’s life, ‘the Spirit of his Son’ manifests filial consciousness in the believer:

91

    93   94   92

J. Wesley, ‘Free Grace’, in Works [BE], 3:545. J. Wesley, ‘The Means of Grace’, in Works [BE], 1:382. J. Wesley, ‘The Nature of Enthusiasm’, in Works [BE], 2:54. J. Wesley, ‘On the Death of George Whitefield’, in Works [BE], 2:343.

48

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

Above all, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and of all that believe in him; who justifies us ‘freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Jesus’ … hath received us for ‘his own children, by adoption and grace’, ‘and because we are sons, hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts crying Abba, Father … .’95

In this passage, ‘the Spirit of his Son’ is attributed the role of witnessing to the believer’s spiritual adoption. Wesley echoed this in his 1765 sermon, ‘The Scripture Way of Salvation’, in which he stated: ‘“Because he [the believer] is a son, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into his heart, crying, Abba, Father”.’96 Elsewhere, in his 1775 sermon on the Trinity, he ascribed this work to the Spirit of God or Holy Ghost: I know not how anyone can be a Christian believer … till ‘the Spirit of God witnesses with his spirit that he is a child of God’ – that is, in effect, till the Holy Ghost witnesses that God the Father has accepted him through the merits of God the Son – and having this witness he honours the Son and the blessed Spirit ‘even as he honours the Father’ … .97

The person and work of the Holy Spirit are identical with those of Christ’s Spirit, whose power and presence guides the believer into repentance and communion. To be sure, Wesley was clear that God’s Spirit functions as the ‘Spirit of adoption’ who notifies believers of their sin’s forgiveness: ‘Ye have not received the spirit of bondage again unto fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father.’98 This passage, which he quoted from Romans, served as the biblical text for his 1746 sermon ‘On the Spirit of Bondage and of Adoption’. However, his sermon on ‘The Marks of the New Birth’, which was published the same year, contains a more precise breakdown of his understanding of the passage. As he expressed it:

95   J. Wesley, ‘Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount – Discourse the Sixth’, in Works [BE], 1:578–9. 96   J. Wesley, ‘The Scripture Way of Salvation’, in Works [BE], 2:161–2. 97   J. Wesley, ‘On the Trinity’, in Works [BE], 2:385–6. 98   Cf., Romans 8:15.

Grace as Pneumatological Operation

49

‘Ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father!’ Ye – as many [as] are the sons of God – have, in virtue of your sonship, received that selfsame Spirit of adoption whereby we cry, Abba, Father. We, the apostles, prophets, teachers (for so the word may not improperly be understood); we, through whom you have believed, the “ministers of Christ, and stewards, and stewards of the mysteries of God’. As we and you have one Lord, so we have one Spirit; as we have one faith, so have we one hope also. We and you are sealed with one ‘Spirit of promise’, the earnest of yours and of our inheritance: the same Spirit bearing witness with yours and with our spirit, ‘that we are the children of God’.99

According to Wesley’s exposition, God provides an inward awareness of spiritual adoption to those who are joined with Christ and his Spirit. As Wesley explained in his 1746 sermon ‘On the Spirit of Bondage and of Adoption’, the change in heart and practice that ensues from divine encounter is accompanied by renewed commitment to moral and spiritual living: It is he [the Holy Spirit] that sheds the love of God abroad in their hearts, and the love of all mankind; thereby purifying their hearts from the love of the world, from the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life. It is by him they are delivered from anger and pride, from all vile and inordinate affections. In consequence, they are delivered from evil words and works, from all unholiness of conversation; doing no evil to any child of man, and being zealous of all good works.100

The Holy Spirit adopts men and women into God’s life purifying them of sin and purging the soul of ‘love for the world’ and ‘pride of life’. The Holy Spirit reshapes us and increases our likeness to Christ and his righteousness. ‘Those to whom the righteousness of Christ is imputed are made righteous by the spirit of Christ, are renewed in the image of God “after the likeness wherein they were created, in righteousness and true holiness”.’101 Spiritual birth signifies our participation in   J. Wesley, ‘The Marks of the New Birth’, in Works [BE], 1:424.   J. Wesley, ‘The Spirit of Bondage and of Adoption’, in Works [BE], 1:262–3. 101   J. Wesley, ‘The Lord Our Righteousness’, in Works [BE], 1:459.  99 100

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

50

the divine life. According to Wesley, this is the work of one Spirit, who bears witness with ours of the promise of salvation: ‘As we and you have one Lord, so we have one Spirit’.102 For Wesley then, the Holy Spirit is one with Christ’s Spirit, which serves to confirm a salient observation made by Albert Outler: ‘Wesley’s pneumatology begins with … a valid integration of Christology, soteriology, and pneumatology; the vital linkage between theo-logy, Christo-logy, and pneumatology held together by consistent emphasis on … the Holy Spirit as the Giver of all Grace.’103 Indeed, Wesley’s pneumatology suggests a salient Christological maxim: the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Christ, united by the divine activity of grace. The work of the Spirit in Wesley’s theology, then, can also be extended to justification. God’s Spirit is manifested economically as gracious relationship, which empowers men and women to participate in the life of holiness. Personal knowledge of the Spirit entails transformation through Christ’s self-sacrifice by the gift of faith. As Wesley explained in his sermon on ‘The Marks of the New Birth’: This it is, in the judgment of the Spirit of God, to be a son or a child of God. It is to believe in God through Christ as ‘not to commit sin’, and to enjoy, at all times and in all places, that ‘peace of God which passeth all understanding’. It is so to hope in God through the Son of his love as to have not only the ‘testimony of a good conscience’, but also ‘the Spirit of God bearing with your spirits that ye are the children of God’: whence cannot but spring the ‘rejoicing evermore in him through whom ye have received the atonement’.104

Spiritual birth, ‘in the judgment of the Spirit of God’, implies ‘[believing] in God through Christ’, or refraining from sin. Any individual whose inward life and outward actions resemble that of Christ likewise knows his Spirit. In Wesley’s thinking, the Spirit’s operation is rooted in both the atonement and justification. Salvation is made possible by the redemptive work of Christ’s lifegiving sacrifice. If not for the atonement, we would remain chained to sin, unable to participate in God’s life. The Spirit of adoption then, which believers receive   J. Wesley, ‘The Marks of the New Birth’, in Works [BE], 1:424.   Outler, ‘A Focus on the Holy Spirit’, 165. 104   J. Wesley, ‘The Marks of the New Birth’, in Works [BE], 1:428. 102 103

Grace as Pneumatological Operation

51

at spiritual birth, attests to Christ’s triumphal sacrifice. God’s gracious power and presence are extended to humanity by the Holy Spirit, and the divine testimony is the point at which we become knowing beneficiaries of Christ’s justificatory merits. The Spirit’s mission and Christ’s atonement are so far joined, claimed Wesley, that anyone ‘who denies the existence of such a testimony does, in effect, deny justification by faith’.105 The work of Christ and the Spirit are one. The Son secures our salvation, which the Spirit reveals in our hearts. Thomas Oden rightly observes that for Wesley, ‘the moment one exercises faith, trusting God’s reconciling Word, one is justified by the Son, with the Spirit bearing assuring witness within. The Spirit is inwardly attesting the power of grace to cleanse from all sin, so as wholly to refashion broken lives.’106 Still, how did Wesley describe the relationship between justification and the work of the Spirit? What are the pneumatological overtones of justification? Wesley’s narrative of salvation history offers clues: ‘By the sin of the first Adam, who was not only the father but likewise the representative of us all, we all “fell short of the favour of God” … “Judgment came upon all [of humanity] to condemnation.”’107 Unwilling to abandon us, God in Christ provides a ‘once for all’ atonement. Wesley explains that through Christ’s ‘sacrifice for sin … as the representative of us all, God is so far reconciled to all the world that he hath given them a new covenant … [viz.,] we are “justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Jesus Christ”.’108 Justification, then, is ‘pardon, [or] the forgiveness of sins.’109 In his sermon, ‘The Scripture Way of Salvation’, he repeated this definition: ‘Justification is another word for pardon. It is the forgiveness of all our sins, and (what is necessarily implied therein) our acceptance with God.’110 The ‘meritorious cause’ of justification ‘is the blood and righteousness of Christ or … all that Christ hath done and suffered for us till “he poured out his soul for the transgressors.”’111 The moment the believer is justified, former transgressions are erased. What is the prerequisite for justification? Neither good works nor adherence to the moral law, ‘which indeed [we] could not till   J. Wesley, ‘The Witness of the Spirit – Discourse II’, in Works [BE], 1:292.  Oden, John Wesley’s Scriptural Christianity, 228. 107   J. Wesley, ‘Justification by Faith’, in Works [BE], 1:187. 108  Ibid. 109   Ibid., 189. 110   J. Wesley, ‘The Scripture Way of Salvation’, in Works [BE], 2:157. 111   Ibid., 158. 105 106

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

52

now [subsequent to justification] perform’,112 can exculpate us. Absolution comes by faith. Wesley held that faith entails ‘not only a divine evidence or conviction that “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself”, but a sure trust and confidence that Christ died for my sins, that he loved me, and gave himself for me.’113 The moment the believer repents and receives the gift of faith, he or she is justified by the merits of Christ. Although Wesley attributed the work of justification to Christ in cooperation with the Father, Wesley also recognized that the condition by which men and women are justified is faith, a gift received through the Spirit. As Wesley defined it in his sermon on ‘The Circumcision of the Heart’: [Faith is] a divine evidence or conviction of his love, his free unmerited love to me a sinner; a sure confidence in his pardoning mercy, wrought in us by the Holy Ghost – a confidence whereby every true believer is enabled to bear witness, ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth;’ that I ‘have an advocate with the Father’, that ‘Jesus Christ the righteous is’ my Lord, and ‘the propitiation for my sins.’114

Faith is the means by which believers sense that their sins are forgiven; it is a work of the Holy Spirit. Since faith is a pneumatological gift, justification by faith is a thoroughly pneumatological event; it occurs in cooperation with the power of the Holy Spirit: ‘This condition of life is plain, easy, always at hand. “It is in thy mouth and in thy heart” through the operation of the Spirit of God.’115 To Wesley, the Spirit of God is fully present as the soul journeys into the life of God, including the moment of justification. By faith in Christ and his Spirit, humanity lays claim to the promise of salvation.116 Wesley’s Christology reflects a strong pneumatological bent: ‘The Spirit of Christ is that great gift of God which … he hath promised to man, and hath fully bestowed since the time that Christ

  J. Wesley, ‘Justification by Faith’, in Works [BE], 1:194.   J. Wesley, ‘Justification by Faith’, in Works [BE], 1:194. 114   J. Wesley, ‘The Circumcision of the Heart’, in Works [BE], 1:405. 115   J. Wesley, ‘The Righteousness of Faith’, in Works [BE], 1:208. 116   For an extensive analysis of Wesley’s understanding of the person and work of Christ, see John Deschner, Wesley’s Christology, reprint edn (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1988). 112

113

Grace as Pneumatological Operation

53

was glorified.’117 Salvation depends upon our reception of and participation in the power of Christ’s Holy Spirit: ‘He is a Christian who has received the Spirit of Christ. He is not a Christian who hath not received him.’118 Christ is the author of our salvation – an office carried out in eternal communion with the Father and Holy Spirit. As Wesley explained in his 1780 sermon ‘On Spiritual Worship’: This eternal life then commences when it pleases the Father to reveal his Son in our hearts; when we first know Christ, being enabled to ‘call him Lord by the Holy Ghost’; when we can testify, our conscience bearing us witness in the Holy Ghost, ‘the life which I now live, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.’119

The Son of God reveals himself to us by faith through his Holy Spirit, and the Father transforms our hearts, as we experience the divine testimony of filial consciousness in solidarity with Jesus Christ. Such, for Wesley, is the power of grace in the economy of salvation. Pneumatology, Christology and soteriology are linked. How does Wesley’s theology of grace relate to his understanding of perceptible inspiration as via Spiritus? Grace admits of two distinctive theological dimensions in relation to his pneumatology of perceptible inspiration. On the one hand, grace is the relational gift of being, extended to creation by God in Spirit. By grace, humans are fashioned into being. We are spiritual beings capable of enjoying our Creator, the source or centre of all existence. God as pure Spirit is the source and sustainer of all life and movement, as well as all intelligence and spirituality. In this respect, grace functions as the basic gift of ontological economy, in which human spirits are wholly dependent upon God even merely for being. On the other hand, Wesley also described grace in terms of the soteriological function of the Holy Spirit. John Tyson has noted that such an emphasis sets ‘Wesleyan soteriology in the context of a dialogical interaction with the Holy Spirit and human spirits.’120 In this sense, grace means the power or presence of the Holy   C. Wesley, ‘Awake, Thou that Sleepest’, in Works [BE], 1:153.   Ibid., 154. 119   J. Wesley, ‘On Spiritual Worship’, in Works [BE], 3:96. 120   John R. Tyson, Charles Wesley: A Reader (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 43. 117

118

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

54

Spirit, which transforms sinners into children of God. The Spirit of Christ who empowers us with faith for justification enables us to participate in the life of God. Grace in this sense refers to the salvific work accomplished by the Holy Spirit in cooperation with the person of Jesus Christ. Thus, grace (as ontological and soteriological gift) is a core function of the Spirit God’s work in the economy of salvation. Grace is the light by which the inspirant ‘clearly perceives both the pardoning love of God and all his “exceeding great and precious promises … ”’121 Grace is the ‘great foundation of the whole Christian building’:122 It ‘does not depend upon [our] endeavours. It does not depend on [our] good tempers, or good desires, or good purposes and intentions; for all these flow from the free grace of God.’123 Neither works of righteousness nor right intentions prevent God’s grace; rather, these comprise the evidence of grace already at work.124 In John Wesley’s pneumatology, grace is both the basic gift of created being, as well as the energy of the Holy Spirit, empowering men and women for life in God.

  J. Wesley, ‘The Great Privilege of Those that are Born of God’, in Works [BE],

121

1:435.

  J. Wesley, ‘The Means of Grace’, in Works [BE], 1:383.   J. Wesley, ‘Free Grace’, in Works [BE], 3:545. 124   Ibid.: ‘They are not the cause, but the effects of it.’ 122 123

Chapter 3

Faith as Pneumatological Operation

To John Wesley, faith is both gift from God and human response. It is theological assent and filial trust. As gift, on the one hand, faith is unmeritable. On the other, as response to the Spirit’s promptings, faith involves an element of active human participation. Faith is a practical assent to the revealed truth of God, as well as an exacting trust in God as Sustainer, Saviour, and Sanctifier. It is a divine conviction bequeathed to believers by the Holy Spirit that Christ, in accord with the Father’s will, has died for all humankind, but it is also a personal conviction that he died for one’s self in particular so that one might be saved and transformed by the power of God in Spirit. To Wesley, faith is both a gift of God’s relational grace, as well as the believer’s Spirit-empowered movement toward its reception. Wesley also conceived of faith in another important way. In this sense, he described faith as the believer’s ability to see, hear, taste and touch God’s spiritual dimension, which is ‘not perceivable by eyes of flesh, or by any of our natural senses or faculties’.1 Faith is ‘the feeling of the soul, whereby a believer perceives, through the “power of the Highest overshadowing him,” both the existence and the presence of him in whom he “lives, moves, and has his being”’.2 Wesley’s theology of faith as spiritual sensation is significant with respect to perceptible inspiration as via Spiritus. Given that grace be understood both in terms of God’s ontological relationality and soteriological power, which is to say, the relational economy in which spiritual beings capable of God are created and exist, as well as the energy by which we attain spiritual participation, then faith, with respect to the model of perceptible inspiration, functions as the essence of spiritual participation itself and the means through which human agents know God. Spiritual sensation is Wesley’s   J. Wesley, ‘An Earnest Appeal’, in Works [BE], 11:46. Cf. Hebrews 11:1. ‘Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.’ 2   Ibid., 47. See also ‘Minutes of Some Late Conversations between the Rev. Mr. Wesleys and Others’, in Works, 8:276: ‘What is faith?’ ‘It is a spiritual sight of God and the things of God.’ 1

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

56

image for faith. As Wesley expressed it in 1756, ‘Faith implies both the perceptive faculty itself and the act of perceiving God and the things of God’;3 and later in 1770, ‘Faith is sight – that is, spiritual sight.’4 Wesley’s theory of religious knowledge, which he disseminated to readers of his published works, is contoured by a variety of early modern sources.5 However, as the John Smith correspondence and Stephen Long suggest, it is also rooted in the tradition of spiritual participation.6 Henry Scougal also influenced Wesley’s theology of spiritual knowledge conceived as participation. When the Oxford Methodists first encountered Scougal’s work, The Life of God in the Soul of Man (1677), it was embraced as a manifesto on the life of holiness, and was passed back and forth amongst the group’s members. It was used by Charles Wesley in his sermon ‘Awake, Thou That Sleepest’ (published by John Wesley in 1746) to describe the nature of the religious life: ‘Doest thou know what religion is? That it is a participation of the divine nature, the life of God in the soul of man … ?’7 Charles held that spiritual knowledge surpasses what we experience with our physical senses. As Scougal described it: Religion … [is] a resemblance of the Divine perfections, the Image of the Almighty shining in the Soul of Man … it is a real participation of his Nature, it is a beam of the Eternal Light, a drop of that infinite Ocean of goodness, and they who are endued with it, may be said to have God dwelling in their Souls, and Christ formed within them.’8   Letters, 3:174.   Letters, 5:209. 5   Influenced by John Locke, Peter Browne, and most importantly the Aristotelian tradition at Oxford, Wesley utilized the language that ideas are formed based on the senses. For analysis of the influence of Aristotelian logic on Wesley, see Rex Matthews, ‘Religion and Reason Joined : A Study in the Theology of John Wesley’ (Harvard Divinity School: Doctoral Thesis, 1986). 6   Influenced by the Augustinian tradition as expressed through Cambridge Platonism and other sources, such as the Eastern tradition of St Ephraem Syrus and Pseudo-Macarius and contemporary writers such as Henry Scougal, Peter Browne, and Jonathan Edwards, Wesley conceived of faith as the ‘eye’ of spiritual understanding, which perceived the work of the Holy Spirit as humans participated in the life of God. See Outler, John Wesley, 119. 7   Works [BE], 1:150. 8   Henry Scougal, The life of God in the soul of man: or, the nature and excellency of the Christian religion, 4th edn (London, 1702), 9. 3 4

Faith as Pneumatological Operation

57

Wesley believed that physical sensation and consciousness are founded upon the gift of spiritual existence extended to us by a gracious and loving Spirit God, and, like Scougal, that spiritual knowledge is the work of God’s Spirit in us, fostering relational participation. Although couched in the parlance of empiricism, Wesley’s epistemic theology is contoured by a pneumatology of spiritual being and participation, wherein faith as spiritual sensation does not mediate concepts or ideas, but relational intimacy inspired by the Holy Spirit’s presence in the soul. What is the significance of spiritual perception in terms of Wesley’s theology? In what sense is the gift of faith a pneumatological operation? Given the abundance of scholarly work already written on John Wesley’s religious epistemology, the intent of this chapter is not to explicate his doctrine of spiritual sensation per se, which Mark Mealey’s doctoral thesis has provided.9 Rather, it is to explore the extent to which Wesley’s understanding of faith illuminates his doctrine of perceptible inspiration and vice versa. How does Wesley describe faith with respect to human experience in the economy of salvation? This requires placing his theology of faith within the wider context of Wesley’s narrative of salvation history. Preceding humanity’s expulsion from paradise, humans were ‘able to talk with him [God] face to face, whose face we cannot now see … and consequently had no need of that faith whose office it is to supply the want of sight’.10 Wesley’s hermeneutic reflects a literal reading of the creation stories in Genesis 1 and 2, an interpretation that shapes his doctrine of praeternatural human knowledge.11 According to Wesley, our original, unimpeded ability to perceive the Divine was a feature of humanity’s being cast in the image of God. In addition to the ‘political’ (meaning stewardship over creation) and ‘moral’ (love for God and humankind) aspects of the divine nature described by Wesley, humanity was fashioned according to God’s ‘natural’ image, which relates to spirit-hood, knowledge and understanding. In an early Oxford sermon, ‘The Image of God’ (1730), Wesley preached that, ‘with regard to understanding’, humanity was created with the  9

  See Mealey, ‘Taste and See that the Lord is Good: John Wesley in the Christian Tradition of Spiritual Sensation’, especially Chapters 1 and 2. 10   J. Wesley, ‘The Law Established through Faith – Discourse the Second’, in Works [BE], 2:40. 11   Wesley often used the term ‘preternatural’ as a synonym for ‘supernatural’. Here, the term ‘praeternatural’ will be used as an adjective for ‘prior to sin’s entrance into the world’.

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

58

natural ability to perceive and engage created nature intellectually, as well as to enjoy intimacy with God: ‘[Humanity’s] understanding was just; everything appeared to him according to its real nature’, which included his ability to perceive God.12 In a later sermon, on ‘The General Deliverance’ (1781), he detailed the extent of our praeternatural knowledge: Above all … he was a creature capable of God, capable of knowing, loving, and obeying his Creator. And in fact he did know God, did unfeignedly love and uniformly obey him. This was the supreme perfection of man, as it is of all intelligent beings – the continually seeing and loving and obeying the Father of the spirits of all flesh. From this right state, and right use of all his faculties, his happiness naturally flowed.13

However, Wesley believed that after partaking of the forbidden fruit, humankind immediately spiralled into ignorance. Humanity’s entire nature became ‘altogether corrupt, in every power and faculty’.14 Our knowledge of God, along with our epistemic faculty, broadly speaking, was marred by sin. To be sure, Wesley’s understanding of original sin’s effect on human knowledge raises some significant questions. For instance, if human knowledge has become so misaligned by sin, then to what extent can logic or physical sensation be trusted to mediate knowledge of the world at all? How can we know anything if our faculty for knowledge is itself corrupted? Wesley partially resolved these by suggesting that the fallen-ness of our understanding is superseded by the Spirit’s pre-venting grace. Humanity in the state of nature (or immediately following original disobedience) is fully ignorant of the good, true and beautiful. Wesley held that prevenient grace accounts for the work of the Holy Spirit, which preconditions and facilitates not just spiritual knowledge of God but all knowledge in general. Thus, despite the effect of sin which drastically reduced the scope of human cognition, God sustains human knowledge. Prevenient grace, then, has two main functions in relation to knowledge with respect to Wesley’s pneumatology. Through God’s (normative)

  J. Wesley, ‘The Image of God’, in Works [BE], 4:293.   J. Wesley, ‘The Great Deliverance’, in Works [BE], 2:439. 14   J. Wesley, ‘Self Denial’, in Works [BE], 2:242. 12 13

Faith as Pneumatological Operation

59

preventing agency, humans retain ‘natural conscience’ and the ‘light of reason’.15 The latter enables us to think, make judgements, form civil societies, and perform any other tasks requiring intellection. In his 1781 sermon concerning ‘The Case of Reason Impartially Considered’, Wesley defined reason as, among other things,16 our capacity for understanding, ‘a faculty of the human soul … [exerting] itself in three ways: by simple apprehension, by judgment, and by discourse.’17 He continues: Simple apprehension is barely conceiving a thing in the mind, the first and most simple act of understanding. Judgment is the determining that the things before conceived either agree with or differ from each other. Discourse (strictly speaking) is the motion of progress of the mind from one judgment to another. The faculty of the soul which includes these three operations I here mean by the term reason.18

15

  Wesley’s theology of prevenient grace, in addition to ‘reason’ and ‘natural conscience’, suggests the importance of ‘fruits meet for repentance’, which precede justification by faith. For a recent analysis of the topic, see Gregory Crofford, ‘Streams of Mercy: Prevenient Grace in the Theology of John and Charles Wesley’ (University of Manchester: Doctoral Thesis, 2009). 16   Wesley used the term ‘reason’ in a variety of ways. He used it as a synonym for ‘argument’ or ‘motives’ (for example, ‘what was your reason for not washing up the dishes? Why did you do it? Give an account of yourself!’). Furthermore, ‘reason’ could entail the relationship between two or more physical objects. Wesley distinguished this definition from the former: ‘“reasons of things” here means the relations of things to each other’: ‘The Case of Reason Impartially Considered’, in Works [BE], 2:590. Wesley also discussed reason in an ontological sense. See J. Wesley, ‘An Earnest Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion’, in Works [BE], 11:55. There, Wesley expounded upon ‘eternal reason, or the nature of things: the nature of God and the nature of man, with the relations necessarily subsisting between them’. See also J. Wesley, ‘The Original, Nature, Properties, and Use of the Law’, in Works [BE], 2:9–10. In this sermon, Wesley described reason as the ‘unchangeable’, fixed nature of God’s law: ‘If we survey the law of God in another point of view, it is supreme, unchangeable reason; it is unalterable rectitude; it is the everlasting fitness of all things that are or ever were created.’ The nature of God’s law is always congruent with the ordering principle of existence: namely, eternal reason. 17   J. Wesley, ‘The Case of Reason Impartially Considered’, in Works [BE], 2:590. See also ‘Remarks Upon Mr. Locke’s “Essay on Human Understanding”’, in Works 13:456; and ‘A Compendium of Logic’, in Works 14:161. 18   J. Wesley, ‘The Case of Reason Impartially Considered’, in Works [BE], 2:590.

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

60

Humans are able, by the work of God’s Spirit, to grasp truths and engage in rational discourse. Reason allows us to form ideas based upon our sensation of external stimuli, and subsequently to make critical judgements concerning their truth. Furthermore, in his 1788 sermon ‘What is Man?’ he explained: I find something in me that thinks, which neither earth, water, air, fire, nor any mixture of them can possibly do. Something which sees, and hears, and smells, and tastes, and feels, all of which are so many modes of thinking. It goes farther: having perceived objects by any of these senses it forms inward ideas of them. It judges concerning them, it sees whether they agree or disagree with each other. It reasons concerning them; that is, infers one proposition from another. It reflects upon its own operations. It is endued with imagination and memory. And of its operations, judgment in particular, may be subdivided into many others.19

To Wesley, reason is the collective process of, first, apprehending facts about the material world acquired by the senses, then juxtaposing these with more basic truths already formed, and finally, assenting or dissenting to new truth in light of our stock beliefs. Reason includes thinking, sensing, judging, reasoning, and reflection, as well as imagination, and memory. As humans participate in this process, reflexively or not, we gain a more robust awareness of self in relation to the world. By virtue of the various operations that comprise reason, we are capable of carrying out a variety of tasks: To begin at the lowest point, [reason] can direct servants how to perform the various works wherein they are employed; to discharge their duty either in the meanest offices or in any of a higher nature … It can direct the husbandman at what time and in what manner to cultivate his ground … It can direct the painter, the statuary, the musician, to excel in the stations wherein providence has placed them … [Reason] can assist us in going through the whole circle of the sciences: of grammar, rhetoric, logic, natural and moral philosophy, mathematics, algebra, metaphysics.20

  J. Wesley, ‘What is Man?’ in Works [BE], 4:21.   J. Wesley, ‘The Case of Reason Impartially Considered’, in Works [BE], 2:590–91.

19 20

Faith as Pneumatological Operation

61

However, despite the goods it provides us, Wesley contended that reason is an incomplete picture of humanity’s former, praeternatural understanding. In other words, although our cognitive faculty facilitates the formation of ideas concerning physical existence, it has serious limitations. Reason, for instance, is powerless to discern spiritual truth. Though a function of the Spirit’s prevenient agency, as well as evidence of God’s grace always already at work, it is incomplete and incapable of yielding intimacy with God.21 Wesley expressed this in his 1788 sermon, ‘On the Discoveries of Faith’. Neither reason nor the senses can ‘reach beyond the bounds of the visible world. They supply us with such knowledge of the material world as answers all the purposes of life. But as this was the design for which they were given, beyond this they cannot go. They furnish us with no information at all concerning the invisible world.’22 Participation in God’s divine nature requires something more. Secondly, the Spirit’s prevenience, which secures our ability to acquire knowledge of the physical world, also enables humans to lead ethical lives. Indeed, that individuals who have not received (justifying) faith may refrain from stealing, cruelty, and other forms of sin is evidence of ‘natural conscience’, a function of prevenient grace in the economy of salvation. Drawing from his classical education at Oxford, Wesley appealed to Plato’s Apology as an example: ‘For who that was not favoured with the written Word of God ever excelled, yea, or equalled Socrates? In what other heathen can we find so strong an understanding joined with so commensurate virtue?’23 Conscience, then, which is the result of God’s normative preventing agency, is a function of the Holy Spirit. Wesley believed that natural conscience is a close corollary of reason, both of which are gifts: ‘God has given us our reason for a guide. And it is only by acting up to the dictates of it, by using all the understanding which God hath given us, that we can have a conscience

21   Wesley nuanced the relationship between faith and reason in his 1759 ‘Letter to the Reverend Mr. Downes’, in Works [BE], 9:359: ‘We do not represent faith “as altogether precluding” or at all precluding “the judgment and understanding”; rather as enlightening and strengthening the understanding, as clearing and improving the judgment. But we do represent it as “the gift of God”, yea, and a “supernatural gift”; yet it does not preclude “the evidence of reason”, though neither is it the whole foundation.’ 22   J. Wesley, ‘On the Discoveries of Faith’, in Works [BE], 4:30. 23   J. Wesley, ‘The Case of Reason Impartially Considered’, in Works [BE], 2:596.

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

62

void of offence toward God and man.’24 In his 1788 sermon, ‘On Conscience’, he defined the term as a species of reason: ‘It is a kind of silent reasoning of the mind, whereby those things which are judged to be right are approved of with pleasure; but those which are judged evil are disapproved of with uneasiness.’25 More precisely, he continued, ‘[it] is that faculty whereby we are at once conscious of our own thoughts, words, and actions, and of their merit or demerit, of their being good or bad, and consequently deserving either praise or censure.’26 The ability to reason concerning right and wrong is basic to all rational beings (compos mentis), according to Wesley.27 As soon as we begin to reason, we also begin, when confronted with moral ambiguities, to discern between right and wrong.28 In what sense is conscience natural? Although conscience is basic in the sense that all rational beings possess it, it is not properly basic to the nature of humanity in our corrupted state.29 Wesley believed that human beings are completely incapable of performing good works independent of God’s grace. If not for the prevenient work of God’s Spirit, we would remain disequilibrated in terms of knowledge of the good. Conscience is the gift of God, supernaturally bestowed to every soul that enters the world, enabling him or her to act morally. Thus, ‘it is not nature but the Son of God that is the “true light, which enlighteneth every mean which cometh into the world”. And it is his Spirit who giveth thee an inward check, who causeth thee to feel uneasy, when thou walkest in any instance contrary to the light which he hath given thee.’30 For Wesley, the gift of conscience reflects the normative presence of Christ’s Spirit who seeks to usher us into the fullness of 24

  Ibid., 592. The phrase ‘conscience void of offence’ was one that Wesley frequently employed. It is also an allusion to Acts 24:16, ‘And herein do I exercise myself, to have always a conscience void of offence toward God, and toward men.’ 25   J. Wesley, ‘On Conscience’, in Works [BE], 3:481. Wesley’s definition of ‘conscience’ reflected the ideas of his grandfather Samuel Annesley, whose sermon, Universal Conscientiousness, Wesley quotes at length. 26   Ibid., 481. 27   ‘Can it be denied that something of this is found in every man born into the world?’: ibid., 481. 28   ‘And does it [conscience] not appear as soon as the understanding opens … as soon as reason begins to dawn?’: ibid., 482. 29   ‘[Though] in one sense it [conscience] may be termed “natural”, because it is found in all men, yet properly speaking it is not natural; but a supernatural gift of God, above all natural endowments’: ibid., 482. 30   Ibid., 482.

Faith as Pneumatological Operation

63

God’s presence: ‘In order to the very existence of a good conscience, as well as to the continuance of it, the continued influence of the Spirit of God is absolutely needful.’31 An active conscience then, is evidence of God’s Spirit preparing our soul for participation in the divine nature and renewal in God’s image. Thus, reason and conscience point to the agency of the Holy Spirit in the economy of salvation: ‘ … both the one and the other … a branch of that supernatural gift of God which we usually style “preventing grace”’.32 What are the pneumatological implications of Wesley’s doctrine of prevenient grace with respect to his view of human knowledge? Reason and conscience are supernatural gifts bestowed to all human beings and evidence of God’s refusal to abandon us to utter despair, sin, and ignorance. The Spirit empowers us to know God and imbues us with basic epistemic and moral faculties. In his 1765 sermon, ‘The Scripture Way of Salvation’, Wesley defined prevenient grace as ‘all that “light” wherewith the Son of God “enlighteneth everyone that cometh into the world”, showing every man “to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with his God”; all the convictions which his Spirit from time to time works in every child of man.’33 Prevenient grace, which functions economically in terms of reason and its corollary, natural conscience, indicates the Spirit’s soteriological efficacy always at work at each successive stage in one’s journey into holiness. As Wesley put it, ‘He shows us the way wherein we should go, as well as incites us to walk therein.’34 The Spirit facilitates and sustains our knowledge of the material world, as well as awakens us from spiritual darkness to new life. Still, what are the exact limitations of reason and conscience in terms of prevenient grace with respect to knowledge of God? As stated above, Wesley suggested that reason can do much for the human person: ‘Is it not reason … which enables us to understand what the Holy Scriptures declare concerning the being and attributes of God? Concerning his eternity and immensity, his power, wisdom, and holiness?’35 He continues:

31

  Ibid., 486.   Ibid., 484. 33   J. Wesley, ‘The Scripture Way of Salvation’, in Works [BE], 2:157. 34   J. Wesley, ‘A Farther Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion, Part 2’, in Works [BE], 11:258. 35   J. Wesley, ‘The Case of Reason Impartially Considered’, in Works [BE], 2:592. 32

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

64

It is by this we understand (his Spirit opening and enlightening the eyes of our understanding) what that repentance is, not to be repented of; what is that faith whereby we are saved; what is the nature and condition of justification; what are the immediate and what the subsequent fruits of it. By reason we learn what is that new birth, without which we cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven, and what that holiness is, without which no man shall see the Lord.36

Reason is capable of acknowledging God’s existence and operation in the world. However, beyond the formation of concepts regarding God’s nature, reason cannot go. As Wesley put it, ‘reason cannot produce faith.’37 The former functions with respect to conceptual or rational knowledge about physical as well as spiritual reality, while the latter closeness with the divine. Physical sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell are adapted to meet the constraints of this world: All our external senses are evidently adapted to this external visible world. They are designed to serve us only while we sojourn here, while we dwell in these houses of clay. They have nothing to do with the invisible world; they are not adapted to it. And they can take no more cognizance of the eternal than of the invisible world, although we are as fully assured of the existence of this as of anything in the present world.38

Reason expresses and explains theological concepts, but it cannot suffice for spiritual knowledge known by faith. Wesley augmented this notion: ‘[To] supply the defect of sense; to take us up where sense sets us down, and help us over the great gulf … .’ God ‘hath appointed faith’:39 ‘[Its] office begins where that of sense ends. Sense is an evidence of things that are seen; of the visible material world, and the several parts of it. Faith, on the other hand, is the “evidence of things not seen”, of the invisible world; of all those invisible things which are revealed in the oracles of God.’40 ‘It is where sense can be of no farther use that faith comes into

36

 Ibid.   J. Wesley, ‘The Case of Reason Impartially Considered’, in Works [BE], 2:593. 38   J. Wesley, ‘Walking by Sight and Walking by Faith’, in Works [BE], 4:50–51. 39   J. Wesley, ‘On the Discoveries of Faith’, in Works [BE], 4:30. 40  Ibid. 37

Faith as Pneumatological Operation

65

our help. It is the grand desideratum: it does what none of the senses can.’41 In the Earnest Appeal, he states: What then will your reason do here? How will it pass from things natural to spiritual? From the things that are seen to those that are not seen? From the visible to the invisible world? What a gulf is here! By what art will reason get over the immense chasm? This cannot be till the Almighty come in to your succour, and give you that faith you have hitherto despised.42

Elsewhere, he suggested that faith ‘supplies the place of sense, and gives us a view of things to come … [Faith] draws aside the veil which hangs between mortal and immortal being.’43 Faith, then, is Wesley’s term for spiritual knowledge of God’s divine reality, a species of knowledge distinct from reason. Faith is intimate union with God, experienced in relation to personal conviction that God in Christ has transformed one’s life. In this sense, faith is less a matter of doctrinal assent than an inward sense or feeling of dependence upon God and participation in the life of the Spirit.44 Incidentally, clear parallels exist between Wesley and Friedrich Schleiermacher on the nature of religious experience. Schleiermacher explained religious experience as a sense of ultimate dependence upon a totalizing reality external to the self, a sense which is immediate and unfiltered with respect to prior held beliefs and feelings constitutive of our noetic structure.45 Wesley similarly described faith as an immediate sense of the divine, using the language of trust or dependence as well as intimate union. But Wesley also emphasized the importance of right belief in relation to spiritual experience. Thus, for Wesley, while faith as   J. Wesley, ‘Walking by Sight and Walking by Faith’, in Works [BE], 4:53.   J. Wesley, ‘An Earnest Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion’, in Works [BE], 11:57. 43   J. Wesley, ‘On the Discoveries of Faith’, in Works [BE], 4:32. 44   The dominant religious tradition in Britain during the long eighteenth century was Christianity. Thus, while Wesley’s pneumatology of spiritual sensation did not require conceptual or propositional assent per se, it did presuppose at least a basic understanding of Christian teaching, which was ingrained within the fabric of British popular and intellectual culture. 45   Wayne Proudfoot, Religious Experience (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 31. 41 42

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

66

spiritual perception is unmediated by concepts or beliefs, it takes root within our belief structure and cognitive functions. Wesley’s use of the term ‘faith’ must be unpacked according to two predominant senses in which he uses it. On the one hand, then, faith refers to the content ( fides quae) or articles of belief demarcating distinctive theological traditions held and preserved by respective proponents of the Christian religion.46 On the other, faith as spiritual sensation ( fides qua) refers to intimacy with God and participation in the divine life, which both transcends and incorporates our noetic structure as rational agents.47 What is the significance of each sense or property of faith in Wesley’s soteriology? Unlike spiritual sensation, fides quae is not immediately salvific. That is, according to Wesley, one’s ability to assent intellectually to articles of faith does not in itself transform us. As he explained in his 1746 sermon on ‘The Way to the Kingdom’: A man may be orthodox in every point; he may not only espouse right opinions, but zealously defend them against all opposers; he may think justly concerning the incarnation of our Lord, concerning the ever blessed Trinity, and every other doctrine contained in the oracles of God. He may assent to all the three creeds – that called the Apostles’, the Nicene, and the Athanasian – and yet ‘tis possible he may have no religion at all, no more than a Jew, Turk, or Pagan.48 46

  For example, Wesley spent considerable amounts of time and energy responding to Calvinist theologies of ‘election’ and ‘perseverance’ with which he ardently disagreed. See Allan Coppedge, John Wesley in Theological Debate (Wilmore, KY: Wesley Heritage Press, 1987). 47   I disagree that Wesley’s ‘mature theology of faith’ somehow excludes his emphasis upon ‘the content’ of the Christian faith. See Mealey, ‘Taste and See that the Lord is Good: John Wesley in the Christian Tradition of Spiritual Sensation’, 10. In Wesley’s 1788 sermon on faith, despite his explicit definition of faith as a ‘divine evidence and conviction of God and the things of God’, it was precisely faith understood as the ‘content of belief’ that enables him to rank the distinctive theological positions with which he was familiar (that is, the ‘materialist’, ‘deist’, ‘heathen’, ‘Jewish’, ‘Roman Catholic’, and ‘Protestant’ faiths). Both dimensions of faith were significant in Wesley’s theology – ‘spiritual sensation’ for soteriological reasons, and the ‘content of faith’ for its doctrinal importance. 48   J. Wesley, ‘The Way to the Kingdom’, in Works [BE], 1:220. See also Wesley’s Response to Josiah Tucker, ‘The Principles of a Methodist’, in Works [BE], 9:52–3. There, Wesley claimed that ‘even the devils believe that “Christ was born of a virgin, that he wrought all kind of miracles, declaring himself to be very God, that for our sakes he died and rose again and ascended into heaven, and at the end of the world shall come again to

Faith as Pneumatological Operation

67

Although fides quae provides boundaries for right belief and practice, it is through intimate knowledge of God ( fides qua) that the believer is refashioned in the divine. Wesley began to make this distinction early on in his life, especially during his studies at Christ Church, Oxford in the early 1720s.49 Among the most formative influences in this regard was his mother, Susanna. Their correspondence during the 1720s when Wesley was at Oxford shows the depth of impact she had upon his early theology of faith. Susanna challenged him to consider faith not just in terms of logical statements about God, but also as personal awareness of God in Christ. Initially, Wesley was reluctant to make the distinction here defined as fides qua and fide quae, as he expressed it in a letter to Susanna: ‘Faith must … be resolved into reason. God is true, therefore what he says is true. He hath said this, therefore this is true. When anyone can bring me more reasonable propositions than these, I am ready to assent to them.’50 Wesley initially described faith in terms of logical deduction. However, as early as 22 November 1725, his thinking shifted. In a letter to Susanna dated that day, Wesley declared: ‘I am therefore at length come over entirely to your opinion, that saving faith (including practice) is an assent to what God has revealed, because he has revealed it, and not because the truth of it may be evinced by reason.’51 In other words, he now believed that saving faith and logical assent are two distinct species of knowledge. Saving faith, Wesley eventually came to believe, is better understood in terms of trust and intimacy, or participation. Reflecting autobiographically upon this shift approximately twenty years afterward, Wesley professed to then being ‘ignorant of the nature of saving faith … apprehending it to mean no more than a “firm assent to all the propositions contained in the Old and New Testament”.’52 As a result of his discussions with Susanna, he came to view faith as something far more personal than logical assent. judge the quick and the dead.” This the devils believe, and so they believe all that is written in the Old and New Testament. And yet still, for all this faith, they are but devils. They remain still in their damnable estate, lacking true Christian faith.’ 49   For an extensive bibliography of his reading list at Oxford, see Richard P. Heitzenrater, ‘John Wesley and the Oxford Methodists’ (Doctoral Dissertation: Duke University, 1972). According to David Bebbington, Cambridge Platonist John Norris was among Wesley’s favourite in this respect. See Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, 49. 50   Works [BE], 25:176. 51   Ibid., 188. 52   J. Wesley, ‘A Farther Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion, Part 1’, in Works [BE], 11:176–7.

68

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

In addition to Susanna Wesley’s influence, John Wesley’s theology of faith as intimate union with God reflects another source, Cambridge Platonist, John Smith (not to be confused with ‘John Smith’ from the 1745–48 correspondence),53 whose work ‘A Discourse Concerning the True Nature of Attaining Divine Knowledge’ John Wesley included in A Christian Library (1750–55).54 If Smith is indeed a formative source, this would reinforce the possible theological connection between the Cambridge Platonists and John Wesley argued by Stephen Long.55 Despite minor alterations, Wesley preserved the majority of the work’s content, which suggests continuity of theological thought. Smith’s explication of divine knowledge resonates with Wesley’s theology of faith on a number of levels: [The] true method of knowing … is not so much by notions as actions; as religion itself consists not so much in words as things. They are not always the best skilled in divinity, that are the most studied in art and science. He that is most practical in Divine things, hath the purest and sincerest knowledge of them. Divinity indeed is a true efflux from the eternal light, which, like the sunbeams, does not only enlighten but warm and enliven; and therefore our Saviour hath in his beatitudes connected purity of heart with the beatific vision. And as the eye cannot behold the sun, unless it be sun-like, and hath the form and resemblance of the sun drawn in it; so neither can the soul of man behold God, unless it be God-like, hath God formed in it, and be made partaker of the Divine nature. The 53   Numerous other sources helped to shape Wesley’s theology of faith as spiritual sensation. See Albert Outler, John Wesley, 3–33. Here, just two are highlighted, Susanna because of the ongoing influence she had on John Wesley’s theology and the tendency to overlook her contribution in favour of more widely known and universally received representatives of both the Western and Eastern canons, and the second because it underscores the possibility of a real theological connection between Wesley and the Cambridge Platonists, which is worth further exploring. 54   John Smith (1618–52) studied at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, taking his B.A. and M.A. degrees (1636–44); after which, he was named fellow of Queens College. Wesley’s appreciation for Smith’s Discourse runs deep. Aside from a grammatical streamlining of the text and the occasional omission of ancient Greek references, Wesley’s 1750 version of John Smith’s discourse concerning ‘Divine Knowledge’ rarely alters the content of Simon Patrick’s 1660 edition. However, Wesley does omit Smith’s emphasis on innate ideas, along with his claim for ‘hidden mysteries of divine truth, wrapped up one with another, which cannot be discerned but only by divine Epoptists’ (cf., John Smith, Selected Discourses, ed. Simon Patrick [1660], 6–8). 55  Long, John Wesley’s Moral Theology, 13.

Faith as Pneumatological Operation

69

apostle Paul, when he would lay open the right way of attaining Divine truth, saith, ‘Knowledge puffeth up, but love edifieth.’ The knowledge of Divinity that appears in systems and models, is but a poor wan light, but the powerful energy of Divine knowledge displays itself in purified souls.56

Knowledge of God, according to Smith, is not bound up with ‘notions’. Spiritual awareness occurs as believers partake of the divine nature and experience intimacy with God, which Smith associated with purity and holy living. Divine knowledge is not a matter of ‘systems and models’ but participation: ‘What are all our most sublime speculations of the Deity, that are not impregnated with true godliness, but insipid things that have no taste or life in them, that do but swell like empty froth in the souls of men.’57 Like Smith, Wesley believed that saving faith entails partaking or participation in the divine. In addition to intellectual assent to theological propositions ( fides quae), faith is union with God ( fides qua). What role does the Holy Spirit play in fostering spiritual participation? In what sense is fides qua a pneumatological operation? Wesley used a number of figurative expressions to explain his theology of spiritual sensation, each of which was a metaphor for saving faith: ‘[It] may easily be observed that the substance of all these figurative expressions is comprised in that one word “faith”, taken in its widest sense; being enjoyed, more or less, by everyone that believes in the name of the Son of God.’58 The images of heart circumcision, divine consciousness, and spiritual birth not only help to supplement what is known of Wesley understanding of the term ‘spiritual sensation’,59 but also to demonstrate the spiritual current animating Wesley’s theology of faith as intimate union or participation with the Holy Spirit’s person and work. In his same titled sermon preached on New Year’s Day in 1733, Wesley used the expression ‘heart circumcision’60 to expound upon the Spirit’s role in fostering our 56

  John Smith, ‘A Discourse Concerning the True Method of Attaining Divine Knowledge’, in A Christian Library, Vol. XI (London: 1821), 140. 57   Ibid., 143. 58   J. Wesley, ‘On Living without God’, in Works [BE], 4:173. 59   See Mark Mealey, ‘John Wesley’s Use of the Idea of the Spiritual Senses in His Definitions of Faith and the New Birth’, in Canadian Methodist Historical Society Papers, vol. 13 (1999–2000): 151–75. 60   Wesley’s sermon on the topic was based on Rom. 2:29: ‘Circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter.’

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

70

spiritual life in the divine. Though pre-dating his evangelical understanding of the doctrine of justification by faith, which he would later glean from the Moravians, his theology of heart circumcision given here links faith as spiritual sensation to the work of the Holy Spirit. He laid special emphasis upon spiritual perception as the gift of those who strive for holiness. Right or wrong, he was convinced that Oxford had become a place of lax discipline that was filled with ‘natural men’ who supplant true Christian virtue with moralism.61 Wesley defined ‘the natural man’ as one who trusts in reason above revelation, who rejects the supernatural activity of God, and who limits the Spirit’s operation to normal works of human morality. Wesley professed that such a person does not know God, because divine truth is a matter of spiritual, not natural sensation. To know God requires heart circumcision, or in other words, that one’s acts of mercy and love be motivated by trust in God. Wesley would agree that anyone who trusts his or her own abilities, rather than abiding in God, cannot know the life which God invites us to enjoy. As he put it, the natural man is blind to the Spirit and the true meaning of Scripture: [Natural men and women] ‘receiveth not the’ words ‘of the Spirit of God’, taken in their plain and obvious meaning. ‘They are foolishness unto him; neither’ indeed ‘can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned:’ they are perceivable only by that spiritual sense which in him was never yet awakened, for want of which he must reject as idle fancies of men what are both the ‘wisdom’ and the ‘power of God’.62

Thus, ‘natural men’ cannot discern spiritual truth (either directly or indirectly through Scripture), because their spiritual senses have not been awakened. They have not received the words of the Spirit because they do not have saving faith in God. Wesley repeated this notion, that the spiritual senses must be awakened   See Jeremy Gregory, ‘The Long Eighteenth Century’, in The Cambridge Companion to John Wesley, Randy Maddox and Jason Vickers, eds (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 27. In response to the historiographical tendency to demonize the Church of England and venerate Wesley’s spirituality, Gregory observes the following: ‘There is at the moment, then, a debate between optimists and pessimists about the state of the Church in the eighteenth century.’ In other words, recent scholarship suggests that the Church of England during the long eighteenth century was likely not the lifeless ecclesial entity that many historians, especially from inside Methodism, have made it out to be. 62   J. Wesley, ‘The Circumcision of the Heart’, in Works [BE], 1:402. 61

Faith as Pneumatological Operation

71

to experience divine knowledge, in his sermon on ‘The Spirit of Bondage and of Adoption’, published in 1746: His spiritual senses are not awake; they discern neither spiritual good nor evil. The eyes of his understanding are closed; they are sealed together, and see not … Hence, having no inlet for the knowledge of spiritual things, all the avenues of his soul being shut up, he is in gross, stupid ignorance of whatever he is most concerned to know. He is utterly ignorant of God, knowing nothing concerning him as he ought to know.63

However, Wesley suggested that spiritual blindness has an immediate remedy. When pride and self-love are exchanged for intellectual humility and a spirit of contrition, spiritual consciousness begins to flourish. Indeed, ‘“the eyes of his understanding being enlightened,” he sees what is his calling’; ‘He feels what is “the exceeding greatness of his power” who, as he raised up Christ from the dead, so is able to quicken us … “by his Spirit which dwelleth in us”.’64 The natural man, as soon as his spiritual senses are awakened, begins to see by faith. To Wesley, this transformation is accomplished by the power of God, the Holy Spirit. Again, it should be noted that while Wesley’s doctrine of justification by faith, which he would come to embrace through close ties with the Moravian Brethren, had yet to take root in his evangel by 1733, the ground was already fertile. He used the term ‘faith’ (or some variant thereof)65 no less than twenty times, and even went so far as to claim that faith is the condition of heart circumcision: Another truth which naturally follows from what has been said is that none shall obtain the honor that cometh of God unless his heart be circumcised by faith, even a ‘faith of the operation of God’; unless, refusing to be any longer led by 63   J. Wesley, ‘The Spirit of Bondage and of Adoption’, in Works [BE], 1:251. See also ‘A Caution Against Bigotry’, in Works [BE], 2:66. Here Wesley describes the natural man as one who has been ensnared by the devil: ‘The conqueror holds his captives so much the safer because they imagine themselves at liberty … neither the deist nor the nominal Christian suspects he is there … He blinds the eyes of their understanding so that the light of the glorious gospel of Christ cannot shine upon them. He chains their souls down to earth and hell with the chains of their own vile affections.’ 64   J. Wesley, ‘The Circumcision of the Heart’, in Works [BE], 1:405. 65   That is, including the words: ‘faithful’ and ‘faithfully’.

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

72

his senses, appetites, or passions, or even by that blind leader of the blind, so idolized by the world, natural reason, he lives and ‘walks by faith’; directs every step, as ‘seeing him that is invisible’, ‘looks not at the things that are seen, which are temporal, but at the things that are not seen, which are eternal’; and governs all his desires, designs, and thoughts, all his actions and conversations, as one who is entered in within the veil, where Jesus sits at the right hand of God.66

Early on in his career, Wesley preached that the heart must be circumcised by faith. Faith is the only means of ‘seeking Him that is invisible’, of perceiving ‘the things that are not seen, which are eternal’. Wesley’s sermon, ‘The Circumcision of the Heart’, illustrates an important theme present especially in his later writings. Saving faith and spiritual sensation both refer to the same event: God consciousness ( fides qua), facilitated by the redemptive work of the Holy Spirit, and experienced in terms of intimacy and participation. But what does it mean to say that the Spirit awakens our faculty for divine consciousness? What does the image of consciousness itself suggest about the Holy Spirit’s work and mission with respect to saving faith in Wesley’s theology? Charles Wesley’s sermon, ‘Awake, Thou that Sleepest’, which John included in his first edition of Sermons on Several Occasions (1746), substantiates the Spirit’s role as God’s self-revealing energy with respect to spiritual consciousness. Although John was not its author, the text nevertheless endorses his views on the subject, lest it would have been excluded from publication with his name attached. Charles used the term ‘sleepers’ to describe any human being confined by sin to unconsciousness of God’s reality. Conscious percipients of God’s love enjoy union with God through faith in Christ. Every other, according to Charles, ‘sleeps on still, and takes his rest, though hell is moved from beneath to meet him’.67 As such, the sleeper’s soul does not recognize the truth of God’s relational nature: ‘Having eyes, he sees not; he hath ears, and hears not.’ He doth not ‘taste and see that the Lord is gracious’. He ‘hath not seen God at any time’, nor ‘heard his voice’, nor ‘handled the Word of life’ … The soul that sleepeth in death

  J. Wesley, ‘The Circumcision of the Heart’, in Works [BE], 1:410.   C. Wesley, ‘Awake, Thou that Sleepest’, in Works [BE], 1:143.

66 67

Faith as Pneumatological Operation

73

hath no perception of any objects of this kind. His heart is ‘past feeling’, and understandeth none of these things.68

Here, the image of divine consciousness, a synonym for spiritual sensation, functions as Wesley’s primary metaphor for saving faith. Obvious parallels exist between Charles’s statements regarding the ‘sleeper’ and John’s earlier sentiments concerning the ‘natural man’. Charles made the connection explicit: … having no spiritual senses, no inlets of spiritual knowledge, the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; nay he is so far from receiving them that whatever is spiritually discerned is mere foolishness unto him. He is not content with being utterly ignorant of spiritual things, but he denies the very existence of them. And spiritual sensation itself is to him the foolishness of folly.69

Echoing John’s sentiments from 1733, Charles claimed that ‘natural men’ scoff at true religion. They cannot see God, because they do not possess saving faith. Both brothers agreed that participation in God’s life is tantamount to believing ‘on the Lord Jesus, with a faith which is his gift, by the operation of the Holy Spirit’.70 Divine consciousness occurs as the life of God illuminates the soul of the believer. When these two sermons are compared side by side, it is clear that the metaphor of spiritual sensation is extended differently by each author. John suggested that the spiritual senses lie dormant in the individual until justification occurs. Charles on the other hand suggested that the spiritual senses are non-existent prior to the individual’s reception of justifying grace. However, both would agree that spiritual sensation refers to faith, which serves to confirm their understanding of the Spirit’s mission in terms of God’s self-revealing energy. ‘Faith is the divine evidence whereby the spiritual man discerneth God and the things of God … It is the spiritual sensation of every soul that is born of God.’71

68

    70   71   11:46. 69

Ibid., 145–6. Ibid., 146. Ibid., 147. J. Wesley, ‘An Earnest Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion’, in Works [BE],

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

74

Given Wesley’s view that humanity’s faculty for spiritual perception becomes active at the new birth, in what sense is the new birth a pneumatological event? Wesley published a sermon called ‘The Marks of the New Birth’ in 1746, which was closely followed by a second one dealing with similar themes, ‘The Great Privilege of those that are Born of God’ (1747/8). Together, the sermons outline his understanding of John 3:8 and 1 John 3:9, respectively. In the second of the two, Wesley described spiritual birth as ‘a vast inward change; a change wrought on the soul by the operation of the Holy Ghost, a change in the whole manner of our existence’ whereby ‘we live in quite another manner than we did before; we are, as it were, in another world.’72 For Wesley, this change, which is the effect of the Holy Spirit’s operation, transforms us for holiness. When born again, we pass from spiritual darkness to life, becoming children of God through the merits of Christ. To Wesley, the new birth is a foretaste of kingdom come, an experience that transcends rational circumscription. What practical fruits accompany the new birth with respect to the human agent’s inward and outward transformation? Wesley suggested that contrition, humility, and penitence are necessary conditions of spiritual birth, but faith alone is its sufficient condition.73 Here, Wesley defined faith as more than ‘barely notional or speculative … [it is] a disposition which God hath wrought in his heart; “a sure trust and confidence in God that through the merits of Christ his sins are forgiven, and he reconciled to the favour of God”.’74 Becoming a child of God requires saving faith, here described as a disposition of trust and confidence in the work of Christ and a sense of forgiveness. Wesley illustrated this change using the image of physical birth:75 The child which is not yet born subsists indeed by the air … but feels it not, nor anything else, unless in a very dull and imperfect manner. [She] hears little, if at all, the organs of hearing being as yet closed up. It sees nothing, having its eyes fast shut, and being surrounded with utter darkness. There are, it may be,   J. Wesley, ‘The Great Privilege of Those that are Born of God’, in Works [BE], 1:432. 73   J. Wesley, ‘The Marks of the New Birth’, in Works [BE], 1:417. 74   Ibid., 418–19. 75   Ibid., 432: ‘ … there is so near a resemblance between the circumstances of the natural and of the spiritual birth … that to consider the circumstances of the natural birth is the most easy way to understand the spiritual.’ 72

Faith as Pneumatological Operation

75

some faint beginnings of life when the time of its birth draws nigh, and some motion consequent thereon, whereby it is distinguished from a mere mass of matter. But it has no senses; all these avenues of the soul are hitherto quite shut up. Of consequence it has scarce any intercourse with this visible world, nor any knowledge, conception, or idea of the things that occur therein.76

Prior to birth, our faculty for physical sensation lies dormant. As Wesley put it, the ‘senses … are not yet opened in [the] soul … whereby alone it is possible to hold commerce with the material world.’77 However, as soon as the child is born, he or she immediately begins to form simple ideas: He now feels the air with which he is surrounded, and which pours into him from every side, as fast as he alternately breathes it back, to sustain the flame of life. And hence springs a continual increase of strength, of motion, and of sensation; all the bodily senses being now awakened and furnished with their proper objects … His eyes are now opened to perceive the light, which silently flowing in upon them discovers not only itself but an infinite variety of things with which before he was wholly unacquainted. His ears are unclosed, and sounds rush in with endless diversity. Every sense is employed upon such objects as are peculiarly suitable to it. And by these inlets the soul, having an open intercourse with the visible world, acquires more and more knowledge of sensible things, of all the things which are under the sun.78

As we continue to explore and experience physical reality, first forming simple ideas and later complex ones, we become aware of having been conscious agents all along. According to Wesley, the same is true of the new birth. Before one is born from above: Before that great change is wrought, although he subsists by him in whom all that have life ‘live and move and have their being’, yet he is not sensible of God. He does not feel, he has no inward consciousness of his presence. He does not 76

  Ibid., 433.  Ibid. 78  Ibid. 77

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

76

perceive that divine breath of life without which he cannot subsist a moment. Nor is he sensible of any of the things of God.79

Prior to spiritual birth, humanity is unconscious of God’s reality: ‘He seeth not the things of the Spirit of God, the eyes of his understanding being closed, and utter darkness covering his whole soul, surrounding him on either side.’80 To Wesley, our spiritual sense lays dormant; this view is distinct from the one adopted by Charles in ‘Awake, Thou that Sleepest’, who suggested that prior to justification and the new birth, our spiritual sense is non-existent. Despite this difference, both John and Charles would agree that prior to the new birth, God’s spiritual reality remains hidden to us. Once the believer is born again, he or she begins to know and enjoy God. To Wesley, spiritual birth is a dialectical event between humanity and the divine, through which the Holy Spirit breathes life ‘into the new-born soul’, which we in turn respire through our actions and devotion to God: ‘the same breath which comes from, returns to God.’81 Inspiration is ‘continually received by faith, so it is continually rendered back by love … the breath of every soul … truly born of God.’82 New birth, then, is a pneumatological event signifying God’s power and presence in the economy of salvation, through which believers are awakened from darkness to spiritual consciousness and new life. It is an event in which the Holy Spirit awakens us to saving faith in Christ. When individuals are born from above, we begin to use our spiritual sense, which is Wesley’s metaphor for faith ( fides qua) denoting intimacy, union, participation, and dispositional trust in God. Wesley underscored the pneumatological character of faith as spiritual sensation and the new birth in his 1765 Sermon, ‘The Scripture Way of Salvation’: By this twofold operation of the Holy Spirit – having the eyes of our soul both opened and enlightened – we see the things which the natural ‘eye hath not seen, neither the ear heard’. We have a prospect of the invisible things of God. We see the spiritual world, which is all round about us, and yet no more discerned

79

  Ibid., 433–4.   Ibid., 434. 81  Ibid. 82  Ibid. 80

Faith as Pneumatological Operation

77

by our natural faculties than if it had no being; and we see the eternal world, piercing through the veil which hangs between time and eternity. Clouds and darkness then rest upon it no more, but we already see the glory which shall be revealed.83

The Spirit both awakens and enlightens our spiritual senses. When enlightened by the Spirit, our sight becomes faithful. In so far as we experience the light of grace by the Spirit of power, we participate in the divine nature. Wesley’s theology of the new birth, along with the images of heart circumcision and divine consciousness, indicate the primacy of the Spirit’s mission with respect to fostering intimate knowledge of God. In summary, Wesley believed that human beings are epistemically sustained by the Holy Spirit’s prevenient grace subsequent to original sin. Reason, as such, enables human beings to think critically and act morally. However, notwithstanding the goods it provides us, reason is powerless to mediate divine knowledge. Over and above our natural faculties, faith is required for true religious or spiritual knowledge. Wesley conceived of faith in two important respects. Using the terms fides quae and fides qua, we distinguished between Wesley’s concept of faith as assent to conceptual or propositional knowledge (the Christian deposit) and faith as spiritual sensation or divine participation. Wesley began to make this distinction early on, prompted by the influence of Susanna Wesley and others during his Oxford years. Thus with respect to perceptible inspiration as pneumatological model, faith is the direct result of the Holy Spirit’s salvific operation in the economy of salvation. By grace, earlier defined in terms of God’s ontological and soteriological relationality, spiritual sensation becomes viable in human agents. Indeed, according to Wesley, it is only by the power of ‘“the Spirit, which is of God” – the sum of all promises – “that we … know the things that are freely given to us of God.”’84 The Holy Spirit, the light of God’s countenance and the power facilitating our response to the divine initiative to redeem us, illuminates our souls with faith.

  J. Wesley, ‘The Scripture Way of Salvation’, in Works [BE], 2:161.   C. Wesley, ‘Awake, Thou that Sleepest’, in Works [BE], 1:153.

83 84

This page has been left blank intentionally

Chapter 4

Witness of the Spirit as Pneumatological Operation

In John Wesley’s theology, God is the source of spiritual truth. By faith ( fides qua), which transcends and incorporates reason, believers perceive the wide panorama of God’s spiritual presence, which envelops all things seen and unseen. Still, to Wesley, what exactly does faith perceive?1 Daniel Luby has suggested that ‘we can answer that question by saying that faith perceives what God has revealed.’2 While this is correct in a general sense, Wesley also believed that the Holy Spirit provides an inward testimony of divine fellowship to human beings, which is sensible by faith. Such a testimony, when received by human agents, confirms for the individual God’s communicative and relational nature, that God is the Father of all spirits and seeks to draw near to men and women of faith. To perceive inspiration, then, is to sense the testimony of God’s Spirit within the soul. In this chapter, Wesley’s doctrine of the dual witness of the Spirit and assurance will be considered as pneumatological operations with respect to perceptible inspiration as via Spiritus. What does Wesley mean when he uses testimony or witness of the Spirit language?3 In his theology, the testimony of the Spirit signifies the moment at 1

  See Joseph W. Cunningham, ‘A New Trajectory in Wesleyan Pneumatology: “Perceptible Inspiration” Reconsidered’, in Wesleyan Theological Journal, 45 (2) (2010): 242–61. This chapter was adapted from previous publication. 2   Luby, ‘The Perceptibility of Grace’, 167. Specifically, he lists ‘supernatural revelation’, ‘God’s self-disclosure’, ‘God’s love’, and ‘His holiness’. While this is true in a general sense, Wesley’s writings lend a more precise response, which, in turn, will also address the issue of coherence raised by Mark Mealey. See Mealey, ‘Taste and See that the Lord is Good: John Wesley in the Christian Tradition of Spiritual Sensation’, 255. 3   Wesley expressly preferred one term over the other: ‘I use the phrase, “testimony [or witness] of the Spirit”, rather than “inspiration”, because it has a more determinate meaning’: J. Wesley, ‘A Letter to John Smith’, in Works [BE], 26:232.

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

80

which one becomes personally aware of the Spirit’s presence. It refers to the point when the believer senses that God’s Spirit has witnessed to him or her directly. The event is twofold. As Wesley put it, ‘there is in every believer both the testimony of God’s Spirit, and the testimony of his own, that he is a child of God.’4 What are the distinguishing marks of each? The first or direct testimony refers to spiritual encounter unmediated by reason, and the second or indirect testimony serves to confirm one’s religious experience through conscience and holy living. Wesley explained that the former precedes the latter, given that holiness of heart and life is the fruit of spiritual encounter with God and the immediate result, rather than prerequisite, of the Spirit’s inspiring energy. Thus, before the human agent can become conscious of God’s work in us, that work must already be begun. The love of God shed abroad in the heart through the Spirit’s restorative operation first gives rise to direct spiritual knowledge perceived relationally by faith (our spiritual sense); subsequently, the human spirit reflects back using his or her rational faculties. The dual testimony forms a lasting imprint on the soul, according to Wesley. It signifies arousal from ‘spiritual slumber’ to personal awareness of filial relationship with God. As Wesley put it, ‘the testimony of the Spirit is an inward impression on the soul, whereby the Spirit of God directly “witnesses to my spirit that I am a child of God”; that Jesus Christ hath loved me, and given himself for me; that all my sins are blotted out, and I, even I, am reconciled to God.’5 The direct witness of the Spirit is God’s mode of conveying the personal dimension of his love to human beings, which humans experience by faith. In turn, the indirect witness is marked by our spirit’s acknowledgment of God’s love – a physical awareness, which gives birth to practical holiness. Wesley wrote, ‘we must love God before we can be holy at all … this being the root of all holiness. Now we cannot love God [until] we know he loves us … and we cannot know his pardoning love to us [until] his Spirit witnesses it to our spirit.’6 While distinct in kind, the direct testimony is nevertheless conjoined to the indirect witness in the economy of salvation, just as fides qua is linked to fides quae: ‘Not as standing

  J. Wesley, ‘The Witness of the Spirit – Discourse I’, in Works [BE], 1:271.   Ibid., 274. 6  Ibid. 4 5

Witness of the Spirit as Pneumatological Operation

81

alone, not as a single witness, but as connected with the other; as giving a joint testimony, testifying with our spirit that we are children of God’.7 Before proceeding to define Wesley’s concept of the dual witness as pneumatological operation, what influences shaped his theology of the testimony of the Spirit? After Wesley reached the shores of America in February 1736, Moravian minister and missionary August Spangenberg gave him spiritual advice. Wesley’s account of their meeting runs as follows: ‘He [Spangenberg] said, “My brother, I must first ask you one or two questions. Have you the witness within yourself? Does the Spirit of God bear witness with your spirit that you are a child of God?” I was surprised, and knew not what to answer.’8 While this meeting was a watershed moment in Wesley’s spiritual journey, it is unlikely that their exchange was what initially led Wesley to embrace the language of witness of the Spirit. Wesley was already familiar with the phrase by the time of their meeting. It was rooted in the Christian Scriptures, which he had studied during his childhood, adolescence, and collegiate years,9 and moreover, a topic he himself had preached on in 1733 at St Mary’s, Oxford, where he claimed that heart circumcision implies ‘even the testimony of their own spirit with the Spirit which witnesses in their hearts, that they are the children of God.’10 Wesley’s father may have also used it on at least one occasion.11 Thus, although the influence of the Moravians likely solidified Wesley’s use of the expression, it was not the original source. According to John Newton, the more probable source was Wesley’s parents, Susanna in particular.12 Susanna and Samuel Wesley both came from non-conformist backgrounds. John Wesley’s grandfathers were both dissenting ministers. Though Susanna and Samuel ultimately decided to throw in their lots with the Church of England, still their theological inheritance was marked by a   J. Wesley, ‘The Witness of the Spirit – Discourse II’, in Works [BE], 1:295.   Works [BE], 18:146.  9   See Kenneth Collins, John Wesley: A Theological Journey (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2003), especially Chapters 1 and 2. 10   J. Wesley, ‘The Circumcision of the Heart’, in Works [BE], 1:406. 11   J. Wesley, ‘Letter to “John Smith”’, in Works [BE], 26:289. According to John Wesley, some of the last words spoken by Samuel Wesley Sr to his son John were regarding the inward witness of the Spirit: ‘“The inward witness, son, the inward witness,” said he to me, “that is the proof, the strongest proof, of Christianity”.’ 12   See John Newton, Susanna Wesley and the Puritan Tradition in Methodism (London: Epworth Press, 2003).  7  8

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

82

Puritan upbringing. This being the case, witness of the Spirit language may have found its way into Samuel and Susanna’s Epworth home as well. Henry Rack has cautioned this reading, however, suggesting that ‘at the devotional level there was much common ground between pious people of the early eighteenth century.’13 In other words, the phrase had become a widespread feature of evangelical piety accepted by proponents of varying denominations during the early-modern period. This means that John Wesley could have gleaned it from any number of sources. While it would be interesting to discover if there were any significant differences in the way that various theological traditions employed the expression, such would surpass the boundaries of the present investigation. Incidentally, in the 1760s, Wesley began to incorporate into his theology the possibility of perceiving numerous, distinctive witnesses of the Holy Spirit; which is to say, he allowed that a believer may experience the ‘testimony of God’s Spirit with “ours”’ concerning both regeneration in the Spirit, as well as exculpation from sin. In a letter from 18 June 1767, Wesley made the following distinction, which emphasized the importance of both the dual-witnesses of justification and of sanctification: ‘The witness of sanctification as well as justification is the privilege of God’s children. And you may have the one always clear as well as the other if you walk humbly and closely with God.’14 Wesley even espoused the notion that Christians could experience two or three dual-testimonies of the Holy Spirit – each relating to different aspects of God’s salvific work, which he further expressed in the Plain Account of Christian Perfection (1777): But how do you know, that you are sanctified, saved from your inbred corruption? … We know it by the witness and by the fruits of the Spirit. And, First, by the witness. As, when we were justified, the Spirit bore witness with our spirit, that our sins were forgiven; so, when we were sanctified, he bore witness, that they were taken away. Indeed, the witness of sanctification is not always clear at first; (as neither is that of justification;) neither is it afterward always the same, but, like that of justification, sometimes stronger and sometimes fainter. Yea, and

 Rack, Reasonable Enthusiast, 47.   Letters, 5:50.

13 14

Witness of the Spirit as Pneumatological Operation

83

sometimes it is withdrawn. Yet, in general, the latter testimony of the Spirit is both as clear and as steady as the former.15

Wesley suggested that one could experience a dual-testimony of final salvation or glorification,16 though he later toned down this claim in the Plain Account.17 However, despite such provisions, it is clear from his writings that the overarching pattern for experiencing inspiration was as one continual witness, where God breathes into the soul the direct witness, and in consequence, the human spirit responds with physical awareness of the event, the indirect witness. Spiritual knowledge admits of ‘innumerable’ degrees.18 The inspirant ‘continually receives into his soul the breath of life from God, the gracious influence of his Spirit, and continually renders it back; [the spiritual-born] thus … perceives the continual actings of God upon his spirit, and by a kind of spiritual re-action returns the grace he receives in unceasing love’.19 Thus, while Wesley did not deny that testimonies concerning both justification and sanctification are possible, his main concern was to promote sustained perception of the dual witness of the Spirit of adoption: ‘encourage one another … to pray for and expect the continual and direct witness of the Spirit.’20 The witness of the Spirit is a central feature of John Wesley’s pneumatology of perceptible inspiration. Spiritual sensation refers to faith, which serves as humanity’s faculty for perceiving the testimony of the Spirit. But how do   J. Wesley, ‘A Plain Account of Christian Perfection’, in Works, 11:420.   ‘I see several [biblical texts] which speak of the plerophory (or full assurance) of hope. And whoever has this is divinely assured “I shall dwell with God in glory.”’ See Wesley’s letter to Mrs Crosby on 12 September 1766: Letters, 5:26. 17   J. Wesley, ‘A Plain Account of Christian Perfection’, in Works, 11:422. ‘“But have any a testimony from the Spirit that they shall never sin?” “We know not what God may vouchsafe to some particular persons; but we do not find any general state described in Scripture, from which a man cannot draw back to sin. If there were any state wherein this was impossible, it would be that of these who are sanctified, who are ‘fathers in Christ, who rejoice evermore, pray without ceasing, and in everything give thanks;’ but it is not impossible for these to draw back. They who are sanctified yet may fall and perish.”’ 18   See Wesley’s letter to Miss March from 14 March 1768: ‘There are innumerable degrees, both in a justified and a sanctified state, more that it is possible for us exactly to define’: Letters, 5:81. 19   J. Wesley, ‘The Great Privilege of those that are Born of God’, in Works [BE], 1:435–6. 20   See J. Wesley’s letter to Mrs Bennis written on 24 July 1769. Letters, 5:142. 15 16

84

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

consciousness and spiritual consciousness relate? Furthermore, if the testimony of God’s Spirit is tantamount to intimate participation in God’s life and transcends reason, then what intelligible shape, if any, does such an experience take? What does Wesley mean exactly by the ‘direct witness’? Acknowledging the ineffability of the Holy Spirit’s work (in se), Wesley described the testimony of God’s Spirit in terms of its effects within the human agent physiologically as well as morally. Inward feeling, with respect to direct spiritual perception,21 is Wesley’s synonym for the affective disposition that something ‘other’ is the case, a disposition which is neither fleeting nor capricious, and which is generated within our knowing faculties, stimulated by the divine. Wesley’s understanding of inward feeling in relation to direct perception bears traces of apophatic spirituality, and reflects the influence of his contemporary, Jonathan Edwards,22 whose work ‘A Narrative of the Late Work of God in Northampton’ (first published in 1737) Wesley published in A Christian Library (1750–55). This influence suggests continuity between varying figures within the wider cultural, religious phenomenon of early evangelicalism. Edwards explained that for many believers, spiritual experience is inexpressible and beyond utterance: ‘They speak much of the inexpressibleness of what they experience, [of] how their words fail, so that they can in no wise declare it: Of the superlative excellency of that delight of soul, which they sometimes enjoy.’23 ‘[They] feel an inward ardour and burning of heart, the like to which thy never experienced before: They have new appetites, new breathings and pantings of heart, “and groanings that cannot be uttered.”’24 Wesley similarly described inward experience of God as a kind of warmth and unexpected feeling, which he wrote in his journal for 24 May 1738: ‘I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ alone for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved 21   See Gregory S. Clapper, John Wesley on Religious Affections: His Views on Experience and Emotion and Their Role in the Christian Life and Theology (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1989). Clapper’s study likewise highlights the crucial nature of inward feeling and its place in Wesley’s spirituality. 22   Jonathan Edwards (1703–58) was a prominent New England Evangelist, theologian, and philosopher. Shaped by his commitment to Reformed (Calvinistic) theology, he was largely responsible for initiating the first ‘Great Awakening’ in America during the 1730s. 23   Jonathan Edwards, ‘A Narrative of the Late Work of God at and near Northampton, in New England’, in A Christian Library, John Wesley, ed. Vol. XXX (London: 1827), 115. 24   Ibid., 136.

Witness of the Spirit as Pneumatological Operation

85

me from the law of sin and death.’25 To both Wesley and Edwards, direct encounter was descriptive in terms of feeling stimulated by the presence of the Divine, a feeling that transcends and incorporates the human agent’s knowing faculties. It is immediate with respect to our natural faculties. The direct witness is sensed spiritually by faith, which, in our sinful condition, is not part of our functional epistemic equipment and must be awakened: ‘It is by faith … beholding “that light of … the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” we perceive, as in a glass, all that is in ourselves, yea, the inmost motions of our souls. And by this alone can that blessed love of God be “shed abroad in our hearts”, which enables us so to love one another as Christ loved us.’26 How did other contemporaries in the evangelical revival view inward feeling in terms of spiritual knowledge? Charles Wesley similarly explained that direct inspiration was a ‘“feeling [of] the Spirit of Christ”; of being “moved by the Holy Ghost’, and [of] knowing and “feeling there is no other name than that of Jesus whereby we can receive any salvation”.’27 Ralph Erskine wrote to Wesley, saying, ‘we cannot deny … we sensibly feel … some remarkable breathings of the Spirit of God’.28 Erskine affirmed Wesley’s emphasis   Works [BE], 18:250. See also J. Wesley, ‘Predestination Calmly Considered’, in Works, 10:204: ‘I am inclined to believe, that many of those who enjoy the “faith which worketh by love,” may remember some time when the power of the Highest wrought upon them in an eminent manner; when the voice of the Lord laid the mountains low, brake all the rocks in pieces, and mightily shed abroad his live in their hearts, by the Holy Ghost given unto them. And at that time it is certain they had not power to resist the grace of God. They were then no more able to stop the course of that torrent which carried all before it, than to stem the waves of the sea with their hand, or to stay the sun in the midst of heaven.’ 26   J. Wesley, ‘The Witness of Our Own Spirit’, in Works [BE], 1:304. 27   C. Wesley, ‘Awake, Thou that Sleepest’, in Works [BE], 1:156. 28   Works [BE], 25:689. Scottish minister Ralph Erskine (1685–1752) and Wesley would later disagree over the idea that Communion could function as a means of converting sinners to God. See Rack, Reasonable Enthusiast, 228–9. However, their understanding of faith-perceiving inspiration differed only by a ‘hair’s breadth’, according to Wesley, which he described in his journal entry for 1 September 1769. Responding to Erskine’s definition of faith (the internal quotations below), Wesley wrote. ‘“It is in general an assent to the Word of God, in which there is a light, a glory, a brightness, which believers, and they only, perceive. In particular, it is an assent of the understanding to the gospel method of salvation in which there is an excellency and glory which only believers see. A supernatural conviction of this is faith.” But if this be his [Erskine’s] judgment, why does he quarrel with me? For how marvelously small is the difference between us! Only change the word assent for conviction … and do we not come within an hair’s breadth of each other? I do not quarrel with the definition of faith in general, “a supernatural assent to the Word of God”, though I think a supernatural conviction of the truths contained in the word of God 25

86

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

upon inward feeling and inspiration, based upon observable phenomena within his own congregations. Like others, Wesley considered inward feeling essential in terms of the human agent’s subjective apprehension of the direct testimony. As he explained to the Revd Dr Rutherforth in 1768: ‘with respect to “inward feelings”, whoever denies them … must deny all the life and power of religion, and leave nothing but a dead, empty form.’29 Furthermore, in his ‘Answer to Mr. Church’s Remarks’ (1745), Wesley claimed: ‘Do you reject “inward feelings” toto genere? Then you reject both the love of God and of our neighbor. For if these cannot be inwardly felt, nothing can.’30 Conversely, inward feeling could also indicate spiritual disconnection. Wesley recounted the experience of one such person (whose name was not recorded) who knew by inward feeling that he or she lacked union with the Spirit: [A] Christian is one who has the fruits of the Spirit of Christ, which (to mention no more) are love, peace, and joy. But these I have not. I have not any love of God. I do not love either the Father or the Son … How do I know whether I love God [?] … I feel this moment I do not love God; which therefore I know, because I feel it … I have not the fruits of the Spirit of Christ.31

is clearer. I allow, too, that the Holy Spirit enables us to perceive a peculiar light and glory in the Word of God, and particularly in the gospel method of salvation. But I doubt whether saving faith be properly “an assent to this light and glory”. Is it not, rather, “an assent (if we retain the word) to the truths which God has revealed”? Or, more particularly, a divine conviction that “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself”?’: Works [BE], 22:202–3. 29   J. Wesley, ‘A Letter to the Reverend Dr. Rutherforth’, in Works [BE], 9:387. Thomas Rutherforth (1712–71) was a man of high academic standing. In 1745, he was named Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge; and at the same time, he accepted his doctorate degree from said university. Later, he published Four Charges to the Clergy of the Archdeaconry of Essex (1763), which treated, among other things, the Methodist teachings on ‘inward feelings’ and ‘assurances’. 30   J. Wesley, ‘An Answer to the Rev. Mr. Church’s Remarks’, in Works [BE], 9:116. See also Wesley’s ‘Letter to the Reverend Mr. Downes’, in Works [BE], 9:360: ‘We … allow that outward actions are one way of satisfying us that we have grace in our hearts. But we cannot possibly allow that “the only way to be satisfied of this is to appeal to our outward actions, and not our inward feelings”. On the contrary, we believe that love, joy, [and] peace are inwardly felt, or they have no being; and that men are satisfied they have grace, first by feeling these, and afterward by their outward actions.’ 31   Works [BE], 19:30–31.

Witness of the Spirit as Pneumatological Operation

87

This account echoes Wesley’s own experience on board the Samuel, en route from Georgia to England in 1738, after what he seems to have perceived as a failed missionary attempt. Wesley professed to ‘having no such faith in Christ as will prevent my heart from being troubled; which it could not be if I believed in God, and rightly believed in him’.32 Like the anonymous testimony above, Wesley too was convinced of his lack of spiritual intimacy by ‘the most infallible of proofs, inward feeling’.33 For Wesley then, inward feeling – manifested spiritually as love for God and communion with his Spirit, and affectively in terms of warmth, ardour, and devotion – was an important physiological barometer for gauging the subject’s spiritual sense of participation mediated by faith, as well as spiritual disenchantment, should one’s love for God grow apathetic.34 To be sure, Wesley also acknowledged the possibility of misguided feeling, and the fact that not all who claim to feel inspired have truly perceived inspiration. Indeed, Thomas Maxfield and George Bell, whose claims to perfection stirred up controversy for the Methodists during the 1760s, helped to solidify this distinction.35 According to John Tyson, the repercussions of the Maxfield/ Bell controversy were massive. They shook the London society to its core, and made the Wesleys look like religious lunatics: ‘Their extravagant claims and experiential elitism quickly divided the Methodist Society, and soon gained a broader attention. The dispute was a public relations fiasco, occurring at just the time when Methodism had begun to clear itself of charges of “enthusiasm” and “fanaticism”.’36 This event reinforced Wesley’s conviction that the outward fruits of righteousness and love must be a constant check to inward feeling. Thus, in terms of spiritual experience, again heeding the words of Susanna,37 he claimed   Works [BE], 18:208–9.  Ibid. 34   See J. Wesley, ‘A Second Letter to the Author of the Enthusiasm of Methodists and Papists Compar’d’, in Works [BE], 11:399: ‘I here assert that inward feeling, or consciousness, is the most infallible of proofs of unbelief, of the want of such a faith as will prevent the heart’s being troubled.’ 35   For a detailed overview and analysis of the controversy, see Rack, Reasonable Enthusiast, 334–42. 36  Tyson, Charles Wesley: A Reader, 372. 37   Works [BE], 25:385. As early as 1734, Susanna urged him that ‘you must not judge of your interior state by your not feeling great fervours of spirit and extraordinary agitations, as plentiful weepings, etc., but rather by the firm adherence of your will to God.’ 32

33

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

88

that inward feeling alone does not verify externally one’s perception of the direct testimony. As an internal indicator of spiritual awareness for the knowing subject, inward feeling is important. With respect to external verification however, it offers little or no concrete proof. As such, as early as 1739, Wesley issued the following caveat to his ministerial cohorts: ‘Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they be of God.’[38] I told them they were not to judge of the Spirit whereby anyone spoke, either by appearances, or by common report, or by their own inward feelings … I warned them all these were in themselves of a doubtful, disputable nature: they might be from God and they might not, and were therefore … to be tried by … ‘the law and the testimony’.39

Wesley suggested that in order to distinguish the marks of the Spirit’s testimony from ‘the presumption of a natural mind’, one must rely upon the Bible for guidance.:‘[The] scriptures lay down those clear, obvious marks as preceding, accompanying, and following that gift’.40 Given the possibility of false inspiration, Wesley urged his fellow ministers ‘“[not] to believe every spirit, but to try the spirits whether they were of God”’.41 Wesley outlined the following criteria: those who profess to have felt God’s indwelling presence, and who consequently bear the fruits of outward holiness preceding and subsequent to what the believer describes as direct religious encounter, should be embraced as possibly authentic. However, claims to direct religious encounter unaccompanied by righteousness and charity should be treated with scepticism. Wesley held that holy living is a 38

  Cf., 1 John 4:1.   Works [BE], 19:73. Wesley would repeat these sentiments to ‘James Hutton and the Fetter Lane Society’ on 2 July 1739 (Works [BE], 25:664), and also to Bishop of Exeter, George Lavington, in ‘A Letter to the Author of the Enthusiasm of Methodists and Papists Compar’d’, in Works [BE], 11:373–4. See also J. Wesley, ‘The Witness of the Spirit – Discourse II’, Works [BE], 1:295: ‘[Let] every man who believes he “hath the witness in himself” try whether it be of God. If the fruit follow, it is; otherwise, it is not. For certainly “the tree is known by its fruit.” Hereby we prove if it be of God.’ 40   J. Wesley, ‘The Witness of the Spirit – Discourse I’, in Works [BE], 1:278. 41   Works [BE], 19:69. See also J. Wesley, ‘The Witness of the Spirit – Discourse I’, in Works [BE], 1:269: ‘How many have mistaken the voice of their own imagination for this witness of the Spirit of God, and thence idly presumed they were the children of God while they were doing the works of the devil!’ 39

Witness of the Spirit as Pneumatological Operation

89

necessary consequence of direct religious experience: ‘Love rejoices to obey, to do in every point whatever is acceptable to the Beloved. A true lover of God hastens to do his will on earth as it is done in heaven.’42 The mark of authentic inspiration, according to Wesley, is inward feeling paired with outward holiness: Hereby you shall know that you are in no delusion; that you have not deceived your own soul. The immediate fruits of the Spirit ruling in the heart are ‘love, joy, peace’; bowels of mercies, humbleness of mind, meekness, gentleness, long-suffering. And the outward fruits are the doing good to all men, the doing no evil to any, and the walking in light – a zealous, uniform obedience to all the commands of God.43

The direct witness is evinced in love, holiness, and ‘zealous, uniform obedience’ to God’s moral commands. Just as one cannot serve two masters, it is impossible to both perceive the indwelling Spirit and to subvert God’s call to holiness. Direct spiritual perception and outward holiness go hand in hand. Wesley claimed that faith ‘is the life of the soul: and if ye have this life abiding in you, ye want no marks to evidence it to yourself, but that … divine consciousness, that “witness of God”.’44 However, he also suggested that perception of the direct witness is externally corroborated (despite the inability to infallibly verify cases of inspiration) in so far as the fruits of holiness are present in one’s life. In other words, putative direct apprehension of the Spirit’s witness is corroborated externally through holy living and acts of piety. Inward feeling must be rightly ordered; it must be situated in a life of charity and holiness in order to qualify as authentic phenomena. Given the importance of the direct witness, what does the indirect testimony signify with respect to Wesley’s pneumatology in relation to spiritual consciousness? In terms of fostering religious experience, the direct witness is perceived by faith (our spiritual sense) in physiological relation to inward feeling, which is phenomenally evinced in acts of charity and holiness. The indirect witness, however, is situated in our cognitive faculties and refers to the mental process of self-differentiation, through which the agent becomes reflexively   J. Wesley, ‘The Witness of the Spirit – Discourse I’, in Works [BE], 1:280.   Ibid., 283. 44   C. Wesley, ‘Awake, Thou that Sleepest’, in Works [BE], 1:146. 42

43

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

90

conscious of the spiritual phenomena ostensibly experienced.45 In other words, the direct testimony is immediate with respect to reason and human cognition, but the indirect testimony is mediated by reason and human cognition. Put another way, the direct witness transcends reason, while the indirect testimony incorporates it. Referring to the indirect testimony, Wesley explained that ‘all this is no other than rational evidence: the “witness of our [own] spirit” or reason or understanding. It all resolves into this: those who have these marks, they are the children of God. But we have these marks: therefore we are children of God.’46 The indirect witness is, then, consciousness of spiritual consciousness: ‘God begins his work at the heart; then the inspiration of the highest giveth understanding.’47 The direct witness is mediated by faith ( fides qua) – which is not part of our natural functional epistemic equipment given our sinful condition – in cooperation with inward feeling (phenomenally evinced when rightly ordered), and the indirect witness through reason and conscience. Consciousness, with respect to the indirect witness, entails cognizance about having felt the love of God shed abroad in the soul, while spiritual sensation refers to direct spiritual communion itself. Thus, the ‘witness of our own spirit’ is Wesley’s term for natural reflection on the marks of the Spirit’s testimony, namely peace, joy, and love. By immediate consciousness, explained Wesley, ‘you will know if your soul is alive to God; if you are saved from the pain of proud wrath, and have the ease of a meek and quiet spirit.’48 In a general sense, consciousness is Wesley’s designation for humanity’s ability to perceive the present and to reflect upon the past, as well as reasoning, memory, and self-awareness:

  ‘And as we perceive these outward Objects, so we know that we do perceive them. The mind can look inward upon itself, and reflect upon its own Perceptions’: see J. Wesley, A Compendium of Natural Philosophy, vol. 1 of 2, 91. 46   J. Wesley, ‘The Witness of the Spirit – Discourse I’, in Works [BE], 1:272. Wesley also quoted from 1 John 3:14, 18, 24 and 4:13. 47   Works [BE], 20:274, emphasis added. Wesley’s distinction between the direct and indirect witness of the Spirit – that God’s inspiration was first inwardly felt by faith and then apprehended through the conscious medium of understanding – was questioned by William Warburton in Operations of the Holy Spirit Vindicated, 162–3. Responding directly to the quote excerpted above, Warburton claimed, contrarily, that ‘God began with the understanding; and rational conviction won the heart.’ 48   J. Wesley, ‘The Witness of the Spirit – Discourse I’, in Works [BE], 1:273. 45

Witness of the Spirit as Pneumatological Operation

91

God has made us thinking beings, capable of perceiving what is present, and of reflecting or looking back on what is past. In particular we are capable of perceiving whatsoever passes in our own hearts or lives; of knowing whatsoever we feel or do; and that either while it passes, or when it is past. This we mean when we say man is a ‘conscious’ being: he hath a ‘consciousness’ or inward perception both of things present and past relating to himself, of his own tempers and outward behavior.49

As Wesley described it, consciousness is introspective – it is our awareness of self as a self, and of all the thoughts, feelings, and events that shape our identity or self-understanding. In order for the direct witness to be rationally or consciously appropriated, the human spirit must respire with confidence in terms of his or her interpretation of the spiritual phenomena experienced: ‘you cannot but perceive [it] if you love, rejoice, and delight in God. By the same you must be directly assured if you love your neighbor as yourself; if you are kindly affectioned to all mankind, and full of gentleness and longsuffering.’50 The indirect witness represents a posterior cognitive response to the direct witness, through which, according to Wesley, ‘you undoubtedly know in your own breast if, by the grace of God, it belongs to you.’51 It is consciousness of direct spiritual experience – an interpretation of the event such that the individual comes to believe that he or she has been transformed by the Spirit to love and serve others: It is a consciousness of our having received, in and by the Spirit of adoption, the tempers mentioned in the Word of God as belonging to his adopted children; even a loving heart toward God and toward all mankind, hanging with childlike confidence on God our Father, desiring nothing but him, casting all our care upon him, and embracing every child of man with earnest, tender affection, so as to be ready to lay down our life for our brother, as Christ laid down his life for us … .52

  J. Wesley, ‘The Witness of our own Spirit’, in Works [BE], 1:301.   J. Wesley, ‘The Witness of the Spirit – Discourse I’, in Works [BE], 1:273. 51  Ibid. 52   Ibid., 274. 49 50

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

92

The indirect witness refers to the believer’s acknowledgement that what he or she has experienced is spiritually efficacious. It is, as Wesley put it, an outward ‘consciousness that we are inwardly conformed by the Spirit of God to the image of his Son, and that we walk before him in justice, mercy, and truth; doing the things which are pleasing in his sight.’53 Wesley also used conscience as a synonym for the indirect witness. He wrote: ‘This [indirect testimony] is nearly, if not exactly, the same with “the testimony of a good conscience toward God”, and is the result of reason or reflection on what we feel in our own souls.’54 To Wesley, conscience comprises the part of our natural epistemic faculty that discerns between right and wrong. Sustained by the Spirit’s prevenience, it enables men and women to distinguish goodness from evil in a basic way. Wesley described it as ‘a faculty or power, implanted by God in every soul that comes into the world, of perceiving what is right or wrong in his own heart or life, in his tempers, thoughts, words, and actions’; and whose ‘main business is to excuse or accuse, to approve or disapprove, to acquit or condemn.’55 Conscience is self-awareness with respect to the events and experiences that shape the way we perceive ought. Although supernaturally instilled in each person, conscience is not ethically prescriptive in a normative sense. To be formed properly, it must be guided by ‘the Word of God, the writings of the Old and New Testament’.56 As Richard Baxter put it, ‘[we] must not try the Scriptures by our most spiritual apprehensions, but our apprehensions by the Scriptures.’57 Wesley undoubtedly agreed, stating: ‘This alone he [the believer] receives as his rule of right or wrong, of whatever is really good or evil.’58 Having a conscience ‘void of offence’59 means

53

 Ibid.   J. Wesley, ‘The Witness of the Spirit – Discourse II’, in Works [BE], 1:287. 55   J. Wesley, ‘The Witness of our own Spirit’, in Works [BE], 1:302. 56   Ibid., 302–3. In terms of Wesley’s epistemic theology, conscience belongs to every rational being. It is ‘the rule of heathens’, or “the law written in their hearts”’. Thus, in so far as non-believers adhere to the dictates of their conscience, they exude some measure of divine light. However, full illumination cannot occur until conscience is wed to Scripture. 57   Richard Baxter, The Practical Works of the Rev. Richard Baxter, ed. William Orme (London: James Duncan, 1830), 5.559. See Nuttall, The Holy Spirit in Puritan Faith and Experience, 32. 58   J. Wesley, ‘The Witness of our own Spirit’, in Works [BE], 1:303. 59  Ibid. 54

Witness of the Spirit as Pneumatological Operation

93

taking delight in carrying out the commands and practices outlined in Scripture.60 Wesley explained its operative significance by highlighting the various properties of conscience. First, it is consciousness of how we live and behave toward others; secondly, a judgement concerning the moral value of our actions; and third, an execution, which elicits a particular sense of guilt or satisfaction depending upon the outcome. As he put it: To make a more distinct view of conscience, it appears to have a threefold office. First, it is a witness, testifying what we have done, in thought, or word, or action. Secondly, it is a judge, passing sentence on what we have done, that it is good or evil. And thirdly, it in some sort executes the sentence, by occasioning a degree of complacency in him that does well, and a degree of uneasiness in him that does evil.61

The relationship between conscience and consciousness is reciprocal. Conscience functions when our sense of right and wrong is applied to and informed by lived experience reflexively evaluated. Conscience, then, is our moral framework for distinguishing right from wrong, a process of personal introspection with respect to what we know to be right and wrong, and the evaluation of our actions and thoughts based upon our interpretation of Scripture. In this respect, it is a supernatural gift which is common to all human beings as a function of the Holy Spirit’s preventing agency. When directed toward spiritual knowledge, conscience serves as the indirect witness:

60   According to Wesley, ‘it is impossible we should walk by a rule if we do not know what it means’: J. Wesley, ‘The Witness of our own Spirit’, in Works [BE], 1:304. At the heart of Wesley’s hermeneutics was the ‘analogy of faith’ – the core doctrines of ‘original sin’, ‘justification by faith’, and ‘Christian perfection’. However, it should be noted that Wesley’s position here exposes an inlaid hermeneutical circle (as does his criterion for interpreting direct religious experience). He grounded the properly formed conscience on Scripture as definitive guide, but this again raises the question of textual interpretation raised earlier, as well as the problem that textual interpretation is what formed and shaped his theology of conscience in the first place. For discussion of Wesley’s hermeneutics, see Scott Jones, John Wesley’s Conception and Use of Scripture (Nashville, TN: Kingswood Books, 1995). 61   J. Wesley, ‘On Conscience’, in Works [BE], 3:483.

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

94

Strictly speaking, it [conscience/the indirect witness] is a conclusion drawn partly from the Word of God, and partly from our own experience. The Word of God says everyone who has the fruit of the Spirit is a child of God. Experience, or inward consciousness, tells me that I have the fruit of the Spirit. And hence I rationally conclude: therefore I am a child of God.62

As the percipient begins to recognize the putative marks of the Spirit, as well as his or her desire to engage in righteous and charitable behaviour, Wesley would say that one’s spirit testifies indirectly (mediated through our natural faculties) through a conscience void of offence and replete with commitment to carry out the commands and promises of Scripture. Thus, with respect to perceptible inspiration as via Spiritus, the dual witness is the content of religious knowledge known in terms of spiritual participation and rational appropriation respectively.63 To what extent is the dual witness of the Spirit a pneumatological event? In summary, inward feeling is Wesley’s designation for the physiological response manifested in conjunction with spiritual sensation of the divine testimony, which occurs by faith. According to Theodore Runyon, inward feeling refers to Wesley’s understanding of ‘the sensations mediated by the spiritual senses to the “heart,” the center of the psychosomatic unity of the person’ – an inward consciousness of ‘the heart but to the reason as well’.64 The dual witness both transcends and incorporates reason, as the individual becomes immediately conscious of having felt the love of God shed abroad in his or her soul, processing the event affectively as well as intellectually by way of conscience. Wesley, in his sermon on ‘The Great Privilege of those that are Born of God’, likened the joint testimony to inhaling and exhaling. Inspiration perceived is tantamount to ‘God’s breathing into the soul, and the soul’s breathing back what it first receives from God; a continual action of God upon the soul, the re-action of the soul upon God; an unceasing presence of God, the loving, pardoning God, manifested to the heart, and perceived by faith’.65   J. Wesley, ‘The Witness of the Spirit – Discourse II’, in Works [BE], 1:287–8.   See J. Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament (London, 1755), 398. Cf. Romans 8:16. ‘The same Spirit beareth witness with our Spirit – with the Spirit of every true believer, by a testimony distinct from that of his own Spirit, or the testimony of a good conscience.’ 64  Runyon, The New Creation, 152. 65   J. Wesley, ‘The Great Privilege of those that are Born of God’, in Works [BE], 1:442. 62 63

Witness of the Spirit as Pneumatological Operation

95

Thus, the Holy Spirit fosters and facilitates our spirit’s participation in the divine life by faith and the dual witness. Close consideration of Wesley’s theology of the dual witness also requires examining his theology of assurance. How then does John Wesley define assurance?66 What is its relationship to faith as fides qua? In Wesley’s theology, assurance is a personal awareness of God’s pardoning love. Assurance, as Wesley explained, ‘is not of the essence of faith, but a distinct gift of the Holy Ghost, whereby God shines upon his own work, and shows us that we are justified through faith in Christ.’67 Faith refers to intimacy and spiritual participation, while assurance, like the indirect witness of the Spirit, occurs as our natural faculties are enlightened by God’s indwelling presence in cooperation with faith. ‘[It] is certain’, Wesley stated, ‘that this faith “necessarily implies an assurance” (which is here only another word for evidence, it being hard to tell the difference between them) that Christ loved me, and gave himself for me.’68 That is to say, the former acts as a medium for life in God, and the latter, the illumination of our natural understanding that our faith is authentic. Although distinct soteriological realities, faith always implies some degree of assurance. Wesley reached this conclusion after taking into account the narratives of many who claimed to be justified while lacking the witness of the Spirit,69 and it reflects his own spiritual journey as well.70 66

  For a detailed analysis of the historical and theological antecedents of John Wesley’s understanding of assurance, see Arthur S. Yates, The Doctrine of Assurance: With Special Reference to John Wesley (London: Epworth Press, 1952). 67   J. Wesley, ‘To the Reverend Arthur Bedford (Sept. 28, 1738)’, in Works [BE], 25:564. See also J. Wesley’s letter ‘To the Revd. Charles Wesley (July 31, 1747)’, in Works [BE], 26:254: ‘Is justifying faith a sense of pardon? Negatur – it is denied … By justifying faith I mean that faith which whosoever hath is not under the wrath and the curse of God. By a sense of pardon I mean a distinct, explicit assurance that my sins are forgiven.’ 68   J. Wesley, ‘The Scripture Way of Salvation’, in Works [BE], 2:161. 69   See J. Wesley, ‘To the Revd. Charles Wesley’, in Works [BE], 26:255: ‘[If] justifying faith necessarily implies [or functions in the same capacity as] such an explicit sense of pardon, then everyone who has it not, and everyone so long as he has it not, is under the wrath and under the curse of God. But this is a supposition contrary to Scripture as well as to experience.’ One can see development in Wesley’s thought on this heading. The excerpt above was taken from a letter to Charles written on 31 July 1747. However, in 1765, Wesley claimed that though justifying faith and assurance were distinct spiritual gifts, the former did necessarily imply the latter. Cf., J. Wesley, ‘The Scripture Way of Salvation’, in Works [BE], 2:161. 70   See John Wesley’s letter to his brother Samuel Jr from 30 October 1738. Samuel was suspicious of John’s newfound ‘faith’. John had been preaching to friends and relatives

96

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

Thus, Wesley held the view that one may be exculpated from sin while remaining unaware of it until sometime afterwards. His theology allows for varying degrees of assurance: ‘This assurance, I believe, is given to some in a smaller, to others in a larger degree; to some also sooner, to others later, according to the counsels of [God’s] will.’71 For Wesley, each degree of assurance corresponds to the measure of faith actively received in cooperation with God’s grace manifested in the person and work of the Spirit. While the spectrum of assurance is populated by innumerable degrees, Wesley made mention of two clear benchmarks.72 One such degree, which could occur subsequent to justification but before the indirect witness of the Spirit corroborates direct spiritual apprehension, was the ‘spirit of bondage unto fear’. Those of this degree, according to Wesley, have been exonerated from past guilt and sin, have shown repentance, humility, and the desire to be forgiven by God, but have yet to feel the peace, joy, and love associated with the Holy Spirit’s work. Plagued by a sense of fear and bondage, they feel themselves chained to the law of perfect obedience, which they know is impossible to keep. The man or woman ‘under the law’, explained Wesley, faintly glimpses the things of God, while remaining fearful of God’s judgement: ‘He now clearly perceives that the great and holy God is “of purer eyes than to behold iniquity”; that he is an avenger that prior to 24 May, he had had no faith; and that, before his experience of evangelical conversion, he was akin to the disciples of Jesus, which, when confronted by stormy seas, doubted their Saviour and feared death. Noting his brother’s reluctance to accept it, John wrote to Samuel in defence and explanation of his new belief in faith. In the letter, after recounting his lamentable experience on board the Simmonds (see Wesley’s Journal, 8 January 1738), John confessed to being formerly void of faith – that gracious gift of God – which he now believed himself to enjoy at least partially: ‘Some measure of this faith, which bringeth salvation, or victory over sin, and which implies peace and trust in God through Christ, I now enjoy by his free mercy, though in very deed it is in me but as a grain of mustard seed; for – “the seal of the Spirit”, “the love of God shed abroad in my heart”, and producing joy in the Holy Ghost, “joy which no man taketh away”, “joy unspeakable, and full of glory” – this witness of the Spirit I have not, but I patiently wait for it.’ As evinced here, Wesley believed that there were degrees of assurance, which corresponded to one’s level of reception of the gift (faculty) of faith: the highest of which was the witness of the Holy Spirit: J. Wesley, ‘Letter to Samuel Wesley, Jr.’, in Works [BE], 25:577. 71   J. Wesley, ‘To the Rev. Arthur Bedford’, in Works [BE], 25:564. 72   See Wesley’s 1745 publication, ‘An Answer to the Rev. Mr. Church’s Remarks’, in Works [BE], 9:100: ‘The one is an assurance that my sins are forgiven, clear at first, but soon clouded with doubt or fear. The other is, such a plerophory or full assurance that I am forgiven, and so clear a perception that Christ “abideth in me” as utterly excludes all doubt and fear, and leaves them no place, no, not for an hour.’

Witness of the Spirit as Pneumatological Operation

97

of everyone who rebelleth against him, and repayeth the wicked to his face; and that “it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”’73 Feeling the weight of sin and its consequences, he or she struggles to consciously accept God’s forgiveness. Although there is firm resolve to serve God, the individual cannot reconcile past evils with the possibility of pardon: ‘The more he strives, wishes, labours to be free the more does he feel his chains, the grievous chains of sin, wherewith Satan binds and “leads him captive at his will”.’74 As Wesley puts it in ‘On the Discoveries of Faith’ (1788), the Holy Spirit ‘convinces us of the desert of our sins, so that our mouth is stopped, and we are constrained to plead guilty before God.’75 Such is the ‘“spirit of bondage unto fear”, fear of the wrath of God, fear of the punishment which we have deserved, and above all fear of death, lest it should consign us over to eternal death.’76 ‘Servants’, then, ‘feel themselves at once altogether sinful, altogether guilty, and altogether helpless’.77 However, the ‘spirit of bondage unto fear’, according to Wesley, does not prevent one from final salvation. On the contrary, those who are obsequious to the law of obedience, even out of fear, have received justifying faith, and by its nature, a measure of assurance. The ‘spirit of bondage’ is evidence of some spiritual consciousness and participation in God’s life. Wesley expounded upon this in his 1786 sermon, ‘On Friendship with the World’. He explains that anyone who keeps God’s commandments, even for fear of damnation, is in some sense ‘of God’.78 Being ‘of God’, one possess a measure of faith, and thus a measure of assurance. To possess the ‘faith of a servant’ means abiding by God’s commandments for ‘fear of God in their heart, and a sincere desire to please him’.79 Incidentally,

  J. Wesley, ‘The Spirit of Bondage and of Adoption’, in Works [BE], 1:255.   Ibid., 258. 75   J. Wesley, ‘On the Discoveries of Faith’, in Works [BE], 4:34. 76   Ibid., 34–5. 77   Ibid., 35. See also Wesley’s letter to Alexander Knox from 29 August 1777: ‘[There] is a medium between a child of God and a child of the devil – namely, a servant of God … You are not yet a son, but you are a servant; and you are waiting for the Spirit of adoption, which will cry in your heart, “Abba, Father.” You have “received the Spirit of grace,” and in a measure work righteousness.’ 78   J. Wesley, ‘On Friendship with the World’, in Works [BE], 3:130. 79  Ibid. 73 74

98

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

this issue was at stake during the first two Methodist Conference meetings.80 In 1744, members denied the possibility of faith without full assurance.81 However, a year later, they came to ‘allow [that] there may be infinite degrees of seeing God: Even as many as there are between him who sees the sun when it shines on his eye-lids closed, and him who stands with his eyes wide open in the full blaze of his beams.’82 In Wesley’s theology, justifying faith necessarily entails a sense of assurance, however faint. Wesley’s conclusion on this heading is vital for two reasons. First, it implies that one can be in a state of faith despite not being fully certain of it. Secondly, it implies that one can be spiritually conscious without being fully cognizant of it naturally. God consciousness is possible even without fully knowing that one is spiritually conscious of God. One may be aware of God’s love even in the midst of doubt and anxiety. On 3 February 1739, John Wesley wrote to his brother Samuel on assurance, and claimed that some believers experience ‘a clear evidence’ (or consciousness) of ‘being in a state of salvation’ while ‘others’ do not: I find more persons day by day who experience a clear evidence of their being in a state of salvation. But I never said this continues equally clear in all as long as they continue in a state of salvation. Some indeed have testified – and the whole tenor of their life made their testimony unexceptionable – that from that

80   The 1744 conference board was made up of John and Charles Wesley, John Hodges, Henry Piers, Samuel Taylor, and John Meriton. The 1745 meeting included members John and Charles Wesley, John Hodges, Thomas Richards, Samuel Larwood, Thomas Meyrick, Richard Moss, John Slocombe, Herbert Jenkins, and Marmaduke Gwynne. The purpose of the latter was to ‘review the Minutes of the last Conference with regard to justification’. See ‘Minutes of Some Late Conversations between the Rev. Mr. Wesleys and Others’, in Works, 8:281. 81   Ibid., 276. ‘That all true Christians have such a faith as implies an assurance of God’s love, appears from Romans viii. 15; Ephes. iv. 32; 2 Cor. xiii. 5.; Heb. viii. 10; 1 John iv. 10, and 19. And that no man can be justified and not know it, appears farther from the nature of the thing.’ 82   Ibid., 282. ‘[Q:] Is a sense of God’s pardoning love absolutely necessary to our being in his favour? Or may there be some exempt cases?’ ‘[A:] We dare say there are not.’ ‘[Q:] But what can we say of one of our own society, who dies without it, as J.W., at London?’ ‘[A:] It may be an exempt case … We leave his soul in the hands of Him that made it.’

Witness of the Spirit as Pneumatological Operation

99

hour they have felt no agonies at all, no anxious fears, no sense of dereliction. Others have.83

To Wesley, faith is the spiritual faculty through which human agents participate in the divine life of the Spirit. Spiritual sensation may function even at low levels of human awareness. Some may be conscious of the Spirit’s operations for the entirety of their journey and others may not. Wesley suggested, based on the variegated experience of his followers, that one may subsist in a state of salvation (that is, of participating in the life of the Holy Spirit by faith) without being fully conscious of the Spirit’s restorative operations. In a letter from 3 September 1768 written to James Morgan, Wesley stated: ‘The general rule is, they who are in the favour of God know they are so. But there may be some few exceptions. Some may fear and love God, and yet not be clearly conscious of His favour; at least, they may not dare to affirm that their sins are forgiven.’ If you put the case thus, I think no man in his senses will be under any temptation to contradict you … .84

Assurance is a necessary consequence of faith, which may function on occasion at low or even subconscious levels. Faith and assurance, then, are distinct soteriological realities conjoined by the Spirit’s operation. The former is our means of divine participation and the latter occurs as humans become conscious of transformation in the Spirit. Faith ( fides qua) incorporates the process of physical cognition, registering in varying degrees our acknowledgement of life in the divine. The more we actively love God and neighbour, the more assurance we experience, but not always. Some are justified by faith without being fully certain of it. Such individuals, who love God and neighbour for fear of punishment, do experience a limited level of assurance. Without which, the significance of engaging in practices commensurate with certain beliefs about God’s existence already held and which stimulate our sense of anxiety regarding our place in God’s kingdom would not be intelligible to the human agent. Despite the fact that one may subsist in such a state and not be   J. Wesley, ‘A Letter to Samuel Wesley, Jr.’, in Works [BE], 25:599–600.   Letters, 5:103.

83 84

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

100

excluded from final union with God, in Wesley’s view, in order to flourish here and now, believers must press onward and seek ‘that faith which none can have without knowing that he hath it.’85 The ‘spirit of bondage’ must be exchanged in order to realize fully present salvation. If the ‘spirit of bondage’ represents a low, even subconscious degree of assurance, the ‘Spirit of adoption’ occupies the other end of the spectrum.86 Adoption occurs when the Holy Spirit fully purges the heart of bondage, fear, and doubt. Exchanging ‘the spirit of fear for the spirit of love’, believers are now, to Wesley, ‘properly said to be “under grace”’.87 As the soteric power of the Holy Spirit is more fully received, men and women become more fully conscious of God’s love. Unlike those who remain in bondage, the ‘children of God’ now ‘[see] “the light of the glorious love of God, in the face of Jesus Christ”.’88 They have a ‘divine “evidence of things not seen” by sense, even of “the deep things of God”’; and ‘more particularly of the love of God, of his pardoning love to him that believes in Jesus’.89 Wesley’s use of the term ‘God’s children’, as such, denotes those who spiritually sense the love of God in their soul by faith, and who respire, with their own spirit, the confidence of acceptance in the beloved. Wesley referred to them as ‘Sons of God’ who inwardly feel God’s love shed abroad by the Holy Spirit. To Wesley, the ‘Spirit of adoption’ is a synonym for the indirect testimony. Both refer to immediate consciousness of God’s love. For instance, Wesley coupled the two in his 1746 sermon on ‘The Marks of the New Birth’: Sons and daughters of God sense the direct witness of the Holy Spirit and testify with their own spirit: ‘“Ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father!” Ye – as many [as] are the sons of God – have, in virtue of your sonship, received that selfsame Spirit of adoption whereby we cry, Abba, Father.’90 As we ‘have one Lord, so we have one Spirit; as we have one faith, so have we one hope also’; thus   Works [BE], 18:215.   J. Wesley, ‘The Spirit of Bondage and of Adoption’, in Works [BE], 1:250: ‘The spirit of bondage and fear is widely distant from this loving Spirit of adoption.’ 87   Ibid.; ‘He cannot fear any longer the wrath of God; for he knows it is now turned away from him, and looks upon him nor more as an angry judge, but as a loving Father’: ibid., 261. 88   Ibid., 261. 89  Ibid. 90   J. Wesley, ‘The Marks of the New Birth’, in Works [BE], 1:424. 85 86

Witness of the Spirit as Pneumatological Operation

101

we ‘are sealed with one “Spirit of promise”, the earnest of … our inheritance: the same Spirit bearing witness with … our spirit, “that we are the children of God”.’91 To have the ‘Spirit of adoption’ is to receive the gift of faith, to inwardly feel the love of God shed abroad in the soul, and subsequently to become immediately conscious of the Spirit’s restorative operation. Thus, the dual testimony of the Spirit and the ‘Spirit of adoption’ refer to the same pneumatological event: consciousness (both spiritual and physical) of the pardoning love of God and its prolific effects. Wesley also referred to this as the ‘full assurance of faith’. As he explained in his 1739 sermon on ‘Free Grace’: [You] who believe yourselves the elect of God, what is your happiness? I hope, not a notion, a speculative belief, a bare opinion of any kind; but a feeling of possession of God in your heart, wrought in you by the Holy Ghost; or, ‘the witness of God’s Spirit with your spirit, that you are a child of God’. This, otherwise termed ‘the full assurance of faith’, is the true ground of a Christian’s happiness … .92

The ‘witness of God’s Spirit with our own’ and the ‘Spirit of adoption’ are interchangeable with what Wesley calls the ‘full assurance of faith’. As believers sense the love of God in their hearts, which transcends rational assent through divine participation by faith, we perceive the Spirit of God. In turn, as we become immediately conscious of God’s work and its effects, and our conscience affirms the event affectively, intellectually, and morally; the result is full assurance. As Wesley stated, passing ‘from faith to faith’, that is, ‘from the faith of a servant to the faith of a son’, inspirants inwardly feel ‘the spirit of childlike love’.93 The spiritual senses ( fides qua) are fully awakened. Men and women of God experience ‘what St. Paul means by those remarkable words to the Galatians, “Ye are the sons of God by faith;” “and because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.”’94

91

    93   94   92

Ibid., 424. J. Wesley, ‘Free Grace’, in Works [BE], 3:549. J. Wesley, ‘On the Discoveries of Faith’, in Works [BE], 4:35. Ibid., 36.

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

102

When full assurance of faith is continuously experienced by believers, it develops into what Wesley called the ‘abiding witness of the Spirit’ or the ‘plerophory’ of faith.95 The ‘plerophory of faith’ signifies the believer’s enjoyment of ‘consciousness of the divine favour, without any intermission’.96 As Wesley stated in his first discourse, ‘Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount’ (1748), the steadfast faithful of God experienced the ‘witness of [God’s] accepting them in the Beloved as shall never more be taken away from them’.97 They feel the ‘“full assurance of faith” [swallow] up all doubt, as well as all tormenting fear, God now giving them a sure hope of an enduring substance and “strong consolation through grace”’.98 He referred to percipients of this degree as ‘Fathers in Christ’.99 In Wesley’s view, the faith of a ‘Father’ is tantamount to cultivated holiness and continuous growth in grace and faithful perception of the divine witness: ‘A babe in Christ … has the witness sometimes. A young man … has it continually. I believe one that is perfected in love or filled with the Holy Ghost, may be properly termed a father.’100 As believers increase in intimacy with God, they become less prone to temptation, doubt, and anxiety and more inclined to spiritual communion. They are purged of sin and perfected in love. Now making full use of their spiritual senses, they perceive the love of God without intermission, participating fully in the life of the Divine Spirit.101 Thus, with respect to Wesley’s pneumatology of perceptible inspiration as via Spiritus, assurance and the conjoined witness of the Spirit relate to faith as the content of spiritual sensation, and jointly indicate the Holy Spirit’s soteriological presence in the economy of salvation. By faith, believers sense the direct witness.  95

 Ibid.   Ibid., 37.  97   J. Wesley, ‘Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount – Discourse the First’, in Works [BE], 1:485.  98  Ibid.  99   J. Wesley, ‘On the Discoveries of Faith’, in Works [BE], 4:37. 100   J. Wesley, ‘A letter to Joseph Benson from 16 March 1771’, in Letters, 5:229. 101   In a letter to Hannah Ball from 4 October 1771, Wesley explained the maturity of spiritual fatherhood using the image of ‘the seal of the Spirit’: ‘The being “sealed by the Spirit” in the full sense of the word I take to imply two things: first, the receiving the whole image of God, the whole mind which was in Christ, as the wax receives the whole impression of the seal when it is strongly and properly applied; secondly, the full assurance of hope, or a clear and permanent confidence of being with God in glory … When both are joined together, then I believe they constitute that seal of the Spirit.’ See Letters, 5:280.  96

Witness of the Spirit as Pneumatological Operation

103

Subsequently, the human spirit begins to respire with assurance through immediate consciousness of the divine operative in the soul. Wesley also acknowledged many degrees of faith and assurance, that some individuals feel the ‘witness of the Spirit’, or the ‘full assurance of faith’ instantly and without intermission, while others labour under the ‘spirit of bondage’ for a season. The latter, though not fully conscious of it, do however perceive the Spirit by faith to certain degree, having been justified by faith expressed in terms of contrition and repentance. When the ‘Spirit of bondage’ is exchanged for the ‘Spirit of adoption’, believers enjoy a more robust awareness of the Spirit’s presence. As it develops into the plerophory of faith, doubt and fear fade away, and believers abide in the life of the Spirit. Our faculty for intimacy with God is faith ( fides qua). To perceive inspiration, according to Wesley, is to sense the dual witness, which transcends and incorporates reason, and which results in ever-increasing consciousness of God’s love, and continuous growth in holiness. To what extent is Wesley’s pneumatology of perceptible inspiration reasonable? It is clear that Wesley espoused the view that God communicates directly with human beings through faith and the direct witness. But how tenable is it to suggest that men and women actually experience the supernatural indwelling of the Spirit and then make progress in varying degrees toward the assurance of faith and holiness? Wesley’s emphasis on direct spiritual knowledge led to the charge of ‘enthusiasm’ by many of his contemporaries and critics, affixing a stigma to his pneumatology of which he was aware: ‘[to] men of reason you will give offence by talking of inspiration and receiving the Holy Ghost.’102 Many of Wesley’s critics reflected an epistemological approach, which suggests that all knowledge stems from an indubitable and universal base.103 Descartes, for example, argued that clear and distinct perceptions of the mind are the foundation of all knowledge and that other truths are only true in so far as they can be traced back to or corroborated by

  J. Wesley, ‘Advice to the People Called Methodists’, in Works [BE], 9:127.   See Stanley J. Grenz and John R. Franke, Beyond Foundationalism: Shaping Theology in a Postmodern Context (Louisville, KY: Westminster Press, 2001), 30: ‘At the heart of the foundationalist agenda is the desire to overcome uncertainty generated by our human liability to error and the inevitable disagreements that follow. Foundationalists are convinced that the only way to solve this problem is to find some means of grounding the entire edifice of human knowledge on invincible certainty.’ 102 103

104

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

such perceptions.104 The empiricists (that is, Locke, Berkeley, and Reid) advocated that all knowledge (including simple and complex ideas) is based on our senses, intellectual reflection, or a combination of the two. If a statement cannot be verified empirically or corroborated by an unchallenged stock belief, then the statement lacks justification.105 Later synthesizing these two strains of thought, Kant espoused the notion that knowledge occurs as the senses mediate information to the mind, which is already structured with the transcendental categories intact necessary to apprehend truth. Categories like colour, shape, and size are not empirical but transcendental, and function jointly with the senses enabling the formation of ideas.106 All three of these approaches – the Cartesian, Empiricist, and Kantian – although assuming distinctive epistemological priorities, base knowledge upon ‘a set of unquestioned beliefs or certain first principles’, which are ‘supposedly context-free and available … to any rational person’.107 All three of these perspectives preclude the possibility of direct participatory knowledge of God, because direct religious experience challenges the very structure of knowledge itself as defined by foundationalist prescriptions for what makes a noetic structure rational. Wesley’s espousal of the possibility of direct knowledge of God suggests that what is transcendent is in fact knowable, even though it cannot be demonstrated evidentially. Indeed, his view on the direct testimony of the Spirit ostensibly falls short of epistemic justification, because it contradicts a more basic, foundationalist maxim that nothing exists in the mind not first apprehended by the senses, except for the categories required for discerning

104   See René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, Michael Moriarty, trans. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 25: ‘I am certain that I am a thinking thing … And therefore I seem already to be able to lay down, as a general rule, that everything I very clearly and distinctly perceive is true.’ 105   See Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 2nd edn (New York: Routledge, 2004), 556: ‘Locke may be regarded as the founder of empiricism, which is the doctrine that all our knowledge (with the possible exception of logic and mathematics) is derived from experience.’ 106   See Roger Scruton, A Short History of Modern Philosophy: From Descartes to Wittgenstein, 2nd edn (New York: Routledge, 2001), 139: ‘It was Kant’s principal contribution to show that the choice between empiricism and rationalism is unreal, that each philosophy is equally mistaken, and that the only conceivable metaphysics that could commend itself to a reasonable being must be both empiricist and rationalist at once.’ 107   Grenz and Franke, Beyond Foundationalism, 30.

Witness of the Spirit as Pneumatological Operation

105

natural truths of reason. Wesley’s emphasis on faith as spiritual sensation runs contrary to foundationalism and certain of its axiomatic presuppositions. In response to early-modern epistemological strategies, ‘post-foundationalism’ has emerged as an alternative to the view that reason or the senses are the unquestionable base of all knowledge.108 This approach fits well with Wesley’s theology of perceptible inspiration. For Wesley, reason is not the foundation of spiritual knowledge. Though an important part of what mediates the believer’s consciousness of pardon (through assurance and the indirect witness of the Spirit), rational reflection is not what justifies religious experience or knowledge of the divine at work in the soul. Wesley’s theology of faith and the dual witness in this respect resonate with certain elements of Reformed epistemology and the work of Alvin Plantinga.109 Responding to the challenge of spiritual perception, Plantinga states, ‘I have no doubt that perception of God or something very much like it does occur, and occurs rather widely.’110 Drawing on the work of William Alston,111 he continues: [If] there is such a person as God, there could certainly be perception of him, and indeed is perception of him. Alston’s powerful discussion shows that the usual objections to perception of God (no independent way of checking, disagreement as to what God is like, differences from sense perception, apparent relativity to

108   Grenz and Franke explain that among its many facets, the two most significant are ‘coherentism’ and ‘pragmatism’. The coherentist approach suggests ‘that the justification for a belief lies in its “fit” with other held beliefs’, which ‘must form and integrative whole, and this whole must have “explanatory power.”’ On the other hand, the pragmatist approach advocates ‘the truth of any belief ought to be measured according to the belief’s success in advancing “factual inquiry”’, or ‘“ … by the way [beliefs] function in the context of responsible enquiry.”’ See Beyond Foundationalism, 38–41. 109   For a comparison of Wesley’s view and Plantinga’s approach, along with an analysis of the contributions made by contemporary scholars on the question, see Scott Crothers and Joe Cunningham, ‘Wesley’s Epistemology in Contemporary Perspective’, in Via Media Philosophy – Holiness Unto Truth: Intersections between Wesleyan and Roman Catholic Voices, L. Bryan Williams, ed. (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009), 171–85. 110   Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 182. 111   See William Alston, Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991).

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

106

the theological beliefs of the alleged perceiver, and so on) have very little to be said for them.112

The objections advanced by Wesley’s opponents are tantamount to those outlined above, which, according to Plantinga, have ‘very little to be said for them’.113 ‘John Smith asserted that since Wesley could produce no ‘infallible’ proof of his claims to the Spirit’s dual witness, he was an enthusiast. Many other critics114 derided the Methodist emphasis on spiritual knowledge, suggesting that if God really does inspire believers, it ought to be a universal phenomenon, something that happens to other Christians besides those who already support the doctrine. According to Plantinga, however, such claims have little steel in a post-foundationalist context, where neither ‘rationality’, ‘sensation’, nor any synthesis of the two can serve as universally binding foundation of knowledge. Based upon Plantinga’s view, Wesley’s theology of the dual witness is reasonable. How does Plantinga understand perception in post-foundationalist terms? Perception is anything involving ‘sensuous imagery’,115 and which fosters in the human person an awareness of some thing or event. Thus, while our perception of God does not occur in the same capacity that we perceive, say, the scent of a flower in full bloom, still, our spiritual senses function analogically with respect to physical phenomena. At times, it can also be experienced as ‘a brooding presence’, a description which echoes Wesley’s view on inward feeling. Plantinga writes: To the believer, the presence of God is often palpable. A surprising number of people often report that at one time or another, they feel the presence of God, or at any rate it seems to them that they feel the presence of God – where the ‘feeling’ also doesn’t go by way of sensuous imagery. Many others…report hearing God speak to them. And among these cases, cases where it seems right or nearly right to speak of perceiving God (feeling his presence, perhaps hearing his voice), there is great variation. There are shattering, overwhelming sorts of experiences had by Paul (then ‘Saul’) on the road to Damascus and reported  Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief, 180–81.   Ibid., 181. 114   Viz., Josiah Tucker, Thomas Church, Edmund Gibson, George Lavington, Richard Smalbroke, Revd Bailey of Cork, Dr John Free, and William Warburton et al. 115  Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief, 181. 112 113

Witness of the Spirit as Pneumatological Operation

107

by mystics and other masters of interior life. In these cases there may be vivid sensuous imagery of more than one kind. Still, there is also a sort of awareness of God where it seems right to say one feels his presence, but where there is little or none of the sort of sensuous imagery that typically goes with perception; it is more like a nonsensuous impression of a brooding presence.116

Plantinga’s description of spiritual perception, perception that occurs in humans by way of ‘feeling’ or ‘sensuous imagery’, complements Wesley’s understanding of the experience of believers who receive the gift of faith for perception of the Spirit’s direct and indirect witness. Plantinga suggests that we do not need arguments to evidence belief in God, just as we do not need arguments to demonstrate the existence of external reality or the past. Plantinga observes that if such truths can be accepted as basic and warranted despite no external evidence, perhaps other truths can as well, especially those which are both immediately luminous and morally helpful, such as belief in the existence of God and putative cases of direct religious encounter which move the believer to improve his or her life in relation to others. In conclusion, what is the significance of the witness of the Spirit in relation to John Wesley’s pneumatology of perceptible inspiration? The work of the Spirit enlightens our understanding. The direct testimony is perceived by faith, and corroborated by inward feeling and love for God and neighbour. The indirect testimony occurs as we become immediately conscious of the Spirit’s operation through the natural light of reason and conscience.117 By faith ( fides qua), which is received as pneumatological gift, percipients become spiritually and immediately conscious of God’s relational presence. Like the indirect testimony, assurance signifies consciousness of pardon, though a more general term for it. Ranging from the ‘spirit of bondage’ to the full ‘plerophory of faith’, assurance is experienced at varying levels. Since spiritual consciousness transcends while 116

  Ibid., 181–2.   It is precisely this distinction that avoids what Mark Mealey labels a ‘significant problem of coherence and integrity for Wesley’s theology’. See ‘Taste and See that the Lord is Good: John Wesley in the Christian Tradition of Spiritual Sensation’, 255. While Mealey interprets faith and the witness of the Spirit as synonyms with respect to Wesley’s metaphor of spiritual sensation, the present work argues that for Wesley, faith functions as a faculty for spiritual experience, and the witness of the Spirit the sense of participation observed by faith. 117

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

108

incorporating reason, it is possible for a believer to be spiritually aware (that is, participating to a certain extent in the life of God) without being fully physically aware of it. Despite this fact, to Wesley the fullness of faith – holiness coupled with inward experience of love for God and humankind – should be pursued as the end of spiritual perception. Such is the nature of inspiration perceived, God continually breathing into the soul, and the soul breathing back in conscious acknowledgement. Further, although John Wesley was heavily criticized for his pneumatology of inspiration, post-foundationalism provides a useful apologetic. As Theodore Runyon has observed: Against those who would insist, in an effort to avoid subjectivism, that experience can best be ignored, Wesley would ask, if the Holy Spirit is to engage human consciousness, how is this to be done without experience, relationally understood? Every Christian has the right to expect to sense the presence of God to his soul. This being touched by the Spirit of God, this participation, this koinonia, is precisely what has the power to transform, to bring new life, to renew the image of God.118

Personal experience of the Spirit is foundational for spiritual participation or koinonia with God. That the Holy Spirit should ‘engage human consciousness’ in a profoundly intimate way that both overshadows and involves our noetic structure as rational agents testifies to the pneumatological character of the dual witness and assurance.

 Runyon, The New Creation, 157.

118

Chapter 5

The Fruits of the Spirit as Pneumatological Operation

For John Wesley, knowledge of the direct witness of the Spirit is experienced inwardly as a deep sense of love for God and neighbour paired with the interior fruits of righteousness, peace, and joy.1 Subsequently, as the believer becomes immediately conscious of God’s inspiring operation (vis-à-vis the testimony of conscience informed by Scripture), the human spirit respires with filial confidence. By grace through faith, believers perceive the immanence of the Holy Spirit, along with the abiding assurance of forgiveness and justification, while simultaneously becoming participants in the divine nature. Inspiration is externally and phenomenally verifiable in so far as the fruits of the Spirit are borne in practice. When unaccompanied by holy living however, Wesley advised that claims to inspiration must be treated with scepticism. Love, righteousness, peace, and joy externally corroborate instances of putative religious experience. The fruits of the Spirit are crucial to Wesley’s via Spiritus of perceptible inspiration and the immediate result of life in the Divine. How does the Spirit’s work enable Christian practice, according to Wesley’s pneumatology of perceptible inspiration as via Spiritus? To what extent are the fruits of the Spirit collectively an operation of the Holy Spirit? As he expressed it, men and women of faith are set free from sin to lead the true moral or spiritual life. Participants in the divine become living testimonies to God’s goodness. Sharing in the peace of God, the righteousness of salvation, and the joy of spiritual adoption, sons and daughters of God become prolific in terms of Christian practice by exhibiting the fruits of the Spirit. In his 1744 sermon on ‘The New Birth’, Wesley 1   See Joseph W. Cunningham, ‘John Wesley’s Moral Pneumatology: The Fruits of the Spirit as Theological Virtues’, in Studies in Christian Ethics, 24 (3) (Fall 2011), Sage Publications, Inc.: 275–93. This chapter was adapted from previous publication.

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

110

described the believer’s experience of inspiration and the spiritual fruits that result from it: He ‘feels in his heart … the mighty working of the Spirit of God’ … he feels, is inwardly sensible of, the graces which the Spirit of God works in his heart. He feels, he is conscious of, a ‘peace which passeth all understanding’. He many times feels such a joy in God as is ‘unspeakable and fully of glory’. He feels ‘the love of God shed abroad in his heart by the Holy Ghost which is given unto him’. And all his spiritual senses are then ‘exercised to discern’ spiritual ‘good and evil’. By the use of these he is daily increasing in the knowledge of God, of Jesus Christ whom he has sent, and of all the things pertaining to his inward kingdom. And now he may properly be said to live: God having quickened him by his Spirit, he is alive to God through Jesus Christ. He lives a life which the world knoweth not of, a ‘life’ which ‘is hid with God in Christ’. God is continually breathing, as it were, upon his soul, and his soul is breathing unto God. Grace is descending into his heart, and prayer and praise ascending to heaven.2

By the spiritual senses ( fides qua), believers enjoy assurance of forgiveness and the witness of the Spirit. As peace, joy, and love inhere in the soul, men and women are quickened by the Spirit ‘to live’ the life ‘hid with God in Christ’.3 Rooted in the Spirit’s power, the spiritual fruits signify a deep connection between God and human: ‘And by this intercourse between God and man … a kind of spiritual respiration, the life of God in the soul is sustained.’4 According to Wesley then, to perceive inspiration – to experience the witness of the Holy Spirit by grace through faith, while germinating the fruits of righteousness and holy living – is to participate in the divine nature, and to follow the example of Christ by leading the life of Spirit-empowered goodness. Still, what specifically do the fruits of the Spirit signify in Wesley’s practical pneumatology? The aim of this chapter is to place Wesley’s moral theology in conversation with his understanding of perceptible inspiration as via Spiritus.   J. Wesley, ‘The New Birth’, in Works [BE], 2:192–4.  Ibid. 4  Ibid. 2 3

The Fruits of the Spirit as Pneumatological Operation

111

Wesley’s overarching concern was that followers of Methodist teaching actively lead the life of faith and embody the spiritual and moral character of Christ. Gerald Cragg has commented: ‘Right belief issues in proper conduct; faith is the foundation of true morality. Wesley inculcated this theme with tireless insistence.’5 Cragg observes that Wesley continuously stressed the importance of faith and its impression upon our conduct – or as the present study has added, our experience of the dual witness by grace through faith, and how it shapes our behaviour in relation to others. Despite John Wesley’s emphasis on the importance of spiritual character and its practical development within the life of the believer, past scholarship has tended to extrapolate the issue of theological coherence from the ethical implications of his doctrine of perfect love.6 To supplement the discussion, this chapter will argue the significance of virtue for grasping Wesley’s moral pneumatology, which has recently gained momentum in scholarly circles.7 The true inspirant in Wesley’s theology cultivates qualities that reflect God’s goodness. Wesley defined ‘real virtue’ in 1762 as the ‘fruits of the love of God [and] man’, and having ‘the mind which was in Christ Jesus’.8 When framed accordingly, a salient theme emerges with respect  Cragg, Works [BE], 11:119.   Those writing within this area have focused primarily on the following theological issues: namely, to what extent God perfects sinful creatures in the present life and, whether or not one’s conclusion on the matter reflects sound biblical interpretation. See W.E. Sangster, The Path to Perfection: An Examination and Restatement of John Wesley’s Doctrine of Christian Perfection (London: Epworth Press, 1943); Kenneth Prior, The Way of Holiness: A Study in Christian Growth (London: Intervarsity Christian Fellowship, 1967); J.I. Packer, Keep in Step with the Spirit (Grand Rapids, MI: Revell, 1987); Stanley N. Gundry, ed., Five Views on Sanctification (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1996). 7   See especially H. Ray Dunning, Reflecting the Divine Image: Christian Ethics in Wesleyan Perspective (Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 1998); Leonard D. Hulley, To Be and To Do: Exploring Wesley’s Thought on Ethical Behaviour (Pretoria: University of South Africa, 1988); D. Stephen Long, John Wesley’s Moral Theology: The Quest for God and Goodness (Nashville, TN: Kingswood Books, 2005); Robin W. Lovin, ‘The Physics of True Virtue’, in Wesleyan Theology Today, Theodore H. Runyon, ed. (Nashville, TN: Kingswood Books, 1985), 264–72; Kevin Lowery, Salvaging Wesley’s Agenda: A New Paradigm for Wesleyan Virtue Ethics (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2008). What remains to be seen is which particular spiritual tempers or virtues Wesley emphasized most, and collectively, how they functioned in relation to the Spirit’s economic person and mission in his theology. 8   The Bicentennial Edition of the Works of John Wesley, vols 18–24, Reginald Ward and Richard Heitzenrater, eds (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1988–2003), 21:399. 5

6

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

112

to Wesley’s pneumatological ethics: experience of the Spirit’s operative presence always begets fruitful living. The Holy Spirit, when perceived by faith, transforms the human agent as God’s perfect love enables our participation in the divine life.9 Wesley’s practical pneumatology has a marked moral bent. Subsequently, as a second objective, it will be shown that love’s perfect governance of the soul is inseparable from the themes of happiness, holiness, and true religion in Wesley’s theology, which, collectively, serve as the end or telos of Christian life. In this regard, Wesley’s emphasis reflects the tradition of eudaimonia, which envisages humanity’s highest good as happiness through virtue. The fruits of the Spirit – especially righteousness, peace, joy, and love which Wesley emphasized in his correspondence with John Smith – and their place in the life of faith is a rondo throughout Wesley’s works, echoing the importance of spiritually virtuous living in relation to the reign of God presiding over the heart. The fruits of the Spirit, to Wesley, are both affective and dispositional. ‘Righteousness, peace, and joy’, wrote Wesley, ‘[can be] termed “the kingdom of God” because it is the immediate fruit of God’s reigning in the soul.’10 As the fruits of the Spirit are cultivated within, we experience God’s kingdom: ‘You shall know … that love of God which passeth knowledge. You shall witness the kingdom of God within you’.11 The reign of God is inaugurated by love. Partaking of the Spirit’s fruit means being ‘“made perfect in love”, in that love which “casts out” all painful “fear”, and all desire but that of glorifying him.’12 To Wesley, righteousness, peace, joy, and love signify God’s presence in the human soul and serve as the external or empirical evidence of participation in the Spirit. For example, in 1744, Wesley preached at St Mary’s, Oxford on ‘being filled with the Holy Ghost’,13 which he described as both having the mind of Christ and being prolific of the Spirit’s fruits. In his words, to receive the Spirit is to express ‘“love,

 9

  A key biblical text for Wesley’s theology of spiritual participation was 2 Peter 1:4, on which he reflected in his Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament [originally published in 1755], reprint edn (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1986): ‘Ye may become partakers of the divine nature – Being renewed in the image of God, and having communion with them, so as to dwell in God and God in you.’ 10   J. Wesley, ‘The Way to the Kingdom’, in Works [BE], 1:224. 11   Letters,4:261. 12   J. Wesley, ‘The Way to the Kingdom’, in Works [BE], 2:139–40. 13   See Acts 4:31.

The Fruits of the Spirit as Pneumatological Operation

113

joy, peace … [and] goodness”’.14 This inward change, marked by the Spirit’s indwelling presence, empowers believers to ‘fulfill all outward righteousness, “to walk as Christ also walked”, in the “work of faith, the patience of hope, the labour of love”’.15 Again, in his 1746 sermon, ‘The First Fruits of the Spirit’, Wesley explained that they have ‘peace with God’ who cease to ‘follow the motions of [their] corrupt nature’, because ‘their thoughts, words, and works are under the direction of the blessed Spirit of God.’16 Refashioned by the Spirit’s holiness, believers reflect God’s spiritual nature ‘both in their hearts and lives’.17 As the fruits of the Spirit germinate, men and women display love for God and neighbour outwardly. Believers are led into ‘every holy desire, into every divine and heavenly temper, till every thought which arises in their heart is holiness unto the Lord.’18 In the same sermon, Wesley provided a clear pronouncement on the moral nature of those who walk after the Spirit: ‘Being filled with faith and with the Holy Ghost, they possess in their hearts, and show forth in their lives, in the whole course of their words and actions, the genuine fruits of the Spirit of God, namely, “love, joy, peace …” and whatever else is lovely or praiseworthy.’19 Wesley elaborated this notion in his 1777 sermon, ‘On Laying the Foundation of the New Chapel’. Lauding ‘Methodism’ as the ‘old religion’ (or the religion of love), he explained that true practitioners must always be filled with the Spirit. This, according to Wesley, was the foundation of true virtue, and the wellspring of perfect love. The ‘religion of love, and joy, and peace … ever [shows] itself by its fruits, continually springing up, not only in all innocence – for love worketh no ill to his neighbour – but likewise in every kind of beneficence, spreading virtue and happiness all around it.’20 14   J. Wesley, ‘Scriptural Christianity’, in Works [BE], 1:160–61. Cf., Gal. 5:22–3: ‘But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against which there is no law.’ 15   J. Wesley, ‘Scriptural Christianity’, in Works [BE], 1:160–61. 16   J. Wesley, ‘The First Fruits of the Spirit’, in Works [BE], 1:234. 17   Ibid., 236. 18  Ibid. 19   Ibid., 237. 20   J. Wesley, ‘On Laying the Foundation of the New Chapel’, in Works [BE], 3:585. It should be noted that Wesley is here quoting from An Earnest Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion (1743). See The Bicentennial Edition of The Works of John Wesley, Gerald Cragg, ed. (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1987), 11:45–6.

114

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

John Wesley emphasized true morality in terms of God’s inward kingdom of righteousness, peace, joy, and love. Each has an affective as well as a dispositional component. They must be cultivated in cooperation with the Spirit’s empowerment and perfected in grace. Although Wesley’s writings do expose an overall preference for the term ‘tempers’, his underlying sentiment supports the importance of habituating spiritual character.21 Wesley’s use of temper/virtue language also relates to a deeper question with respect to his reception of the reformation emphasis on sola gratia. Namely, his thinking raises the question of how human agents are said to actuate goodness, if it is God’s work within us that facilitates authentic Christian practice. Wesley suggested that the Divine Spirit, in unison with our reception of faith as gift, inspires believers to actively and wilfully express their love for God and neighbour by leading the spiritually tempered life. This was the ‘gospel leaven’, according to his 1787 sermon on ‘The Signs of the Times’, or ‘faith working by love, inward and outward holiness … “righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost”’,22 gifts of the Spirit freely sought by empowered human beings. Holiness not only involves, but requires human participation. Wesley undoubtedly agreed with St Augustine that ‘He that made us without us will not save us without us.’23 The fruits of holy living are manifested in us by the Spirit, as human agents actively seek to embody them in practice. Abiding in the Spirit, our character is re-bent toward God’s eternal and beneficent nature, the foundation of morality. In what sense are the fruits of the Spirit affective as well as dispositional? How do love, righteousness, peace, and joy function with respect to the Holy Spirit’s economic operation within the human person? In Wesley’s moral theology, righteousness, peace, and joy are evidence of life in the Holy Spirit. The root of these, however, is love. Wesley held that love takes root in the soul when (by faith) one spiritually senses the indwelling presence of the Spirit, which precipitates in 21   The matter of holy ‘tempers’ and moral psychology in Wesley’s thought has received increased attention by scholars recently. See Kenneth J. Collins, ‘John Wesley’s Topography of the Heart: Dispositions, Tempers, and Affections’, in Methodist History 36 (1998): 162–75. See also Randy L. Maddox, ‘A Change of Affections: The Developments, Dynamics, and Dethronement of John Wesley’s Heart Religion’, in “Heart Religion” in the Methodist Tradition and Related Movements, Richard B. Steele, ed. (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2001), 3–31. 22   J. Wesley, ‘The Signs of the Times’, in Works [BE], 2:527. 23   Cf., St. Augustine, Sermon 169, 11, 13: PL 38, 923.

The Fruits of the Spirit as Pneumatological Operation

115

outward expressions of holiness and practical devotion on the part of the believer. Love holds overarching significance with respect to the other fruits of the Spirit in Wesley’s moral pneumatology.24 To Wesley, love is the centre of all spiritual virtue and the foundation of Christian morality: [Love] is the essence, the spirit, the life of all virtue. It is not only the first and great commandment, but it is all the commandments in one. Whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are amiable or honourable; if there be any virtue, if there be any praise, they are all comprised in this one word – love.25

According to Wesley’s Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament (1755), it is ‘the root of all the rest’.26 Elsewhere he stated: ‘It is plain all these fruits … are [the] means of increasing the love from which they spring.’27 Love must not only be felt, but continuously practiced by believers. The relationship between love, the core spiritual fruit, and peace, joy, and righteousness in Wesley’s theology can be compared to the relationship between prudence and the other cardinal virtues – justice, fortitude, and temperance in the tradition of virtue ethics; without prudence, one cannot embody the other virtues.28 Unless one cultivates the practical wisdom to distinguish right from wrong consistently, and while taking into consideration the specifics of concrete situations and the needs of those involved, one will struggle to act justly, moderately, or with courage, when instances should arise which call for action. Prudence means knowing when and how to act in the right way, at the right time, with the right intentions or reasons, and for the right end. Similarly, according to Wesley, without love, it is impossible to cultivate the other fruits of the Spirit. One cannot truly embody or share God’s peace, joy, or righteousness unless love of God and neighbour takes root in one’s heart and life. 24

  Although righteousness, as will be shown in the following section, was the substance of all theological virtues, the essence or life-giving principle of every Christian action was love, in John Wesley’s theology. 25   J. Wesley, ‘The Circumcision of the Heart’, in Works [BE], 1:407. 26   J. Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament (London, 1755), p. 505. Cf., Gal. 5:22. 27   J. Wesley, ‘The Important Question’, in Works [BE], 3:190. 28   See Joseph Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues (South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1966), 3–22.

116

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

Love’s governance of the human soul, in relation to peace, joy, and righteousness, serves as the praxiological foundation of true morality. Love is the essence of all Christian virtue, like a spiritual phronesis for acting peaceably, righteously, and joyfully in every circumstance and situation.29 This view of love, as guiding affective and dispositional temper or virtue of the spiritual life, is what gives pragmatic steel to his doctrine of Christian perfection or perfect love: ‘But what is perfection? The word has various senses: here it means perfect love. It is love excluding sin, love filling the heart, taking up the whole capacity of the soul. It is love “rejoicing evermore, praying without ceasing, in everything giving thanks”.’30 Further, in his journal entry for 6 March 1760, he claimed: ‘Constant communion with God … [as] fills their hearts with humble love … this is …“perfection”.’31 Wesley echoed this in his 1784 sermon, ‘On Perfection’, where he claimed that ‘the sum of Christian perfection … is all comprised in that one word, love.’32 When love for God is sensed by human agents, and when it guides our actions toward the fruits of peace, joy, and righteousness, communion with God is known and enjoyed by the believer. As love rules the human soul, through continued cultivation and spiritual devotion, the soul is freed from sin for holy living: ‘If you love God, [then] God is in all your thoughts, and your whole life is a sacrifice to him. And if you love mankind, it is your one design, desire, and endeavour, to spread virtue and happiness all around you, to lessen the present sorrows, and increase the joys, of every child of man.’33 Love’s dispositional grip of the human soul, to Wesley, is ‘another term for holiness. They [love and holiness] are two names from the same thing.’34 The inward kingdom of virtue reigns when human agents cultivate love as core spiritual fruit.35 29   See, especially, J. Wesley, ‘Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount – Discourse the Second’, in Works [BE], 1:499–509. 30   J. Wesley, ‘The Scripture Way of Salvation’, in Works [BE], 2:160. 31   J. Wesley, in Works [BE], 21:245. 32   J. Wesley, ‘On Perfection’, in Works [BE], 3:74. 33   J. Wesley, ‘Serious Thoughts Occasioned by the Late Earthquake at Lisbon’, in Works, 11:11. 34   J. Wesley, ‘Christian Perfection’, in Works [BE], 2:104. 35   A debate persists over how best to interpret Wesley’s doctrine of perfect love visà-vis entire sanctification, namely, whether perfection is a gradual process or instantaneous event. See Harald Lindström, Wesley and Sanctification: A Study in the Doctrine of Salvation (Grand Rapids, MI: Francis Asbury Press, 1982).

The Fruits of the Spirit as Pneumatological Operation

117

Wesley distinguished between love directed toward God and love directed toward human beings, both of which are affective and dispositional. Although love of God is inseparably connected with love of neighbour, the former is always antecedent to the latter. In other words, love of neighbour stems from love of God. Its ‘first branch’, according to Wesley … is the love of God: and as he that loves God loves his brother also, it is inseparably connected with the second, ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself’. Thou shalt love every man as thy own soul, as Christ loved us. ‘On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophecy:’ these contain the whole of Christian perfection.36

Wesley espoused this understanding as early as 1733, when, in his sermon on ‘The Love of God’, he claimed: ‘we must not love anything more than God, we may not love the creature above the Creator. Nay … we must not love anything so much as him … we must reserve for him the highest seat in our heart, the largest and choicest share of our affection.’37 Although love for God is what prompts love of neighbour, Wesley was convinced that both are necessary in terms of achieving our teleological end. It is impossible to love God without loving our neighbour, and vice versa. Humanity is fashioned for knowledge, love, and enjoyment of God, as well as community with each other. As Wesley explained in his sermon on ‘The One Thing Needful’ (1734): ‘For to this end was man created, to love God; and to this end alone, even to love the Lord his God with all his heart, and soul, and mind, and strength. But love is the very image of God: it is the brightness of his glory. By love man is not only made like God, but in some sense one with him.’38 When human agents come to embody God’s perfect love by faith and holy living, we begin to achieve our purpose as creatures in God’s image. ‘This, this alone,’ he claimed, ‘is the one end of our abode here; for this alone are we placed on the earth; for this alone did the Son of God pour out his blood; for this alone doth his Holy Spirit watch over us.’39 The entirety of the Spirit’s mission 36

    38   39   37

J. Wesley, ‘On Perfection’, in Works [BE], 3:74. J. Wesley, ‘The Love of God’, in Works [BE], 4:333. J. Wesley, ‘The One Thing Needful’, in Works [BE], 4:355. Ibid., 358.

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

118

within the economy of salvation tends toward this.40 Human beings are created to participate in the life of God, whose economic operation fosters loving reciprocity and dispositional devotion. To the extent that believers express God’s love, not just in feeling but in character, the nature of Christ and his Spirit becomes ours. Cultivation of spiritual character, especially perfect love, is paramount in Wesley’s pneumatological ethics. Righteousness is also a core spiritual disposition, or temper, in Wesley’s moral theology. To Wesley, righteousness (when rooted in faith and tempered by love) subsumes every moral good or praiseworthy action. In his sermon entitled ‘Seek First the Kingdom’ (1725), Wesley underscored its importance as a core spiritual temper: ‘Whatever virtues are recommended to us by reason, especially as assisted by revelation, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are pure – in a word, the whole of our duty both towards God, ourselves, and our neighbour – are here included in the word “righteousness”.’41 Righteousness faithfully carries out God’s ultimate command to love God and neighbour, stemming from inward knowledge of the Spirit’s love. Wesley carefully demarcated Christian righteousness. In his view, habitually abstaining from cruelty and engaging in benevolent behaviour is just and praiseworthy, but it does not reach the depth of holy , nor is it sufficient for spiritual flourishing. Such was the charge he laid before his Oxford community in 1741: ‘Are there not many present here who … believe that a good moral man and a good Christian mean the same thing? That a man need not trouble himself any further if he only practises as much Christianity as was writ over [Alexander Severus] the heathen emperor’s gate – “Do as thou wouldst be done unto”?’42 Without spiritual devotion, righteousness becomes an exoskeleton without sinew, ‘for no system, either of morality or philosophy, can be complete, unless God be kept in view, from the very beginning to the end.’43 Wesley taught that true

40

  ‘To the same end are all the internal dispensations of God, all the influences of his Holy Spirit’: ibid., 357. 41   J. Wesley, ‘Seek First the Kingdom’, in Works [BE], 4:219. 42   J. Wesley, ‘Hypocrisy in Oxford [English Version]’, in Works [BE], 4:399. See also Wesley’s journal entry from 3 July 1776, where he condemns morality free from theology: ‘the fashionable religion vulgarly called morality … is neither better nor worse than atheism’: J. Wesley, Works [BE], 23:22. 43   J. Wesley, ‘Thoughts upon Necessity’, in Works, 10:473.

The Fruits of the Spirit as Pneumatological Operation

119

righteousness must always be guided by faith and rooted in love for God. It is not obedience to a set of prescriptive laws, but a practical disposition and lived expression. The truly righteous person, according to Wesley, models holy living in all places and with right intentions. Wesley held that righteousness ‘doth not require any impossibility to be done (although to mere man what it requires would be impossible, but not to man assisted by the Spirit of God)’; ‘the covenant of grace doth not require us to do anything at all … but only to believe in him.’44 Righteousness is endowed by the Holy Spirit, and subsequently habituated into the life of holiness. It is both spiritual fruit of the Holy Spirit and theological virtue or disposition: ‘And although this may in one sense be said to be ours, as being in some measure owing to our own, working together with the Holy Spirit of God, yet is it very justly ascribed to him and termed his righteousness, since he is the confirmer and perfecter, as well as the infuser of it.’45 To know and practice Christ’s righteousness is to perceive the Holy Spirit’s indwelling presence, to desire it for ourselves, and subsequently to express the love of God and neighbour through righteous actions. In a letter to William Law from 6 January 1756, Wesley stressed the fundamental connection between righteousness, peace, and joy: ‘[The] present kingdom of God in the soul is “righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost” … [These], which God hath joined, man ought not to put asunder … peace and joy should never be separated from righteousness, being the divine means both of preserving and increasing it.’46 Righteousness naturally leads toward peaceful living. How should peace be understood with respect to Wesley’s pneumatological ethics? As Wesley understood it, those who fully experience the dual witness of the Spirit enjoy a lasting sense of stillness with God. Believers become confident in God’s faithfulness. The source of true peace is Christ’s Spirit alone.47 By faith through the merits of Christ’s atonement, believers are absolved from guilt. So long as one abides in Christ, trusting in his meritorious work, the fear of death is supplanted with calm and assurance. Those who are justified and experience full assurance, explained Wesley, feel ‘no sense of guilt, or dread of the wrath of God.   J. Wesley, ‘The Righteousness of Faith’, in Works [BE], 1:207.   J. Wesley, ‘Seek First the Kingdom’, in Works [BE], 4:219. 46   J. Wesley, Letters, 3:361. 47   ‘[Those] who are “in Christ”, have “peace with God”’: J. Wesley, ‘The First Fruits of the Spirit’, in Works [BE], 1:234, emphasis added. 44 45

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

120

They “have the witness in themselves; they are conscious of their interest in the blood of sprinkling.”’48 Wesley considered peace a Spirit-endued, inward sense of tranquillity (‘that banishes all doubt’ and ‘all painful uncertainty’49). It is, he explained: ‘that serenity of soul which it hath not entered into the heart of a natural man to conceive, and which it is not possible for even the spiritual man to utter.’50 Peace is existential reassurance of the sustaining presence of Christ’s Spirit in relation to the believer. However, Wesley’s views also suggest that, in an underlying sense, peace has dispositional characteristics, in so far as it is refined during times of hardship. Peace must be cultivated as part of one’s spiritual character. Peace is both affective as well as dispositional. The believer must, through the Spirit’s empowerment, habituate ‘a peace which all the powers of earth and hell are unable to take from him. Waves and storms beat upon it, but they shake it not; for it is founded upon a rock.’51 In times of difficulty, doubt, anxiety or fear, dispositional peace functions as the believer’s resolve to remain steadfast in devotion to God. Peace as disposition means being ‘happy in God. In every state … [learning] to be content, yea … [giving] thanks unto God through Jesus Christ’.52 Peace, then, is both a feeling of the soul directly resulting from assurance, and a learned or acquired spiritual resolve to rest secure in the Spirit by faith in Christ: ‘And what is this peace, the peace of God, but that calm serenity of soul, that sweet repose in the blood of Jesus, which leaves no doubt of our acceptance in him?’53 Lasting ‘serenity of soul’ demands practice on the part of the inspirant. Continual peace is essential for growth in grace and holiness: ‘There is scarce a greater help to holiness than this: a continual tranquility of spirit, the evenness of a mind stayed upon God … And without this it is scarce possible to grow in grace, and in the vital knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.’54 Knowledge of God and participation in the life of the Spirit

48

  Ibid., 1:238.   J. Wesley, ‘The Way to the Kingdom’, in Works [BE], 1:223. 50   J. Wesley, ‘The Marks of the New Birth’, in Works [BE], 1:422. 51  Ibid. 52  Ibid. 53   J. Wesley, ‘Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount – Discourse the First’, in Works [BE], 1:481. 54   J. Wesley, ‘Satan’s Devices’, in Works [BE], 2:143. 49

The Fruits of the Spirit as Pneumatological Operation

121

not only manifests itself in the feeling of peace, but also dispositionally, which Wesley described in terms of serenity of soul and continual tranquillity. In an even broader sense, Wesley understood peace to denote ecumenical hospitality. Peace is an expression of Christian fellowship and community. In his eulogy for George Whitefield (1770), Wesley urged his listeners to partake of the spirit of catholicity. ‘From henceforth hold ye’ he insisted, ‘“the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace”.’55 Mutual respect or hospitality is essential for catholicity: But although a difference in opinions or modes of worship may prevent an entire external union, yet need it prevent our union in affection? Though we can’t think alike, may we not love alike? May we not be of one heart, though we are not of one opinion? Without all doubt we may. Herein all the children of God may unite, notwithstanding these smaller differences.56

To know peace, according to Wesley, is to enjoy a lasting sense of favour with God through the victorious merits of Christ. However, it also signifies hospitality or communion between Christians of differing opinions and modes of worship: ‘This is our point. We leave every man to enjoy … his own mode of worship, desiring only that the love of God and his neighbor be the ruling principle in his heart, and show itself in his life by an uniform practice of justice mercy, and truth.’57 Peace entails more than the feeling of contentment; it is also the practice or disposition of being peaceful. As Wesley expressed it, ‘God is a God of peace …   J. Wesley, ‘On the Death of George Whitefield’, in Works [BE], 2:346. Incidentally, Wesley and Whitefield shared a complicated relationship. They disagreed on the question of predestination and its practical consequences. However, finding common ground in his evangelical understanding of the redemptive person and work of Christ and his Spirit, Wesley professed to respect the other’s ministry as it sought to promote God’s kingdom. However, Wesley’s deliberate omission from the funeral sermon of certain theological emphases favoured by Whitefield himself (namely ‘election’ and ‘predestination’), according to Kenneth Collins, ‘roiled Whitefield’s Calvinist friends, planting the seeds for the fierce controversy that was soon to come’. Collins gives the impression that, ironically, despite his message of catholicity, in this instance Wesley’s praxis could be construed as undermining it. See Kenneth Collins, ‘Wesley’s Life and Ministry’, in The Cambridge Companion to John Wesley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), p. 54. 56   J. Wesley, ‘Catholic Spirit’, in Works [BE], 2:82. 57   J. Wesley, ‘A Short History of the People Called Methodists (1781)’, in Works [BE], Rupert Davies, ed. (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1989), 9:502. 55

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

122

His children should with all their might labour after it.’58 To ‘labour after’ peace, is to cultivate peace as spiritual virtue. When habituated, it becomes part of one’s spiritual character. The shared nature of peace in Wesley’s theology also indicates the overall importance of corporate holiness for his approach to Christian ethics. Spiritual virtue is never abstract from practice. Believers develop righteousness, love, and peace in relation to serving others. The fruits of the Spirit must be expressed in community. In addition to the three above, Wesley recognized the significance of joy as a vital spiritual fruit, ‘wrought in the heart by the Holy Ghost, by the everblessed Spirit of God’,59 and with affective and dispositional characteristics. In his 1746 sermon on the ‘The Witness of Our Own Spirit’, Wesley described joy in pneumatological language. He claimed that percipients of the Spirit rejoice with the following language: I rejoice because the sense of God’s love to me hath by the same Spirit [been] wrought in me to love him, and to love for his sake every child of man, every soul he hath made … I rejoice because I both see and feel, through the inspiration of God’s Holy Spirit, that all my works are wrought in him, yea, and that it is he who worketh all my works in me.60

Joy is also Christological and dispositionally present in those who actively rejoice in God ‘through Christ Jesus, “by whom we have now received the atonement”’ and ‘reconciliation with God’.61 The joyful person is filled with faith in the meritorious self-sacrifice of Jesus. According to Wesley, joy is continuous delight in the divine directly resulting from inward affection for God: ‘Now, what is it to love God but to delight in him, to rejoice in his will, to desire continually to please him, to seek and find our happiness in him, and to thirst day and night for a fuller enjoyment of him?’62 Joy always finds itself in alignment with the divine will.63   J. Wesley, Letters, 4:278.   J. Wesley, ‘The Way to the Kingdom’, in Works [BE], 1:223. 60   Ibid., 310. 61   J. Wesley, ‘The Way to the Kingdom’, in Works [BE], 1:223. 62   J. Wesley, ‘On Love’, in Works [BE], 4:383. 63   Wesley’s emphasis upon joy in terms of the Christian life, along with the overarching importance of happiness and holiness in union with God’s Spirit vis-à-vis 58 59

The Fruits of the Spirit as Pneumatological Operation

123

Wesley distinguished between joy in terms of affective experience and joy as dispositional behaviour. In a letter from 18 January 1774, Wesley gave the following advice to a society member: A will steadily and uniformly devoted to God is essential to a state of sanctification, but not … uniformity of joy or peace or happy communion with God. They may rise and fall in various degrees; nay, and may be affected either by the body or by diabolical agency, in a manner which all our wisdom can never understand or present.64

Still grappling with the issue nearly three years later, Wesley wrote to her again on 21 December 1776, reiterating his earlier sentiments: It is devoutly to be wished for that we may rejoice evermore; and it is certain the inward kingdom of God implies not only righteousness and peace but joy in the Holy Ghost … Yet it cannot be denied that many times joy is withheld even from them that walk uprightly. The great point of all is an heart and a life devoted to God. Keep only this, and let all the rest go; give him your heart, and it sufficeth.65

The feeling of joy can be affected by numerous events or circumstances. As Wesley put it above in his letter from 1774, joy in this sense rises and falls in ‘various degrees’, based on internal or external conflict, spiritual or otherwise. Still, while affective joy may ebb and flow, dispositional joy remains present when externalized morally as love for God and neighbour, in so far as the ‘will [remains] steadily and uniformly devoted to God’ – or, as he expressed it in the above letter from 1776, one’s heart and life remain devoted to God. Dispositional joy is what anchors joy as affective experience. The will perfectly oriented toward God seeks, despite journeying through emotional peaks and valleys, God’s kingdom through communion with others, and recognizes love as its chief means of happiness. moral action would preclude any unfiltered Kantian reading of his ethics. See Kevin T. Lowery, Salvaging Wesley’s Agenda: A New Paradigm for Wesleyan Virtue Ethics (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2008). 64   J. Wesley, ‘To Mary Bennis’, in Letters, 6:68. 65   Ibid., 243.

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

124

In his sermon on ‘Justification by Faith’, he claimed that to enjoy God ‘is (in substance) life everlasting’.66 Salvation, for Wesley, is participation in the life of God’s Spirit and obedience to the greatest of all commandments instituted by Christ. Joy, as such, is both affective and dispositional, to the extent that believers find meaning and happiness in self-sacrifice and service of neighbour even in the midst of sorrow or pain. The fruits of the Spirit represent the practical substance of Christian morality in Wesley’s theology. When love tempers the soul, the inspirant personifies Christian holiness through righteous living. Peace takes shape as a deep sense of tranquillity rooted in faith, which liberates the soul from fear and anxiety. Finally, joy signifies enjoyment of God and finding our highest satisfaction in holy living despite affective incontinuity. Without love, however, the fruits of the Spirit invariably expire from the soul. Love constitutes the Spirit’s perfecting agency within the human person. The moral dimension of Wesley’s pneumatology is grounded in God’s spiritual kingdom inwardly experienced, dispositionally developed, and outwardly expressed. To what extent is Wesley’s theological ethics grounded in his theology of spiritual existence? What makes his moral theology pneumatological? Wesley believed that humanity was fashioned distinctively as an expression of God’s graciousness and relationality. Created in the divine image, Wesley held that we have been given the faculties of understanding and volition (or intellect and will). In addition, we are endowed with liberty, an inseparable corollary of the former. That is, not only are humans designed to know the good and to act upon it, but also to choose to do so. As Wesley expressed it, ‘every spirit in the universe, as such, is endued with understanding, and in consequence with a will and with a measure of liberty; and that these three are inseparably united in every intelligent nature.’67 This raises the question of Wesley’s definition of liberty. Wesley conceived of human liberty or freedom in two important respects. On the one hand, freedom entails the liberty for choosing between contraries. An inbuilt facet of spiritual nature, humans are capable of choosing between competing alternatives. On the other hand, freedom signifies liberation from sin, or freedom for perfection. According to Wesley, humans are truly liberated when justified and sanctified by   J. Wesley, ‘Justification by Faith’, in Works [BE], 1:185.   J. Wesley, ‘The End of Christ’s Coming’, in Works [BE], 2:475.

66 67

The Fruits of the Spirit as Pneumatological Operation

125

faith for the latter: ‘From the glorious liberty wherein he was made he is fallen into the basest bondage. He [the Devil] hath bound him with a thousand chains, the heavy chains of his own vile affections.’68 Our highest freedom, then, is deliverance from sin. Despite freedom for contrariety being essential with respect to fostering community and engaging in moral practice, true and lasting freedom is achieved through submission to the Spirit’s peaceable will. To Wesley, freedom in this sense is interchangeable with the term ‘perfect love’: ‘perfect love and Christian liberty are the very same thing; and these two expressions are equally proper, being equally scriptural.’69 The desire for communion with God is ingrained within our created nature as human beings. As believers experience true freedom, or what Wesley called ‘Christian liberty’, ‘they shall be filled with the thing that they long for, even with righteousness and true holiness.’70 Freedom for perfection exceeds freedom for contrariety in terms of its praiseworthiness. True liberty is not making choices, it is having that which we desire most, that without which we fail to flourish spiritually. Wesley held that ‘the recovery of the image of God, of this glorious liberty, of this perfect soundness, is the one thing needful upon earth.’71 Freedom for perfection is humanity’s telos, realized when vacillation between sin and love subsides. However, liberty as choice is also important in terms of Wesley’s theology of freedom. It is a distinctive characteristic of our threefold spiritual nature (along with the intellect and will) that, without which, ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ would cease to be meaningful moral categories. Wesley’s response to the philosophical problem of ‘determinism’ exposes the importance of ‘choice’ for his moral theological system. According to Wesley, the central argument of determinism – ‘as taught either by ancient Heathens, or by the moderns, (whether Deists or Christians)’72 – suggests that everything in existence functions according to certain prescriptive laws. These laws, whether natural or based on God’s divine command, are binding on human agents, truncating our freedom for choice. If determinism is true, then the experience of choosing to act this way or that is illusory – choices are merely   J. Wesley, ‘The One Thing Needful’, in Works [BE], 4:354.   See Wesley’s letter to Joseph Benson from 5 October 1770, in Letters, 5:203. 70   J. Wesley, ‘Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount – Discourse the Second’, in Works [BE], 1:497. 71   J. Wesley, ‘The One Thing Needful’, in Works [BE], 4:355. 72   J. Wesley, ‘Thoughts upon Necessity’, in Works, 10:468–9. 68 69

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

126

effects predetermined by antecedent causes. Wesley took the implications of determinism seriously, as is evinced in his Thoughts upon Necessity, published in 1774. This work was partly a response to high Calvinism (especially the doctrine of predestination) and its philosophical implications, but it was also a response to the new scientific ethos, in which many thinkers understood the universe in terms of fixed mechanical laws.73 In either form, Wesley believed that determinism limits human freedom and responsibility: If all the actions, and passions, and tempers of men are quite independent on their own choice, are governed by a principle exterior to themselves; then none of them is either rewardable or punishable, is either praise or blameworthy. The consequence is undeniable: I cannot praise the sun for warming, nor blame the stone for wounding me; because neither the sun nor the stone acts from choice, but from necessity. Therefore, neither does the latter deserve blame, nor the former deserve praise. Neither is the one capable of reward, nor the other of punishment. And if a man does good as necessarily as the sun, he is no more praiseworthy than that; if he does evil as necessarily as the stone, he is no more blameworthy.74

In other words, if liberty (in terms of contrariety) does not exist, if the freedom to choose between alternatives is divorced from the intellect and will or some exterior   Wesley’s writing was specifically occasioned by Lord Kames’s Essays on the Principles of Morality, and Natural Religion (Edinburgh, 1751), which Wesley read in the spring of 1774. Kames suggested that humanity, while bound to the laws of cause and effect, nevertheless experiences the feeling of being free, which is the basis of moral agency. Wesley disagreed. In his journal entry for 24 May 1774, he wrote, ‘I read Lord K[ame]’s plausible Essays on Morality and Natural Religion. Did ever man take so much pains to so little purpose as he does in his essay “On Liberty and Necessity”? Cui bono? What good would it do to mankind if he could convince them that they are a mere piece of clockwork? That they have no more share in directing their own actions than in directing the sea or the north wind? He owns that “if men saw themselves in this light, all sense of moral obligation, of right and wrong, of good or ill desert, would immediately cease.” Well, my Lord “sees himself in this light”. Consequently, if his own doctrine is true, he has no “sense of moral obligation, of right and wrong, of good or ill desert”. Is he not then excellently well qualified for a judge? Will he condemn a man for not “holding the wind in his fist”?’ See also Wesley’s journal entry for 6 July 1781. Wesley criticized Kames’ work yet again, calling it ‘a masterpiece of infidelity’ and its author, ‘a professed infidel’: Works [BE], 23:214. 74   J. Wesley, ‘Thoughts upon Necessity’, in Works, 10:464. 73

The Fruits of the Spirit as Pneumatological Operation

127

principle supplants our faculty for choice, then ‘the consequence is undeniable’.75 According to Wesley, the human agent would be as reproachable for murder as giving alms to the poor – neither of which would be objectively preferable to the other. Wesley stated, ‘There can be no moral good or evil, unless [humans] have liberty as well as will.’76 Although the philosophical question of determinism was itself significant to Wesley, its value for the present study lies in his response’s emphasis on true morality, which he founded upon his pneumatology of spiritual existence. For Wesley, humanity’s spiritual nature – our understanding, volition, and liberty – grounds our ethical responsibility. To unhook freedom from its pneumatological foundation is to ‘[destroy] all the morality of human actions, making man a mere machine’.77 The basis of human spiritual nature is God’s divine nature, in whose image humans were originally cast: ‘What made his image yet plainer in his human offspring was … the liberty he originally enjoyed; the perfect freedom implanted in his nature, and interwoven with all its parts.’78 Our capacity for choosing between contraries, without which ethical responsibility would cease to be, is founded upon God’s gift of pneumatological being. Given the pneumatological character of Wesley’s understanding of ethical responsibility, as well as his emphasis on freedom in terms of perfection, how do these relate to his theology of the fruits of the Spirit, here conceived in terms of virtue? Love’s perfect governance of the soul is inseparable from the themes of happiness, holiness, and true religion in Wesley’s theology. Collectively, these are the end or telos of perceptible inspiration as via Spiritus. The fruits of the Spirit are vital to John Wesley’s spiritual ethics: ‘What a glorious constellation of graces is here! Now suppose all these to be knit together in one, to be united together in the soul of a believer – this is Christian perfection.’79 When ‘knit together’ by the inspired love of God and neighbour, the fruits of righteousness, peace, and joy move human beings toward the end of our created being: ‘In this is perfection and glory and happiness. The royal law of heaven and earth is this, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy 75

    77   78   79   76

Ibid., 464. Ibid., 467. Ibid., 468–9. J. Wesley, ‘The Image of God’, in Works [BE], 4:295. J. Wesley, ‘On Perfection’, in Works [BE], 3:75.

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

128

mind, and with all thy strength.”’80 The love of God, according to Wesley, is ‘our passport into happy eternity’.81 That humanity is always already oriented toward participation in the Holy Spirit is an elemental characteristic of John Wesley’s theology: ‘He made you; and he made you to be happy in him; and nothing else can make you happy.’82 Wesley compared the cravings of humanity’s spiritual nature to those of the body. Similar to the way in which food and drink are necessary to physical survival, participation in the divine life of God is essential to that of the spiritual: ‘In like manner this hunger in the soul, this thirst after the image of God, is the strongest of all our spiritual appetites when it is once awakened in the heart; yea it swallows up all the rest in that one great desire to be renewed after the likeness of him that created us.’83 Craving for renewal in God’s image, according to Wesley, is fundamentally human in terms of his pneumatological anthropology. We are spirits created for communion with God. When stirred by grace through faith, humanity’s spiritual yearnings become insatiable: And even so, from the time that we begin to hunger and thirst after the whole mind which was in Christ these spiritual appetites do not cease, but cry after their food with more and more importunity. Nor can they possibly cease before they are satisfied … He can find no comfort in anything but this: he can be satisfied with nothing else.84

Only spiritual participation – ‘[the] knowledge of God in Christ Jesus; “the life that is hid with Christ in God”; the being “joined unto the Lord in one Spirit”; [and] the having “fellowship with the Father and the Son”’85 – satisfies us. Echoing St Augustine, Wesley claimed that the soul is always restless until it rests in God.86 For Wesley then, happiness and holiness together are the twinned end of Christian living and the summation of the Spirit’s work in the economy   J. Wesley, ‘The Circumcision of the Heart’, in Works [BE], 1:407.   J. Wesley, ‘The Love of God’, in Works [BE], 4:338. 82   J. Wesley, ‘The Unity of the Divine Being’, in Works [BE], 4:64. 83   J. Wesley, ‘Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount – Discourse the Second’, in Works [BE], 1:496. 84   Ibid., 496–7. 85   Ibid., 497. 86   Ibid. Cf. St. Augustine, Confessions, 1:1. 80 81

The Fruits of the Spirit as Pneumatological Operation

129

of salvation. Union with God occurs as our spiritual craving is nourished and perfect love governs the righteous, peaceful, and joyful human soul. As Wesley stated, ‘This love, ruling the whole life, animating all our tempers and passions, directing all our thoughts, words, and actions, is … the only true happiness which is to be found under the sun.’87 Wesley’s understanding of happiness in this respect reflects the Greek tradition of eudaimonia. To Plato, happiness transcended carnal delight. It carries the connotations of satisfaction and wholeness. Happiness is the flourishing of the human person, which occurs when the soul (with its rational, spiritual, and appetitive facets) is properly governed by reason vis-à-vis prudence and the other cardinal virtues.88 Eudaimonia, as such, is the telos of human existence. To realize our highest good, humans must function properly, or virtuously. The virtues serve as our excellence (arête), or that which enables us to reach our full potential. Eudaimonia is wholeness of life experienced by those who cultivate the virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance, as well as a host of others. Similarly, to Aristotle, happiness requires cultivating virtue. Happiness is a stasis of life, which is never stagnant, and which is achieved when the individual habitually practises the virtues and abstains from vice while enjoying the proper proportion of material goods to meet our physical needs. Through growth in love of wisdom, the human being actualizes his or her perfection or purpose. According to Aristotle, one can become so inclined toward the good that he or she no longer cares to indulge its vicious outliers.89 Happiness results when the virtues (tempered by prudence) govern the human soul. Wesley’s theology of happiness – with its emphasis on perfect love’s tempering of the righteous, peaceful, and joyful soul – reflects the Platonic and Aristotelian conception of eudaimonia. Thomas à Kempis, whom Wesley read during the 1720s and beyond, described happiness in the teleological sense.90 In 1741, Wesley translated and published the Imitatio Christi. According

  J. Wesley, ‘The Important Question’, in Works [BE], 3:189.  Plato, The Republic, Book II. 89  Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book II:6. 90   For a somewhat recent analysis of Wesley’s reception of à Kempis’s spirituality with respect to virtue, see Richard Heitzenrater, ‘The Imitatio Christi and the Great Commandment: Virtue and Obligation in Wesley’s Ministry with the Poor’, in The Portion of the Poor: Good News to the Poor in the Wesleyan Tradition, M. Douglas Meeks, ed. (Nashville, TN: Kingswood Books, 1995), 49–63. 87 88

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

130

to his translation, true happiness is attained only through communion with God: ‘Forsake therefore all earthly things, and labour to please thy Creator, and be faithful unto him, that thou mayest attain true happiness.’91 Furthermore, he wrote, ‘Thou canst not be satisfied with any temporal good, because thou art not created to enjoy them. Although thou hadst all created good; yet wouldst thou not be happy or blessed; but in God, that hath created all things, thy whole happiness consisteth.’92 Nothing material can substitute: Surely then, to trust in riches for happiness is the greatest folly of all that are under the sun! Are you not convinced of this? Is it possible you should still expect to find happiness in money or all it can procure? What! Can silver and gold, and eating and drinking, and horses and servants, and glittering apparel, and diversions and pleasures (as they are called) make thee happy? They can as soon make thee immoral.93

Wesley advised in his 1790 sermon on ‘The Danger of Increasing Riches’, to not make wealth one’s chief delight or happiness: ‘See that thou expect not happiness in money, nor anything that is purchasable thereby – in gratifying either the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, or the pride of life.’94 Happiness in God is our highest satisfaction and good: ‘O my God, my everlasting Love, my whole Good, my never-ending Happiness’.95 In addition to à Kempis, Wesley also read Richard Lucas, whose multi-volume work, An Enquiry After Happiness (1685), Wesley published in 1755. Lucas described happiness as the ‘one uniform tendency’ of

  J. Wesley, An Extract of the Christian’s Pattern: Or, a Treatise of the Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis (London: W. Strahan, 1741), 48. 92   J. Wesley, An Extract of the Christian’s Pattern, 65. 93   J. Wesley, ‘Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount – Discourse the Eighth’, in Works [BE], 1:625. 94   J. Wesley, ‘The Danger of Increasing Riches’, in Works [BE], 4:182. See also J. Wesley, ‘A Farther Appeal, Part 2’, in Works [BE], 11:266. Delineating eternal happiness from sensual enjoyments, Wesley maintained, ‘Suppose this earthly covering, this vehicle of organized matter, whereby you hold commerce with the material world, were now to drop off! Now, what will you do in the regions of immortality? You cannot eat or drink there. You cannot indulge either the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eye, or the pride of life. Here is no possibility of sensual enjoyments.’ 95   Ibid., 129. 91

The Fruits of the Spirit as Pneumatological Operation

131

all human beings – an activity of the mind, which transcends isolated desires and fleeting emotions: [When] all my inclinations shall have one uniform tendency, when every desire of the soul, and every action of life, shall be a step advancing in a direct line towards happiness; when the vigor and activity of my mind shall not be suspended and frustrated by uncer­tainties and fluctuation, nor deluded and lost in wandering errors and deviations, but shall ever carry me straight for­wards towards my journey’s end; then certainly all my labors will prosper, and my progress will be great … .96

Happiness requires that the individual’s desires and inclinations are properly oriented. Desire is necessary for happiness, but only desire which is dispositionally ordered toward God and love of neighbour is sufficient for true happiness: ‘Truth and happiness inhabit a palace, into which none can enter but humble, sincere, and constant lovers.’97 According to Wesley, happiness in God is achieved when the human person is liberated for perfection in love. Wesley explained this in the Farther Appeal: And when you thus love God and all mankind, and are transformed into his likeness … [you] will experience here that solid happiness which you had elsewhere sought in vain … ‘O that this were so … That I may be love, as thou art love; that I may now be happy in thee; and, when thou wilt, fall into the abyss of thy love, and enjoy thee through the ages of eternity!’98

Happiness results when the inspirant cultivates the fruits of the Spirit, when love governs the righteous, peaceful, and joyful soul. As individuals continually love God and serve neighbour, inclination to sin decreases, similar to the way in which virtue cultivated abstains from vice. As Wesley observed in his preface to the Imitatio Christi: ‘In order to attain this perfect love … it is necessary, not only

96   Richard Lucas, ‘An Enquiry After Happiness’, in A Christian Library, Vol. 24 (London: 1821), 64. 97   Lucas, ‘An Enquiry After Happiness’, in A Christian Library, 74. 98   Ibid., 270–71.

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

132

that the soul be fully purged from all willful, habitual sin; but likewise that it be enlightened by the knowledge and practice of all virtue, before it can be united to God.’99 What connections can be made between Wesley’s moral pneumatology and his theology of perceptible inspiration? Pneumatology contours Wesley’s view of happiness in God. Happiness is the result of life in the Spirit. Perfect love requires spiritual knowledge ( fides qua). That is, unless inspired by the Holy Spirit with an inward sense of love for God and neighbour, the spiritual fruits cannot be fully cultivated: [The] Spirit alone reveals all truth, and inspires all holiness; that by his inspiration men attain perfect love, the love which ‘purifies them as he is pure’; and that through this knowledge and love of God they have power to ‘do always such things as please him’; to worship God, a Spirit, according to his own will, that is, ‘in spirit and in truth’.100

The Spirit of God imbues men and women with faith, as righteousness, peace, joy, and love are embodied in practice. Happiness through perfect love is rooted in the Holy Spirit’s power and presence, which illuminates the human soul with love for God and neighbour. Holy love and Christian virtue are the arête or excellence of human existence leading to eudaimonia in God. Wesley also expressed his theology of happiness in terms of true religion: ‘[As] there is but one God, so there is but one happiness, and one religion. And both of these centre in God.’101 Happiness and true religion describe the same reality, namely, participation in the life of the Spirit. To be happy, one must be holy; and to be holy one must be purified from vice and confirmed in the virtue of love.102 Nothing, claimed Wesley, ‘deserves the name of religion but a virtuous heart, producing a virtuous life – a complication

  J. Wesley, ‘Preface to The Christian’s Pattern’, in Works, 14:204.   J. Wesley, ‘A Farther Appeal, Part 2’, in Works [BE], 11:254. 101   J. Wesley, ‘The Unity of the Divine Being’, in Works [BE], 4:70. 102   ‘I was made to be happy; to be happy I must love God; in proportion to my love of whom my happiness must increase. To love God I must be like him, holy as he is holy; which implies both the being pure from vicious and foolish passions and the being confirmed in those virtues and rational faculties which God comprises in the word charity’: J. Wesley, ‘Letter to_____, 19 July 1731’, in Works [BE], 25:293.  99 100

The Fruits of the Spirit as Pneumatological Operation

133

of justice, mercy, and truth, of every right and amiable temper, beaming forth from the deepest recesses of the mind in a series of wise and generous actions.’103 Freedom for perfection is the fullness of true religion, or ‘liberty from sin and sorrow, wherewith Christ hath made them free’,104 manifested in the human soul via Christian practice or holy living. For Wesley, true religion transcends adherence to doctrinal propositions. Insistence on doctrine at the expense of spiritual participation and enjoyment of God is antithetical to God’s spiritual kingdom: ‘Into this snare [that is, the ‘religion of opinions, or what is commonly called orthodoxy’] fall thousands of those who profess to hold “salvation by faith”.’105 Religion requires more than one’s ability to articulate fides quae: Not this or that opinion, or system of opinions, be they ever so true, ever so scriptural. It is true this is commonly called ‘faith’. But those who suppose it to be religion are given up to a strong delusion, to believe a lie; and if they suppose it to be a sure passport to heaven, are in the high road to hell … No: religion is no less than living in eternity, and walking in eternity; and hereby walking in the love of God and man, in lowliness, meekness, and resignation … He alone who experiences this ‘dwells in God, and God in him.106

True religion, like assurance and the dual testimony, consists in the mutual indwelling of God’s Spirit with the human spirit, or when perfect love governs the soul: ‘True religion is right tempers toward God and man. It is, in two words, gratitude and benevolence: gratitude to our Creator and supreme Benefactor, and benevolence to our fellow creatures. In other words, it is the loving God with all our heart, and our neighbour as ourselves.’107 Heart religion begins ‘when we … know God, by the teaching of his own Spirit. As soon as the Father of spirits reveals his Son in our hearts, and the Son reveals his Father, the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts; then, and not till then are we happy.’108 Inspiration,

103

    105   106   107   108   104

J. Wesley, ‘A Short Address to the Inhabitants of Ireland’, in Works [BE], 9:283. J. Wesley, ‘The Unity of the Divine Being’, in Works [BE], 4:67. Ibid., 66. J. Wesley, ‘Walking by Sight and Walking by Faith’, in Works [BE], 4:57–8. J. Wesley, ‘The Unity of the Divine Being’, in Works [BE], 4:66–7. Ibid., 67.

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

134

happiness, and true religion are joined as pneumatological gifts in the economy of salvation.109 Thus, according to Wesley, God breathes spiritual life into the soul, and believers in turn respire with knowledge of God’s pardoning love, which is manifested in practice as the abiding fruits of righteousness, peace, joy, and love blossom internally and externally. The inward kingdom of the Holy Spirit is tantamount to perfect love governing the heart, which believers cultivate through holy tempers or virtues and dispositional growth in holiness. For Wesley, holiness is social. Embodiment of the fruits of the Spirit requires community. To lead the inspired life is to personify Christian virtue and to press on toward our ultimate purpose. According to Wesley, humans are fashioned for happiness in God. This is our highest good and perfection. As he expressed it to his brother Charles in 1767, by ‘perfection I mean the humble, gentle, patient love of God and man ruling all the tempers, words, and action, the whole heart, and the whole of life.’110 Re-sounding the ethical tradition of eudaimonia, Wesley considered happiness the goal or telos of human spiritual existence. Humans, as creatures fashioned in God’s image, are designed to enjoy spiritual freedom and perfection in love. Thus, perceptible inspiration as via Spiritus begins with God’s graciousness initiative to redeem, culminates in epistemic and spiritual awareness of God’s indwelling presence, and reaches completion through practical holiness and virtuous living.

  J. Wesley, ‘Spiritual Worship’, in Works [BE], 3:100: ‘ … if religion and happiness are in fact the same, it is impossible that any man can possess the former without possessing the latter also. He cannot have religion without having happiness, seeing they are utterly inseparable.’ 110   J. Wesley, ‘A Letter to Charles, 27 January 1767’, in Letters, 5:38. 109

Conclusion

Wesley’s espousal of the possibility of religious inspiration was not unique. Discussion of the concept is present in the writings of Jonathan Edwards, Ralph Erskine, George Whitefield, Count Zinzendorf, Peter Böhler, and August Spangenberg among others.1 Overall, there was continuity theologically between early evangelicals, barring certain disagreements over universal grace and limited atonement that separated the Calvinist and Arminian extensions of the revival. Wesley gleaned much from the Moravians on the subject of assurance, and took influence from earlier puritan and German pietist sources.2 Evangelical figures such as Isaac Watts, Philip Doddridge, and Howell Harris, who, like Wesley drew deeply from the well of British and continental reformed spirituality, developed similar doctrines based upon the collective experience of their respective congregations.3 However, despite its ubiquity, David Bebbington notes that Wesley was largely ‘responsible for disseminating a newly enhanced doctrine of assurance’ (or spiritual knowledge) to his contemporaries, which placed the Spirit’s will in direct tension with empiricist or perceptual language.4 Considering the frequency of his preaching engagements on the topic, his writings on the subject, and the notoriety gained as a result, perceptible inspiration is an uncontestably salient feature of Wesley’s theology. That conversion and assurance became hallmarks of Methodist identity (as well as evangelicalism more broadly) owes a great deal to Wesley’s ministry, critics, and theology of inspiration. In conclusion, perceptible inspiration serves as a useful model (via Spiritus) for characterizing the pneumatological dimension of John Wesley’s theological system, in response to the critique of inconsistency prompted by the charge of   Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, 45–6.   See W.R. Ward, Early Evangelicalism: A Global Intellectual History, 1670–1789 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 119–39. 3   See Noll, The Rise of Evangelicalism, 76–99. 4   Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, 42, 50. 1 2

136

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

enthusiasm affixed to Wesley’s theology during the eighteenth century. Perceptible inspiration, which surfaces during his correspondence with John Smith from 1745–48, illustrates Wesley’s understanding of the distinctive movements of the Spirit-God in relation to humankind, and helps to re-envisage the themes of grace, faith, the witness of the Spirit, and the fruits of the Spirit in Wesley’s theology, offering wide-ranging implications for his theology of salvation. Perceptible inspiration signifies Wesley’s view of the unfolding spiritual journey of the Methodist in relation to the Spirit’s mission of fostering spiritual consciousness and right practice in the economy of salvation.5 First, through free grace, both in terms of ontology and soteriology, men and women receive the faculty of faith to perceive the dual witness of the Holy Spirit, and subsequently (by the Spirit’s continuous presence) believers germinate the fruits of the Spirit and holy living. Grace signifies both the extension of created being and the panoply of the Holy Spirit’s power and presence within the economy of salvation. Perceptible inspiration marks Wesley’s emphasis upon the Spirit’s economic operation which fosters relational participation in the divine life. God is the centre of all spirits, the ontological progenitor of creaturely existence, and the ultimate reality in whose image all intelligent spirits are fashioned. As beings capable of God, human spirits are made to know, love, and enjoy God. The Holy Spirit functions as God’s power and presence within the economy of salvation. Soteriological grace is inextricably tied to the Holy Spirit in Wesley’s pneumatology. In union with the person and work of Christ, the Spirit procures justification and forgiveness of sins, which exonerates guilt, and enables participation in the divine life. Grace is both the ontological ground of spiritual existence itself, and the salvific means of humanity’s restoration.

5   See J. Wesley, ‘A Word to a Methodist’, in Works [BE], 9:243:‘I am called a Methodist, like you. Do you believe that “Jesus Christ is made unto us by God’s wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption”? Do you believe, “We are freely justified by his grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus”? And that “by grace”, grace alone, “you are saved, through faith”? I believe the same. Do you hold that “the Spirit of God beareth witness with the spirit” of every true believer that he is “a child of God”? And that “the love of God is shed abroad in the hearts” of such, together with the love of all mankind? Like you I firmly believe that all this is the truth of God. Do you count him and him only a true Christian “in whom is the mind which was also in Christ Jesus”, and who “walks even as he walked”? Then thy heart is as my heart. Give me thy hand, and let us “provoke unto love and to good works”.’

Conclusion

137

Secondly, Wesley held that faith is the means by which humanity experientially subsists with the divine. Spiritual knowledge of God ( fides qua) is relational, functioning as intimate communion rather than intellectual assent to statements of orthodoxy alone ( fides quae), despite the latter’s importance for Wesley’s theology broader faith. Beyond natural understanding, faith satisfies the desideratum of spiritual sight. Although our post-lapsarian condition retains (by the Spirit’s prevenient restoration) the ability to reason and act civilly, these cannot produce divine knowledge in the sense of relational intimacy. ‘By faith’, stated Wesley, ‘the love of God and all mankind is shed abroad in [our] hearts.’6 Through regeneration in the Spirit, men and women become spiritually conscious of the divine. Wesley used a host of expressions (circumcision of the heart, divine consciousness, and spiritual birth) to develop his metaphor of spiritual sensation and to connect the Holy Spirit’s person with the gift of faith which mediates participation in the divine life and calls into question interpretations of Wesley’s epistemology defined narrowly in terms of empiricism. Third, Wesley underscored the theological importance of the dual witness of the Holy Spirit in terms of inspiration perceived. By faith ( fides qua), believers gain intimate, relational knowledge of God’s love, in relation to the affective disposition of inward feeling. Subsequently, as our natural faculties respire with consciousness and confidence, the indirect witness issues filial response. Through immediate consciousness, humans become physically aware that God has transformed our life; and by the scripturally formed conscience, newborn Christians confirm their spiritual adoption. For Wesley, the indirect witness and assurance are linked, despite the latter’s admitting of innumerable degrees along the spectrum of pardon and confidence. From the ‘Spirit of bondage’ to ‘adoption’ and the full ‘plerophory of faith’, assurance functions on a host of conscious planes. In some instances, believers can be spiritually aware without fully realizing it. Wesley stressed that the goal of the Christian life is to continually sense the Spirit’s nearness with a mature faith, and to press on toward holiness and sanctification. Wesley’s theology of spiritual sensation does not presume the priority of ‘natural reason’ over faith. To him, the direct testimony of the Spirit (inwardly felt as love experienced deep within the soul) and its confirmation in 6   J. Wesley, ‘A Farther Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion, Part 1’, in Works [BE], 11:132.

138

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

the scripturally formed conscience, when paired with the outward expression of holiness, is reasonable in itself, a position which fits with contemporary trends in post-foundationalist religious epistemology. Finally, Wesley’s pneumatology of perceptible inspiration, with its emphasis on the fruits of the Spirit, also suggests a moral vision akin to the tradition of virtue. Refracting elements of Platonic and Aristotelian ethics, Wesley understood the purpose of human spiritual existence as true religion in terms of happiness in God. Wesley understood Christian perfection as love’s unwavering guidance of the human spirit and charity’s tempering of the fruits of righteous, peace, and joy both affectively and dispositionally. Facilitating our movement toward perfection, the Holy Spirit is the agent and power of salvation, always acting in communion with the Father and Son. The material function of the Spirit’s operation is to draw men and women into relationship with the divine. Human beings are meant for spiritual communion. This is humanity’s purpose, economically realized when inward holiness is outwardly expressed. Spiritual virtue – or love governing the righteous, peaceful, and joyous soul – constitutes the Spirit’s inward kingdom outwardly and morally expressed. By grace through faith, believers sense the dual witness of the Spirit and germinate the fruits of holy living. Wesley’s theology of perceptible inspiration, an important aspect of his theological system, thus provides a useful model for understanding his economic pneumatology, his views on human spiritual nature, and shows promise with respect to further Wesleyan engagement with broader theological discussions regarding the Holy Spirit’s person and mission, post-foundationalist religious epistemology, and theological ethics.

Bibliography

Primary Sources (John Wesley) The Bicentennial Edn of the Works of John Wesley. Frank Baker, editor-in-chief. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1984. Vol. 1: Sermons I. Albert Cook Outler, ed. 1984. Vol. 2: Sermons II. Albert Cook Outler, ed. 1985. Vol. 3: Sermons III. Albert Cook Outer, ed. 1986. Vol. 4: Sermons IV. Albert Cook Outler, ed. 1987. Vol. 7: A Collection of Hymns for the Use of the People Called Methodists. Franz Hildebrandt & Oliver Beckerlegge, eds. 1983. Vol. 9: The Methodist Societies I: History, Nature and Design. Rupert E. Davies, ed. 1989. Vol. 10: The Methodist Societies: The Minutes of Conference. Henry Rack, ed. 2011 Vol. 11: The Appeals to Men of Reason and Religion and Certain Open Letters. Gerald R. Cragg, ed. 1989. Vol. 12: Doctrinal and Controversial Treatises I. Randy Maddox, ed. 2012. Vol. 18: Journals and Diaries I, 1735–38. W. Reginald Ward and Richard P. Heitzenrater, eds. 1988. Vol. 19: Journals and Diaries II, 1738–43. W. Reginald Ward and Richard P. Heitzenrater, eds. 1990. Vol. 20: Journals and Diaries III, 1743–54. W. Reginald Ward and Richard P. Heitzenrater, eds. 1991. Vol. 21: Journals and Diaries IV, 1755–65. W. Reginald Ward and Richard P. Heitzenrater, eds. 1992. Vol. 22: Journals and Diaries V, 1765–75. W. Reginald Ward and Richard P. Heitzenrater, eds. 1993.

140

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

Vol. 23: Journals and Diaries VI, 1776–1786. W. Reginald Ward and Richard P. Heitzenrater, eds. 1995. Vol. 24: Journals and Diaries VII, 1787–1791. W. Reginald Ward and Richard P. Heitzenrater, eds. 2003. Vol. 25: Letters I, 1721–39. Frank Baker, ed. 1980. Vol. 26: Letters II, 1740–55. Frank Baker, ed. 1982. A Christian Library: Consisting of Extracts from and Abridgments of the Choicest Pieces of Practical Divinity Which have been Published in the English Tongue. 50 vols. Bristol: Farley, 1749–55. Reprint edn. 30 vols. London: Cordeux, 1819–27. The Desideratum, or Electricity Made Plain and Useful. London: 1760. Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament. Reprint edn. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1986. Explanatory Notes Upon the Old Testament. Reprint edn. Salem, Ohio: Schmul, 1975. The Letters of the Rev. John Wesley, A.M. John Telford. ed. 8 vols. London: Epworth Press, 1960. John and Charles Wesley: Selected Prayers, Hymns, Journal Notes, Sermons, Letters and Treatises. Frank Whaling and Albert Outler, eds. New York: Paulist Press, 1981. John Wesley. Albert Outler, ed. New York: Oxford, 1964. John Wesley and the Holy Spirit. Arvest Lawson, ed. New York: Vantage Press, 1997. John Wesley’s Prayers. Fredrick C. Gill, ed. London: Epworth Press, 1951. The Journal of Rev. John Wesley, A.M. Nehemiah Curnock, ed. 8 vols. London: Epworth Press, 1909–16. A Letter to the Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of Gloucester, Occasioned by his Tract on the Office and Operations of the Holy Spirit (Dublin, 1763). Primitive Physick: Or An Easy and Natural Method of Curing Most Diseases. London: 1761. The Sunday Service of the Methodists in North America. London: 1784. A Survey of the Wisdom of God in the Creation: or a Compendium of Natural Philosophy. Vols 1 and 2. Bristol: 1763. The Works of John Wesley. 14 vols. Thomas Jackson, ed. Reprint edn. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1979.

Bibliography

141

Primary Sources (Other Authors) Á Kempis, Thomas. John Wesley, ed. The Imitation of Christ. London: 1741. Baxter, Richard. The Practical Works of the Rev. Richard Baxter, ed. William Orme. London: James Duncan, 1830. Browne, Peter. The Procedure, Extent, and Limits of Human Understanding. 3rd edn. London: 1737. Burgh, James. The Dignity of Human Nature (London, 1754). The Cambridge Platonists. C.A. Patrides, ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980. Charles Wesley: A Reader. John Tyson, ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Church, Thomas. Remarks on the Rev. Mr. John Wesley’s last Journal. London: 1745. ——. Some Farther Remarks on the Rev. Mr. John Wesley’s last Journal. London: 1746. Delarue, Charles. Opera, 4 vols. Paris, 1733–59. Dockwray, Thomas. The Operations of the Holy Spirit Imperceptible, and How Men may Know when they are under the Guidance and Influence of the Spirit. A Sermon Preached in Newcastle on May 22, 1743. Downes, John. Methodism Examined and Exposed: or the Clergy’s Duty of Guarding their Flocks against False Teachers (London, 1759). Edwards, Jonathan. ‘A Narrative of the Late Work of God at and near Northampton, in New England’, in A Christian Library, John Wesley ed. Vol. XXX (London: 1827). Gibson, Edmund. Observations upon the conduct and behaviour of a certain sect, usually distinguished by the name of Methodists (London: 1744). Hildrop, John, Two Letters to a Lady (London, 1783). Johnson, Samuel. A Dictionary of the English Language (London, 1755). Lavington, George. The Enthusiasm of Methodists & Papists Compar’d (London: 1749). Lucas, Richard. ‘An Enquiry After Happiness’, in A Christian Library, Vol. 24 (London: 1821). Owen, John. ‘Of Communion with the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost’, in A Christian Library, Vol. XI (London: 1821).

142

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

Pearson, John. An Exposition of the Creed (London, 1676). Poiret, Pierre. The Divine Economy, English trans., 6 vols (London, 1713). Scougal, Henry. The life of God in the soul of man: or, the nature and excellency of the Christian religion, 4th edn (London, 1702). Smalbroke, Richard. A Charge deliver’d to the Reverend the Clergy in several Parts of the Diocese of Lichfield and Coventry, in a Triennial Visitation of the same in 1741. London: J. and P. Knapton, 1744. Smith, John. ‘A Discourse Concerning the True Method of Attaining Divine Knowledge’, in A Christian Library, Vol. XI (London: 1821). Swift, Jonathan. On the Trinity (1744). Tucker, Josiah. A Brief History of the Principles of Methodism. Oxford: 1742. Warburton, William. The Doctrine of Grace, or the Office and Operation of the Holy Spirit Vindicated from the Insults and Abuses of Fanaticism. London: 1763.

Secondary Sources Books and Monographs Abraham, William J. The Coming of Revival: Recovering the Full Evangelical Tradition. San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row, 1984. ——. Wesley for Armchair Theologians. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005. Alston, William. Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991. Baker, Frank. John Wesley and the Church of England. London: Epworth Press, 1970. Barbour, Hugh. The Quakers in Puritan England. Yale Publications in Religion, vol. 7. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1964. Bebbington, David. Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1780s. New York: Routledge, 1989. Becker, Carl L. The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth Century Philosophers. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1932.

Bibliography

143

Bett, Henry. The Spirit of Methodism. London: Epworth Press, 1937. Borgen, Ole E. John Wesley on the Sacraments: A Theological Study. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1986. Brantley, Richard E. Locke, Wesley, and the Method of English Romanticism. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1984. Butler, David. Methodists and Papists: John Wesley and the Catholic Church in the Eighteenth Century. London: Darton, Longman, and Todd Publishing, 1995. Cell, George Croft. The Rediscovery of John Wesley. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1935. Clapper, Gregory S. John Wesley on Religious Affections: His Views on Experience and Emotion and Their Role in the Christian Life and Theology. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1989. Cobb, John B. Grace and Responsibility: A Wesleyan Theology for Today. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995. Colie, R.L. Light and Enlightenment: A Study of the Cambridge Platonists and the Dutch Arminians. London: Cambridge University Press, 1957. Collins, Kenneth. John Wesley: A Theological Journey. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2003. ——. The Scripture Way of Salvation: The Heart of John Wesley’s Theology. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1997. ——. The Theology of John Wesley: Holy Love and the Shape of Grace. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2007. Colón-Emeric, Edgardo A. Wesley, Aquinas, and Christian Perfection: An Ecumenical Dialogue. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2009. Coppedge, Allan. John Wesley in Theological Debate. Wilmore, KY: Wesley Heritage Press, 1987. Cushman, Robert E. John Wesley’s Experimental Divinity: Studies in Methodist Doctrinal Standards. Nashville, TN: Kingswood Books, 1989. Descartes, René. Meditations on First Philosophy, Michael Moriarty trans. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. ——. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. Deschner, John. Wesley’s Christology. Reprint edn, Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1988.

144

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

Dunning, H. Ray. Grace, Faith, and Holiness: A Wesleyan Systematic Theology. Kansas City, MO: Beacon Hill Press, 1998. ——. Reflecting the Divine Image: Christian Ethics in Wesleyan Perspective. Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 1998. Eayrs, G. John Wesley, Christian Philosopher and Church Founder. London: Epworth Press, 1926. Gregory, Jeremy. ‘The Eighteenth-Century Reformation: the Pastoral Task of Anglican Clergy after 1689’, in The Church of England: c. 1689–c. 1833 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993). —— and John Stevenson. Britain in the Eighteenth Century: 1688-1820. 2nd edn. London: Routledge, 2007. Grenz, Stanley J. and John R. Franke. Beyond Foundationalism: Shaping Theology in a Postmodern Context. Louisville, KY: Westminster Press, 2001. Gundry, Stanley N. ed., Five Views on Sanctification. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1996. Heitzenrater, Richard P. The Elusive Mr. Wesley, 2nd edn. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2003. ——. Mirror and Memory: Reflections on Early Methodism (Nashville, TN: Kingswood Books, 1989). ——. Wesley and the People Called Methodists. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995. Hempton, David. Methodism: Empire of the Spirit. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005. Hulley, Leonard D. To Be and To Do: Exploring Wesley’s Thought on Ethical Behaviour. Pretoria: University of South Africa, 1988. Hynson, Leon. To Reform the Nation: The Theological Foundation of Wesley’s Ethics. Grand Rapids, MI: Francis Asbury Press, 1985. James, William. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature. Reprint edn. New York: Longmans, 1928. Jones, Scott J. John Wesley’s Conception and Use of Scripture. Nashville, TN: Kingswood Books, 1995. Kent, John. Wesley and the Wesleyans. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Khoo, Lorna. Wesleyan Eucharistic Spirituality. Australia: ATF Press, 2006. Kimbrough, Jr., S.T., ed. Orthodox and Wesleyan Spirituality. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2002.

Bibliography

145

Knight III, Henry H. The Presence of God in the Christian Life: John Wesley and the Means of Grace. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1997. Knox, R.A. Enthusiasm: A Chapter in the History of Religion. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977. Langford, Thomas A. Methodist Theology. Peterborough, England: Epworth Press, 1998. Lee, Umphrey. The Historical Backgrounds of Early Methodist Enthusiasm. New York: Columbia University Press, 1931. ——. John Wesley and Modern Religion Nashville, TN: Cokesbury Press, 1936. Lindström, Harald. Wesley and Sanctification: A Study in the Doctrine of Salvation. Grand Rapids, MI: Francis Asbury Press, 1982. Lodahl, Michael. God of Nature And of Grace: Reading the World in a Wesleyan Way. Nashville, TN: Kingswood Books, 2004. Long, D. Stephen. John Wesley’s Moral Theology: The Quest for God and Goodness. Nashville, TN: Kingswood Books, 2005. Lovejoy, Arthur. The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea, 6th edn. New York: Harper and Row, 1960. Lowery, Kevin T. Salvaging Wesley’s Agenda: A New Paradigm for Wesleyan Virtue Ethics. Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2008. Maas, Robin. Crucified Love: The Practice of Christian Perfection. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1989. Maddox, Randy L. Aldersgate Reconsidered. Nashville, TN: Kingswood Books, 1990. ——. Responsible Grace: John Wesley’s Practical Theology. Nashville, TN: Kingswood Books, 1994. ——. Rethinking Wesley’s Theology for Contemporary Methodism. Nashville, TN: Kingswood Books, 1998. Marquardt, Manfred. John Wesley’s Social Ethics: Praxis and Principles. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1996. McAdoo, H. R. The Spirit of Anglicanism: A Survey of Anglican Theological Method in the Seventeenth Century. London: Adam & Charles Black, 1965. McGonigle, Herbert Boyd. Sufficient Saving Grace: John Wesley’s Evangelical Arminianism. Carlisle: Paternoster Press, 2001.

146

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

Miles, Rebekah. ‘The Instrumental Role of Reason’, in Wesley and the Quadrilateral: Renewing the Conversation (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1997), 77–106. Newton, John. Susanna Wesley and the Puritan Tradition in Methodism. London: Epworth Press, 2003. Noll, Mark A. The Rise of Evangelicalism: The Age of Edwards, Whitefield and the Wesleys. Downers Grove, IL: Intervarsity Press, 2003. Nuttall, Geoffrey F. The Holy Spirit in Puritan Faith and Experience. 2nd edn. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1946. Oden, Thomas C. John Wesley’s Scriptural Christianity: A Plain Exposition of His Teaching on Christian Doctrine. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1994. ——. Life in the Spirit. San Francisco, CA: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992. ——. The Transforming Power of Grace. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1993. Olson, Mark. John Wesley’s Theology of Christian Perfection: Developments in Doctrine and Theological System. Fenwick, MI: Alethea In Heart, 2007. Oord, Thomas Jay and Michael Lodahl. Relational Holiness: Responding to the Call of Love. Kansas City, MO: Beacon Hill Press, 2005. Outler, Albert C. Evangelism and Theology in the Wesleyan Spirit. Nashville, TN: Discipleship Resources, 1996. ——. Theology in the Wesleyan Spirit. Nashville, TN: Tidings, 1975. Packer, J.I. Keep in Step with the Spirit. Grand Rapids, MI: Revell, 1987. Parris, John R. John Wesley’s Doctrine of the Sacraments. London: Epworth Press, 1963. Pieper, Joseph. The Four Cardinal Virtues. South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1966. Piette, Maximin. John Wesley in the Evolution of Protestantism. New York: Sheed & Ward, 1938. Plantinga, Alvin. Warranted Christian Belief. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Podmore, Colin. The Moravian Church in England 1728–1760. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998. Prest, Charles. The Witness of the Holy Spirit. London: Wesley Conference Office, 1867.

Bibliography

147

Prior, Kenneth. The Way of Holiness: A Study in Christian Growth. London: Intervarsity Christian Fellowship, 1967. Proudfoot, Wayne. Religious Experience. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985. Rack, Henry D. The Future of John Wesley’s Methodism. Richmond: John Knox Press, 1965. ——. John Wesley and the Enlightenment. Tyndale Conference, 2005. ——. Reasonable Enthusiast: John Wesley and the Rise of Methodism. London: Epworth Press, 2002. Rivers, Isabel. Reason, Grace and Sentiment. Volume 1, Whichcote to Wesley: A Study of the Language of Religion and Ethics in England 1660–1780. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Runyon, Theodore. The New Creation: John Wesley’s Theology Today. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1998. Russell, Bertrand. History of Western Philosophy, 2nd edn. New York: Routledge, 2004. Sangster, W.E. The Path to Perfection: An Examination and Restatement of John Wesley’s Doctrine of Christian Perfection. London: Epworth Press, 1943. Scruton, Roger. A Short History of Modern Philosophy: From Descartes to Wittgenstein, 2nd edn. New York: Routledge, 2001. Shaw, Jane. Miracles in Enlightenment England. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2006. Staples, Rob L. Outward Sign and Inward Grace: The Place of Sacraments in Wesleyan Spirituality. Kansas City, MO: Beacon Hill Press, 1991. Starkey, Lycurgus M. The Work of the Holy Spirit: A Study in Wesleyan Theology. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1962. Stone, Ronald. John Wesley’s Life and Ethics. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2001. Taves, Ann. Fits, Trances, and Visions: Experiencing Religion and Explaining Experience from Wesley to James. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999. Thorsen, Donald. The Wesleyan Quadrilateral: Scripture, Tradition, Reason, and Experience as a Model of Evangelical Theology (Nappanee, IN: Francis Asbury Press, 1990). Tuttle Jr., Robert G. Mysticism in the Wesleyan Tradition. Grand Rapids, MI: Francis Asbury Press, 1989.

148

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

Vickers, Jason. Wesley: A Guide for the Perplexed. New York: T & T Clark, 2009. Walsh, John and Stephen Taylor, eds. The Church Of England: c. 1689–c. 1833. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Ward, W.R. Early Evangelicalism: A Global Intellectual History, 1670–1789. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Watkins-Jones, Howard. The Holy Spirit from Arminius to Wesley: A Study of Christian Teaching Concerning the Holy Spirit and His Place in the Trinity in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. London: Epworth Press, 1929. Weber, Theodore R. Politics and the Order of Salvation: Transforming Wesleyan Political Ethics. Nashville, TN: Kingswood Books, 1998. Weston, Frank. The Teaching of John Wesley as Gathered from His Writings. London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1912. Williams, Colin. John Wesley’s Theology Today. London: Epworth Press, 1960. Wood, Arthur Skevington. Revelation and Reason: Wesleyan Responses to Eighteenth-Century Rationalism. Lutterworth: The Wesley Fellowship, 1992. Wynkoop, Mildred Bangs. A Theology of Love: The Dynamic of Wesleyanism. Kansas City, MO: Beacon Hill Press, 1972. Yates, Arthur. The Doctrine of Assurance: With Special Reference to John Wesley. London: Epworth Press, 1952. Articles and Essays Abraham, William J. ‘The Epistemology of Conversion: Is there Something New?’, in Conversion in the Wesleyan Tradition. Kenneth Collins and John Tyson, eds (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2001): 175–91. ——. ‘Inspiration, Revelation and Divine Action: A Study in Modern Methodist Theology’. Wesleyan Theological Journal. Vol. 19, no. 2 (1984): 38–51. Andrews, Stuart. ‘John Wesley in the Age of Reason’. History Today. Vol. 19 (1960): 25–32. Arnet, William. ‘The Role of the Holy Spirit in Entire Sanctification in the Writings of John Wesley’. Wesleyan Theological Journal. Vol. 14, no. 2 (Fall 1979): 15–30. Bartels, Laura. ‘John Wesley and Dr. George Cheyne on the Spiritual Senses’. Wesleyan Theological Journal. Vol. 39, no. 1 (Spring 2004): 163–72.

Bibliography

149

Chamberlain, Jeffrey S. ‘Moralism, Justification, and the Controversy over Methodism’. Journal of Ecclesiastical History. Vol. 44 (1993): 652–78. Collins, Kenneth J. ‘John Wesley’s Topography of the Heart: Dispositions, Tempers, and Affections’. Methodist History 36 (1998): 162–75. ——. ‘Wesley’s Platonic Conception of the Moral Law’. Wesleyan Theological Journal. Vol. 21, no. 1–2 (Spring–Fall 1986): 116–28. Crothers, Scott and Joe Cunningham. ‘Wesley’s Epistemology in Contemporary Perspective’, in Via Media Philosophy – Holiness Unto Truth: Intersections between Wesleyan and Roman Catholic Voices. L. Bryan Williams, ed. (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2009): 171–85. Cubie, D.L. ‘Wesley’s Theology of Love’. Wesleyan Theological Journal. Vol. 20, no. 1 (Spring 1985): 122–54. Cunningham, Joseph W. ‘John Wesley’s Moral Pneumatology: The Fruits of the Spirit as Theological Virtues’, in Studies in Christian Ethics, 24 (3) (Fall 2011), Sage Publications, Inc.: 275–93. ——. ‘A New Trajectory in Wesleyan Pneumatology: “Perceptible Inspiration” Reconsidered’. Wesleyan Theological Journal, 45 (2) (2010): 242–61. ——. ‘Pneumatology Through Correspondence: The Letters of John Wesley and “John Smith” (1745–1748)’. Wesley and Methodist Studies. Vol. 1 (2009): 18–32. Dieter, Melvin E. ‘The Wesleyan Perspective’, in Five Views on Sanctification. Stanley N. Gundry, ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan), 1987. Gunter, W. Stephen. ‘Personal and Spiritual Knowledge: Kindred Spirits in Polanyian and Wesleyan Epistemology’. Wesleyan Theological Journal. Vol. 35, no. 1 (Spring 2000): 130–48. Hahn, Roger L. ‘Pneumatology in Romans 8’. Wesleyan Theological Journal. Vol. 21, no. 1–2 (Spring–Fall 1986): 74–90. Heitzenrater, Richard P. ‘God with Us: Grace and the Spiritual Senses in John Wesley’s Theology’, in Grace upon Grace: Essays in Honor of Thomas A. Langford. Robert Johnston, Gregory Jones, and Jonathan Wilson, eds (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1999): 87–109. ——. ‘The Imitatio Christi and the Great Commandment: Virtue and Obligation in Wesley’s Ministry with the Poor’, in The Portion of the Poor: Good News to the Poor in the Wesleyan Tradition, M. Douglas Meeks ed. Nashville, TN: Kingswood Books, 1995: 49–63.

150

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

Kürschner, M.J. ‘The Enthusiasm of the Rev. John Wesley’. Wesleyan Theological Journal. Vol. 35, no. 2 (Fall 2000): 114–37. Lodahl, Michael Eugene. ‘“The Witness of the Spirit” Revisited: Is the Putatively Therapeutic Character of Wesley’s Doctrine of Assurance Actually Feasible?’, in Between Nature and Grace: Mapping the Interface of Wesleyan Theology and Psychology – Papers Presented at the Conference of the Society of Psychology and Wesleyan Theology, held at Asbury Theological Seminary, March 29–31 2000. (San Diego, CA: Wesleyan Center for Twenty-First Century Studies, Point Loma Nazarene University, 2000): 126–42. Lovin, Robin W. ‘The Physics of True Virtue’, in Wesleyan Theology Today, Theodore H. Runyon, ed. Nashville, TN: Kingswood Books, 1985. Maddox, Randy L. ‘A Change of Affections: The Developments, Dynamics, and Dethronement of John Wesley’s Heart Religion’, in “Heart Religion” in the Methodist Tradition and Related Movements, Richard B. Steele ed. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2001: 3–31. McGonigle, Herbert Boyd. ‘Pneumatological Nomenclature in Early Methodism’. Wesleyan Theological Journal. no. 8 (1973): 61–72. Mealey, Mark T. ‘John Wesley’s Use of the Idea of the Spiritual Senses in His Definitions of Faith and the New Birth’. Canadian Methodist Historical Society Papers. Vol. 13 (1999–2000): 151–75. Rack, Henry. ‘John Wesley and the Enlightenment’. Paper Given at Tyndale House, Cambridge, 2005. ——. ‘A Man of Reason and Religion? John Wesley and the Enlightenment’. Wesley and Methodist Studies. Vol. 1 (2009): 2–17. Runyon, Theodore. ‘Orthopathy: Wesleyan Criteria for Religious Experience’, in Heart Religion in the Methodist Tradition and Related Movements. Richard Steele, ed. (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2001): 291–305. Smith, Timothy. ‘The Holy Spirit in the Hymns of the Wesleys’. Wesleyan Theological Journal. Vol. 16, no. 2 (Fall 1981): 20–48. Staples, Rob L. ‘John Wesley’s Doctrine of the Holy Spirit’. Wesleyan Theological Journal. Vol. 21, no. 1–2 (Spring–Fall 1986): 91–115. Starkey, Lycurgus. ‘The Holy Spirit and the Wesleyan Witness’. Religious Life. Vol. 49 (1980): 72–80.

Bibliography

151

Wainwright, Geoffrey. ‘Trinitarian Theology and Wesleyan Holiness’. Orthodox and Wesleyan Spirituality. Steven T. Kimbrough, ed. (Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2002): 59-80. Williams, Garry John. ‘Was Evangelicalism Created by the Enlightenment?’ Tyndale Bulletin. Vol. 53 (2002): 283–312. Unpublished Theses & Dissertations Benner, Forest T. ‘The Immediate Antecedents of the Wesleyan Doctrine of the Witness of the Spirit’. Temple University: Doctoral Dissertation, 1966. Crofford, Gregory. ‘Streams of Mercy: Prevenient Grace in the Theology of John and Charles Wesley’. University of Manchester (Nazarene Theological College): Doctoral Thesis, 2009. Crutcher, Timothy. ‘“The Crucible of Life”: The Role of Experience in John Wesley’s Theological Method’. Catholic University of Leuven: Doctoral Thesis, 2003. Eckley, Richard Kevin. ‘Pneumatology in the Wesleyan Tradition and Yves Congar: A Comparative and Ecumenical Study’. Duquesne University: Doctoral Thesis, 1998. Felleman, Laura Bartels. ‘The Evidence of Things Not Seen: John Wesley’s Use of Natural Philosophy’. Drew University: Doctoral Thesis, 2004. Griswold, John Eliot. ‘Toward Perfected Love: An Evaluation of John Wesley’s Theological Conversation on Christian Perfection, with Particular Attention to His Use of Patristic Participation’. Yale Divinity School: S.T.M. Thesis, 1993. Heitzenrater, Richard P. ‘John Wesley and the Oxford Methodists’. Duke University: Doctoral Dissertation, 1972. Hoon, Paul H. ‘The Soteriology of John Wesley’. University of Edinburgh: Doctoral Thesis, 1936. Im, Seung-An. ‘John Wesley’s Theological Anthropology: A Dialectical Tension Between the Latin Western Patristic Tradition and the Greek Eastern Patristic Tradition’. Drew University: Doctoral Thesis, 1994. Kellett, Norman L. ‘John Wesley and the Restoration of the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit to the Church of England in the Eighteenth Century’. Brandeis University: Doctoral Thesis, 1975.

152

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

Luby, Daniel Joseph. ‘The Perceptibility of Grace in the Theology of John Wesley: A Roman Catholic Consideration’. Pontificia Studiorum Universitas A.S. Thomas Aquinas, in Urbe: Doctoral Thesis, 1984. Matthews, Rex Dale. ‘Religion and Reason Joined: A Study in the Theology of John Wesley’. Harvard Divinity School: Doctoral Thesis, 1986. Mealey, Mark Thomas. ‘Taste and See that the Lord is Good: John Wesley in the Christian Tradition of Spiritual Sensation’. Toronto School of Theology: Doctoral Thesis, 2006. Moore, Don Marselle. ‘Immediate Perceptual Knowledge of God: A Study in the Epistemology of John Wesley’. Syracuse University: M.Phil. Dissertation, 1993. Rakestraw, Robert Vincent. ‘The Concept of Grace in the Ethics of John Wesley’. Drew University: Doctoral Thesis, 1985. Rogers, Charles Allan. ‘The Concept of Prevenient Grace in the Theology of John Wesley’. Duke University: Doctoral Thesis, 1967. Young, Sherman P. ‘The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit in Relation to Methodist Theology’. Drew University: Doctoral Thesis, 1930. Shimizu, Mitsuo. ‘Epistemology in the Thought of John Wesley’. Drew University: Doctoral Thesis, 1980. Yang, Jung. ‘The Doctrine of God in the Theology of John Wesley’. University of Aberdeen: Doctoral Thesis, 2003.

Index

absolution 52 adoption, spirit of 100–101 Alexander Severus 118 Alston, William 105–6 angels 40–41 antinomianism 8 Aristotle and Aristotelian ethics 129, 138 assurance 95–9, 135 definition of 95 Athanasian creed 43 atonement 122 Augustine, St 114, 128 Baker, Frank 2, 24 Barclay, Robert 18–19 Baxter, Richard 92 Bebbington, David xv, 135 Bell, George 87 Bett, Henry 1 body and spirit, duality of 37 Böhler, Peter 135 brain damage 36 Calvinism 126 Cambridge Platonism 18, 68 Cartesian doctrine 103–4 chain of being 39–40 Christian fellowship 121 Collins, Kenneth 25 Common Prayer, Book of 14–15 conscience 62–3, 92–3, 101 consciousness 90–93 see also spiritual consciousness Cragg, Gerald 111 creation narratives 57 ‘Danger of Increasing Riches’ sermon (1790) 130 Descartes, René 103–4

determinism, philosophical problem of 125–7 Dieter, Melvin 12 direct spiritual experience x–xi, 18–23, 84–91, 102, 107, 109 ‘Discoveries of Faith’ sermon (1788) 61, 97 ‘Dives and Lazarus’ sermon (1788) 38 Dockwray, Thomas 17–18 Doddridge, Philip 135 Downes, John 6 dual testimony and dual witness 79–83, 94–5, 101–8, 111, 119, 137–8 An Earnest Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion (1743) 25–6, 65 economy of salvation xii–xv, 2–3, 24–6, 45, 53–4, 57, 61, 63, 76–7, 80, 102, 117–18, 128–9, 136 Edwards, Jonathan xv, 84–5, 135 empiricism 104 epistemology xiv, 105 Erskine, Ralph 85–6, 135 eudaimonia xv, 112, 129, 132, 134 evangelicalism xv-xvi, 84–5, 135 ‘Evil Angels’ sermon (1783) 39 Explanatory Notes Upon the New Testament (1755) 115 faith xiv, 5–16, 21–5, 27, 52, 55–7, 64–74, 77, 79–80, 89–90, 98–107, 109–11, 136–7 definition of 74 two usages of the term 66 see also full assurance of faith; justification by faith; plerophory of faith; saving faith A Farther Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion (1744) 131

154

John Wesley’s Pneumatology

fides qua and fides quae 66–9, 72–3, 76–7, 79–80, 90, 99, 103, 107, 110, 132–3, 137 ‘First Fruits of the Spirit’ sermon (1746) 113 foundationalism 104–5 Fox, George 18–19 ‘Friendship with the World’ sermon (1786) 97 fruits of the Spirit xiii, 13, 27, 109–15, 122, 124, 127, 131, 134, 136, 138 full assurance of faith 101–3 ‘General Deliverance’ sermon (1781) 36, 58 God belief in the existence of 107 desire for communion with 125 direct knowledge of 104 feeling the presence of 106–7 nature of vii, 13, 27–34, 37–44, 64, 79 ‘God’s children’ 100–101 ‘Good Steward’ sermon (1768) 34 grace xiii–xiv, 44–7, 53–4, 63, 77, 102, 109–11, 119, 136 ‘Great Privilege’ sermon (1747–8) 74, 94 happiness, theology of 129–34 Harris, Howell 135 ‘heart circumcision’ 69–72, 81 Heitzenrater, Richard 23 heliocentricity 33–4 Hempton, David x–xi holiness xii, 38–9, 80, 88–9, 102–3, 108, 114–16, 119–25, 128, 134, 137–8 Holy Spirit vii, xiii, xv, 18–21, 24–5, 27, 44–54, 58, 61, 63, 69–77, 79, 82, 93–102, 108–9, 112, 114, 119, 128, 132–8 ‘Image of God’ sermon (1730) 57 indirect testimony and indirect witness xiv, 80, 83, 89–93, 100, 107, 137 inspiration, concept of 16 inward feeling 85–9, 94, 106–7 Jesus Christ xiii, 55, 65, 80, 85, 111, 119–22 joy 122–4

justification by faith 8, 51–2, 70–71, 95, 99, 103 ‘Justification by Faith’ sermon 124 Kant, Immanuel 104 à Kempis, Thomas 129 koinonia 108 Latitudinarianism 18 ‘Laying the Foundation’ sermon (1777) 113 ‘Letter to a Roman Catholic’ (1749) xii liberty 124–7 Christian 125 definition of 124–5 Long, Stephen 22, 56, 68 love 114–18, 124–5, 131–2 of God and of neighbour 117 ‘Love of God’ sermon (1733) 117 Luby, Daniel 79 Lucas, Richard 130–31 Maddox, Randy viii–ix Malebranche, Nicolas 33 ‘Marks of the New Birth’ sermon (1746) 50, 74, 100 Maxfield, Thomas 87 Mealey, Mark xi, 57 ‘Means of Grace’ sermon (1746) 45 Moravian Brethren 70–71, 81, 135 ‘natural man’ 70–73 definition of 70 ‘New Birth’ sermon (1744) 109–10 Newton, John 81 Oden, Thomas 13, 51 ‘One Thing Needful’ sermon (1734) 117 original sin 40, 58 Outler, Albert 1, 42, 50 Owen, John 19 Paul, St 69, 101, 106 peace dispositional 120–21 as a sense of tranquility 124 as a spiritual virtue 122 Pearson, John 14–15

Index perceptible inspiration, doctrine of xi–xvi, 2–10, 17–27, 53, 57, 83, 102–7, 109–10, 132, 135–8 criticisms of 7–10 ‘Perfection’ sermon (1784) 116 A Plain Account of Christian Perfection (1777) 82–3 Plantinga, Alvin 105–7 Plato and Platonic ethics 61, 129, 138 see also Cambridge Platonism plerophory of faith 102–3 pneumatology definition of vii of John Wesley viii, xi, xiv–xvi, 27–32, 34, 37, 45, 47, 50–54, 57–8, 63, 74–7, 83, 102–3, 107–28, 132, 136, 138 post-foundationalism xiv, 105–8, 138 predestination 126 prevenient grace 63 ‘Promise of Understanding’ sermon (1730) 46 Quakerism 18 Rack, Henry x–xi, 82 reason 59–64, 77 definition of 59 ‘Reason Impartially Considered’ sermon (1781) 59 righteousness 118–19, 125 Runyon, Theodore 94, 108 salvation 50, 53, 124, 133 definition of 24 see also economy of salvation ‘Salvation by Faith’ sermon (1738) 25 saving faith 4, 10–12, 67, 69–76 Schleiermacher, Friedrich 65 Scougal, Henry 56–7 Scripture 8–9, 13, 16–20, 88, 92–4 ‘Scripture Way of Salvation’ sermon (1765) 48, 51, 63, 76–7 Secker, Thomas 1 ‘Seek First the Kingdom’ sermon (1725) 118 Sermon on the Mount 47, 102 ‘Signs of the Times’ sermon (1787) 114

155

Smith, John (Cambridge Platonist) 68–9 ‘Smith, John’ (pseudonym of John Wesley’s correspondent, 1745–8) xi–xii, 1–23, 56, 106, 112, 136 Socrates 61 soul, human 36–7, 128 Spangenberg, August 18, 81, 135 ‘spirit of bondage’ 48, 96–7, 100, 103 ‘Spirit of Bondage’ sermon (1746) 45, 48–9, 71 spirit of man 34–41, 53 see also body and spirit spiritual birth 74–6 spiritual consciousness and spiritual perception xiv, 5, 39, 71–2, 76, 90, 105–8, 136 spiritual sensation 83, 99, 102, 105, 137 ‘Spiritual Worship’ sermon (1780) 53 Starkey, Lycurgus viii–x Swift, Jonathan 43 Thirty-Nine Articles 42 Thoughts upon Necessity (1774) 126 transcendental categories of information (in Kant) 104 Trinitarian doctrine 42–4 Tyson, John 53, 87 via Spiritus xii, 4, 79, 94, 102, 109–10, 127, 134–5 Watts, Isaac 135 ‘Way to the Kingdom’ sermon (1746) 66 Wesley, Charles xv, 23, 45, 56, 72–3, 76, 85 Wesley, Samuel (junior) 98 Wesley, Samuel (senior) 81–2 Wesley, Susanna 67–8, 77, 81–2 ‘What is Man?’ sermon 60 Whitefield, George xv, 121, 135 ‘Witness of Our Own Spirit’ sermon (1746) 46, 122 worship 28–9 Wynkoop, Mildred vii–viii Young, Sherman xi Zinzendorf, Nicolaus 135