The first presentation of John Wesley's doctrinal teachings in a systematic form that is also faithful to Wesley's own writings in ebook format. Wesley was a prolific writer and commentator on Scripture, yet it is commonly held that he was not systematic or internally consistent in his theology and doctrinal teachings. On the contrary, Thomas C. Oden intends to demonstrate here that Wesley displayed a remarkable degree of consistency over sixty years of preaching and ministry. The book helps readers to grasp Wesley's essential teachings in an accessible form so that the person desiring to go directly to Wesley's own writings (which fill eighteen volumes) will know exactly where to turn.
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Wesley prayed that the people in his connection of spiritual formation might be saved from supposed “improvements” on the apostolic testimony or presumed christological innovations.1 Wesley at no point hinted that there is a needed purification, progression, or remodeling of ancient ecumenical christological definitions.2 There is very little of that in magisterial Protestantism. The Reformers gladly accepted ancient ecumenical definitions of the apostolic church, and Wesley followed in their steps.
The study of the doctrine of Christ (Christology) has two parts: The person of Christ as God-man (theantropos) and the work of Christ as mediator of salvation to humanity.
1. The Person of Christ
In Wesley’s view, it is precisely in the text of the New Testament that we meet the “inmost mystery of the Christian faith,” where “all the inventions of men ought now to be kept at the utmost distance” to allow Scripture to speak of the one mediator who has “become the guarantor of a better covenant” (Heb. 7:22 NIV).3
Wesley summarized his thinking: “I do not know how any one can be a Christian believer … till God the Holy Ghost witnesses that God the Father has accepted him through the merits of God the Son; and having this witness, he honors the Son, and the blessed Spirit, ‘even as he honors the Father.’ “4
a. Two Natures: Truly God, Truly Human
The foundation of the doctrine of Jesus Christ is found in Scripture: truly God, truly human. Wesley confidently employed the language of the Council of Chalcedon in phrases like “real God, as real man,”5 “perfect, as God and as man,”6 and “the Son of God and the Son of Man,” whereby one phrase is “taken from his divine, and the other from his human nature.”7
The Son’s unity with the Father is a unity of divine essence, nature, substance, and glory. All the attributes of God the Father are manifested in God the Son. Wesley paraphrased Jesus, saying, “I am one with the Father in essence, in speaking, and in acting.”8 The Father is Jesus’ Father “in a singular and incommunicable manner; and ours, through Him, in such a kind as a creature is capable of.”9 To say these divine attributes are “incommunicable” means that the Son’s unique nature as eternal Son is not in itself transferable in its fullness to finite beings, but that persons through faith participate in his sonship “in such a kind as a creature is capable of.”10
Though inseparably united with the Father, the Son is a distinguishable voice from the Father as a person yet always understood emphatically within their unity of essence.11 The Son is worthy of worship since “Christ is God.”12
b. Arguments Concerning the Divinity of Christ
Wesley often called Jesus simply “God,”13 or
, the one who is spoken of in Romans 9:5. There the classic view of the two natures of Christ is clear: “‘He that existeth, over all, God blessed for ever’: the supreme, the eternal, ‘equal with the Father as touching his Godhead, though yielding to the Father as touching his manhood.’ “14
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus speaks as “
,” the one who incomparably is, “the being of beings, Jehovah, the self-existent, the supreme, the God who is over all.”15 He speaks in the first person, and thus claims the divine name, “I am,” of Exodus 3:14 (John 8:24, 27–8, 58). His eternal generation distinguishes him from all creatures. “He has all the natural, essential attributes of his Father … the entire Divine Nature.”16
The ascription of all divine attributes of the Father to the eternal Son is taken for granted as the faith of the ancient church. To the Son are ascribed “all the attributes and all the works of God. So that we need not scruple to pronounce him God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, in glory equal with the Father, in majesty coeternal.”17
The incarnation reveals the harmony of God’s attributes, especially the subtle interfacing of God’s justice, which must discipline the sinner, and God’s mercy, which reconciles the sinner — a reconciliation that occurs out of divine love as an event in history on the cross.18 Through incarnation and atonement, we learn “that not sovereignty alone, but justice, mercy, and truth hold the reins.”19
c. Arguments Concerning the Humanity of Christ
“In the fullness of time He was made man, another common Head of mankind, a second general Parent and Representative of the whole human race.”20 In becoming “flesh,” God becomes fully human, not simply body but all that pertains to humanity.21
He is a “real man, like other men,” even “a common man, without any peculiar excellence or comeliness,” who becomes weary, who weeps, who is tempted as we are yet without sin, who increases in wisdom “as to his human nature,” who passes through stages of development like other human beings, who as man lives within limitations of time, finitude, and the restrictions of contextual knowing.22
Wesley commented freely on the temperament of Jesus, his psychological dynamics, interpersonal relationships, and courage, yet without displacing the premise that he is truly human, truly God, not one without the other.
In all this there is no hint of a docetic (flesh-repudiating) tendency in Christology.23 Above all his humanity is seen in his death and burial. “He did not use His power to quit His body as soon as it was fastened to the cross, leaving only an insensible corpse to the cruelty of His murderers; but continued His abode in it, with a steady resolution.”24 In the bodily ascension, God “exalted Him in his human nature.”25
d. The Assumption of Human Nature by the Son in the Virgin Birth
“I believe that he was made man, joining the human nature with the divine in one person, being conceived by the singular operation of the Holy Ghost and born of the Blessed Virgin Mary.”26 “Christ, the Second Person, had a being before he was born of a virgin,”27 but it was the being of the preexistent Son,28 not a preexistent human flesh — an idea that Wesley considered “exceeding dangerous” since it tended to compromise the Son’s coequality and coeternality with the Father.29
In the virginal conception, “the power of God was put forth by the Holy Ghost, as the immediate divine agent in this work.”30 “As Christ was to be born of a pure virgin, so the wisdom of God ordered it to be of one espoused; that, to prevent reproach, He might have a reputed father according to the flesh.”31
Mary who was “as well after as before she brought him forth, continues a pure and unspotted virgin.”32 The nativity hymns of Charles Wesley splendidly attest the virgin conception and Christmas theology.
Yet the angelic salutation “gives no room for any pretense of paying adoration to the virgin.”33 “[Mary] rejoiced in hope of salvation through faith in Him, which is a blessing common to all true believers, more than in being His mother after the flesh, which was an honor peculiar to her…. In like manner he has regarded our low estate; and vouchsafed to come and save her and us.”34
e. The Mystery of the Personal Union
Insofar as the mediator between God and humankind shares our humanity, he does not need to know the time of the day of judgment, for “as man,” that is insofar as Jesus was flesh and blood in finite time, he was a palpable human being. How could he be if he dwelt in finite time? But according to his divine nature, “He knows all the circumstances of it.”35
All that belongs to the divine nature appears in the human nature. All that appears in the human nat...
Table of contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Contents
Preface
Abbreviations
Introduction
CHAPTER 1: Jesus Christ
CHAPTER 2: The Scripture Way of Salvation
CHAPTER 3: Justification
CHAPTER 4: The Holy Spirit
CHAPTER 5: Grace: Preceding, Accompanying, and Perfecting Salvation
CHAPTER 6: Predestination
CHAPTER 7: The Doctrine of Salvation by Faith
CHAPTER 8: Regeneration
CHAPTER 9: Sanctification
CHAPTER 10: On Remaining Sin after Justification
CHAPTER 11: History and Eschatology
CHAPTER 12: Future Judgment and New Creation
APPENDIX A: Alphabetical Correlation of the Sermons in the Jackson and Bicentennial Editions
APPENDIX B: Bicentennial Volume Titles Published to Date
