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| ISBN-13: | 9781501834332 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Abingdon Press |
| Publication date: | 11/01/1995 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| File size: | 636 KB |
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John Wesley's Conception and Use of Scripture
By Scott J. Jones
Abingdon Press
Copyright © 1995 Abingdon PressAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5018-3433-2
CHAPTER 1
The Authority of Scripture Alone
John Wesley conceives of Scripture alone as the authority for Christian faith and practice. Paradoxically, he also acknowledges the roles other authorities play in religious matters. This apparent contradiction between Scripture as sole authority and the roles of reason, Christian antiquity, experience, and the Church of England will be explored later in this study, but an accurate description of Wesley's conception must begin with his understanding of the authority of Scripture alone.
The categories which form the sections for this and the following chapter arise in part out of the corpus of Wesley's writings and in part out of the larger Christian tradition. Albert Outler's annotations of Wesley's Sermons have demonstrated his wide knowledge of that tradition. Thus, it is appropriate to use traditional theological categories as analytical tools to structure Wesley's own words on the relevant topics and show the systematic connections between different aspects of his conception of Scripture.
For example, Wesley does not give significant attention to the clarity of Scripture, and yet in this study it is treated as a distinct topic. There are two reasons for this. First, there is a prior history of the topic within Protestant theology, and Wesley was aware of that history. It is a helpful principle in interpreting Wesley to assume that he has the larger Christian tradition in mind even while writing "plain truth for plain people." Second, isolating Wesley's views on this topic will help formulate his overall conception of Scripture. He presupposes the clarity of Scripture, and his views are succinctly stated in several places. By examining those views and showing their connections to the other aspects of Wesley's understanding of Scripture, one can gain a more complete and systematic account of his position. It is helpful to begin with the topic of revelation to show how Wesley understands the origins of the biblical writings. That understanding then sets the stage for a discussion of the inspiration of Scripture as a property of the text. Scripture's authority and infallibility can then be examined, and its sufficiency, clarity, wholeness, and canonicity considered.
Revelation
Wesley's understanding of revelation involves a communication of the divine message from God to God's chosen messengers — prophets, evangelists, and apostles. While recognizing that there are both divine and human elements in the process, he minimizes the human element and emphasizes the faithfulness with which the message is transcribed. Wesley's clearest statements about revelation are found in the Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament. In its Preface he says:
Concerning the Scriptures in general, it may be observed, the word of the living God, which directed the first Patriarchs also, was, in the time of Moses, committed to writing. To this were added, in several succeeding generations, the inspired writings of the other Prophets. Afterwards, what the Son of God preached, and the Holy Ghost spake by the Apostles, the Apostles and Evangelists wrote.
This description minimizes the human element in the process of revelation as much as possible. The "word of the living God" was written down. In the New Testament it was the words of Jesus and the Holy Ghost that the apostles and evangelists wrote down. Revelation is thus a faithful rendering of the message God gave to human beings. The messengers faithfully transmit what they were given and act as conduits of the divine message.
Wesley comes closest to an explicit statement of a dictation theory of revelation in his comments on the book of Revelation. Wesley notes that "all the books of the New Testament were written by the will of God, but none were so expressly commanded to be written." John's function was to write down what was spoken, and this became chapter 1. "What was contained in the second and third chapters was dictated to him in like manner." By minimizing the participation of the recipients of revelation, the account at first appears to be a type of dictation. Even the human language employed was "the language which God Himself used." An understanding of Wesley's view of inspiration must take into account these places where it appears that the process was like God dictating to the "penmen."
However, this is not the whole of Wesley's position; in other places his terms are more carefully nuanced. The note on 1 Thessalonians 4:15 identifies "the word of the Lord" as a "particular revelation." The same qualifier is used at 1 Corinthians 7:25:
I have no commandment from the Lord — By a particular revelation. Nor was it necessary he should; for the apostles wrote nothing which was not divinely inspired: but with this difference, — sometimes they had a particular revelation, and a special commandment; at other times they wrote from the divine light which abode with them, the standing treasure of the Spirit of God. And this, also, was not their private opinion, but a divine rule of faith and practice.
Thus, there are different types of revelation. A particular revelation is one where the specific words are given to the person. Indeed, the opening chapters of the Apocalypse of John contain such a revelation because specific words were commanded to be written down. Other parts of Scripture are explicitly noted as not being particular revelations but nevertheless inspired.
This distinction is crucial to a balanced account of Wesley's understanding of revelation. Wesley does not intend a mechanical dictation theory of inspiration. All Scripture is revealed from God, but only part of it was dictated by particular revelation. Most Scripture originated in a more general inspiration, "the divine light which abode with them, the standing treasure of the Spirit of God." This allows much more human participation in the process.
Wesley refers to at least three ways in which the prophets and apostles participated in the writing of Scripture. First, there is the possibility of other sources used for Scripture. Three possible sources are noted for Jude's claim that Enoch had foretold the second coming of Christ. "St. Jude might know this either from some ancient book, or tradition, or immediate revelation." Discovering truths in ancient books or from traditional sources is outside the mechanical understanding of revelation where the Holy Spirit is understood to have told the inspired writers precisely what to put down.
Second, revelation operates in such a way that normal human processes are left intact. In his comment on 1 Corinthians 14:32, he writes:
The impulses of the Holy Spirit, even in men really inspired, so suit themselves to their rational faculties, as not to divest them of the government of themselves, like the heathen priests under their diabolical possession. Evil spirits threw their prophets into such ungovernable ecstacies, as forced them to speak and act like madmen. But the Spirit of God left his prophets the clear use of their judgment, when, and how long, it was fit for them to speak, and never hurried them into any improprieties either as to the matter, manner, or time of their speaking.
Clearly, on this view, the prophets were participating in the process by using their judgment about how the message was best communicated. Although their judgment did not affect the content of what was said, the manner of speaking, and by implication, of writing also was a matter of judgment on the part of the individual who received the revelation. This view is strengthened by Wesley's contention that the apostles were left ignorant of some things and thus had "room to exercise faith and patience." Concerning the Council of Jerusalem described in Acts 15, Wesley is puzzled that these men could be so confused about an issue so basic to the Christian faith. On verse 7 he comments, "For how really soever they were inspired, we need not suppose their inspiration was always so instantaneous and express, as to supersede any deliberation in their own minds, or any consultation with each other." He sees that the apostles, while having God's spirit as a standing treasure, still must work through human processes of consultation to discover what is the right course of action. Nevertheless, they were protected from making a mistake in that process.
Third, the motivations of the apostles can be determinative in the content of an epistle. In discussing why Paul would write to Timothy, it is to Paul's motivations that Wesley turns. Although Paul had instructed Timothy privately, Wesley says that these letters were written "to fix things more upon his mind, and to give him an opportunity of having recourse to them afterward, and of communicating them to others, as there might be occasion, as also to leave divine directions in writing, for the use of the church and its ministers, in all ages."
These motivations are directly attributed to Paul as reasons for writing the letters to his "son in the faith." They could be conceived as divine reasons for revealing these things to Paul, but they are not discussed in that way at all. Instead, the motivations are explained from a human point of view.
Thus, the process of revelation is seen by Wesley as a divine-human collaboration where the message of God is accurately communicated, but in a way that does not override human faculties, judgments, and motivations. This allows for ignorance on the part of the writers of Scripture, as well as confusion about some basic points. Most of the Scripture comes from the "standing treasure of the Spirit of God," which was with the inspired men all of the time. Some parts of Scripture, however, originate in "particular" revelations where the precise words are commanded to be written and are faithfully transcribed.
The Inspiration of Scripture
The process of revelation resulted in a set of writings which are described as "inspired." Despite the human participation in its writing, God is understood to be its author. The Preface to the Notes says:
In the language of the sacred writings, we may observe the utmost depth, together with the utmost ease. All the elegancies of human composures sink into nothing before it: God speaks not as man, but as God. His thoughts are very deep; and thence his words are of inexhaustible virtue. And the language of his messengers, also, is exact in the highest degree: for the words which were given them accurately answered for the impression made upon their minds: And hence Luther says, "Divinity is nothing but a grammar of the language of the Holy Ghost."
While human beings may shape the way the message is delivered, God is the author of the text. The Bible is the product of a divine-human collaboration, but the divine contribution far predominates the other side.
One of Wesley's strongest arguments for the inspiration of Scripture appears in "A Clear and Concise Demonstration of the Divine Inspiration of the Holy Scriptures." Here Wesley makes four basic arguments for inspiration: "miracles, prophecies, the goodness of the doctrine, and the moral character of the penmen." He then elaborates a version of the fourth argument:
The Bible must be the invention either of good men or angels, bad men or devils, or of God.
1. It could not be the invention of good men or angels; for they neither would nor could make a book, and tell lies all the time they were writing it, saying, "Thus saith the Lord," when it was their own invention.
2. It could not be the invention of bad men or devils; for they would not make a book which commands all duty, forbids all sin, and condemns their souls to hell to all eternity.
3. Therefore, I draw this conclusion, that the Bible must be given by divine inspiration.
Several points should be emphasized with reference to the content of this argument. First, Wesley makes a brief appeal to the fulfillment of prophecies and the miracles in the New Testament as evidence of Scripture's divine authorship. These arguments were standard ones for Scripture in his day and bore the brunt of the attacks made by the Deists. Anthony Collins' Scheme of Literal Prophecy attacked the credibility of the first, while Thomas Woolston and David Hume attacked the second. Wesley shows no sign of replying to such attacks, but assumes that the conventional arguments need only to be referred to by name.
Second, there is a complete lack of historical perspective in the logical alternatives Wesley sets up. He assumes that the biblical writers shared his eighteenth-century understanding of divine revelation and especially of particular revelation. Wesley does not investigate any alternative understandings of what the biblical writers were doing. In his mind, the line between divine speech and human speech is sharply drawn. The recipient of a revelation could not fail to distinguish between God's words and his or her own thoughts. Thus, only a liar would write "thus saith the Lord" when the words were not genuinely given by God. How this sharp dichotomy compares with the broader view of revelation as "the divine light which abode with them" is unclear. Wesley would clearly say that a prophet should preface a particular revelation with "thus saith the Lord." Should such a preface be given to all inspired writings? How can prophets or apostles distinguish God's words from their own judgments and ways of expressing the message? Wesley does not answer these questions. In part, this is because the inspiration of Scripture is not a topic which he has investigated and on which he has arrived at an independent conclusion. Rather, the doctrine is only considered as a way to bolster his assertion of Scripture's authority.
Third, Wesley uses simplistic categories for grouping people based on their character. Good men would not lie about an important matter, and bad men would not act against their own interests.
Fourth, the logic of the argument is impeccable. For Wesley, there can be no doubt that God is the author of Scripture. Once the terms of the argument have been accepted, no other alternative makes sense. While Wesley's understanding of revelation allows for a human component, the text itself is inspired. The human part of its composition in no way obstructs the divine authorship of the text. The Bible is best understood as the written testimony of God. Wesley acknowledges that the human factors in the composition of Scripture play a role, but God's message gets through in a way that makes the written word truly divine.
The Infallibility of Scripture
An important corollary of Wesley's doctrines of revelation and inspiration is the claim that Scripture is free from error. Frequently, the inspiration and infallibility of the Scriptures are intertwined. Typically, Wesley seeks to understand what the Scripture said about a disputed question and then argues that the Scripture's position has to be right since God could not be a liar.
The point about faith due to the testimony of God is a longstanding position which Wesley takes. Rex Matthews has noted that Wesley uses three different definitions of "faith," one of which is the idea of assent. A clear example occurs in a letter to his mother written in 1725:
Faith is a species of belief, and belief is defined, an assent to a proposition upon rational grounds. Without rational grounds there is therefore no belief, and consequently no faith....
I call faith an assent upon rational grounds because I hold divine testimony to be the most reasonable of all evidence whatever. Faith must necessarily at length 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. Till then it will be highly unreasonable to change my opinion.
While Matthews and George Croft Cell argue that this notion of faith was dominant in Wesley prior to 1738, he used it as late as 1750 in his Compendium of Logic.
Recall the evidence just presented that Wesley often understands Scripture as God's testimony. He distinguishes between divine faith, which is assent to God's testimony, and human faith, which is assent to human testimony. Thus, the logic of Wesley's argument appears to be as follows:
1. The Scriptures are God's testimony.
2. God's nature is such that he cannot be ignorant and he cannot lie.
3. The Scriptures are therefore without mistake.
To Wesley, it is inconceivable that any rational person would deny that Scripture is revealed truth. To him the Deists and philosophes are not "rational" persons. The claim that Scripture is not "of divine original" is literally absurd in the sense that no right-thinking person would ever support such a position. If Wesley can reduce his opponents to that point, he shows that their position is untenable.
Wesley holds the traditional Protestant view, arguing that God inspired the Scriptures and therefore they are infallible. Because of their infallibility, they are trustworthy, and ought to serve as the sole authority for Christian faith and practice. Wesley's statements on this point are unambiguous and frequent. In two places he refers to the Bible as "an infallible test." In two other places he is even more clear about there being no mistakes in the Bible. In the Journal for August 24, 1776, he writes:
I read Mr. Jenyns's admired tract on the Internal Evidence of the Christian Religion. He is undoubtedly a fine writer, but whether he is a Christian, Deist, or Atheist I cannot tell. If he is a Christian, he betrays his own cause by averring that "all Scripture is not given by inspiration of God, but the writers of it were sometimes left to themselves, and consequently made some mistakes." Nay, if there be any mistakes in the Bible, there may as well be a thousand. If there be one falsehood in that book, it did not come from the God of truth.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from John Wesley's Conception and Use of Scripture by Scott J. Jones. Copyright © 1995 Abingdon Press. Excerpted by permission of Abingdon Press.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Acknowledgments,Introduction,
PART ONE: JOHN WESLEY'S CONCEPTION OF SCRIPTURE,
Chapter 1: The Authority of Scripture Alone,
Chapter 2: The Characteristics of Scripture,
Chapter 3: The Authority of Scripture in Tension with Other Authorities,
Chapter 4: Interpretation of Scripture,
PART TWO: JOHN WESLEY'S USE OF SCRIPTURE,
Chapter 5: The Function of Scripture as an Authority,
Chapter 6: The Function of Other Authorities in Relation to Scripture,
Chapter 7: Interpretation of Scripture,
Conclusion,
Appendix 1: Representative Sample of Wesley's Works Used in Part Two,
Appendix 2: Wesley's Scriptural References in the Sermons Compiled by Book,
Abbreviations,
Notes,
Selected Bibliography,
Index,