The Wesleyan Soteriological Balance Resplendent

I have spent much of my Christian existence on a theological and spiritual journey from one tradition to the next, slowly but surely searching the Scriptures to find the path of salvation both in its conceptual form and in its practical application. I grew up in a nominal Roman Catholic home, met an evangelical Protestant (somewhat Lutheran-flavored) in high school who directed me to the Scriptures, and was sent on a long journey for truth and salvation from that point on. I still consider myself to be on that journey, for who of us can claim to have fully arrived either in theory or practice? But my experience and reflection has brought me to a comfortable place in terms of my soteriology where I think my conclusions are tried and true both on the theological and the practical front. Like Wesley, I put much of my theology into practice as I tried to find God (and even after I found God), seeing if it worked, and returning to the Scriptures if some conclusion just didn't seem to flesh out in reality. While I experimented, I tried to make sure I was not testing Scripture (which is God's infallible Word on matters of faith and practice, although it has to pass through human interpretation - something many Protestants forget) by the bar of human experience. Nevertheless, if a conclusion I thought sprung from Scripture just would not pan out after sincere effort to live it or put it into practice, I went back to it to re-examine. And so here I am, with Wesleyan convictions that have only gotten stronger as I have tested them theologically and practically (having passed through nominal and then sincere Roman Catholicism, easy-believist, decisionistic evangelicalism, Lutheran antinomianism, and Holiness-movement moralism - although I am not necessarily making the claim that these blind alleys represent the majority of each named tradition). I try to subject all that I do and believe to rigorous examination, and I did not lightly move into the Protestant/Wesleyan tradition. There were several points when I wondered if I am shortchanging Roman Catholicism, or if the argument that Protestants were just subject to doctrinal relativism without a Magisterium is valid, or if Wesley's view of the normal Christian life and grace is just too high or rigid, or if prevenient grace is just a theological invention with no biblical support, and the like. But in the end my experience and reflection upon life and Scripture led me to where I am, though I'm more than willing for both to lead me elsewhere.

John Wesley was a conjunctive theologian. He held many themes together in balance that other theologians and theological traditions over stress, under stress, or outright miss. Not only does he hold themes and insights in balance, but on the whole he holds to the right themes and insights. Here are some of the reasons why I think Wesley's soteriology takes the best of each tradition while leaving behind their various mistakes and imbalanced stresses:

1) Holiness and Happiness. Let's start with a relatively non-controversial one that happens to be one of my favorites. Wesley understood that true Christian holiness and deep, lasting human fulfillment and happiness and bound together with an unbreakable link. Even amidst the worst hardships of life, the joy of knowing Christ and being like Christ can sustain a soul and keep it from despair and loneliness. Holiness, best encapsulated as simply love of God and neighbor, enables successful human relationships and flourishing. It takes the pleasures we often cheapen and vulgarize and puts them on pedestals of sanctity as delightful gifts to be relished and appreciated with gratitude. Unless holiness ultimately led to happiness (recognizing that we often have to wait until eternity to reap the fruits of our behavior), we would be foolish to pursue it, for the moral life is painful and difficult. The grand illusion that must be shattered is that God's way is a joyless and passionless way, that godliness leads away from happiness. Who knows how to satisfy us more than the One who created us?

2) Justification by faith alone and the necessity of holiness, good works, and love Following the Reformers, Wesley believed in justification by faith alone. That is, he believed that we are brought into right relationship with God / put in right standing with God / justified before God simply by placing our radical trust and confidence in Jesus for the forgiveness of past sins without bringing any works or holiness to the table. It is a simple leaning on Jesus. Justification for Wesley, as for other Protestants, is something that is not accomplished by anything we do (even enabled by grace), but rather by the work of Christ alone received by faith alone. The relational rift between willful sinners and a holy God is breached by the cross, and Christ's work is reckoned to the believer - or to put it in biblical terminology, the sinner's faith is reckoned as (in place of past) righteousness, since the believer has no past righteousness of his own. This is a juridical and forensic declaration for the believer, pertaining to the forgiveness of sins. Not only do we not earn the forgiveness of sins (and sadly, Rome still affirms that we merit eternal life - one only has to read her official teaching), but we also do not achieve it by our works (even works enabled by grace). It is solely based upon the work of Christ on the cross. This fits well with the Pauline flavor of justification, which Paul sees as punctiliar and instantaneous. After discussing justification by faith in Romans 4, Paul speaks of those who "have been justified by faith" in Romans 5, indicating that this is a past event for his Christian audience, the result of which is a life of obedience and holiness, which Paul spells out in Romans 6-8. This is where a right relationship with God starts, with the open receptivity of empty-handed faith, and this is what God reckons as righteousness before any actual righteousness/holiness appears within us (and of course, we have no holiness before justification anyway).

And yet, although Wesley affirmed justification by faith alone, Wesley also believed that "without holiness no man shall see the Lord" (Hebrews 12:14). How did he hold these two insights in tension? Simple: he saw faith alone as the condition of salvation, and holiness, love, and good works as the fruit of salvation. The goal of justification is the beginning of a relationship which is aimed at sanctification. Far from making holiness and growth in grace optional because we are now fine with God, it is the way we enter into those realities, and moreover, we can always fall back into the practice of sin and require restoration (the ordo salutis is the normative order of salvation for all people - since we all have the same problem and are dealing with the same cure. But we may, of course, step back at any stage if we so choose). When we are justified we are also regenerated, which is a significant work of sanctification done by God that begins the process of sanctification with a bang. So not only is faith the condition for justification, but faith is also the condition for initial sanctification and eventually entire sanctification (faith defined as an empty-handed, open-handed trust and openness to God's work within us, a disposition that can certainly be fostered by participating in the means of grace, though that participation on our part is not what does the actual saving and sanctifying work. It enables us to trust and be open to God's saving work). There is a crucial distinction to be drawn between the conditions of salvation and the result of salvation. To conflate them (faith and works, faith and love) or to make the result the condition is a counsel of despair for powerless sinners! As such, Wesley understood the teaching of Ephesians 2:8-10 that salvation is not by our works, lest anyone should boast, but God's work received through faith. We do not bring it about or achieve it; we merely extend our hands to receive it, all so we might then love and obey God and neighbor through God's work in us. This is what Paul means when he speaks of "faith active in love" in Galatians. The impartation of transformational and enabling power is the work of God alone, and only out of that work we can now begin to love God and neighbor. Salvation and grace (received by faith alone, a faith that looks beyond our current resources) secures and enables what the moral law requires. To run the two together is to create a soteriology of Pelagianism or semi-Pelagianism in which we pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps and trust in ourselves and our works for deliverance (prevenient grace that draws us to Christ is not the same as sanctifying grace, folks. We still need grace beyond our current power before we can love as God loves). At every crucial level of Christian advancement in salvation, we come with empty hands in the powerlessness of faith, clinging only to the cross and the grace it imparts. God commands us to be holy as He is holy, and through saving faith He gives us the power to fulfill that command.

3) Process and crisis. Wesley understood that along the ordo salutis, there is both process and crisis. This is where he most clearly avoids the imbalanced errors of both many Protestants and the Catholic traditions (Roman Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy). The Bible does not allow for a view that is all crisis or all process. There is process that leads up to the instantaneous crisis of conversion (conviction of sin, legal repentance from deliberate sin, exercising faith in Christ for deliverance, regeneration, assurance of salvation) whether or not that crisis is known or remembered. The language of regeneration, repentance, and conversion make it clear that this is a decisive shift that issues in a qualitative, not just a quantitative, change. Believers become something they never were before: holy. There is also a process that leads up to the final stroke of sanctifying grace (conviction of inward sinfulness and sinful tempers, evangelical repentance, exercising faith in Christ for a fully pure heart, entire sanctification, the full assurance of faith). For Wesley, process leads to crisis, which is the natural way to understand the language we find in the Bible. While there is process up to being born, for instance, there is a moment when the baby crosses into this world and is born. It is similar with our new birth with God. This means that while some may not like categories like "saved or unsaved," "born again or not born again," "sinner or saint," the Bible actually does speak of such black/white, either/or categories in some places. Specifically, with respect to the practice of sin or righteousness, the Bible also makes it clear that there is no in between point. You are either practicing sin or you are not; you have either left behind a life of rebellious transgression of God's known will, or you have not. You are either serving sin or you are serving God. You are either a child of the devil, practicing sin, or a child of God, practicing righteousness. You are either fundamentally walking in the light, or you are walking in the darkness. Passages such as John 8:34, Romans 6, Romans 7-8, and the whole of 1 John make this clear, and Wesley took them at face value. Not every change in the Christian journey of salvation is one of degree - some are changes of kind. This is lost on many traditions that believe salvation is unremittingly processive. It also tends to keep human working too much at the center of things, when there are times when God must work alone and we simply must receive that work with no cooperation or contribution on our part. Regeneration is one of those moments of crisis and free grace. It is therefore biblical and appropriate to speak of "states of grace," something that is hard to fit into a completely process-oriented model that postulates nothing but incremental change. We have to let the Bible judge us and tell us where we are at on the journey of salvation.

And yet, it must also be stated the human working and effort does play a role in salvation, a truth neglected by many Protestants, though not Wesley. However - and this is a BIG however - Human works categorically do not merit salvation, nor do they accomplish or effect it. Humans are called to repent, exercise faith, receive salvation, and then obey God once salvation has been effected by God (alone). These surely are things humans must "do," but they are not the kind of works Paul rails against in his epistles: works that merit or cause deliverance. They are conditions that enable God to cause salvation to occur and bring it about in our hearts and lives. They are our submitting ourselves to the reception of God's grace, and then obeying God once that grace is received and does its saving work. One must receive before they respond, and one must put themselves in the proper disposition to receive through practicing the means of grace.

4) Wesley's nuanced and Biblical doctrine of sin. Wesley's view of sin in the regenerate Christian life has brought him some criticism, mostly, in my view, because people do not sufficiently grasp his nuanced doctrine of sin. Wesley saw sin as both an act and a state. Moreover, he defined an act of sin, or "committing sin," as "willful transgression of a known law of God." Admittedly, this raises many questions. How do we respond to clear sin in believers? What does it mean for something to be willful and known? I think Wesley's parsing of sin is helpful for navigating the way of salvation.

Wesley does indeed affirm that regenerate believers are "so perfect so as not to commit sin." What does he mean? From my reading of the corpus, Wesley means the full-throttle, rebellious, willful, deliberate engagement of wickedness. It is when we know something is evil very clearly and we give our whole will and consent to the action, letting "sin reign in our mortal bodies," as Paul puts it. It is not simply a momentary lapse into an attitude of the flesh, which as we shall see does happen in the children of the God. It is the service of sin, bondage to sin, being under the power and dominion of sin. 1 John and other Scriptures make it clear that born again believers "do not practice sin" normatively in this sense. Even with human relationships, this makes sense. How can I be in a right relationship with my wife if I engage deliberately in adulterous behavior - if I give my sexual love to another, whether in the form of pornography or a person? I can't, nor can I be at peace with God if I find myself in chains to willful evil. I cannot be at peace with my wife if I can't stop giving myself to the ongoing practice of sin. This bondage is precisely what the initial work of salvation frees us from, so it should prompt those of us who want to follow Jesus but find ourselves enslaved to sin to cry out with Paul, "Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death?" (Romans 7:24).

However, my wife will also know that I am not perfect, and that there are sinful aspects of my character that come out in certain circumstances. I may snap, or be impatient, or be somewhat selfish, or find myself with a lustful thought, or be haughty at times, and so forth (not to mention all the mistakes due not to sin, but human infirmity and ineptitude, such as forgetfulness or a general lack of wisdom and maturity). Wesley refers to these sinful dispositions that manifest themselves in the children of God as the carnal nature or a state of sin. He even talks about "sins of surprise," those which correspond to the carnal nature bubbling up within us and catching us off guard (and which generally issue in immediate repentance). There remains even in the children of God self-will, pride, unholy anger, and so forth. But Wesley believes that regeneration keeps them from reigning in the believer's life. They are there, they affect even our noblest actions, they make us act in ways that are not entirely pure, but they do not control us. Eventually, through a further work of grace, this old nature will be uprooted and cleansed entirely.

Now, as already mentioned, believers may revert back to the bondage of sin and succumb to its slavery. One can always backslide, fall under the power of sin and willfully disobey God's law, only to be restored eventually or to fall away finally to one's eternal loss (as such, to affirm distinct and salient states of grace is not to be committed to a static rather than a dynamic view of salvation at all). But Wesley nevertheless taught that so long as believers remain in the grace of God by the power of the Holy Spirit, there will be no ongoing bondage in the regenerate Christian's life. There may be moral struggles with attitudes, dispositions, and the carnal nature, but that is quite different from bondage of the will and sin having control of us and enslaving us. Slavery to sin simply does not characterize the normal Christian life according to the Bible: victory does. Born again Christians surely are still sinful, but sin does not reign over them or have them in its enslaving grip. This is what the qualitative work of regeneration does for the believer, something that is not a change in degree but a change in kind. It is a distinctive mark of those who have been born of God, and the Bible testifies to this. The flesh still influences us, but it is kept from controlling us, unless we let go of Jesus and chase after it deliberately. And if we do turn from God back to the practice of sin, Jesus is always there to restore us if we repent. This should just not be the normal cycle, else it seems to me that the power of sin is never decisively broken - and again, how can two walk together lest they are agreed? How can I walk with God when I am walking in the other direction deliberately? How can I be at peace with God with such a disobedient and evil will?

In my opinion, this is a very biblical and balanced way to view how God deals with sin in our lives. It's not done in a moralistic way, breaking off this or that habit or "sin." Sanctification is not an accomplishment of human beings in this way, as if it were merely behavior modification that anyone can do without the Holy Spirit. It is not even done by us at all, even by the power of the Spirit. It is simply done by the Holy Spirit, and then out of that transformation we can then obey through the ongoing enablement of the Spirit. It is an over hall that deals with the flesh from the inside out, first breaking the slavery of sin and later cleansing us from its influence altogether. It enables us to see the Biblical truth taught by Jesus and Paul that we simply cannot serve two masters at the same time, while also giving needed space and grace for further growth in holiness and love. There is room for conviction of unknown sins, for the reality of sin (in one sense) in believers, and for believers to fall back into the willful practice of sin and require restoration or refuse it. And yet there is also an affirmation of liberty and decisive, gracious change and empowerment. Consequently, I gladly commend Wesley's soteriology to the wider Christian church. It seems to me that Wesley's soteriology is the most biblical and consistent one out there. It is realistic in its diagnosis, yet also optimistic in its high estimation of the transforming power of grace.