Methodist theology vs. Methodist theologians; a review of several Methodist writers

Front matter

1 m e t ho i> i s t T h e e l o g y e m i I ( ) i > I s t T h e o l o g i a n s i

GK W. WILSON

Class "flX ^351

Preface

Of recent years Methodism has published several volumes in which the authors assail doctrines which are fundamental to the spirituality, growth, and perpetuity of her institutions. These volumes are influencing the thought of the Church. Their aim is to correct well-established beliefs, under the plea of giving us a more reasonable, philosophical, and sounder theology and terminology. Under the charge of an unsound interpretation of the Scriptures, a false psychology, limited intellectuality, lack of scientific acumen, the dominance of imagination over reason, and emotions which mislead the judgment, they hurl from them the testimonies, doctrines, and teachings concerning every vital truth which has made us a distinctive people. The crude statements of some are magnified and frequently made to stand out as the reality of the experience itself. Reason assumes the prerogative of determining what is real and what is imaginative. One's consciousness is made the standard by which the testimonies of others are tested, and a philosophy of experience is made to stand for the experience itself. They contradict the clearest consciousness of most reliable witnesses, and unfortunately contradict themselves. Scriptural statements are contradicted or reasoned away, and the charge is made

PREFACE.

that the Church's spiritual history has been wrought by erroneous beliefs. These writers do not alarm us. In no sense have they established any right to be heard, by any reasonable solution of the problems they endeavor to solve ; they lack the facts of personal experience. They suggest doubt by failing to explain anything. Interrogation points are poor resting-places for a weary spirit. A daring, dashing, dogmatic assault upon erroneous expressions that ends in denying spiritual realities, blending sophistry, sarcasm, and self-assertion, can hardly be called sound reasoning. Reasoning which produces no evidence, or does not make the truth clearer to one's vision and more exact in form, may gratify vanity, but can not be an aid to spirituality. Equally great intellects believe the things these writers deny. These assaults of reason, so called, inside the Church would long since have divested it of its spirituality had not God placed "I know" over against "I think." When man bases his thinking upon selfconscious states alone, God withholds His manifested presence, and spiritual darkness ensues. President Elliott, of Harvard University, recently expressed his disapproval of what he calls "Methodist Emotionalism." Recent science emphasizes the fact that "Emotional occasions, especially violent ones, are extremely potent in precipitating mental rearrangements." What has produced sounder and more healthy emotions, without disastrous counteraction, like the manifestations of God to His people, which have made religious experience the corrective of unsound theology? It is the very truths, divinely revealed, which arouse such

PREFACE.

heavenly emotions, which are being assailed by these writers. Teachings and experiences which have modified the most learned systems of religion by challenging them to test them experimentally are considered as "theological monstrosities." These "enemies of the Cross" are sometimes bitter in spirit, and with a limited spirituality have undertaken to deny the larger spiritual consciousness of others. They ignore those intellectual enlightenments, moral exaltations, and intense joyousnesses which are frequently imparted to those who are their intellectual peers ; experiences which change one's thought, character, and life. They frequently ignore the Word of God, holding that no matter what the Scriptures seem to say we are to follow our moral reason.

Everything fundamental to Methodism is being assailed. An advanced theology means a clearer statement of the truth without excluding any truth now in our possession. The difficulty this volume combats is not our inability to measure up to the high spiritual state or ideal held out to us, but to surrender our sources of power; the loss of Methodism in a sea of vain speculations, and the decrease of those experiences and testimonies and interpretations of God's Word which have confounded all human philosophy, and makes heaven resonant with redemption's song. " When these writers include more in their definitions than our fathers, and lead to greater spiritual heights, they will not lack followers. The bewildered mind at last seeks positive truth. This writer begs forbearance concerning style, literary taste, and an apparent

PREFACE.

dogmatism. In reviewing authors, one can not adopt that easy method which comes from consecutively pursuing his own thoughts to their legitimate conclusions. We enter this field in defense of the truth, and pray for that guidance which is necessary to discern between a process of reasoning and a discovery of the truth. Two Methodisms ! Which ?

G. W. WILSON.

602 W. High Street, Urbana, III

Introduction

John Wesley was no ordinary man. It seems that he was as really a chosen vessel of the Almighty as was Paul, or Isaiah, or Samuel, or Moses. His work was different from that of these men who preceded him, but it was none the less God's work, and he was God's servant. Heredity did much for him. Home influences did more. His university training supplemented both. His long and wearisome search after God, and the successful outcome of his search made him a fit leader of men. His natural temperament, his perfectness of physical life, his rare insight into human nature, his sympathy with the common people, and his ability to command the respect of the most exalted, his broad, minute, thorough, exhaustive scholarship, his patient, long-continued utilization of the inductive methods of the great philosopher Bacon in the observation and careful study of the .various phases of religious theories and experience with which he came in contact for more than sixty years, altogether gave him a most wonderful power over the men and thought of his own time, a power which has gone on increasing at a most surprising ratio until the present time, and was never so great and aggressive as now.

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INTRODUCTION.

It took a very bold, not to say reckless, man to confront him while he lived, for it is a notable fact that while he never was known to commence a quarrel with any one, he was never known to be the first to quit when once a quarrel had commenced. Hence it seems a very unwise procedure on the part of an average scholar or theologian in these days to set up for a critic of John Wesley. The race of man has produced only a very few men who have equaled Wesley, and fewer still who have surpassed him. And yet we have now and then one who assumes to know more about the subjects concerning which Wesley wrote than he knew. Little critics are this sort of people who undertake to correct his English, his interpretation of Scripture, his theological statements, his views of Christian experience, and many other matters of greater or less importance.

This book takes us away from the theorists, and doubters, and disputers, and gives us Wesley and what he taught and what every one of his followers may well accept ; certainly is this the case so far as the points discussed in the book are concerned.

It must have been observed by most, if not all. who have given attention to the subject, that a theoretical lowering of moral standards is sure to follow, except in rare cases, the lowering of moral conduct. The standards are made to correspond with the conduct, and so departures from righteousness are either condoned or excused. In the same way it sometimes happens that theological standards of Christian experience are adjusted to har-

INTRODUCTION.

ii monize with a lukewarm, cold, or backslidden experience. It is a constant source of perplexity to careful observers to see persons who at one time professed the experience of full salvation and taught its reality and attainability, alike from the Bible and the writings of Wesley and others, in subsequent years go back on their own testimony as to the reality and attainability of the blessing, and then in order to justify themselves give new and different views of the Bible teachings and also discredit the teachings of Wesley. One of the many perplexities in such cases is to determine whether now or then such a person could be trusted. Was he honest then? Is he honest now? Was he deceived then? Is he deceived? We have no such difficulty in the case of John Wesley. He commenced in the darkness, found his way into the light, and held on his course without wavering. He has shown by the methods employed, and the results attained, that he was and is a safe guide, and we may follow him without the slightest hesitation as he searches into the deep things of God. Certainly all this will apply with special emphasis whether we have in mind the doctrine of the Trinity, the absolute Deity of Jesus Christ, the personality and Deity of the Holy Spirit, the doctrine of the fall ot man, the natural depravity of each human being, the inspiration of the Bible, the supernatural in prophecy and miracle, the atonement — its ground, scope, and results ; the nature, origin, and possibilities of the Christian life; the resurrection, judgment, heaven, and

INTRODUCTION.

hell. In all these respects it may be said that it will be safe, perfectly so, to follow John Wesley.

It is clear also that the time has come when there is need of such a book as this, and it is to be hoped that it will be read with candor and its truths accepted, and our Methodism become more Wesleyan and Scriptural as the years go on, rather than yield to the unevangelical, un- Wesleyan, and un- Scriptural tendency of the present times.

Aubiirndale, Mass.

Contents

Page

Preface, 5

Introduction, by Bishop W. F. Maixaiteu, D. D.,

Chapter I

Among the volumes to be reviewed is one of three booklets by Professor Borden P. Bowne, of Boston University, entitled "The Atonement." While denying that any view is necessary to a reception of the benefits of the atonement he holds to "the moral view," sufficiently modified and adapted to include his theory of evolution. To review his writings one must examine his definitions.

ORIGIN OF MAN.

He says of man, the subject of the atonement:

His life is "rooted in the animal, out of which we only slowly and by much trial and error emerge." 1 "Our development begins on a sub-moral plane. That was not first which was spiritual, but that which was animal (psychical), and afterward that which was spiritual. Whatever may have been true of the first man, this word of Paul's is true of his descendants ; and the reported performances of even the first man would not seem to set him very high in the scale of development." 2 "Unless we suppose God to have made the world in the dark, we must allow that He foreknew and intended to have just this developing human world with its necessity for struggling out of the animal into the spiritual, out of the mechanical into the free, out of the selfish into the loving, out of the earthly into the Divine." 3 "There are animal beginnings with moral endings." 4 "It is not a conscious moral life from the start, but a sub-moral, sub-rational, even animal life, which is to develop into moral and spiritual forms. The individual in his personal life develops slowly into intelligence, knowledge, and self-control ; and the social development, which has such significance for the mental and moral life of the individual, is an age-long process. Account has to be taken of both orders of development in estimating the moral life of men." 5 "The general form of our life, with its marked prominence of the physical and the animal, is itself a stumbling-block." 6 "We have to deal, not with hypothetical and abstract moral agents, but with beings in the order of development where the intellectual insight, the volitional self-control, and the moral sensibility have to be developed, and where the development is never complete." 7

Professor Bowne roots the life of man in the animal, an undemonstrated hypothesis, for which not a particle of proof yet exists. Where are the facts upon which he bases these bald statements? Geologic truth ought to furnish abundant evidence if this position is true. If God created man in His own image, certainly that was not first which is animal. The image of God is spiritual, not psychical. God is a Spirit. Man is a spirit. The Scriptures recognize a distinction between man and the animal world, and record a distinct, divine, creative act as the cause of man's existence, prior to which no specimens of the man-like animal are found. He does not give a hint in his booklets that the race became fallen in Adam. There is no foundation laid in his theory of the origin and development of man for the fall, consequently his theory of the atonement can not include the gospel of redemption. His "moral view" affords a very limited freedom on the part of the subject for whom the atonement was made. He makes the struggle "out of the animal into the spiritual" a "necessity" God "foreknew and intended," for which

5 P. 129. 6 The Christian Revelation, p. 33. 7 The Christian I^ife, p. 18.

THE ATONEMENT.

he furnishes neither ethnographic nor Scriptural reasons. Christ took upon Him our nature, and was "made like unto His brethren." Will he hold that Christ was first animal and became spiritual after an "age-long process?" If we were first animal, so was Christ, or the Scriptures are not true. His theory of a necessitated, divinely-intended, age-long process makes it impossible for the Author of such a process to hasten its fulfillment. He says :

"The development has a natural root as well as a spiritual goal. The development also involves the unfolding of the constitutional powers of man, as well as his abstract spiritual capacities. For a long time the development remains on the plane of the natural without attaining to the consciously spiritual ; but all the while it is the development of man in a divinely-ordered scheme ; and all the phases and factors of this scheme have their place and function in the divine plan for men." 8 What his moral view effects toward aiding a soul necessitated to pass through this "divinely-ordered scheme" of development is difficult to discover.

DENIES THE FALL.

One holding such theories could not found the necessity for an atonement upon the justice and holiness of God. What we have called the fall is not a disorder leading downward, but one phase "in the divine plan" for men. If this seeming disorder is evolutionary, redemption is ruled out, and the atonement set forth in the Scriptures is false. A divinely-ordered scheme needs neither an atonement nor a redemptive process for its fulfillment. Really Professor Bowne has neither in his system. Redemption implies restoration by purchase, and not by de-

8 The Christian L,ife, p. 39.

velopment. If, as he implies, 9 the fall as recorded in Genesis is a myth, the foundation for any atonement is destroyed. "

DEFINITION OF SIN.

With any weakening of the sense of sin there must be a corresponding weakening of the need of an atonement. Defining sin, he says:

"Sin itself in many of its aspects is a relic of the animal not yet outgrown, a resultant of the mechanism of appetite and impulse and reflex action, for which the proper inhibitions are not yet developed ; and only slowly does it grow into a consciousness of itself as evil. Thus sin is born ; that is, human beings become willful and selfish and willing to do wrong. This may indeed go to any extreme of malignity, but it would be hysteria to regard the common life of man as rooting in a conscious choice of unrighteousness/' 10 "And sin itself, as we find it among men, is largely the willfulness of freedom which has not learned self-control, rather than any deliberate choice of evil." 11 "If God is in history at all, we must say that He wills both that a great many things bad in themselves shall be, and that they shall be done away with." 12

These are his definitions of sin. In many of these aspects it can not be a transgression of a moral law. The being has not entered the realm of morals. If it is the result of the mechanism of appetite and impulse, it must be under the law of necessity, and can not be volitional, a perversity of reason, or a depravation of the affections. He makes sin to root in the animal. God makes it to root in the spirit. It is revolt against nature, as well as plainly prescribed moral laws. The Scriptures say that "Sin is

s The Christian Revelation, pp. 66, 71. 10 P. 69.

11 The Christian Iyife, p. 41. 12 The Christian Revelation, p. 100.

THE ATONEMENT.

the transgression of the law." "All unrighteousness is sin." "To him, therefore, that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin."

The power to sin implies a high quality of being ; animal nature can not sin. Sin can not be charged up to ignorance, which measures man's innocence, nor to the sensuous nature. There are many sins of the darkest type which have nothing to do with the senses. If God "wills that a great many things bad in themselves shall be," may not this be one of the things He wills "shall be ?" God's will is right, so that a great many things bad in themselves are right. According to the Professor, a necessitated, divinely-ordered scheme, in which God wills that a great many things bad in themselves shall be, leaves little ground for a Scriptural definition of sin. Jesus makes sin to "root" in unbelief ; Professor Bowne makes it to root in animalism.

These definitions do not suit him, as he must know that neither freedom nor moral obligation are implied in "the mechanism of appetite and impulse;" therefore, he enlarges it to one including willfulness, selfishness, and willing to do wrong, "the willfulness of freedom, which has not learned self-control." Willfulness and selfishness are terms belonging to spirit nature. Willfulness implies a consciousness of law, with ability to comply with its mandates (natural or gracious). These are misused attributes of man, and not qualities of "freedom." Man is conscious of some measure of freedom ; he may be conscious that he is willful and selfish, and that he abuses his freedom ; but

METHODIST THEOLOGY.

he has no knowledge of when he became so. From what system of revelation, morals, psychology, or philosophy has Professor Bowne discovered that "human beings become willful and selfish?"

Sin is not "born," but discerned, since Adam's fall. It is this fact which compels us to look behind ourselves for its origin. The moral law, which Professor Bowne so shamefully ignores in dealing with the atonement, is the means by which this discovery is made. Professor Bowne roots this willfulness and selfishness in the "animal not yet outgrown ;" the Church has always rooted it in the fall of Adam. Selfishness is not animal ; it is affectional — it is the antithesis of love. The Scriptures reverse the order he holds, and teach that sin appeared first in a free spirit, and, imparting itself to the psychical life, depraved it ; hence the unnatural condition of the race. The only human being which was natural since Adam was Jesus Christ. Humanity discovers itself to be selfish before it wills to be so, and without a work of redemption it finds itself incapable of being otherwise. Instead, therefore, of that being first which is natural, an abnormal condition of the psychic nature is the first discovery, which, when traced to its source in us, is discovered to be a depravation of spirit ; and because not self-imparted must have accompanied our begetting. No, that is not first which is natural, but unnatural, incapable of self-recovery, needing an atonement and a Redeemer to restore it to original righteousness. We have not only an abnormal spirit, but a depraved psychic nature also, both tending to go beyond

THE ATONEMENT.

the limits prescribed by the Divine law. We are under the dominion of a spirit of lawlessness which controls the "mechanism of appetite and impulse," and no amount of "inhibition" can prevent or cure it.

The Scriptures say, "By one man sin entered into the world." Not a single passage contains any of the Professor's definitions. Even the passage he uses to establish the order of development — viz., "that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is animal" — is taken from a Scripture dealing with the resurrection of the body by one whose statements on the atonement he treats with perfect indifference.

If Professor Bowne believes in the existence of fallen angels, he must have some other theory for their fall and the origin of their sin than the "mechanism of appetite and impulse," or "the willfulness of freedom which has not learned self-control." Well has Horace Bushnell said, "What we called sin before we became philosophers we now call development, and excuse ourselves from all blame in it, because we are only a part of nature subject to her laws." 13

We now enter this labyrinth of bewildered religious thought to see what a "moral view" of the atonement, limited by the age-long processes of evolution, can do for us in taking away the sin of the world. The religious form of these writings is their greatest danger; they neither represent Christianity nor Methodism. One would think the Scriptures were not necessary to prove his theory,

13 Nature and the Supernatural, p. 211.

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so little use is made of them; indeed, he questions them where he does not ignore or deny them. In his usual manner he wades through fictitious theories or defective statements of correct doctrinal truth. Ancient theologies based upon Calvinistic notions of salvation are scourged out of the temple of truth ; after which he seeks to argue out of their realistic value the writings of the Scriptures conflicting with his moral view. Concerning

THE LANGUAGE OF SCRIPTURE

"It is further plain that, for setting forth the great truth of Divine grace, it was necessary to use the actual speech and conception of the time. Any revelation which might be made to men must be cast in the existing molds of thought and expression ; otherwise it would be unintelligible. Accordingly we find the great salvation set forth in the language of ancient life and custom. In particular the religious rites and traditions of the age had produced a great system of thought and speech, and in terms of this system the doctrine of grace was naturally cast. The language of the altar and temple, the customs of ransom and redemption, the legal usages of the time, all lent themselves to its expression. Accordingly Christ is a sacrifice and propitiation for our sins. He is the Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world. He is our Passover. He gave His life a ransom for many, and thus becomes the Redeemer of the world. This language was necessary. The religious thought and development of the time would have been inacessible to any other. . . . Thus the language of the time is used; and for that time and for all times it makes a true impression ; and Christian thought is left under the guidance of the Spirit, to distinguish between the spirit and the letter, between the abiding truth and the changing forms of expression. . . . It is becoming more and more apparent that the aim is to make a practically true and important impression." "The truth is to be found in the impression, rather than in any logical or dictionary analysis of the forms of speech : and

THE ATONEMENT.

^5 the expression and understanding will vary with the growth of thought and life and knowledge." 14 "We may hold that in another stage of moral and religious development these modes of speech would not be the best possible, because the forms and customs on which they rest have passed away. For instance, we may well believe that the Biblical forms of speech, while expressive and necessary for the time when they originated, would not be employed if the Christian teaching were to be set forth for the first time to-day. . . . We can not doubt that the doctrine would be cast in modern molds, rather than in those of the Jewish Church and the Roman law. There is no good reason for thinking that those ancient forms have an eternal fitness beyond all others for expressing the grace of God." 13 "The language of Scripture must be interpreted in accordance with our moral reason, no matter what it seems to say." 10 "The language of the Scripture is sacrificial, substitutional, and satisfactional." 17

These lengthy quotations warrant their insertion, as they so clearly set forth the author's view of the language of the Scriptures. Evidently he thinks he has reached that "stage of moral and religious development" in which it would not be best "to use the language of Scripture." His "moral reason" has detected the inaccuracy of its statements concerning the death of Christ. He says the language of Scripture creates "a true impression," but it is most evident that the impression received by him is radically opposite to the one received by the Church for centuries past. He says the language of the Scriptures is sacrificial, substitutional, and satisfactional; but there is "no literal substitution of one person for another, no literal satisfaction of the claims of justice, no literal payment of a debt, no literal ransom or redemption." Indeed, he has no figurative substitution, satisfaction, or payment of debt. The incarnation which he holds is the atonement could not furnish such, so these things are ruled out of his theory.

CHRIST RECOGNIZES THEIR RELATION TO HIMSELF.

Christ taught, and His disciples believed, that the language of the Old Testament prefigured His life, work, and especially His death. It was these very Scriptures He used to prove to them "the things concerning Himself." There would be some force in his argument if the Gospel was for the Jew only. Why should those New Testament writers foist a religious language exclusively Jewish upon the Grecian, Roman, or Corinthian peoples, none of whom were familiar with those things which distinguished the Jewish from all other religions? Certain places, services, and days were sacred to the Jew, which a Gentile could not understand. Being first separated from the Gentile world, they received those customs, services, and sacrifices by a revelation made to Moses as essential to an acceptable worship of God. Their progress or decline centered around a faithful performance of all those requirements. Christ taught His disciples that His death was the fulfillment of this typical system of worship. So thoroughly convinced were they of that fact, that it formed the principal part of their writing and preaching. The Old Testament language was not "necessary" in preaching the gospel Professor Bowne advocates. All he declares could have been expressed in the language of Greece or Rome

THE ATONEMENT.

independent of the Old Testament Scriptures. This is his gospel :

PROFESSOR BOWNE'S GOSPEL.

"We see the love of God in the gift of His Son, and the love of Christ in His work for us, and the gracious condition in which, as the result of that work, we find ourselves. The forgiveness of sin is proclaimed. The Divine love is declared, and the Divine help is proffered to all. This is the clear revelation which emerges from these forms of speech ; and this is a Divine Gospel which is worthy of all acceptation.'" 3

If, as Professor Bowne says, "Any revelation which might be made to men must be cast in the existing molds of thought and expression," why did the apostles borrow a strange language and radically opposite molds of thought and expression to introduce Christianity among the .Gentiles ? The gospel of blood, of altar, of temple, of ransom, of redemption, was declared to them in the plainest terms as essential to the blessings of the great salvation. They had bloody sacrifices, altars, temples, and priests, but they were not used as "the existing molds of thought and expression." They were required to turn from Gentile to Jewish sacrifices for the symbolical language which set forth the Gospel of Jesus Christ, because it contained something concerning Christ no other religious rite contained. The Gentiles had no "Passover" nor "day of atonement." They had nothing which suggested the fundamental truth of the Christian religion, and, while Jewish sacrifices were essential to the Divine favor until

METHODIST THEOLOGY.

fulfilled in Christ, Gentile sacrifices were "an abomination unto the Lord." Their sacrifices could not suggest a redeemer from sin, and in no sense did Christ fulfill them.

THE IMPRESSION FOUNDED UPON FACTS.

In studying the Scriptures millions have received a different impression concerning the nature of sin, guilt, condemnation, pardon, forgiveness, regeneration, and sanctification from that which Professor Bowne has. Acting upon their impressions they have pursued a different course altogether than the one he teaches to procure salvation. This has produced an experience which he denies as real or Scriptural. He says :

"If sin be thought of as a debt, it is paid. If it be thought of as slavery, we are redeemed or ransomed. If it be thought of as guilt demanding atonement and propitiation and expiation, there has been one supreme sacrifice for sin. If we think of the mediating high priest of the old Temple, we, too, have a Mediator and a High Priest — Jesus, the Son of God, who has passed into the heavens, where He ever liveth to make intercession for us. If we think of our guilt and unworthiness, we are clothed with the righteousness of Christ and are accepted in the Beloved." 19 "One who has been saved from sin and restored to righteousness and the Divine favor, may think well of himself as redeemed and ransomed, or as freed from debts he could never pay. And he might also well and truly think of his Savior as having offered Himself up as a sacrifice for him, as having died for him and redeemed him by His blood. But this is the language of emotion, and devotion, and gratitude, and discipleship. It is the language of the Christian heart and life, not the language of theological theory." 20