What we have here is a failure to indoctrinate
A myth stalks our debates about homosexuality. The myth is that doctrinal purity is the road to denominational salvation. It is the notion that some of us have true belief and others are wrong or even subverting the faith because they fail to think properly about faith.
Shane Raynor provided a link to a recent presentation of this myth.
Former president of the Confessing Movement Rob Renfroe now edits Good News. In his introductory issue, he writes about his view of the deeper issues at play within the United Methodist debate over homosexuality.
Renfroe sees the issue of homosexuality as a symptom of deeper divides. This is familiar ground. The four divides he sees are:
The nature of moral truth – “Is moral truth determined by the unchanging character of God? Or is it determined by the ever-changing experiences of human beings? Does the character of God determine what is right and wrong? Or do we conduct surveys and decide that a particular behavior is to be celebrated if a certain percentage of persons in a given culture engage in it?”
The authority of the Scriptures – “Do they speak truth to all people in all cultures at all times? Or were they wrong when they were written, culturally determined in their declarations, and hopelessly out of date for persons enlightened by the truth contained in the latest sociological surveys?
The revelatory work of the Holy Spirit – “Is it always in accordance with the Scriptures? Or can it amend and even contradict the Scriptures?”
Uniqueness of Christ – “Do we confess him as the only-begotten Son of God, the unique Savior of the world, and the supreme Lord of the universe? Or can he be particularized to our experiences, relativized for a Western culture, and trivialized into just one of many ways to God?”
After I get past the heavily loaded language used to define the debate here, these four remind me of John Wesley’s own explanation of the marks of a Methodist.
Here’s his famous outline of the crucial doctrinal marks of a Methodist:
We believe, indeed, that “all Scripture is given by the inspiration of God;” and herein we are distinguished from Jews, Turks, and Infidels. We believe the written word of God to be the only and sufficient rule both of Christian faith and practice; and herein we are fundamentally distinguished from those of the Romish Church. We believe Christ to be the eternal, supreme God; and herein we are distinguished from the Socinians and Arians.
It sounds very similar to Renfroe’s points, but the context of Wesley’s words are crucial here.
Here’s how Wesley started this section of text:
THE distinguishing marks of a Methodist are not his opinions of any sort. His assenting to this or that scheme of religion, his embracing any particular set of notions, his espousing the judgment of one man or of another, are all quite wide of the point. Whosoever, therefore, imagines that a Methodist is a man of such or such an opinion, is grossly ignorant of the whole affair; he mistakes the truth totally.
Wesley did not think you can believe anything and be a Methodist, but he firmly stated over and again that believing the right things could not make you a Methodist.
And my reading of Renfroe’s article makes me wonder how he would interpret Wesley sermons such as “A caution against bigotry” and “Catholic spirit” in which Wesley is quite open to the idea that those who believe the wrong things can be true agents of God’s kingdom. It sounds very liberal based on Renfroe’s categories.
The Rules of the United Societies speak not at all of holding proper doctrines. The Holy Club’s self-examination included not a question about doctrine. At the band meetings, Christians were not asked whether they held any improper doctrines since the last meeting.
We Methodists are committed to living a life marked by the love of God and neighbor. We are committed to following Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. We need doctrine to help us define that. We need to understand what moral teachings of the Bible are essential and which are not. We need help to interpret what a specific biblical teaching means for our lives. The church from the first days argued and debated these things. It apparently took a generation or more to settle the question of circumcision – and yet the church grew quite a bit while this matter of doctrine and scriptural interpretation was debated vigorously.
As a denomanation, we should continue to debate in the spirit of Acts 15. We should continue to discuss moral issues in the light of Christ’s examples.
But our salvation as a denomination does not lie in getting doctrine right.
None of us can avoid being upset when others get doctrine wrong, from our point of view. John Wesley himself lamented time and again how the people called Methodist ignored his teaching about proper dress and the use of money. He saw clear testimony in scripture about how we should use our money and how we should dress. We modern Methodists are much like the people that drove John Wesley to despair on such matters.
And yet, the Methodist movement – despite its failures on this doctrine – continued to spread and grow. It did so because, however imperfectly, the people called Methodist continued to try to live in ways that affirmed Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. They made a terrible hash of doctrine many times. Their hearts were not always even in the right place. But they continued trying to live better and better and closer and closer to God.
Doctrinal tests about the meaning of biblical inspiration will not renew or reviatlize our denomination. An experiential faith inspired by the love of God and neighbor will.
Can I point out that conservatives also think that there are behaviours that are sometimes morally good and sometimes evil? Monogamy is one of those behaviours: straight people practice monogamy as a discipline of holiness; gay people commit monagamy as a sin.
Insightful, informative, respectful and poignant. It’s a favorite.
I’m still not quite sure if Wesley is saying what you want him to say in the passage you quoted. The character of a Methodist was a tract written to defend against other Christians. He was trying to say Methodists hold no strange doctrines that would disqualify a Methodist being called a Christian. Also, one has to take what was assumed at the time (like in the debate over what Wesley meant when he said the Lord’s Supper is a ‘converting sacrament’ – many take that to mean that he was for an open communion that could be taken preceding baptism, which in the time was not likely true). This is also the same man who made sure his preachers stuck to his doctrines and the general rules were laid out to ensure certain behaviours.
Not of what I write here means that Renfroe is correct. As someone who leans to the ‘right’, more conservative side, his points make me shudder. But there are plenty of other myths of Wesley floating around from the more liberal side, usually using Wesley’s ‘Catholic Spirit’ and the Wesleyan Quadrilateral.
Will, point taken. I’m sure Wesley would be flabbergasted by contemporary attitudes toward scripture. He wrote a sermon explaining the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 in terms that would likely not be well received if written about Hurricane Katrina or the tsunami in Asia a few years ago. It was based on a very high view of scripture’s interpretation of disasters and calamities.
My understanding is that he sees holding “right opinions” as a necessary but not sufficient source of true Christian faith. You have to have right opinions on the essentials or you can’t get to the true heart religion, but having right opinions in itself gives you no more faith that the devils – to paraphrase another one of his sermons.
But – and maybe this was poorly explained in the original post – my reading is that he found wrangling over doctrine an impediment rather than a cause of true faith. He wrote in his sermons and journals about it. If some of us make too much of sermons such as “A caution against bigotry” and “Catholic spirit” I do not think we are wrong to see them as picking up a theme that runs throughout his writings.
I am not arguing that doctrine is unimportant – or that Wesley said it was. But it is not the point of the enterprise. Doctrine is like a framework that forms the body of an airplane. It gives is shape and structure, but it does not get the thing off the ground. It is not the engine. Bad doctrine can make a plane unflyable, but it turns out there is more than one way to build an airplane. Wesley would have us spend more time in the air and less time on the ground arguing over the proper technique for riveting together metal beams.
That’s my reading of him, anyway. I may be wrong. I have been many times before.
If I am wrong – and the central point of faith is proper doctrine – then I’m in the wrong business.
John:
An excellent post.
I like your analogy about the airplane. You say that the framework of the plane (doctrine) will not get it off the ground. That is true, but without the framework there is no airplane. Unfortunately what happens when Methodists get into these kinds of discussions is that we line up on two extreme sides with both arguing in either/or mode. One side argues that if we have all the right doctrine that is all that matters; the other side wants to reduce core doctrines to mere opinions (thus making them optional) and assert that all that matters to that we do good. When Wesley uses the word “opinion” he is not referring to what he believed were essential doctrines. He refers to those things, to use his words,”that do not strike at the heart of Christianity.”
There is a complexity in this discussion that gets grossly over simplified when we pit doctrine against morality, which is what both sides unfortunately do. Both are necessary for the identity of Christianity and they are complimentary and intertwined with one another. You do a nice job of holding both together, even though you emphasize living because in its context you are responding to the comments of another.
Thanks again.
Allan, thank you.
Now-Bishop Scott Jones wrote a book in 2002 entitled, “United Methodist Doctrine: The Extreme Center.” It sounds like a good principle.
so much to think about! Thanks for presenting this in such an insightful way.
Just for starters I’m thinking about that first category: moral truth.
“The nature of moral truth – “Is moral truth determined by the unchanging character of God? Or is it determined by the ever-changing experiences of human beings? Does the character of God determine what is right and wrong? Or do we conduct surveys and decide that a particular behavior is to be celebrated if a certain percentage of persons in a given culture engage in it?””
I’m wondering if the first two questions have to be mutually exclusive. Can moral truth be based both on the unchanging character of God AND the ever-changing experiences of human beings? is it that as our experiences of God grow and change and mature we find out deeper and more fuller truths about the unchanging eternal? Isn’t this why the story of Noah and the ark tells us different and new things as we grow from infants to octogenarians? Or why we aren’t quite ready to hear about the 7 of each type of clean animals in elementary school, but by the 20th time we hear the story we start to ask questions about the behavior of Noah’s sons after the flood? The scripture hasn’t changed – God hasn’t changed, but we have AND WE ARE in our experiences of both.
Katie, I find myself responding in a similar way to his questions. I am not a big fan of either/or in most things. That puts me in the squishy, road kill middle. But there I am.
Thank you for dropping by and adding your thougths.
An important point that often gets lost when we discuss Wesley is that when he was writing to and about the Methodists he was not addressing a church. The Methodists of Wesley’s life and work were an evangelical renewal movement within the Church of England. They were a network of religious societies under his direction and leadership. Membership in a Methodist society had no bearing on church membership. We also need to be reminded that not all Methodists were Anglican. The Methodists welcomed all who agreed to abide by their disciplined form of discipleship, shaped by the General Rules and participation in a class and/or band.
You are right to point out the fact that there was no doctrinal test for membership in a Methodist Society. The goal was to make you the best possible disciple of Jesus Christ and that you contribute to the life and mission of your Church. If you were Anglican, the Methodists wanted you to be an excellent Anglican; if a Baptist, be an excellent Baptist; if a Quaker, be an excellent Quaker; if a Presbyterian, be an excellent Presbyterian. The focus of the disciplined life of the Methodist society was on forming lives shaped by holiness of heart and life. Wesley assumed the historic doctrine of the church would be preached from Methodist preaching houses. He expected that good doctrine with the power of the Holy Spirit and the discipline of Christian community (society, class, and band) would lead to a people who would be “salt and light” for the church and the world.
Will is right in pointing out that the place where Wesley insisted upon what he considered to be right doctrine was among the community of Methodist preachers and helper. He expected that those serving as leaders must hold to his understanding of Christian doctrine, particulary his soteriology (justification and sanctification).
John, I hope you get the idea that I’m agreeing with your point. My caution is that when we talk about what Wesley said and did with the people called Methodist we cannot equate his Methodists with Methodists of today. A network of religous societies is very different from a Church. While it is right to have no doctrinal test for membership in a society, I don’t think Wesley would agree that the same ought to be true for candidates for baptism and church membership. I am confident it saying that Wesley would certainly have very high expectations that ordained clergy affirm, preach, and teach the historic doctrines of the Church contained in the Nicene and Apostles’ creeds and the Articles of Religion.
With Wesley, particularly with regard to doctrine and holiness, he regards both to be equally important. It’s always both/and with him. You cannot have one without the other. They are like the sides of the coin.
Steve,
I absolutely understand that you are affirming my basic point, while trying to caution against going too far.
I am mindful that we need to be aware of the limits of our interpretation. And in a mainline denomination there is special risk in sliding toward “you can believe anything and be a Methodist.”
My intention was not to set up a doctrinal standard – or knock one down – but rather to argue that doctrinal purity is not the key to our renewal as a denomination. Going back to Abraham’s book and probably before, there is a strain of argument that seems to equate our weakness and decline with not thinking the right way. I am not persuaded that our true problem lies there.
So, I risk sounding a bit too much like a doctrinal relativist in pointing out that the cure Renfroe offers us will not treat our disease.
Thank you for your contribution and your gentle correction.
I understand the points but we can’t go too far. A couple of months back we had a preacher who said that he didn’t pray to God as he didn’t see God in that way but instead prayed to Jesus. He went on to say that we need more discussion and to be more open as a church.
The sermon was really strange. I mean… how can we be so open that someone can preach that they don’t pray to God, or that they view God and Jesus as so seperate they can pray to one and not the other. Is there some debate over this that I’ve missed out on?
That’s why I think some level of doctrine standard is important even if it’s basic like “we believe in the Trinity” or “a personal God we can pray to” or similar.
You say:
“there is a strain of argument that seems to equate our weakness and decline with not thinking the right way”
I wouldn’t say thinking the right way however we do need to have an agreed version of the basics of our faith. If we are to be witnesses and share our faith with others then it is essential. I also think we need confidence that we are sharing God’s truth and it is hard to have that confidence if we think we’re going to be bringing people to a church where the Son of God, salvation, forgiveness of sins/release from our feelings of guilt, God’s personal love, etc. are optional extras rather than something real to be rejoiced over. I would like to say our weakness comes from the fact we can be inward looking, constantly debating certain issues instead of sharing those things we agree with but if we don’t agree on the basics have we got much faith to share?
Tompen,
Your caution against going too far is right on the mark. I agree. I do not know what the preacher you heard was talking to when he suggested we don’t pray to God. Sounds rather odd to me.
You wrote:
I would like to say our weakness comes from the fact we can be inward looking, constantly debating certain issues instead of sharing those things we agree with but if we don’t agree on the basics have we got much faith to share?
Share, yes. Live and act upon, even more so.
Let’s not clothe John Wesley in the same chameleon suit that we’ve laid on Paul. He supports the positions of the right! He is the inspiration of the left! He is the (whatever I want him to be)! Oh, wait a minute, who am I talking about, Paul or John? Does it even matter?
Both were real men, not sock puppets saying anything I/you/we/they wanted. Like it has been done for Paul, perhaps now it’s time for a New Perspective on John Wesley.
Rick, thanks for reading and taking the time to comment.
I was not aware I was turning Wesley into a sock puppet. My intention was to read him as honestly as I could. Of course, I’m liable to fail in that effort because I am not perfect, but there was no conscious intent to twist or pervert.
Short of not saying anything about Wesley, Paul, Jesus, or God, there is no way to avoid running the risk of falling short of true fidelity. But not all failures are signs of manipulation.
John, I didn’t think you were. I just wanted to issue a caution against simplistic appeals to snippets of Wesley, or dishonest twists of what Wesley “really” was saying, to bolster one’s argument or agenda. I see it all too often.
I like Will’s and most of Steve’s points, but I would hope that clergy affirm, preach, and teach the faith contained in the Bible first and foremost. Sadly, some only preach what they wanted Jesus, Paul, or Wesley to have said.