We Wesleyans are in conversation with a tradition of biblical interpretation and Christian living that found its first articulation in John and Charles Wesley. One of the great questions for those of us who wish to remain Wesleyans is how to disagree with the tradition without abandoning it.
For instance, I do not read the Bible the way John Wesley did. I do not believe Moses wrote the Torah. I am not a young earth creationist — although I am not troubled by people who are. I do think that if we find any error in Scripture at all that we should toss it all, which Wesley wrote once. So, as a Wesleyan, I have to work out what my differences with Wesley over the nature of Scripture means for my theology.
But this is not a new problem. The people called Methodist have never been in lock-step with Wesley on every point. This vexed Wesley to no end late into his life. He wrote time and again about the habit of Methodists to wear costly clothing. And he never figured out how to convince the Methodists to follow his teaching about money: earn all you can, save all you can, give all you can.
In his sermon “Causes of the Inefficacy of Christianity” he puts the issue in plain terms:
Many of your brethren, beloved of God, have not food to eat; they have not raiment to put on; they have not a place where to lay their head. And why are they thus distressed? Because you impiously, unjustly, and cruelly detain from them what your Master and theirs lodges in your hands on purpose to supply their wants! See that poor member of Christ, pinched with hunger, shivering with cold, half naked! Meantime you have plenty of this world’s goods, — of meat, drink, and apparel. In the name of God, what are you doing? Do you neither fear God, nor regard man?
How much more would Wesley be horrified by us than he was by them? In practical terms, Methodists abandoned the tradition with regard to the use of money before John Wesley was laid to his rest. And we’ve gone on abandoning him on this point ever since.
This gives me pause, this morning. It raises the question that stalked Wesley’s entire ministry: what does it mean to be a Christian?
Perhaps the DEFINITION of a Christian (or at least a radical Christian) can be found in the Sermon on the Mount. Anyone who takes those three chapters of the Bible seriously and tries to live by it will be counter-cultural. Most “successful” preachers rationalize those chapters away. Those who take them seriously and try to live by them are living in a blessed, and spirit-filled Kingdom that is not of this world; and will be challengers to the institutional church and other kingdoms of this world.
John, this is a really honest post. So often those of us in the Methodist tradition refuse to critically engage Wesley, elevating his standard sermons to a status equal to that of the Gospels. And yet, as you have described, there is good and not-so-good in Wesley. The struggle to be Wesleyan is far more difficult than we make it out to be, but I think it is a good struggle, for while I may quibble with Wesley on some of his scriptural interpretations, I can’t quibble with how seriously he took the Gospel (nor, when I really think about it, can I defend the price of my clothes when there are hungry people I could feed). Thanks for wrestling publicly on this one–you have helped me this morning to solidify some of how I understand Wesley.
I’d love to meet folks who take Wesley that seriously. I think I’ve met one: Ken Collins. I think the greater error, and that of a majority of our clergy, is ignoring our founder and his understanding of the Gospel almost entirely.
It is easy to think of Wesley in the rarified ranks of the Saints. Truthfully, he was unable to form what we would consider good relationships with women, he was a ‘health nut’ who wrote and practiced some ideas outside the mainstream, preached poverty at the same time he enjoyed dependable lodging in many communities across England. There were private quarters at the New Room in Bristol and his London home was adjacent to Wesley Chapel and near The Foundry. His prolific writing abilities eventually ranked him as a ‘mega-star’ author of his day and brought enough regular income that he had a dependable cash flow to use for charitable purposes. Most Methodists I know would not come close to the social status Wesley enjoyed.
Wesley’s genius for organization and as a theologian is without question but his personal ‘perfection’ seems more in the spiritual than earthly realm.
His understanding of sanctifying grace and the overt challenge and charity of ‘going on toward perfection’ allow for the reality of less-than-perfect people like me being accepted into not only regular worship but possibly the Kingdom. My sense is that Uncle John would be ok with this.
I am a Methodist by choice and cannot imagine a better way of living. Wesley’s ‘works of piety’ and ‘works of mercy’, his faithful struggles to keep Methodists within the ranks of the historic church (apostolic succession) and the incredible clarity of thought and Biblical understanding keep me coming back for more every Sunday.
For me, a Methodist is someone who is working on that ‘going on toward perfection’ part of our lives.
I guess we will have to reject all that Jesus said about the writing’s of Moses?
Jesus misled us? Jesus lied when he said. “Moses wrote……”?
Who would be so bold ?
14 And as Moses lifted up the bronze snake on a pole in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, 15 so that everyone who believes in him will have eternal life.John 3
26 Jesus replied, “What does the law of Moses say? How do you read it?”
27 The man answered, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind.’ And, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”
Luke 10
“But Abraham said, ‘Moses and the prophets have warned them. Your brothers can read what they wrote.’ Luke 16
“But now, as to whether the dead will be raised—even Moses proved this when he wrote about the burning bush. Long after Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had died, he referred to the Lord as ‘the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’
Philip went to look for Nathanael and told him, “We have found the very person Moses and the prophets wrote about! His name is Jesus, the son of Joseph from Nazareth.”Luke 20
If you really believed Moses, you would believe me, because he wrote about me.
John 1
The name Moses as an authoritive figure is used 115 times in the NLV.
In the Gospels the name Moses is cited 44 times
d, thank you for raising these important questions.
These look like different kinds of quotations to me, but this is a good question to wrestle with. When I have the time and inclination, perhaps I’ll take a closer look at what exactly the NT says about the authorship of the five books. That is a good exegetical question.
In the end, for what its worth, I don’t see saying Moses is authoritative is the same thing as saying he wrote Deuteronomy. His authority is not derived from his authorship of certain books.
And the LORD said to Moses, “Go to the people and consecrate them today and tomorrow. Have them wash their clothes 11and be ready by the third day, because on that day the LORD will come down on Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people.
Then Moses disappeared into the cloud as he climbed higher up the mountain. He remained on the mountain forty days and forty nights.
And the LORD said to Moses, “Go to the people and consecrate them today and tomorrow. Have them wash their clothes 11and be ready by the third day, because on that day the LORD will come down on Mount Sinai in the sight of all the people.
Reason directs us to understand it did not take 40 days and 40 nights for God to recite the 10 commandments.
Reason, prayer and spiritual discernment are all attributes of Methodist thinking.
VeZot haTorah
I’m not following the argument here. The text clearly makes no claim about how long the actual inscription of the tablets took. We don’t know all what happened over those days. I don’t see this as a problematic text at all.
I didn’t know that the authorship of the first 5 books of the Old Testament is a point of contention among Christians. I always thought that Moses is the one commissioned by God to write the Book of the Law. I have no theological education.
I am one of those simple folks in the pew who only know how to read and write. Curious what the controversy is all about, I decided to do a search about the subject matter.
Below is what I found. It came from several sources.
“Jesus believed that the books of the Old Testament were written by the men whose names they bear: Isaiah, Jonah, Daniel…and that Moses was the author of the Pentateuch. Those who claim that Moses did not write the Pentateuch are openly contradicting what Jesus believed. Critics and their skepticism stand against Jesus Christ and what He believed and taught about the Scriptures.
The New Testament leaves no room but to conclude that our Lord Jesus Christ considered the canon of Scripture as God’s Word, written by the hand of men.
Although some religious leaders profess to accept Scripture as “God’s Word,” their low view of “inspiration” belies the fact. They believe and teach that Scripture is, to a very significant degree, man’s word. Many of their statements are in essential disagreement with those of Jesus Christ. From the evidence of their books, we conclude that some Christian leaders are opposite to Christ in His regard for the authority, the inspiration, and the inerrancy of Scripture.
The biblical doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture does not require us to conclude that all the books of the Bible were written by God dictating to the human authors. Dictation was one means employed, very often in the prophetic books (e.g., the prophet says, “The Word of the Lord came to me saying”). But much of the Bible was written from the eyewitness experience of the authors (e.g. 2 Peter 1:16) or as a result of research by the author (e.g., Luke 1:1–4). And just as Christian authors today can quote truthful statements from non-Christian sources without thereby endorsing their wrong ideas, so the Biblical authors could quote non-believers or non-biblical sources without introducing false statements into their divine writings (e.g., Joshua 10:13, 2 Samuel 1:18, Acts 17:28, Titus 1:12, Jude 14–15). So it is perfectly reasonable to think that Moses wrote Genesis from pre-existing, well-preserved oral tradition and/or written documents from the patriarchs.
Unlike those who affirm Mosaic authorship of Genesis and divide the text by the toledoths, (Our English Bibles translate toledoth variously as “this is the account” or “these are the generations” of Adam, Noah, Shem, etc.) JEDP adherents divide the text on the basis of the names of God that were used and say that, at best, Moses simply wove these texts together, often in contradictory ways. However, most JEDP advocates would say that Moses had nothing to do with writing Genesis or the rest of the Pentateuch, which were written much later by many authors and editors.
I’m not sure how much contention there is out there. I do find when I read the first five books of the Bible that they do not read like five books written by one single author. And they do contain arguments or differing interpretations within them.
Just this week while working up my sermon I was reading and studying Exodus 9 and Numbers 11 and the account of Moses and the 70 elders going up the mountain. The differences in these two versions are not huge, but they do seem striking if one person wrote them both. (And this is just one example. My point does not live or die based on this example. It is just intended to be helpful.)
So, while I do not know enough to pass judgment on the JEPD hypothesis, my own reading and study over the years has caused me question whether there is a single author at work here.
I find trying to insist on a single author for all five books unhelpful because I then waste energy trying to explain things and “rescue” the single author hypothesis from my own observations. Letting go of that allows me to put my focus on what the Word is saying rather than who held the pen. This is helpful to me. Perhaps it is a sign of weakness.
I do not criticize people who come down differently on this. It is a matter of opinion and I will “think and let think” with no qualms.
Answering a Few Objections:
A number of objections have been raised by the proponents of the documentary hypothesis. Space allows us to respond to only a few of the most common ones. But the other objections are just as flawed in terms of logic and a failure to pay careful attention to the biblical text.
(There are a few objections to the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch or the Torah or the first 5 books of the OT . I only copied the one that interest me the most and I came out very satisfied with the answer. Adely)
1. Moses couldn’t have written about his own death, which shows that he didn’t write Deuteronomy.
The death of Moses is recorded in Deuteronomy 34:5–12. These are the last few verses of the book. Like other literature, past and present, it is not uncommon for an obituary to be added at the end of someone’s work after he dies, especially if he died very soon after writing the book. The obituary in no way nullifies the claim that the author wrote the book.18
In the case of Deuteronomy, the author of the obituary of Moses was probably Joshua, a close associate of Moses who was chosen by God to lead the people of Israel into the Promised Land (for Moses was not allowed to because of his disobedience), and who was inspired by God to write the next book in the Old Testament. A similar obituary of Joshua was added by an inspired editor to the end of Joshua’s book (Joshua 24:29–33).
Fallacious reasoning of the Skeptics
A final reason for rejecting the documentary hypothesis and accepting the biblical testimony to the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch is the erroneous assumptions and reasoning of the liberal scholars and other skeptics.
1. They assumed their conclusion. They assumed that the Bible is not a supernatural revelation from God and then manipulated the biblical text to arrive at that conclusion. They were implicitly Deistic or atheistic in their thinking.
2. They assumed that Israel’s religion was simply the invention of man, a product of evolution, as all other religions are.
3. Based on evolutionary ideas, they assumed that “the art of writing was virtually unknown in Israel prior to the establishment of the Davidic monarchy; therefore there could have been no written records going back to the time of Moses.”13 This claim not only attacks the intelligence of the ancient Israelites, but also the Egyptians who trained Moses. Were the Egyptians incapable of teaching Moses how to read and write? Since the time the documentary hypothesis was first proposed, archaeologists have discovered scores of written records pre-dating the time of Moses. It is hard to believe that Israel’s ancient neighbors knew how to write, but the Jews could not.
4. Liberal Bible scholars allegedly based their theories on evidence from the Biblical text and yet they evaded the Biblical evidence that refutes their theories. Theirs was a “pick and choose” approach to studying the Bible, which is hardly honest scholarship in pursuit of truth.
5. They arbitrarily assumed that the Hebrew authors were different from all other writers in history— that the Hebrews were incapable of using more than one name for God, or more than one writing style regardless of the subject matter, or more than one of several possible synonyms for a single idea.
6. Their subjective bias led them to illegitimately assume that any biblical statement was unreliable until proven reliable (though they would not do this with any other ancient or modern text) and when they found any disagreement between the Bible and ancient pagan literature, the latter was automatically given preference and trusted as a historical witness. The former violates the well-accepted concept known as Aristotle’s dictum, which advises that the benefit of the doubt should be given to the document itself, rather than the critic. In other words, the Bible (or any other book) should be considered innocent until proven guilty, or reliable until its unreliability is compellingly demonstrated.
7. Although many examples have been found of an ancient Semitic author using repetition and duplication in his narrative technique, skeptical scholars assume that when Hebrew authors did this, it is compelling evidence of multiple authorship of the biblical text.
8. The skeptics erroneously assumed, without any other ancient Hebrew literature to compare with the biblical text, that they could, with scientific reliability, establish the date of the composition of each book of the Bible.14
The Documentary (or JEDP) Hypothesis
To date, no manuscript evidence of the J-document, E-document, P-document, D-document, or any of the other supposed fragments have ever been discovered. And there are no ancient Jewish commentaries that mention any of these imaginary documents or their alleged unnamed authors. All the manuscript evidence we have is for the first five books of the Bible just as we have them today. This is confirmed by the singular Jewish testimony (until the last few centuries) that these books are the writings of Moses
The most comprehensive statement of Mosaic authorship in the Pentateuch is found in Deuteronomy 31:24, where it states that after Moses finished writing in a book the words of this law from beginning to end he commanded the Levites to “Take this Book of the Law and place it beside the ark of the covenant of the Lord.” “
Deuteronomy 31:24 The Message (MSG)
24-26 After Moses had finished writing down the words of this Revelation in a book, right down to the last word, he ordered the Levites who were responsible for carrying the Chest of the Covenant of GOD, saying, “Take this Book of Revelation and place it alongside the Chest of the Covenant of GOD, your God. Keep it there as a witness.
Deuteronomy 31:24 (NLT)
24 When Moses had finished writing this entire body of instruction in a book,
Deuteronomy 31:24 (NKJV)
24 So it was, when Moses had completed writing the words of this law in a book, when they were finished,
Deuteronomy 31:24 GOD’S WORD Translation (GW)
24 Finally, Moses finished writing all the words of these teachings in a book.
Deuteronomy 31:24 (NIV1984)
24 After Moses finished writing(A) in a book the words of this law(B) from beginning to end,
I am A Methodist because I attend a UM church on Sunday mornings. I respect John Wesley as the founder of the Methodist denomination. He is now 309 years old and if he were alive today I will be asking him about his theology some of which I disagree with. I will also be asking him why he treated his ex-girl friends and wife so badly. His wife was buried without Wesley knowing that she died. The people around her did it according to her instructions. I could not call that “perfection in love.” I am a Methodist by tradition because our family are Methodists. I like and respect our new pastor. He is very Scriptural and most of his sermons are expository.
Btw, I am assigned to read the Bible Lesson tomorrow @ 9 AM . Good night! Need to wake up early.
Have a glorious Sunday with the Lord, Adely.
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