John Wesley's Conception and Use of Scripture (Kingswood Series) - Softcover

Jones, Scott J.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0687204666 ISBN 13: 9780687204663

Verlag: KINGS - Kingswood Books, 1995

Inhaltsangabe

Despite wide acceptance of the "Wesleyan quadrilateral", significant disagreements have arisen in both academic and church circles about the degree to which Scripture stood in a place of theological primacy for Wesley, or should do so for modern Methodists, and about the proper and appropriate methods of interpreting Scripture. In this important work, Scott J. Jones offers a full-scale investigation of John Wesley's conception and use of Scripture. The results of this careful and thorough investigation are sometimes surprising. Jones argues that for Wesley, religious authority is constituted not by a "quadrilateral", but by a fivefold but unitary locus comprising Scripture, reason, Christian antiquity, the Church of England, and experience. He shows that in actual practice Wesley's reliance on the entire Christian tradition - in particular of the early church and of the Church of England - is far heavier than his stated conception of Scripture would seem to allow, and that Wesley stresses the interdependence of the five dimensions of religious authority for Christian faith and practice.

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Scott J. Jones is the Resident Bishop of the Texas Conference of the United Methodist Church and served as Bishop of the Great Plains area of The United Methodist Church. He was formerly the McCreless Associate Professor of Evangelism at Perkins School of Theology, where he taught courses in evangelism and Wesley studies. Previous books include The Wesleyan Way, The Evangelistic Love of God & Neighbor, Staying at the Table, and Wesley and the Quadrilateral, all published by Abingdon Press. of the United Methodist Church and served as Bishop of the Great Plains area of The United Methodist Church.

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John Wesley's Conception and Use of Scripture

By Scott J. Jones

Abingdon Press

Copyright © 1995 Abingdon Press
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-687-20466-3

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, 

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...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: KINGS - Kingswood Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1995
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0687204666
• ISBN 13: 9780687204663
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 276
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: preigu GmbH & Co. KG; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; Niedersachsen; 49078; Deutschland