I was at Westminster Central Hall on Monday and saw a life-sized statue of John Wesley. We often forget that well-fed modern people, at least in the west, are big compared with their ancestors. It's easy to visualise Wesley as a great orator, literally towering over his contemporaries. Perhaps he did, perhaps he was a giant in his day. Today we would think he is extraordinarily small.
I'm planning a few posts about Wesley's doctrine of sanctification. Last year Peter Robinson, a local preacher in my circuit died. He was an inspired story teller and so an inspired preacher. He stood down in 2006 and as part of his final testimony he spoke of how from an early age he had decided to preach about sanctification. This made his preaching relevant and he commended it to the preachers who heard him.
Sanctification was and is a powerful and controversial doctrine. I think it is one reason why Methodists show so much commitment to ecumenism and has profound implications for our understanding of ecumenism too.
My guide to this series of posts is Theodore Runyon's 'The New Creation: John Wesley's Theology Today' and as usual details can be found under 'Featured Books' to the left of this post. This is a few sentences from page 19:
Wesley consistently made a distinction between doctrinal "opinions" and "the core of Christian doctrine" or "the marrow of faith". Doctrinal opinions allowed for various approaches, but what Wesley referred to as the analogy of faith was that "connected chain of scripture truths" that constitute the very core of Christian teaching, those doctrines essential to the story of salvation. Included in these are "the three grand scriptural doctrines - Original Sin, Justification by Faith, and Holiness consequent thereon".
I'm sure most people (including Methodists) asked what are the three core Christian doctrines would answer something like incarnation or resurrection or communion ... but Wesley chose these three doctrines. To our ears they seem perhaps intellectual, separated from the reality of life in a broken world. But they are not, as I will show in future posts. So, powerful are these three doctrines that Methodism, with all its derivatives, is the largest Christian tradition after Roman Catholicism.
As soon as Wesley announced these three grand scriptural doctrines, people argued. They liked arguing in the 18th century and the arguments have continued until today.
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