Methodist Nature: Humble & Grateful
Why gentler understandings of anthropology and hamartiology don't cut it
With the formation of the Global Methodist Church, a reclaiming of the Methodist heritage is in order. Many voices are submitting ideas with respect to the particulars of Methodist identity. I have my own thoughts, which will be spelled out in a series of articles. This is the second of at least twelve. I introduced this series two weeks ago. You might read that article first in order to know how I have thought through this project and why I care about it.
Framing Atonement
Atonement deals with an acknowledgment that we humans are not right with God. Sin separates us from him. That gap needs to be closed if we are to know any joy, peace, or happiness. In the Hebrew faith, sin was addressed by placing it upon animals who were then killed in the presence of the Lord. The blood was understood to cover over the sin. The need for regular indefinite blood sacrifice ended when Christ himself shed his blood on the cross. This blood was so efficacious as to end the need for continued sacrifices. Rather, those who are in Christ die to self and experience the blood of Christ being applied to their hearts. Christians believe in blood atonement.
Blood solves the problem of sin when done in right covenant relationship with the Lord. Many people forget that the name ‘Jesus’ literally means ‘savior’ or ‘salvation.’ When the angel tells Mary to give the Son this name, the angel says it was because “he will save people from their sins” (Matt. 1:21). From the beginning, Christ was understood to be the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. The notion of sacrifice and blood was at the beginning, middle, and end of Christ’s ministry. That is why we have the sacrament of communion even at Christmas as we meditate on the infant Jesus: He was born to shed his blood and die on the cross for our sins.
I often find the topic of atonement frustrating. My eyes start to glaze over because the people who often like to talk about it technically or academically are often the same folks who like to use big words and act like they have a superior understanding of the topic to that of the ancients. Yet if those are the only people who talk about it, then you can guarantee that the church will be coopted by those kinds of people.
Atonement deals with the mechanics of how humanity is reconciled to God despite those things that separate us, namely, sin. So this theological question has to do with hamartiology (theology of sin), anthropology (theology of humanity), and soteriology (theology of how we are saved). A bad understanding of any of these things can create some pretty messed up beliefs.
The #1 threat here is semi-pelagian liberalism. It has been a threat from the beginning. We know for a fact that many people who claim to be Christian today actually do not believe some pretty fundamental things about atonement. So here are some basics from my small mind:
We are born in sin. Sin is so awful that it requires a death to cover it. The God of the bible punishes sin and answers it with wrath.
If we are to avoid the death and punishment we deserve, then someone has to take our place. Only what Christ did on the cross is sufficient to satisfy the righteous judgment of God and restore us to right relationship with him.
In our desire to tell the good news, we must understand the bad news first. Indeed, what good news do we even have to offer if we cannot even articulate the problem that Christ’s ministry solves? Consider Articles VII-IX of the Articles of Religion, which are binding upon all Methodists:
ARTICLE VII — OF ORIGINAL OR BIRTH SIN
Original sin standeth not in the following of Adam (as the Pelagians do vainly talk), but it is the corruption of the nature of every man, that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam, whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness, and of his own nature inclined to evil, and that continually.
ARTICLE VIII — OF FREE WILL
The condition of man after the fall of Adam is such that he cannot turn and prepare himself, by his own natural strength and works, to faith, and calling upon God; wherefore we have no power to do good works, pleasant and acceptable to God, without the grace of God by Christ preventing us, that we may have a good will, and working with us, when we have that good will.
ARTICLE IX — OF THE JUSTIFICATION OF MAN
We are accounted righteous before God only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, by faith, and not for our own works or deservings. Wherefore, that we are justified by faith, only, is a most wholesome doctrine, and very full of comfort.
The Doctrine of The Fall
You and I are bad people. We were born bad people, deserving of God’s wrath. There is nothing like innate goodness in us that can save us. Rather, a miracle is needed to be worked from outside of us to bring us wretched souls back to God. If this offends you to hear, then you are not a Methodist. You aren’t even really a Christian. You are guilty of the Pelagian heresy.
Pelagius was a heretic in the fourth and fifth centuries AD who (according to Augustine) denied the doctrine of the fall and believed that humans have free will to choose evil or good. This notion is rightly called heresy because that very message, that we are born morally neutral and free, runs counter to the gospel and to human experience. It is fake news, propaganda, and straight from the devil of hell. It works to deny the power of Christ’s blood and again puts our salvation in our own hands rather than the pierced hands of Jesus.
Having read through the full set of John Wesley’s sermons, this fallen anthropology undergirds and pervades the entire theological framework of Methodism. It isn’t at all remarkable when Wesley says things like
“Our business is to know in particular that we are all originally foolish and vicious, and that there is no truth in our whole religion more absolutely necessary to be known than this. Because if man be not naturally corrupt, then all religion, Jewish and Christian, is vain, seeing it is all built on this—all method[s] of cure presupposing the disease.” - Sermon: The Image of God
or how about this:
“…we are convinced that we are not sufficient of ourselves to help ourselves; that without the Spirit of God we can do nothing but add sin to sin; that it is he alone ‘who worketh in us’ by his almighty power, either ‘to will or do’ that which is good—it being as impossible for us even to think a good thought without the supernatural assistance of his Spirit as to create ourselves, or to renew our whole souls in righteousness and true holiness.” - Sermon: The Circumcision of the Heart
John Wesley and the early Methodists were not at all concerned with the Enlightenment humanist anthropology of frauds like Jean Jacques Rousseau. They didn’t care about the self-esteem of Methodists. Rather, to become a Methodist, one had to have a “sincere desire to flee from the wrath to come and be saved from his sins.” A person who thinks he is basically good or neutral doesn’t flee or fear. But Methodists for centuries have sung ‘Amazing Grace,’ which calls all of us wretches and says that grace teaches us to fear.
We don’t realize it, but this concern about hurting people’s feelings and keeping them from feeling too bad about themselves is from the evil one. Indeed, we need to feel bad about ourselves. If we do not have right understandings of ourselves, then our selves cannot be saved:
“An erroneous opinion of ourselves naturally leads us into numberless errors; whereas to those who know their own folly (beside the natural advantage of it) the Lord of nature ‘giveth the spirit of wisdom, and enlightens the eyes of their understanding, after the likeness in which they were created’ (Eph. 1:17-18; [Col. 3:10]).” - Sermon: The Image of God
“Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” This is basic biblical theology. Anything that softens the harsh reality of our sin and wretchedness, or deserving of hell and death, is something from the evil one who wishes to make our salvation less dire, less miraculous:
Penal Substitutionary Atonement
The bogeyman for many Methodists today is the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement. Penal deals with punishment of criminals. Substitution argues that Christ took our place on the cross. Atonement makes clear that this act, that of God punishing his Son in our place as a criminal, mends the relationship between us and him.
This idea is repugnant to the worldly mind. To the worldly, it is fundamentally unjust for God to punish someone for a sin that they did not commit. Nevermind that the scriptures are clear that Paul says quite clearly, “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21). The problem for many a Methodist, many within the Global Methodist Church, included, is that we begin with our own notions of what justice or love or mercy looks like, then we apply those to God. The directionality of that is wrong. A right approach to scripture is to begin with the narrative of the canon, the clear story of who God is and how he acts in the world, then to understand that those eternal qualities are not abstractions that we conceive of, but they are qualities of God that HE defines. Not us. It doesn’t matter if I think God’s justice is unjust. He is perfect; I am not.
Wesley didn’t have a problem with this. In remarking on God’s justice in Romans 3:26 in his Notes on the New Testament, he said God showed himself just by, “showing his justice on his own Son”. This being in the context of Christ’s crucifixion is quite explicit. He did not beat around the bush with this doctrine. He took it for granted.
John Wesley is not the only doctrinal standard of Methodism, but he has a huge influence. He seems to have taken penal substitutionary atonement for granted. Take, for example, his words regarding saving faith:
“…it acknowledges the necessity and merit of his death, and the power of his resurrection. It acknowledges his death as the only sufficient means of redeeming man from death eternal…Christian faith is then not only an assent to the whole gospel of Christ, but also a full reliance on the blood of Christ, a trust in the merits of his life, death, and resurrection.” - Sermon: The Circumcision of the Heart
…or consider these words considering the Father’s wrath:
Finally, in explaining the use of the word ‘propitiation,’ he said:
“To appease an offended God. But if, as some teach, God never was offended, there was no need of this propitiation. And, if so, Christ died in vain.” (Rom. 3:25) God showed himself just by, “Showing his justice on his own Son.” (Rom. 3:26). - JW’s Notes on the NT
The man was utterly unconcerned about our sensitivities today. He actually seems aware that the human heart is reluctant to hear these things, so he leaned into them all the more.
Modern Calvinists often question the quality of Methodist faith, largely because we collectively seem so unable to process these words: propitiation, wrath, blood, penal, substitution, etc. without clutching our pearls. Yet pretty much every Calvinist is eager to volunteer that JW did not have this problem. I think one of the main reasons Calvinists acknowledge Wesley while questioning his spiritual descendants is because he did not take offense to clear biblical language the way that many of us do. Methodists should again choose to be more biblical, less sensitive, lest we fall into the effete form of Methodism that has prevailed for the last century. I think reclaiming the firm language around these things is integral not just to biblical faithfulness, but also for a proper sense of humility.
Everyone agrees that humility is an essential Christian virtue. This doctrine directly informs such virtue. If I am basically good, or at least not that bad, then I will not bear the same fruit of repentance that one does who understands himself to be a wretched sinner. Jesus himself pointed to this reality when dealing with the sinful woman who washed his feet with her tears (Luke 7:36-50). Or consider Rev. Washer’s wisdom:
If Methodists preach a God who loves us because we are already pretty great and have loads of potential, who doesn’t demand a death and rebirth, but that we instead just make some wise changes in our lives, that we nod to Jesus in the way we live and give some of our money to advance his kingdom…that is not a church worth belonging to. That is a counterfeit church. We need to reclaim churches that preach what the world will receive as hellfire and brimstone. If we continue to lean away from this for fear that we will be rejected and our churches won’t grow, then we will betray the heritage that we have in the first generations of Methodists.
I can anticipate many responses to this article, “Listen, Jeffrey, I think penal substitution is a fraught and unnecessary theory. I personally am humble and grateful, and I have a living and active faith in Christ. I think you’re being too exclusive in your thought.” My response here is: You may have personally been able to balance these things just fine, but you are an exception to a general rule. We should not count on being able to replicate that at any kind of scale. Rather, we need to unabashedly claim and proclaim basic, classic biblical theology. If that makes us sound like simpletons, I can live with that. We are in good company. But if we insist on so much nuance that the world cannot even really hear a clear call, then we are shooting ourselves in the foot. Keep it simple. Use the same language they find in other biblical denominations. If we back off from these things and try to distinguish ourselves as softer and nicer, we will rightly be consigned to the margins of the world’s religious life.
Answering Other Atonement Theories
I went to seminary. I anticipate the high-minded responses this article with elicit: “Jeffrey is being too simplistic about these things. There are other theologies of atonement that largely fit with the biblical witness just fine, and indeed they help us to appreciate things about the passion of Christ that penal substitution doesn’t.”
All that is fine. Whatever. I don’t have a problem with recapitulation, theosis, moral influence, ransom, Christus victor, satisfaction, or governmental theories. All of them have insights that can indeed be helpful. My problem isn’t with them. My problem is with the weak and effete hemophobic people who use these theories to discount the clearly biblical notion of penal substitutionary atonement. Scripture is obviously true on multiple levels at the same time. Using one level to cancel out another is exactly what the enemy does. He knows scripture better than any of us. Right relationship with scripture means we let it be true on every level, especially on those levels that make us uncomfortable.
Why does it matter?
Another quality Methodists have become known for is an extreme aversion to conflict. Many are inclined not to die on this hill, even if they basically agree with me. They think church growth and introducing people to Jesus is more important than having all of the perfect doctrines. Indeed, John Wesley did warn of a dead orthodoxy that had no life in it.
Even so, our understandings of sin, self, and salvation are worth risking conflict, and even death. These are not tertiary issues. They are fundamental to right relationship with God, others, and self. This issue is at the heart of true religion, and it would be a terrible waste of all this momentum if we did not push for a reclaiming of correct doctrine around atonement. We, on our own, are not good. Jesus is. He took our sin upon him and bore it on the tree. Those of us who die to self, take up our cross, and follow Christ are the only ones who can know atonement. It is only when we understand and believe these things that we can offer the biblical Christ to others. Until then, the Jesus we offer will be some lesser demigod without power to save. May the Methodists again be a people offering the fullness of biblical holiness to the world!
Truth! Should not be controversial in the GMC like it was in the UMC.
Jeffrey,
Consider these opposites that resolve themselves:
The total deprivation of man
The all-sufficiency of Christ
Then, there is what David Watson has written
https://davidfwatson.me/2019/02/18/did-john-wesley-affirm-total-depravity/