Dangerous Doctrine: Orthodoxy, Heresy, and the Role of Private Judgment in Methodism

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Photo by Paolo from Pexels

Parts of this essay are excerpted from Watson’s forthcoming book on Methodism and the Bible. 

As the United Methodist Church prepares for division, many informative accounts have appeared describing how we reached this point. I would recommend, for example, Ted Campbell’s outstanding articles in this publication describing the erosion of Methodist connectionalism. In this short essay, however, I want to look at one of Methodism’s earliest controversies over heterodox teaching. The teacher in question is Adam Clarke (1760/62-1832). Clarke’s  influence was considerable, and his break with received tradition based on individual judgment would set the stage for others who would challenge that tradition in more comprehensive ways. In fact, I will argue, his rejection of the doctrine of eternal filiation--the idea that the second person of the Trinity is eternally the Son--set a precedent that comes to bear on the Methodist movement even today. 

Clarke the Intellectual 

Clarke was born in the village of Moybeg in County Londonderry, Ireland. He was the son of an Anglican father and a Presbyterian mother. Despite early academic struggles, Clarke became one of early Methodism’s most revered thinkers and prolific writers. Simply put, Clarke was brilliant, and he would in time come to be known simply as “the Doctor.” After attending the Kingswood School at the invitation of John Wesley, he attended the University of Aberdeen and received an MA in 1807 and an LLD in 1808. He was reputedly fluent in some fifteen languages. Clarke was elected President of the Methodist Conference three times (1806, 1814, 1822), and he participated in numerous scholarly societies. 

His crowning achievement was an eight-volume commentary on the whole Bible. He began his work with the New Testament in 1798, and completed the Old Testament--kneeling while he wrote the last note on Malichi--in 1825. At times Clarke offered biblical interpretations that departed quite radically from the Christian tradition. In his analysis of Genesis 3, for example, he argues that the nachash--traditionally translated “serpent”--who tempted Eve was not a serpent at all, but an ape, perhaps an orangutan. He works carefully through a chain of inference based primarily on etymological evidence and the anatomical characteristics of serpents compared to those of apes. He recognizes, moreover, what a departure from tradition his interpretation represents: “I crave the same liberty to judge for myself that I give to others, to which every man has an indisputable right; and I hope no man will call me a heretic for departing in this respect from the common opinion, which appears to me to be so embarrassed as to be altogether unintelligible.”

As odd as this interpretation now appears--and surely appeared at the time of its publication--most would regard the nature of the nachash as adiaphora. It makes largely no difference for the Christian life and is primarily a matter of scholarly curiosity. As we will see, however, such could not be said for his remarks on the eternal sonship of Christ. 

Methodism and a Personal Creed

Clarke's first encounter with Methodists was in a service led in a barn by an itinerant preacher named John Brettel. It was Brettel who convinced him of the possibility of Christian perfection by demonstrating that it was plainly taught in Scripture. Clarke’s family was brought into the Methodist movement under the preaching of Thomas Barber, whom Clarke describes as “truly apostolic.” Barber exerted a strong influence upon Clarke and convinced him of the need for assurance of salvation. Like Wesley before Aldersgate, Clarke yearned for an experience of salvation. He began to spend every spare moment of his leisure time reading the New Testament. 

As he read, he developed a personal creed in which he would only grow more confident over time. In his autobiography, Clarke writes, “He could say, ‘I have not received my creed from man, nor by man.’ He learned it--without consulting bodies of divinity, human creeds, confessions of faith, or such like,)--from the fountain head of truth, the Oracles of the living God.” Here we see a subtle difference between Clarke’s approach and Wesley’s. Wesley read the Bible in overtly theological ways within the doctrinal constructs of the Church of England and Arminianism. Clarke also read the Bible theologically, but he would more readily pit his own reading of Scripture against its historical interpretations in the church. Clarke’s approach was more individualistic, less ecclesiastical.

Although he had never read the writings of Methodists, he found his personal creed to be entirely in agreement with Methodist teaching. Clark began to attend a Methodist class meeting and around the same time came under a deep conviction of sin. Because of his sense of unworthiness, he missed three consecutive weeks. It was at this time, he says, that God permitted Satan “to sift him as wheat.” He was visiting the house of a respected family with whom he was very close. During the course of the evening’s conversation, someone remarked that the Methodists were idolaters because they gave to Jesus Christ the worship that was due the Father alone. Clarke began to wonder if he himself had been guilty of idolatry. He wondered if he worshiped two Gods, rather than one. He prayed fervently and eventually resolved to leave even the name of Christ out of his prayers. He could not even bear to see the name of Christ in a book. Though he prayed often, his prayers lacked fervor. In desperation, he went out among the cattle to pray. He begged God to lead him into truth, and by habit ended his prayer, “for the sake of Jesus Christ.” At that point he says (and remember he writes about himself in the third person):

Immediately his soul was filled with light, the name of Jesus was like the most odoriferous ointment poured out, he could clasp it to his heart and say, “Yes, my only Lord and Saviour, thou hast died for me--by Thee alone I can come unto God,--there is no other Name given from heaven among men by which we can be saved! Through the merit of thy Blood, I will take confidence, and approach unto God!” At that moment he felt himself delivered from almost complete captivity to Satan. 

This moment came to bear heavily upon Clarke’s Christology--his understanding of Jesus Christ--and the controversy in which he was embroiled after the publication of the first volume of his commentary on the New Testament. It was this realization, he writes, “without any suggestions from man, that led him to examine the reputed orthodox but spurious doctrine, or the Eternal Sonship of Christ; which he soon found, and has since demonstrated, that no man can hold, and hold the eternal unoriginated nature of Jesus Christ. For, if his divine nature be in any sense whatever derived, His eternity, and by consequence His Godhead, is destroyed; and if His Godhead, then His Atonement.”

The Rejection of a Core Doctrine

In the first volume on the New Testament (1817) in his commentary on the whole Bible, Clarke rejects the doctrine of eternal filiation. This doctrine holds that the second person of the Trinity is eternally the Son. Instead, Clarke argues, the logos of God became the Son of God in the virginal conception.  I quote at length a section of his remarks on Luke 1:35: 

Here, I trust, I may be permitted to say, with all due respect for those who differ from me, that the doctrine of the eternal Sonship of Christ is, in my opinion, anti-scriptural, and highly dangerous. This doctrine I reject for the following reasons: 

1st. I have not been able to find any express declaration in the Scriptures concerning it. 

2dly. If Christ be the Son of God as to his Divine nature, then he cannot be eternal; for son implies a father; and father implies, in reference to son, precedency in time, if not in nature too. Father and son imply the idea of generation; and generation implies a time in which it was effected, and time also antecedent to such generation. 

3dly. If Christ be the Son of God, as to his Divine nature, then the Father is of necessity prior, consequently superior to him. 

4thly. Again, if this Divine nature were begotten of the Father, then it must be in time; i.e. there was a period in which it did not exist, and a period when it began to exist. This destroys the eternity of our blessed Lord, and robs him at once of his Godhead. 

5thly. To say that he was begotten from all eternity is, in my opinion, absurd; and the phrase eternal Son is a positive self-contradiction. ETERNITY is that which has no beginning, nor stands in any reference to TIME. SON supposes time, generation, and father; and time also antecedent to such generation. Therefore the conjunction of these two terms, Son and eternity is absolutely impossible, as they imply essentially different and opposite ideas. 

Put more simply, the terms “father” and “son” imply not just a relationship of derivation, but time. Thus it makes no sense to speak of a “son” who is eternal. The historic teaching of the eternal sonship of Christ is thus incoherent. 

It is important to note that Clarke never rejected the divinity of Christ. In fact, he believed that he was defending Christ’s divinity and disclosing the true sense of Scripture. Hence his description of eternal filiation as “dangerous.” He did, however, reject doctrinal traditions closely connected with the divinity of Christ and the doctrine of the Trinity. The Nicene Creed describes the Son as τὸν ἐκ τοῦ Πατρὸς γεννηθέντα πρὸ πάντων τῶν αἰώνων, which translates literally as, “born (or begotten) of the Father before all ages,” but which one might also translate as “eternally begotten.” The Definition of Chalcedon describes the Son as πρὸ αἰώνων μὲν ἐκ τοῦ πατρὸς γεννηθέντα κατὰ τὴν θεότητα, which again one might translate as “begotten before the ages” or “eternally begotten.” The Westminster Confession (2.3) likewise states that “the Son is eternally begotten of the Father.” The Anglican Thirty-nine Articles of Religion (II) describe the Son as “begotten from everlasting of the Father.” The Methodist Articles of Religion (II) describe the Son as “the Word of the Father, the very and eternal God, of one substance with the Father.” Clarke rejects the weight and authority of these traditions, and many others that hold the same. 

The Fallout

Clarke’s denial of the eternal sonship of Christ was first published in 1813, but little was said about it until 1815, after which followed years of ongoing debate and controversy. He was, in the words of Ian Sellers, “the intellectual ornament of the [Methodist] body” (“Adam Clarke, Controversialist: Wesleyanism and the Historic Faith in the Age of Bunting,” 1975, 6), and thus his departure from traditional doctrine was a source of great distress to many. Eternal sonship, after all, is intimately connected to the doctrine of the Trinity--the communion of divine love by which we understand the essential character of God. If we modify the doctrine of the Trinity or correlative doctrines, we run the risk of changing our description and understanding of God’s character. The repudiation of Clarke’s ideas was likewise distressing to others, perhaps because of their personal connection to Clarke, or perhaps because of their commitment to the protection of private judgment. At a meeting of the London District one member brought a heresy charge against Clarke, though “in tears.” Many came to his defense. Articles in the Wesleyan Methodist Magazine and the Imperial Magazine argued against or in defense of his position. Numerous pamphlets appeared on either side of the controversy. Clarke was nevertheless elected as President of the Methodist Conference for a third time in 1822. He continued to enjoy considerable popularity and respect despite the controversy.

The most considerable of the critiques of Clarke’s denial of eternal filiation came from the pen of Richard Watson (1781-1833). His 1818 work, Remarks on the Eternal Sonship of Christ; and the Use of Reason in Matters of Revelation, is too complex to summarize here. It is, however, a thorough, clear, and precise rebuttal of Clarke’s arguments. No doubt many found it eminently compelling. On the other hand, however, Clarke’s influence was considerable. Many looked to him as an exemplar. Watson felt that, though Clarke did not reject the divinity of Christ, his exegesis would lead others to do so. It was Clarke’s teaching, not that of the received tradition, that was dangerous. In fact, many did follow Clarke’s lead, and not simply on the doctrine of eternal sonship. Clarke’s dismissal of received tradition established a precedent that would have long-lasting ramifications. 

Personal Judgment and Conciliar Teaching 

We should not underestimate the extent to which Wesley was formed by the orthodoxies of the Church of England. His doctrinal positions were marked indelibly by his lifelong Anglican formation. It was quite natural for Wesley to read the Bible in concert with the Nicene-Chalcedonian faith in which he had been raised and educated. Clarke, however, was a different animal. He was a generation behind Wesley. Enlightenment individualism had taken root more deeply in the intellectual soil Clarke inhabited. He had not, moreover, received the same level of deep formation in the historic traditions of the church that so influenced Wesley. As Methodism came out from under Wesley’s controlling influence, many others would follow Clarke’s leading, preferring private judgment to the church’s conciliar decisions. There would be others who would continue Watson’s work of defending and recovering the church’s central historic teachings. These trajectories--one of revision, the other of recovery--mark the Methodist movement even today. In the years ahead the divergent paths set out by Clarke and Watson would only diverge more widely. 

Private judgment is the wild card in the Protestant deck. Protestant communities normally have historic confessions of faith to which their members adhere. Within Protestantism, however, an endemic suspicion of ecclesiastical authority abides. This movement began with the rejection of ecclesiastical authority, and Wesley himself took the liberty of ordaining people for ministry and amending the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion. The question that is always in the background, then, is why we should assent to ecclesiastical authority when through private judgment we deem the church to be wrong. I wish I had a compelling answer to this question, but it may simply be baked into the Protestant cake. 

When teaching contrary to the community’s confession begins to emerge, a few options exist. One is for the community of faith to change. Normally, however, communities of faith are reticent to modify their core doctrines. The second is to exercise church discipline and hold dissenting teachers accountable to communal norms. This can be painful, messy, and personal. The Methodist leaders of Clarke’s day seem to have wished to avoid this path. These early Methodists knew one another. Things could get personal quickly. And to discipline Clarke, the most prominent Methodist intellectual of his day, would cause considerable embarrassment to the movement. Thus they chose a third option, toleration of the dissenting teaching. The proliferation within a church of dissenting teaching, however, can reach a critical mass. At some point, the community must admit that it no longer shares common core commitments. Divergent beliefs lead to divergent practices, and eventually members of a community may begin to see one another’s beliefs and practices not just as different, but wrong, even sinful. And this leads to the fourth option, the one that is now inevitable for the United Methodist Church: division. 

By all accounts Adam Clarke was a good man. He loved God, studied the Scriptures, worked on behalf of the poor, and was deeply loyal to the Wesleys. Nevertheless his privileging of private judgment over the historic and conciliar teachings of the church set a precedent within Methodism that would bedevil the movement even to the present day. Methodism has divided many times before. We will soon do so again. And unless we clarify the relationship between private judgment and historic, conciliar teaching, many more divisions will occur in our future. 

David F. Watson is Lead Editor of Firebrand. He serves as Academic Dean and Professor of New Testament at United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio.