Reading Scripture with Wesley [Firebrand Big Read]
Photo by Liviu Pazargic
Wesley’s work at the intersection of Scripture, theology, and life is interesting from a variety of perspectives. It’s easy to see how those in the Wesleyan and methodist traditions might share an insider’s interest in Wesley, but his work is attractive more generally. This is both because Wesley was a practical theologian and because he lived at the momentous turn of an era, with feet planted in both premodern and modern sensibilities.
Wesley: Premodern, Not Precritical
Of course, modern assessment of Wesley as a reader of the Bible has sometimes relegated his work to the category of the “precritical” or “uncritical.” Scholars today draw attention to Wesley’s lack of attention to such standard interests of the historical-critical paradigm as the “original meaning” of a biblical text. This characterization of Wesley is mistaken on at least two grounds.
First, the term itself, precritical, is a dismissive anachronism that gains its force from the assumption that the only legitimate reading of a biblical text is a modern one. C. S. Lewis referred to this false belief as “chronological snobbery,” noting that this form of “presentism” assumes that modern ideas are superior simply because they are modern.
In fact, the “critical tradition” includes a wider range of approaches than modern criticism usually recognizes. Some interpretations try to imitate reality (mimetic), others focus on practical effects (pragmatic), some highlight personal expression (expressive), and others aim to be neutral or factual (objective). Each finds the locus of meaning in its own place—in “the universe,” in “the work,” in “the artist,” or in “the audience”—and so each in its own way is “critical” insofar as it is concerned with evaluating competing interpretations. (See M. H. Abrams, The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition, 1953.)
Second, “precritical” or “uncritical” overlooks the degree to which Wesley himself participated in the Enlightenment project—according significance in his theological enterprise to reason, for example, or evaluating various readings of Scripture in relation to the findings of the new science that emerged from the seventeenth century.
Wesley’s Faith-full Approach
Study of Wesley as a “Bible scholar” demonstrates his ability to navigate what in the ensuing centuries would seem to be competing, even contradictory, interests. On the one hand, familiarity with Wesley’s Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament reveals his interest in the importance of historical and linguistic observations in making sense of the Bible. His comments display an interest in questions of historical background that have come to characterize contemporary biblical studies.
On the other hand, in the “Preface” to his Sermons on Several Occasions, Wesley bears witness to a decidedly “unmodern” approach to dealing with difficult texts. “Does anything appear dark or intricate?” he asks. For most of us and our contemporaries, the key to making sense of difficult passages in the Bible is to seek more background, more historical detail, more insight into ancient patterns of behavior. Wesley takes a different path.
Does anything appear dark or intricate? I lift up my heart to the Father of lights: ‘Lord, is it not your Word, “If any lack wisdom, let them ask of God”? You “give generously and ungrudgingly.” You have said, “If any be willing to do your will, they shall know.” I am willing to do, let me know, your will.’ I then search after and consider parallel passages of Scripture, ‘comparing spiritual things with spiritual.’ I meditate thereon, with all the attention and earnestness of which my mind is capable. If any doubt still remains, I consult those who are experienced in the things of God, and then the writings whereby, being dead, they yet speak. And what I thus learn, that I teach. (§5)
Faced with a biblical text that is unclear, Wesley
Looks to God for help,
Compares the text with other biblical passages,
Meditates,
Consults with “those who are experienced in the things of God,” and
Looks for help in commentaries and other published works.
This is not to suggest that, for Wesley, historical detail was unimportant. In a stinging reversal of much modern biblical interpretation, though, Wesley operates with the assumption that the chief chasm that must be overcome if we are to make sense of Scripture is not measured in terms of our need for more historical detail but in terms of our need to know God and God’s ways. “I lift up my heart to the Father of lights.... I am willing to do, let me know, your will.”
Without wanting to downplay the importance of prayer and theological formation, we should also note that anyone wanting to be schooled in reading the Bible with Wesley must do so by taking advantage of the tools available. Wesley insisted on using the biblical languages, for example, and his biblical studies demonstrate the baseline importance of many of the interpretive approaches common among serious readers of the Bible in the 1700s.
In other words, Wesley’s approach to Scripture cannot be characterized as emphasizing prayer over doing research, nor doing research over prayer. He held these together, while obviously prioritizing the significance of Scripture for Christian faith and life over the importance of establishing the singular, first-century meaning of a text. It is for this reason that Wesley might look askance at how today we have problematized the relationship between Scripture and Christian life, Scripture and theology, Scripture and Christian ethics.
For Wesley, we might say, the tools and methods of biblical scholarship are only means to the end of Christian faithfulness—measured in terms of orthodoxy (right belief), orthopraxis (right behavior and practice), and orthokardia (right-hearted).
Case Study: “On Dress”
Consider Wesley’s treatment in his sermon “On Dress” of 1 Peter 3:3–4 (CEB):
Don’t try to make yourselves beautiful on the outside, with stylish hair or by wearing gold jewelry or fine clothes. Instead, make yourselves beautiful on the inside, in your hearts, with the enduring quality of a gentle, peaceful spirit. This type of beauty is very precious in God’s eyes.
To a degree difficult to fathom today, in the first-century Roman world, a person was his or her clothing—that is, what one wore paraded one’s character and one’s status in the community. Clothing symbolized reality. Thus, Klaus Berger can observe, “In the ancient context a person’s fundamental relationships are rendered effective by the clothing that one wears, which in turn means that clothing shapes the quality of one’s life” (Identity and Experience in the New Testament, 2003, 42; see 40–43). As Shakespeare would later put it, “For the apparel oft proclaims the man” (Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 3). As a result, a variety of first-century documents, including legal materials and philosophical writings, concerned themselves with proper dress.
Writing in the mid-first century, for example, Seneca, Roman philosopher and statesman, praised his mother with these words:
Unchastity, the greatest evil of our time, has never classed you with the great majority of women. Jewels have not moved you, nor pearls.... You have never defiled your face with paints and cosmetics. Never have you fancied the kind of dress that exposed no greater nakedness by being removed. Your only ornament, the kind of beauty that time does not tarnish, is the great honor of modesty. (Ad Helv. 16.3-5)
Accordingly, the items that Peter lists—stylish hair, gold, and fine clothing—would have put on display for all to see such character qualities as lack of self-control, immodesty, snootiness, and sensuality. Over against eye-catching fashion, he sets a heart that pleases God.
Without taking Wesley’s audience on a guided tour of striking fashion on the streets of first-century Asia Minor, Wesley’s sermon nevertheless performs a similar task. After affirming the neatness of dress and overall good grooming, Wesley answers the question: What do we display by our fine clothes and costly jewelry? Here begins an annotated list of problems:
It breeds pride, for “nothing is more natural than to think ourselves better because we are dressed in better clothes” (§9).
It cultivates vanity—that is, “the love and desire of being admired and praised” (§11).
It leads naturally to anger, which Wesley regards as the opposite of the attitudes championed by Peter: “a gentle, peaceful spirit,” which is “very precious in God’s eyes” (1 Pet 3:4, CEB).
It is contrary to Scripture’s message regarding money: “every shilling you needlessly spend on your apparel is in effect stolen from God and the poor” (§14).
It is contrary to concerning oneself foremost with a heart and life oriented toward God. “All the time you are studying this ‘outward adorning,’ the whole inward work of the Spirit stands still; or rather goes back, though by very gentle and almost imperceptible degrees. Instead of growing more heavenly-minded, you are more and more earthly-minded” (§19).
Wesley concludes his list with these words: “All these evils, and a thousand more, spring from that one root—indulging yourself in costly apparel” (§19). In the language of Paul, followers of Christ ought instead to “dress yourself with the Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom 13:14, CEB; cf. Gal 3:27).
Listen to Wesley’s words as he turns even more directly to address his audience:
I call upon you all who have any regard for me, show me before I go hence that I have not labored, even in this respect, in vain for near half a century. Let me see, before I die, a Methodist congregation full as plain dressed as a Quaker congregation. Only be more consistent with yourselves. Let your dress be cheap as well as plain. Otherwise you do but trifle with God and me, and your own souls. I pray, let there be no costly silks among you, how grave soever they may be. Let there be no Quaker-linen, proverbially so called for their exquisite fineness; no Brussels lace, no elephantine hats or bonnets, those scandals of female modesty. Be all of a piece, dressed from head to foot as persons “professing godliness”; professing to do everything small and great with the single view of pleasing God. (§26)
Wesley’s Interpretive Pillars
John Wesley’s sermon “On Dress” makes for interesting reading as a case study in how Wesley locates the words of 1 Peter in the pews of eighteenth-century churches. What can be said about his hermeneutical approach?
First, he is interested in history and historical background. However, in a stunning departure from modern standards of historical-critical inquiry, Wesley doesn’t entertain the idea that historical interests ought to limit the text’s meaning to its original, historical situation. History guides interpretation but does not reduce the hermeneutical reach of the text.
This means, second, that Wesley could think in terms of the simultaneity of Scripture. This is the ability of one scriptural text to speak effectively to its original audience and, at the same time, to the church that embraces these writings as its Scripture.
We can think about what Wesley is doing this way. According to the classical definition, the church is “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic.” To say that the church is “one” is to admit that the people of God to whom 1 Peter was originally addressed, the people of God in Wesley’s day, the people of God in our day, and those who will be gathered as the end-time people of God—all of these are actually the one people of God. This is because the church is “one.”
So words addressed to God’s people in the first century may not have been written to but were certainly written for the whole people of God, everywhere and at all times (cf. Rom 15:4). This theological affirmation speaks to the ongoing significance of biblical texts written in ancient times and places.
Accordingly, Wesley did not need to adopt a two-stage approach to reading 1 Peter. His sermon does not first establish what 1 Peter must have meant in the first century so that Wesley could then add a postscript entitled, “The Relevance of 1 Peter for Today.” But neither did he imagine that 1 Peter had been written in the eighteenth century, as though it were written to address the theological arguments and everyday concerns of the methodist movement. Instead, Wesley works with the text as one is aware of both his theological questions and commitments and the text of 1 Peter, and he shapes his sermon accordingly.
Third, throughout his interpretive work, Wesley seems little concerned with authorial intent (the very measure of “meaning” on which modernist approaches would center). Instead, he operates with the assumption that behind the biblical writings—even though they come from different pens and address different circumstances—stands a single Author. These are the words of God, and this allows him to move freely around the Old and New Testaments—for example, by allowing Paul’s directive to “dress yourself with the Lord Jesus Christ” (Rom 13:14; cf. Gal 3:27) to fill out his message from 1 Peter regarding proper dress.
Fourth, reading the Bible for its “literal sense” meant for Wesley a reading that coincided with “the general tenor of Scripture.” He practiced reading biblical texts against the backdrop of what he called “the analogy of faith.” This refers to those doctrinal affirmations that in some sense arise from the biblical texts themselves, and which are then used to guide faithful readings of the Bible.
For Wesley, the analogy of faith concerns above all the Christian affirmation of the Triune God and the order of salvation, with its emphasis on sin, free grace, and holiness of heart and life. Other Reformers also appealed to the analogy of faith, though this interpretive commitment was actually at work much earlier, in the first centuries of the church. There we find the language of the “rule of faith” or the “rule of truth”—typically, a narrative account of the church’s faith structured around the Christian affirmation of the Triune God.
How does this “rule” or “analogy” guide biblical interpretation? It is not that we read the “analogy” or “creed” back into the Bible (as though Paul had signed the Nicene Creed or Mark had joined one of Wesley’s United Societies). Rather, we test our readings of the Bible in light of the creed. And, coming to Scripture, we ask: Reading the Bible in the light of the prism of this analogy of faith, what do we see? We do not assume that any particular biblical text teaches the creed per se, but we claim that, as a whole, the Bible is interpreted faithfully when our interpretations cohere with the creed. Luke Timothy Johnson sounds the right note: “The creed provides a measure or rule for the proper reading of Scripture. Such a rule is necessary for a coherent communal understanding of Scripture” (The Creed: What Christians Believe and Why It Matters, 2003, 47).
In the case of Wesley, the analogy of faith took a particular form, structured around the journey of salvation. Since he could assume that methodists were practicing members of the Church of England, and therefore affirmed the Church’s Articles of Religion, he was free to emphasize more narrowly the order of salvation: original sin, justification by faith and the new birth, and growth in holiness or sanctification.
Resident in these last two points is an assumption that the Bible is a single book, even though it is also a collection of sixty-six books (in its Protestant version). Written over a lengthy period, by disparate writers and editors, to address different aims among God’s people, these books nevertheless comprise one book, speaking with the one voice of its divine author, God. Importantly, the unity of Scripture is not so much a property integral to the biblical materials themselves. As modern biblical studies has aptly demonstrated, the biblical writings speak with many accents, in many times, for many reasons. Instead, the unity of Scripture resides in the analogy of faith, itself taught by the whole (“the general tenor”) of Scripture.
Even as recently as twenty or thirty years ago, Wesley’s interpretive sensibilities might have seemed hopelessly naive and out of step with the times. Fresh initiatives in the recovery of theological interpretation of the Bible in recent years put him in a somewhat different light, however. In fact, it is not too much to say that each of the interpretive assumptions we have noted has been identified as important in the sort of biblical studies that finds its home in the church.
Two Caveats
Let me add two caveats to this discussion of Wesley’s hermeneutics. First, it almost goes without saying that Wesley lived in the dawning years of the modern period while we occupy its waning years. We should not imagine that we can simply turn back the clock, as though the intervening years, during which the light of modern criticism has shown so brightly, did not happen or were not important. We can admit, though, that the brilliance of the historical-critical light blinded students of the Bible to other approaches and interests, and that the dimming of that light in recent years has allowed us to see again and recover what had for too long been hidden in the shadows. Wesley’s work is thus exemplary for the road ahead for those of us interested in the ongoing role of Scripture in the life of the church.
Second, learning from Wesley does not mean that we situate ourselves in the eighteenth century, nor that we repeat Wesley’s sermons. Instead, being Wesleyan involves us in the process of learning from the progenitor of our tradition certain interpretive habits, patterns, and sensibilities as we consider how best to follow critically along the path marked by Wesley’s engagement with Scripture.
Suggested resources:
Collins, Kenneth J., and Robert W. Wall, eds. Wesley One Volume Commentary. Nashville: Abingdon, 2020.
Green, Joel B. Reading Scripture as Wesleyans. Nashville: Abingdon, 2010.
_______, and David F. Watson, eds. Wesley: Wesleyans, and Reading Bible as Scripture. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2012.
_______, and William H. Willimon, eds., The Wesley Study Bible. Nashville: Abingdon. (Available with the NRSV and the Common English Bible.)
Koskie Jr., Steven Joe. Reading the Way to Heaven: A Wesleyan Theological Hermeneutic of Scripture. Journal of Theological Interpretation Supplement Series 8. Winona Lake, WI: Eisenbrauns, 2014.
Wall, Robert W. “Wesley as Biblical Interpreter.” Pages 113–28 in The Cambridge Companion to John Wesley. Edited by Randy L. Maddox and Jason E. Vickers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Joel B. Green is Senior Professor of New Testament Interpretation, Fuller Theological Seminary, and Affiliate Faculty in New Testament Interpretation, United Theological Seminary.