Wesley, the Almost Charismatic
Did John Wesley, the father of Methodism, hold the gifts of the Spirit to be normative to Christian faith and practice as charismatic believers do today? Simply put, was Wesley a charismatic Christian? Pentecostals, charismatics, and neo-charismatics of all stripes are often grouped under a larger umbrella movement called “Renewalists.” (I will simply use the designation PCR: Pentecostal-Charismatic-Renewalist). The PCR movement is one of the fastest growing segments of the global Christian population, ranging anywhere from 25%-30% of world Christianity. One may trace Pentecostalism back to early Methodism and John Wesley. Many PCRs, including those in my own Methodist (Methocostal) tradition, even turn to Wesley to moor our charismatic experiences historically and theologically.
There is clearly a historical connection between the two, but can we also make an ontological connection between charismatic Christianity and the Methodist founder, whose heart was strangely warmed? Imagine, if the PCR movement were able to take a theological DNA test through ancestry.com. Would the results yield a shared DNA with John Wesley, or is he merely a friend of the family? My use of the term “charismatic” in this context refers to its core DNA, the belief and practice of the gifts of the Holy Spirit as normative in one’s Christian life and ministry. Unlike Pentecostalism identified by the evidence of speaking in tongues, I define“charismatic” in much broader terms, though not in the broadest sense of a “gift of grace,” to mark the larger PCR traditions. My response here to the Wesley-charismatic question is part of a larger manuscript on my drawing board.
Overall, it seems that there are at least four general assertions one can make about Wesley and the charismata:
1. Wesley was not a cessationist.
Wesley vehemently defended the supernatural and often rigorously debated the great ecclesial minds of his day on this issue, including Conyers Middleton; William Warburton, Bishop of Gloucester; Bishop Joseph Butler; and others. The founder of Methodism thoroughly and vigorously defended the authenticity of biblical miracles and the existence of post-biblical miracles in his lengthy letter to the polemical Middleton. Middleton, on the other hand, explained away post-biblical miracles. Wesley’s basic position was that miracles still occurred in post-biblical and post-apostolic ages but in less frequency after the first two or three centuries. In his sermon “The More Excellent Way,” Wesley asserted that “‘the love of many,’ almost of all Christians, so called, was ‘waxed cold,’” following the alleged conversion of Constantine. Wesley’s commitment to the authority of scripture and the testimony of the Church Fathers prevented him from denying the existence of miracles in the early church. Further, his predilection for the confirming power of experiential religion precluded him from denying the real, empirical work of the Spirit, even the miraculous in his own life and ministry.
2. Wesley distinguished between the extraordinary and the ordinary.
Wesley seemed to hold a “charismatic” theory of the knowledge of God, as he poignantly identified the epistemic work of the Spirit in the via salutis. In “An Earnest Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion,” Wesley claimed the regenerate have spiritual, or internal, senses (i.e. faith) that perceive God and other invisible spiritual realities, comparable to our five natural senses that perceive the empirical world. On our spiritual senses he asserts, “It is with regard to the spiritual world, what sense is with regard to the natural. It is the spiritual sensation of every soul that is born of God.” His pneumatic empiricism asserted that our spiritual senses are awakened by the gift of the Spirit in order to perceive, receive, and experience the work of grace from prevenient to sanctifying. Thus for Wesley, faith is the “eye of the new-born soul,” the “ear of the new-born soul, whereby a sinner ‘hears the voice of the Son of God and lives,’” the “palate of the soul; for hereby a believer ‘tastes the good word, and the powers of the word to come,’” and “the feeling of the soul… .” When one is born of God, the ontological shift from death to life and from being in Adam to being in Christ brings about a parallel metaphysical shift from the visible world to the invisible world and an epistemological shift as well from our natural senses to our spiritual senses.
One fruit of Wesley’s spiritual empiricism is the Methodist doctrine of the witness of the Spirit. This core Methodist teaching claimed the direct impression of the Holy Spirit upon the human spirit, where the believer could have assurance that she/he was a child of God. He argued that the witness of the Spirit was not extraordinary, or occasional, but mere scriptural Christianity and normative. Yet, he did not extend this normative function to the receiving and operating of spiritual gifts, as charismatics would today. Wesley’s spiritual empiricism served a soteriological (ordinary) purpose rather than a charismatic-missiological (extraordinary) one, which understands spiritual perception, in part, in terms of the reception and implementation of the gifts. Wesley repeatedly bifurcated the ordinary from the extraordinary work of the Holy Spirit. The ordinary work was available to all believers, and the extraordinary work, though available, was given on occasion to some but should not be hastily claimed or primarily pursued. Anything more was enthusiasm.
In his sermon Scriptural Christianity, Wesley identifies the extraordinary gifts as the “gift of healing, of working other miracles, of prophecy, of discerning spirits, the speaking with divers kinds of tongues, and the interpretation of tongues.” Wesley adds that not everyone had these gifts, “perhaps one in a thousand.” However, the gift of the Holy Spirit was “for a more excellent purpose”: the cultivation of the “ordinary fruits,” which are “essential to all Christians in all ages.” For Wesley, the work of the Spirit in salvation was ordinary, meaning common and available to all, while the miraculous gifts of the Spirit were not necessary for salvation but were extraordinary and not given to all. We see the same logic in Wesley’s “Farther Appeal to Men of Religion and Reason”: “Neither do I confound the extraordinary with the ordinary operations of the Spirit. And as to your last inquiry, ‘What is the best proof of our being led by the Spirit?’ I have no exception to that just and scriptural answer which you yourself have given, — ‘A thorough change and renovation of mind and heart, and the leading a new and holy life.’”
For the father of Methodism, the ordinary work of the Spirit (soteriological) was preferable and normative over against the extraordinary work (the charismata). Wesley defined and discerned a true movement of the Spirit not by demonstrations of power but by the fruit of holiness. Embedded in Wesley’s bifurcation is what I am calling a “holiness hermeneutic,” which is his method of interpreting and discerning whether a belief or a practice stems from the ordinary or normative and essential work of the Spirit. Wesley’s holiness hermeneutic prioritizes and makes normative the salvific work of the Spirit over against the manifestation of the gifts of the Spirit. In this regard, Wesley differs from modern charismatics who see both the work of salvation and the gifts as normative.
3. Wesley was not a charismatic “in theory.”
Although Wesley and the early Methodists experienced a profusion of manifestations of the Spirit, Wesley never claimed to be endowed with apostolic or extraordinary (supernatural) gifts. John Whitehead, in his early Life of the Rev. John Wesley (1739), quotes the very scholarly Bishop Joseph Butler’s critical remark to Wesley, “Sir, the pretending to extraordinary revelations and gifts of the Holy Ghost is a horrid thing, a very horrid thing.” Wesley replied, “I pretend to no extraordinary revelations, or gifts of the Holy Ghost: none but what every Christian may receive, and ought to expect and pray for,” referencing the ordinary work of salvation. On another occasion, the Bishop of Gloucester accused Wesley of claiming apostolic and miraculous gifts and being a false prophet and a fanatic, weighty accusations in the Enlightenment, the age of reason. Wesley responded, “I do not pretend to any extraordinary measures of the Spirit. I pretend to no other measure of it than may be claimed by every Christian minister,” and later, “I claim no extraordinary gift at all.” When confronted by the Bishop that Wesley claimed to pray for the sick and God healed them, Wesley did not deny the accounts but attributes being used in this work to the “providence of God,” who “now hears and answers prayer, even beyond the ordinary course of nature. Wesley does not respond with false humility but with his consistent retort given throughout his ministry when so accused. Throughout the letter, Wesley affirms the supernatural work of the Spirit but deflects any claim to possessing an extraordinary gift of the Spirit. Although Wesley experienced the manifestation of the gifts, he did not believe or teach that the gifts of the Spirit were normative to the Christian life but extraordinary and occasional. The Spirit’s primary work leads to sanctification and growth in grace, and for Wesley, this could occur without miraculous gifts given to the believer.
4. Wesley was a practicing charismatic.
Wesley, in spite of not claiming, teaching, or pursuing extraordinary gifts as normative, frequently saw extraordinary works of the Spirit, including healing, deliverance, prophecy, and a questionable raising of the dead. The distinction is that these “extraordinary” gifts were always judged by a holiness hermeneutic that prioritized fruit over gifts and evaluated the origin, nature, and end of extraordinary gifts based on the fruit they produced. Wesley’s understanding of the person and work of the Holy Spirit served a larger soteriological function, which was to experience the work of the Spirit in terms of holiness and assurance. In “A Farther Appeal to Men of Religion and Reason,” he stated that a “thorough change and renovation of mind and heart, and the leading a new and holy life” are the true and normative measures of being led by the Spirit. In this sense, his view is opposed to the pneumatology of the modern charismatic which is expressed as a distinctive theology of subsequence (the baptism of the Holy Spirit) primarily to receive and minister spiritual gifts as a norm for Christian life and ministry.
Although early Methodism extensively used laity for the work of the ministry, PCRs seem to expect and strive for a more intentional, aggressive, and realized sense of human agency in participating with the Spirit in healing, deliverance, miracles, and the prophetic as the norm than early Methodism. Wesley considered the actual inner work of the Spirit toward holiness to be essential, normative, and to take precedence over the supernatural means or form God may employ to courier that inner work, such as a gift working through an individual. In other words, the content of the message is more important than the form of the message and its messenger.
For Wesley and early Methodism, specifically in its class and band settings, greater attention was paid to grace working inwardly in the hearts of believers and corporate accountability than external signs and wonders or other related pneumatic phenomenology like speaking in tongues, prophecy, or being “slain in the Spirit.” Society, band, and select band rules directed members to commit to their growth in holiness and to support each other through prayer and encouragement and not to receiving and manifesting the gifts, though they occurred, nonetheless.
Wesley’s extraordinary/ordinary distinction and related holiness hermeneutic allow him to test, acknowledge, and permit, without normalizing, the miraculous solely on the grounds of its submission and service to the greater work of scriptural holiness. We also need to interpret Wesley’s strategies in their apologetic, soteriological, and pastoral contexts. Amidst hostile rationalistic detractors, overly enthusiastic false prophets, and faithful participants of a Spirit-led awakening, Wesley created an intentional, well-organized, systematic structure and regimen of accountability to facilitate a vast revival of scriptural holiness and transformation that would spread over multiple continents, awaken the dead to new life, and foster growth in grace among the people called Methodists.
An Almost Charismatic
So, what are the results of our DNA test? Is Wesley a charismatic? Did he hold to the belief and practice that the gifts of the Spirit are normative in the life of the believer or at least for himself? Wesley did not seem to espouse or teach the notion that supernatural manifestations of the Spirit are normative for the believer, which characterizes PCR Christians. Yet, in practice, the charismata clearly operated through Wesley and the early Methodists in quite a regular or normative manner. With that said, Wesley can be considered a charismatic on one of two counts, making him half a charismatic, or playing on Wesley’s “an almost Christian” – “an almost charismatic.” The four inferences drawn from Wesley concerning the gifts of the Spirit further serve as correctives for a proper balance for Wesleyans of all stripes, who often neglect the miraculous power of God, and for today’s PCR movement, which often lacks a robust doctrine of sanctification and sound theology for its supernatural experiences. Simply put, all of the work of the Spirit should be normative in our lives, including the gifts and fruit of the Spirit. The Spirit gives gifts to and produces fruit in every true believer. No Christian should ever settle for anything less than the promises of God in scripture. Yet, in agreement with the scriptures and Wesley, the various operations of the Spirit should be prioritized and given their proper place in the scheme of salvation. We note in 1 Corinthians 13 that the fruit of love, which is eternal, is greater than the gifts of prophecy or tongues, which are temporal. Wesley’s holiness hermeneutic, resonating with scripture, also prioritizes character over charisma, fruit over gifts, and holiness over power.
Wesley judged the gifts through a holiness hermeneutic that prioritized fruit over gifts and evaluated the origin, nature, and end of extraordinary gifts based on the virtue they produced. The gifts are judged by the fruit from which they spring and the fruit that they bear. Ultimately, fruit and not gifts are a reflection of true spiritual growth and maturity. Christ emphasized that a tree is judged and known by the fruit, particularly love. On the other hand, the gifts do not measure our spiritual health. Our ministry calling and gifting from God are irrevocable and not a sign of our salvation (Rom. 11:29). It is possible to operate in the gifts of the Spirit, while not walking in the fruit of the Spirit, like the Corinthian church. From Saul to Solomon to Judas, persons who had fallen from a state of grace could still operate in the gifts of the Spirit. One could function in all of the supernatural signs and wonders, and yet it could still be possible to hear the final condemning words from Christ, “I never knew you.” Simply, the fruit and not the gifts are the scriptural way in which the tree is judged to be good or evil. However, that does not mean the gifts are to be denied or relegated to the apostolic age or to charismatic superstars. The prophecy of Joel in Acts 2 declares that the power of the Spirit for service is poured out on all people. Christians today should walk in the same anointing, power, and authority that Christ and the apostles did because the same Holy Spirit and promises are given to us unto the end of the age.
Dr. Peter J. Bellini is the Associate Professor of Evangelization in the Heisel Chair at United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio.