Wesleyan Theology and Contemporary Ministry August 4-8, 2014
John Wesley’s Dark Night of the Soul?
If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light around me become night, even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is as bright as the day, for darkness is as light to you.”
“In me it is dark, but with you there is light.”
Introduction Personal
A caveat: As primarily a Bible teacher, I am not by any means an accomplished Wesleyan scholar. Although as a Wesleyan I have had an interest in John (1703-1791) and Charles Wesley (1707-1788) all during my ministerial and academic career. I have dipped into him from time to time and have frequently read in the secondary literature. The writers in the secondary literature about John Wesley who most awakened my interest in Wesley were Colin Williams, John Wesley’s Theology Today (1960) and the works of Albert C. Outler who gave the Wiley Lectures at Point Loma College in 1981-1982). I have also read carefully Randy Maddox’s Responsible Grace: John Wesley’s Practical Theology (1994) and many of the writings of Kenneth Collins—and listened to their debates! But I have not been able to keep up fully with Wesleyan Scholarship as it has expanded in the years since retirement in 1996. I have had other interests!
An exception early during retirement is an essay I wrote on assignment for a proposed H. Ray Dunning Festschrift. I gave it the title “Growth in Sanctification: A Comparison of John Wesley and John of the Cross” written during two delightful years at European Nazarene Bible College (1996-1998), now known as European Nazarene College. John of the Cross (1542-1591) is especially known for his poem “The Dark Night” and the treatise based upon it. It is this Festschrift paper that lies behind my time with you for I worked with the primary sources for both John Wesley and John of the Cross. The Festschrift and therefore the original paper, which touched Charles Wesley as well, was never published. An abridged version” that did not include Charles Wesley, did appear in The Tower due to the kindness of Ed Robinson, Academic Dean. I. John Wesley and the Mystics: John of the Cross
My working title for our time together, “John Wesley’s Dark Night of the Soul?” has a question mark for John Wesley himself appears to have used the “darkness metaphor” normally in a negative sense, that is, only for sin and ignorance. The apostolic declaration in 1 John,
God is light and in him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness, we lie and do not do what is true; but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his son cleanses us from all sin (1:5-7),
would characterize Wesley’s use of the metaphors of darkness and light as would Ephesians 5:8: “For once you were in darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as children of light.”
It was the mystical tradition that for centuries had employed the darkness metaphor in their spiritual writings. John Wesley was allured for a period by mystics of various degrees, for he read them in the course of his spiritual quest, a practice that continued all his life. But he often deplored them: “So. I plunged even deeper into mysticism, still plowing with their own wicked heifer.” On January 25, 1738, just four months before Aldersgate, he wrote in his Journal that “all the other enemies of Christianity are triflers; the mystics are the most dangerous of all its enemies. They stab it in the vitals, and its most serious professors are most likely to fall by them. May I praise him who hath snatched me out of this fire.” We should pause to note that among the mystics whom Wesley read throughout his life were Macarius (d. 390), Thomas á Kempis (1380?-1471), Gregory Lopez (1542-1596), Francis de Sales (1567-1622), the life-long favorite Gaston Jean Baptiste de Renty (1611-1649), Madame Guyon (1648-1717), and Francis Fenelon (1651-1715). In Guyon and Fenelon as he said he found the gold of the mystics without the dross. Although the Spanish Carmelites John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila were not among the mystics Wesley read, “it was their brand of mysticism that deeply affected the mystics of the Catholic Reformation and that Wesley relied on so heavily for extract material.”
On November 23, 1736, in a letter to his brother Samuel, John Wesley had concluded that “the rock on which I had the nearest made shipwreck of the faith was the writings of the mystics, under which term I comprehend all, and only those, who slight any of the means of grace.” Those were the “bad” mystics. As stated here, a major issue for Wesley was the use or nonuse of the means of grace. Yet, he was deeply influenced by them, especially by those Lindstrom calls the practical mystics, and included extracts from many of them his Christian Library, among them the French mystic Madam Guyon. [.. “Mysticism,” suggests William R. Cannon, “belonged to his thought and was essential to his theology to the very end. Indeed, it was the bulwark to his doctrine of Christian Perfection.”
We start our quest in regard to John Wesley (1703-1791) with the impact of John of the Cross (1542-1591) on my own spiritual journey. I originally wrote it for a personal paper not designed for publication that I completed in December 2013. We share it:
John of the Cross is best known for his “The Dark Night,” popularly referred to as “The Dark Night of the Soul.” The phrase that most attracted me in John’s writings was “the darkness of faith” which I discovered first in Merton’s New Seeds of Contemplation. The phrase connected with my own as then unarticulated quest for the assurance of salvation as I heard it expressed in my Wesleyan heritage.
John Wesley’s Aldersgate testimony was my historical and theological starting-place:
About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation, and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.
I later understood Wesley’s testimony in a biblical manner as the witness of faith itself as effected by the Holy Spirit, that is, the very ability to believe that God loves us, that he died for even my sins, as the essence of assurance: “Faith as faith in the proclaimed word is certain of itself.” Reflecting Romans 5:5, God’s love to us in the cross of Christ brought home to our hearts by the Holy Spirit is itself Christian certainty. In John’s brother Charles’ poetry it is
Spirit of faith, come down, Reveal the things of God: . . . And give us eyes to see, Who did for every sinner die Hath surely died for me.
No man can truly say That Jesus is the Lord Unless thou take the veil away, And breathe the living word; Then, only then we feel Our interest in His blood.
But while seeking salvation in a revivalist heritage, what I thought was supposed to be assurance with its accompanying lightning and thunder did not come. Finally, after my full share of trips to the traditional evangelical “mourner’s bench,” in the spring semester of my freshman year in college, I told God, “I am going to serve you whether you save me or not, so there!” And of course the assurance came in other forms as the years went by in a life given to obedience to the crucified and risen Lord. My vocation, a life-long mind and heart study of the Scriptures, aided my understanding. When I discovered the works of Saint John of the Cross, I identified with his exposition of “dark faith,” and my faith-understanding was confirmed and enlightened in a heart-warming way.
So a word about the “dark faith” of John of the Cross is in order. We begin with a brief sketch of his life. John was born as Juan de Yepes in 1542, the youngest of three sons. His parents lived in Fontiveros, Spain, a small town a hundred plus miles north of Madrid. John’s father, Gonzales, belonged to a wealthy family of silk merchants. His mother, Catalina, however, was a young orphan girl making her living at the humble trade of weaving. Their marriage in 1529 was truly a “love story.” But due to Catalina’s lack of proper lineage and inheritance, Gonzales was disinherited by his merchant family. Adapting to the drudgery of the poorer class, Juan’s father took up the lowly trade of weaving along with his wife.
Gonzales eventually fell sick, and after a lingering illness died when Juan was only two. Catalina was reduced to poverty with three sons to raise. In time, she made her way to her husband’s clerical brother, an archdeacon to seek help; he callously turned her and her sons away. She returned to Fontiveros, and after another move to nearby Arèvalo for three years, the family eventually settled in the larger Medina del Campo where they “found both work for their sustenance and opportunities for religious and charitable deeds.”
Juan lived there from age nine to twenty two where good providences allowed him a quality education. In his religious work, he developed a contemplative bent and entered the Carmelite monastery in Medina in 1563. In 1564, he was sent to the college of San Andres, A Carmelite house of studies in Salamanca where he studied under some of the outstanding scholars of the day. In the summer of 1567, he met Teresa of Avila (1515-1582) and a year later joined her in her Carmelite reform efforts for his life’s work. Pope Benedict XIII canonized John of the Cross as a saint in 1726, and he was declared a Doctor of the Church by Pope Pius XI in 1926.
John of the Cross’s teaching on “dark faith” begins with the most intriguing religious poem ever written. Its opening profound and mysterious lines read
One dark night, fired with love’s urgent longings –ah, the sheer grace!– I went out unseen, my house being now all stilled.
For John, the theme of the “dark night” belongs to the whole of the Christian’s faith journey. He presents his analysis of the Christian’s progress with two pairs of terms, “sense” and “spirit” and “active” and “passive” in a fourfold pattern:
(1) the active night of the sense, (2) the active night of the spirit, (3) the passive night of the sense, and (4) the passive night of the spirit.
Prayer is the primary context of John’s analysis with the central interpretive themes being faith and love. The nature of “faith” is our concern in its most simplistic sense as the level at which John impacted my quest for assurance.
“God is not the same as anything else” is the controlling theme of the writings of John of the Cross. This affirmation of God as holy--unique over against everything else—when spoken of God as infinite light by John means that the nearer we approach him the more our minds, our intellects, see him as darkness. As Evelyn Underhill, suggests, “it is in the Night of Faith that the soul draws nearest to God; and discovers the indwelling Power whose presence does not depend on vision and feeling, but only on faithfulness.” John tells us that “to journey to God the intellect must be perfected in the darkness of faith.”
John’s emphasis transformed my journey in the realization that “faith” does not depend on rational understanding, warm feelings, or ecstatic experience; faith can be dark as well as light! Spiritual life begins in a “faith” commitment that is lived out in faithfulness, and above all, in a life of prayer. Understanding grows, certainly, feelings come and go, and ecstasy can happen! John defines contemplative prayer as “nothing else than a secret and peaceful and loving inflow of God, which, if not hampered, fires the soul in the spirit of love.” Finally, with his emphasis on contemplative prayer, John of the Cross enlarges for me a concept of a grace that “takes the initiative” with an “optimism of grace” that is radical in its possibilities of transformation all life-long! This way of grace John calls the way of the “dark night” or “the night of faith.” Eugene Peterson’s brief description has it right: Spiritual quest is bedeviled with fantasy and illusion because virtually everyone who pursues the spiritual life expects to be rewarded with ecstasy. John has no patience with what he calls our “spiritual sweet tooth.” He is a ruthless realist, stripping away the illusions, the fantasies, and the delusions, guiding us through the consequent devastations, and training us to discern the realities of faith.
It is helpful to add here a paragraph from The Tower article on John of the Cross:
In his teaching on the dark night of contemplative prayer and all that it involves, John of the Cross is opening up to us the possibility of a yet deeper purging, a purging in regard to which “human effort does little more than dispose one for divine action.” In Wesleyan language this comprehends a purifying of our un-Christlike faults, those faults of character that to this point in our Christian journeys our repentant agonies have been unable to touch even though we may have brought them again and again to the throne of grace in terms of 1 John 1:9, and yet, they are still with us! This is not even to speak of those character faults of which we are as yet totally ignorant! Here is a deeper purging that speaks of a most thrilling optimism of grace. Can anything be done, for example, about some of our inherited and acquired personality traits, those habit and attitude patterns, prejudices, and secondary motivations that tarnish our singleness of will in heart and action and compromise our ability to reflect the Spirit of Christ? John of the Cross is pointing us to the grace of unlimited possibilities of personal transformation! He describes this dark night of contemplation as
than a secret and peaceful and loving an inflow of God into the soul, which purges it of its habitual ignorances and imperfections, natural and spiritual. . . . Through this contemplation, God teaches the soul secretly and instructs it in the perfection of love without its doing anything or understanding how this happens (N. 2. 5. 1.)”
II. John Wesley’s 1766 Confession
We return to the “assurance” theme with which we began with reference to John of the Cross. “Assurance” is often expressed in spiritual literature as “consolation” within the context of the Christian’s relationship to God. We return to it now in regard to John Wesley even though assurance as we have seen does not exhaust the meaning and impact of “dark faith.”
At the heart of our present concern is Wesley’s letter to his brother Charles June 27, 1766, the subject of much scholarly speculation, in which John, at 73 years of age, describes his own faith experience:
In one of my last I was saying I do not feel the wrath of God abiding on me; nor can I believe it does. And yet (this is the mystery) [I do not love God. I never did]. Therefore [I never] believed in the Christian sense of the word. Therefore [I am only an] honest heathen, a proselyte of the Temple, one of the phoboumenoi ton theon [fearers of God]. And yet to be so employed of God! And so hedged in that I can neither get forward nor backward! Surely there never was such an instance before, from the beginning of the world! If I [ever had had] that faith, it would not be so strange. But [I never had any] other elegchos of the eternal or invisible world that [I have] now; and that is [none at all], unless such as fairly shines from reasons glimmering ray. [I have no] direct witness. I do not say that [I am a child of God], but of anything invisible or eternal. And yet I dare not preach otherwise than I do, either concerning faith, or love, or justification, or perfection. And yet I find rather an increase than a decrease of zeal for the whole work of God and every part of it. I am pheromenos [“so swept along,”] (I know not how,” that I can’t stand still. I want all the world to come to on ouk oida [“what I do not know myself”].Neither am I impelled to this by fear of any kind. I have no more fear than love. Or if I have [any fear, it is not that of falling] into hell but of falling into nothing.
British pastor and scholar Henry D. Rack has a lengthy and helpful discussion in his Reasonable Enthusiast in which he concludes that “Wesley generally lacked the kind of direct emotional experience of the presence of God, the supernatural world and an inward assurance of salvation of the kind that so many of the converts valued and about which both he and they spoke as being open to all.” In my reading of back issues of the Wesleyan Theological Journal prior to disposal, from the latest backward, I came across two interpretations or uses of John’s letter to Charles that relate to our concerns with John Wesley’s own religious experience.
The first is an article from the Wesleyan Theological Journal (Fall, 2006) by Laura Bartels Felleman (Cazenovia College), “John Wesley and the Servant of God.” In it she concludes that Wesley “never claimed to have had the faith of a child of God.” By his own definition, “the full sense of the word ‘faith’ included an inward perception or direct witness of one’s love for God.” But Wesley “himself did not possess this ‘direct’ witness.” What he taught to the Methodists was not based on his own religious experience. The Methodist preachers, however, “tried to convince people that if they did not know through the witness of the Holy Spirit that their sins were forgiven then they were children of the devil and not children of God.”
Felleman concludes that by 1775 Wesley’s distinction between the faith of a servant and the faith of a child (i.e., the full Christian faith) applied to himself. He had gained a new appreciation for the faith of a servant. Felleman finds support in her discussion of Wesley’s April 9, 1788, and June 11, 1788, Sermon, 106, “On Faith (Heb. 11:6),” and Sermon 117, “On the Discoveries of Faith,” both very different on this issue than his 1739 Sermon 9, “The Spirit of Bondage and Adoption (Romans 8:15).” In Sermon 117 for Wesley
the servant is called “accepted with [God” and is encouraged to press on in faith in order to attain the full privilege of faith—assurance and love of God. . . . the faith of a servant is presented as a sense of the invisible, eternal and even spiritual worlds and this faith is proof that the servant is justified and accepted by God.
Wesley at some crisis period in his journey and for some significant reason began to view his own faith-relationship to God differently. Felleman’s article concludes with “Wesley changed his mind about the status of those with the faith of the servant, a faith experience closely resembling his own, and finally came to teach that even one who feared God was accepted and justified by faith.” Our question remains, “to what extent can we apply John of the Cross’s “darkness of faith” to the religious faith of John Wesley and particularly to the meaning of his June 27, 1776, letter to his brother Charles”?
The second, more recent, and in my mind more fruitful interpretation for our purposes is that of Mark K. Olson, “Aldersgate II and the Birth of the Servant State,” Wesleyan Theological Journal (Fall, 2008). At the time of writing Olson was the pastor of the Antioch Family Church of the Nazarene in Antioch, California, and was already an accomplished Wesleyan scholar. In his article he grapples with John’s June 27, 1776, letter to his brother Charles. As he sketches the scholarly reaction to the letter, the difficult situational factors at the time proposed by interpreters do not in his mind fully “explain this unusual confession.” Following an analysis of the puzzling paragraphs, Olson proceeds into a fascinating study of Wesley’s views on his own religious experience. Although we cannot do full justice to the details of his careful research, a few of his conclusions may be of help.
From an examination of Wesley’s Sermon 43, “The Scripture Way of Salvation” (1765) and his Plain Account of Christian Perfection (1776), Olson perceived that Wesley, realizes he had “previously judged his pre-Aldersgate faith journey much too harshly.” Wesley now sees himself as having been justified by faith in 1725, but was in a “pre-new birth condition” that awaited the experience of Aldersgate I in 1738. So Wesley believed that “he had experienced two moments of conversion”—justification in 1725 and the new birth in 1738. Olson concludes: “Theologically, Wesley’s path is now set to embracing a gospel that celebrates more fully the universality of God’s grace by enlarging the role of prevenient grace within his ordo salutis.”
In relation to this, Wesley began to use the label of the faith of a servant defining “this lower level as the ‘common privilege of Christians fearing God and working righteousness. . . . This was substantively the same standard Wesley affirmed of himself in his letter to his brother Charles in 1776.” Thus a solution for the apparent contradiction between his “conversions” in 1725 and 1738 Wesley worked out in the mid-1770s: “By the late 1780s the servant state had formally become another stage in the Wesleyan ordo salutis” characterized as “a faith that fears God and pursues righteousness and goodness.” This 1770s change Olson calls “a spiritual crisis in Wesley’s life” that he speaks of as Aldersgate II.
The crises of both Aldersgate I and Aldersgate II led to changes in Wesley’s thinking and ministry. To put Aldersgate II in perspective, Olson contrasts the two experiences:
In Aldersgate I (1738) Wesley was negative toward his early faith journey, causing him to accept a radically “new” gospel message. In Aldersgate II (1766) he frowns on his post-Aldersgate faith journey, moving him over time to reclaim much of his earlier gospel. . . . Aldersgate I led Wesley to tell seekers that salvation is received by faith alone in Christ alone, witnessed by the Spirit alone. Aldersgate II convinced him to counsel seekers who lacked the new birth to not lose hope, for God already accepts those who fear him and pursue righteousness in their lives.
After Aldersgate I Wesley viewed May 24, 1738 as the beginning of his spiritual life; “by contrast, Aldersgate II led him to ground his faith journey not in 1738, but in 1725.” Olson asks, “Why did Wesley so change his mind?”
Olson’s answer is that there is only one sufficient explanation, that is, “Wesley experienced a powerful spiritual upheaval in the years 1765-1767, and this crisis compelled him to change his mind about his early faith journey.” This experience “sharpened his understanding as to what really happened at Aldersgate” and “led him to embrace the faith of the servant as another stage in his ordo salutis.” As Olson concludes his study, “Aldersgate II confirms that the transition from Wesley’s middle to late periods was initiated by a spiritual crisis similar in nature and magnitude to the one he experienced nearly thirty years earlier” at Aldersgate I.
So we ask, “What and how does that which John experienced, as he wrote to his brother Charles on June 27, 1776, contribute to Wesley’s transition in his ordo salutis” for others and especially for his own faith-journey?” Where does it fit in and how can it be viewed? Can John of the Cross help us to understand or better appreciate John Wesley at this point?
III. John Wesley and “the darkness of faith”
Our question has now become in general “how does John Wesley relate to John of the Cross in the realm of Christian life—Wesley’s concepts and in his own religious experience and experiences?” Here we will attempt to present the essence of my 1999 study comparing John Wesley (1703-1791) and John of the Cross (1542-1591) on “Growth and Sanctification. The point that interests us is Wesley’s conception of growth in Christian character beyond what he labeled entire sanctification and its possible relation to the spiritual insights of John of the Cross and the latter’s use of the “darkness” metaphor.
John Wesley’s views on growth in grace and entire sanctification are familiar to all of us who have an interest in our 18th century forbearer (42-45). So we concentrate briefly only on how he speaks of growth beyond sanctification. Hopefully we are all aware that “Wesley’s conception of entire sanctification continued to be dynamic in nature” (45). His position was that the one who
“is perfect, he hath still need to ‘grow in grace’, and daily to advance in the knowledge and love of God his Savior [2 Peter 3:18]” . . . . Speaking of sanctification in Wesley in the broad sense Maddox pinpoints the need in two ways, first “as a life -long process of healing our sin-disoriented affections,” and second as “a persistent deepening of our own awareness of the deceptive motivations and prejudices remaining in our life. How does Wesley describe this need? In 1741 in “Christian Perfection” he says simply that there is no “exemption either from ignorance or mistake, or infirmities or temptations.”
Thirteen years later 1784 Wesley insists that
it is not possible for man, whose understanding is darkened, to whom mistake is as natural as ignorance, who cannot think at all but by the mediation of organs which are weakened and depraved, . . . for men always to think right, to apprehend things distinctly, and to judge truly of them. . . . The highest perfection which man can attain while the soul dwells in the body does not exclude ignorance and error, and a thousand other infirmities (46).
But cannot more progress made in the direction of greater Christlikeness in our affections and actions to the greater “recovery of the divine nature; the renewal of our souls after the image of God in righteousness and true holiness, in justice, mercy, and truth,”! as Wesley himself put it in 1744 (47)? As we read Wesley in the light of John of the Cross just how did Wesley propose that the entirely sanctified are to advance toward the goal of Christlikeness (49)? As we would expect, it is with the chief means of grace that he applies to all levels of growth in grace. Such will for Wesley nourish the grace that is given to us as expressed in a letter to Mrs. Woodhouse in 1766:
Continually stir up the gift of God which is in you, not only by continuing to hear His word at all opportunities, but by reading, by meditation, and above all by private prayer. Though sometimes it should be a grievous cross, yet bear your cross, and it will bear you: your labor shall not be in vain. . . . Surely His grace is sufficient for you: sufficient to subdue all things to Himself. I want you to be all like Him (47 48). Wesley kept the goal of final likeness to Christ always in view as an anchor that keeps the Christian steady. With “St. Paul: “This one thing I do; [. . .] I press toward the mark, for the prize of the high calling in Christ Jesus.” Wesley comments in 1774 that “’it is scarce possible to grow in grace, and in the vital knowledge of Jesus Christ’ without ‘a continual tranquility of spirit, the evenness of a mind stayed on God, a calm repose in the blood of Jesus’” (48-49).
With Wesley on Prayer, the all-important means of grace for him, we come to a major area of his relation to John of the Cross. “Private prayer was uppermost” with recollection appearing as an integral part of praying. Wesley taught that “God does nothing but in answer to prayer; . . . Every new victory which a soul gains is the effect of a new prayer” (49) A question: Although Wesley was “certain that Scripture by ‘prayer’almost always means vocal prayer” and that “whosoever intermits this for any time will neither pray with the voice nor the heart” as he affirmed that “there are excellent things in most of the Mystic writers,” still to what extent did he make room for mental prayer, silent or in the contemplative sense (50)?
John Wesley perceived meditation, for example, as a part of the devotional exercises: “To Christopher Hopper on September 12, 1755, Wesley wrote that God “calls you to converse with him more in prayer and meditation. In the former we more directly speak to God; in the latter he speaks to us.” Prayer for Wesley was the breath of spiritual life: “he that lives cannot possibly cease breathing.” As he continues elsewhere.
the life of God in the soul of the believer. . . implies the continual inspiration of God’s Holy Spirit: God’s breathing into the soul, and the soul’s breathing back what it first receives from God; a continual action of God upon the soul, . . . the . . . unceasing presence of God, the loving, pardoning God, manifested to the heart, and perceived by faith; and an unceasing return of love, praise, and prayer, offering up all the thoughts of our hearts, all the words of our tongues, all the works of our hands, all our body, soul, and spirit, to be one holy sacrifice, acceptable unto God in Christ Jesus (50-51).
Wesley makes several statements in which he comes close to the contemplative mode of prayer such as “what is prayer but the desire of the soul expressed in words to God, either inwardly or outwardly?” He comments in a letter to Philothea Briggs that “a continual desire is a continual prayer” and adds, “there is a far higher sense, such an open intercourse with God, such a close, uninterrupted communion with Him,” as experienced by “not a few of our brothers and sisters now alive.” Of a nineteen year old Jane Bisson, Wesley commented on October 12, 1787, that “I think she exceeds Madame Guyon in deep communion with God.” Was not Wesley surely speaking of contemplative prayer in some degree (51-52)?
A very interesting comment from this child of the Enlightenment comes from August 12, 1769, when Wesley, “referring to praying with the understanding he adds, ‘at other times the understanding has little to do, while the soul is poured forth in passive prayer’.” What did he mean by “passive” prayer? Wesley comes close to “John of the Cross when the latter speaks of contemplative prayer in the language of ‘dark faith’ and similar metaphors.” Wesley could speak of private prayer as a cross, and that there are times when it is “wisdom to force ourselves to prayer—to pray whether we can or no.” Quite instructive is his letter to Miss March, June 25, 1771:
Undoubtedly there are various kinds and degrees of communion with God . . . The most desirable prayer is that where we can quite pour out our soul and freely talk with God. But it is not this alone which is acceptable to Him. “I love one,” said an holy man, “that perseveres in dry duty.” Beware of thinking even this is labour lost. God does much work in the heart even at those seasons.
This sounds to me very much like God teaching “the soul secretly” that we find in the language of John of the Cross (52-53)
Finally we come to “John Wesley on the ‘dark night’” (53-50). Is there any similarity between Wesley and John of the Cross’ “dark night of the soul” to be found? To flesh out his antipathy to the “darkness” metaphor we read in a letter critical of the mystics and writing critically of the mystics naming Madame Guyon dated September 20, 1776, Wesley assures Elizabeth Ritchie that “‘He that followeth Me . . . walketh not in darkness.’ Nothing can be more certain. Closely follow Him, and you will never come into any darkness of soul.” Wesley in Outler’s judgment made an “ʻuncommonly sharp distinction’ between heaviness and darkness of soul as he wrote to Mrs. Marston, August 11, 1770: ʻHeaviness you may sometimes feel; but you never need come into darkness (53).’”
Wesley’s explanation was that “Darkness,” as he wrote four years later to Mary Bishop, “seldom comes upon us but by our own fault,” but “heaviness . . . may be occasioned by a thousand circumstances, such as frequently neither our wisdom can foresee nor our power prevent.” But Wesley’s definitions were not always been so distinct as he wrote in 1757 to Dorothy Furly, “You did right to pray, as you could pray; and this is the best method which can be taken in heaviness or darkness of any kind” (53-54).
The wilderness state as Wesley defined it, “ a loss of faith, love, joy in the Holy Ghost, peace, and power,” could be laid to three causes:
first sin, including sins of commission, sins of omission such as the neglect of private prayer, giving way to some kind of inward sin, giving place to anger, any vain or inordinate affection, and spiritual sloth. . . . A second cause of this darkness is ignorance, imagining that the Scripture teaches that “all believers without exception must sometimes be in darkness.” . . . A third cause of this darkness is temptation, particularly what arises from within. This comes when Christians begin to think too highly of themselves, of their progress in grace, to presume that “because we feel no sin, we have none in us, but the soul is all love (54-55).
The latter cause may throw the Christian “into much heaviness of soul, yea, sometimes into utter darkness (55).”
In distinction to a “darkness of mind” Wesley’s common “heaviness of soul” can exist as he defines it,
along “with faith, with hope, with love of God and man; with the peace of God, with joy in the Holy Ghost, with inward and outward holiness.” Yet it is a “sorrow or grief” which “may sometimes be so deep as to overshadow the whole soul,” even to “have an influence over the body.” The causes are of many kinds, bodily and nervous disorders, calamity, poverty, or the death of those “near and dear unto us.” And again he absolutely denies any withdrawal of God, and affirms that even conviction of sin gained by increasing self-knowledge “need not occasion darkness of soul” (56).
God permits this heaviness to befall so many of his children for the sake of the “trial of their faith” (1 Peter 1:7), for their increase in faith, living hope, and love, and to “advance in holiness, holiness of heart and holiness of conversation”:
By this the blessed Spirit purifies the heart from pride, self-will, passion; from love of the world, from foolish and hurtful desires, from vile and vain affections. . . . Through the operation of his Spirit they humble more and more, and abase the soul before God. They calm and meeken our turbulent spirit, tame the fierceness of our nature, soften our obstinacy and self-will, crucify us to the world, and bring us to expect all our strength from, and to seek all our happiness in, God (56).
It is obvious that there are many similarities between Wesley’s “heaviness of soul” and John of the Cross’ “dark night of the soul,” and perhaps some links between the latter and Wesley’s “darkness of mind” which he called “the wilderness state.”
It reads like Wesley was quoting John of the Cross! Further examination of Wesley convinces me that many similarities exist between Wesley’s “heaviness of soul” and John of the Cross’ “dark night of the soul.” And are there some links between Wesley’s “heaviness of soul” and his “darkness of mind” which he called “the wilderness state.” Are they as fully distinct in experience as Wesley makes them by his rational, somewhat arbitrary definition? What then should
we make of his comments to Miss March on October 13, 1764, that “from what not only you but many others likewise have experienced, we find there is very frequently a kind of wilderness state, not only after justification, but even after deliverance from sin.” Which state is this? Wesley suggests the frequent cause of this is “evil reasoning” and the cure is to resume your confidence: “receive it freely . . . by mere grace. . . . Dare to believe! Look up and see thy Saviour near!” But surely evil reasoning is not the only possible factor (57).
We ask, Does Wesley’s experience, his own and others, always accord with his definitions?
This brings us back to where we began, with Wesley’s letter to his brother Charles on June 27, 1766, which Outler, after quoting from it observes, “Was this a case of ‘heaviness’ or ‘darkness’ or what?” We quote the letter again in part:
I do not feel the wrath of God abiding on me; nor can I believe it does. And yet (this is the mystery) [I do not love God. I never did]. Therefore [I never] believed in the Christian sense of the word. Therefore [I am only an] honest heathen. . . . [I have no] direct witness. . . . And yet I dare not preach otherwise than I do, either concerning faith, or love, or justification, or perfection. And yet I find rather an increase than a decrease of zeal for the whole work of God and every part of it. I am pheromenos, [“so swept along”]I know not how, that I can’t stand still.
Striking is how the last part of this passage [“yet I dare not preach . . . I can’t stand still”] rings true to notes often struck by John of the Cross! If Wesley had read The Dark Night discriminatingly apart from the later mystics, he would have understood better the work of God in his own heart and been able more genuinely to help others without appealing so much to artificial distinctions between “darkness” and “heaviness.”
Significantly, this passage does not stand alone, for more than six years later on December 15, 1772, he wrote again to his brother Charles,
“I often cry out, Vitae me redde priori! [From Horace’s Epistles, I. vii. 95: “Give me back my former life.”] Let me be again an Oxford Methodist! I am often in doubt whether it would not be best for me to resume all my Oxford rules, great and small. I did then walk closely with God and redeem the time. But what have I been doing these thirty years?
In Mark Olson’s terms, John Wesley after Aldergate II longs to go back before Aldersgate I!
Conclusion
Although in one sense we have concluded our quest, perhaps for the sake of completeness it will help to add a few paragraphs from the final “Evaluation” section (59-62) of The Tower article:
What about inserting into a Wesleyan view of growth in grace a positive view of times of spiritual darkness or aridity particularly as presented by the sixteenth century John of the Cross? Is such totally contrary to the spirit of John Wesley or even the essence of Wesleyanism? Does Wesley’s mixed rejection of mysticism really fit John of the Cross?
It is my judgement that Wesley himself knew such dark and arid times at different stages in his spiritual journey. Further “he realized that his own people, more often than not, would not receive [sanctifying] grace until after a lifetime of growth, change, and suffering.” His “uncommonly sharp distinction” between “darkness and heaviness” made it difficult for him to see such experiences as positive, particularly those he defined as “darkness.” Yet he does describe a positive role for “heaviness.” Wesley’s own broader definitions of sin and infirmities could make such times fit positively at times even under his “darkness” or wilderness state” rubric. The dark night for John of the Cross does deal with sin often, but in the passive night of the spirit more with that sin, frailty, and woundedness that Wesley insists remains after entire sanctification. And for John of the Cross it reaches into those areas that one’s activistic or kataphatic efforts fail to heal. So it seems to me that especially in this area there is a place for John of the Cross’s “dark night of the soul,” for growth in grace after what Wesleyans call entire sanctification as they long for a fuller likeness to Christ in character, attitude, and behavior. St. John’s contemplative “dark night” is a kind of prayer that waits on the secret work of God beyond all one’s activistic efforts. As kataphatic as Wesleyanism is, there remains in my opinion an authentic place for a touch of the apophatic. . . .
For me this is illustrated by some in our own time writing out of the Carmelite tradition particularly as formed by Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross. One is Frank X. Tuoti who spells out this work of God in detail:
In silent, wordless, formless prayer we “steal fire from heaven” by means of the Spirit who now prays in us, fire that heals and cauterizes our deep wounds and fissures. Until this Spirit-fire both slakes and purifies us, we will never truly experience that we are children of God. In contemplative prayer, the Spirit gradually dislodges the ‘junk’ of a lifetime, going back to earliest, childhood, the hidden debris of hurts, angers, and resentments that obstruct the inflow of grace at our deepest depths.
We conclude with Thomas Merton that “infused contemplation is a powerful means of sanctification and is intimately connected with the pure and perfect love of God which is God’s greatest gift to the soul.” Considering also John of the Cross’ definition of infused contemplation (N. 1. 10. 6) it appears indispensable for the kind of growth by means of prayer that would make a significant contribution to Wesleyan growth in grace. We Wesleyans need not limit ourselves to “the active night of the spirit” in our spiritual quest, but can also be open to “the passive night of the spirit” in our prayer quest for a deepening and holistic transformation into the likeness of Christ.
Appendix: MotherTeresa
In Brian Kolodiejchuk’s illuminating work, Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light, The Private Writings of the “Saint of Calcutta,” we meet a special lady known to most contemporary Christians for her ministry among the poor and the dying. In her later ministry the theme of “dark faith” that also characterized the life of Mother Teresa (1910--1997), Kolodiejchuk documents and describes how Mother Teresa in her own unique manner lived the spiritual heritage of the sixteenth century John of the Cross in the twentieth century.
At the age of fifty two, Mother Teresa made a “kind of ‘mission statement’” that helps us understand her spiritual life, indeed her whole life”:
“If I ever become a Saint—I will surely be one of ‘darkness.’ I will continually be absent from Heaven—to light the light of those in darkness on earth.”
And “light the light” of countless folk, she certainly did. For decades she was the object of public interest; attention was paid to her particularly at her death at the age of eighty-seven. As Kolodiejchuk asked, “What was the source of this attractive force drawing so many people to her?” How does this “source” relate to the heart of the Christian gospel as heard and practiced by Mother Teresa?
Three aspects of Mother Teresa’s interior life were revealed during the process of canonization (beatified October 19, 2003). In addition to her private vow as a nun (1942) and the mystical experiences (September 10, 1946) that led to the founding of the Missionaries of Charity was “her intimate sharing in the Cross of Christ through the long years of interior darkness.” This darkness as it became the greatest trial of her life relates to her “sharing in the Cross of Christ”—and to the power of the resurrection so evident in her ministry.
Gonxha Agnes Bojaxhiu was born in Skopje, Macedonia, on August 26, 1910, and at eighteen on September 26, 1928, she left her native Albania for Ireland to join the Sisters of Loreto in Calcutta. At age twelve in 1922, she knew that she “had a vocation to the poor.” The hand of God was on her life uniquely from childhood in ways that extend beyond what most of us know. When Mother Teresa joined the Loreto order she was named after Thérèse of Lisieux, “the Little Flower” (1873—1897). After a five week journey she arrived in Calcutta on January 6, 1929, and made her first profession of vows on May 25, 1931.
As she approached her final vows on May 24, 1937, although she had her share of sufferings, she was described as one for whom “the joy she radiated around her effectively hid her trials.” In a February 8, 1937, letter she wrote: “I have joyfully carried my cross with Jesus. . . . Now I embrace suffering even before it actually comes, and like this Jesus and I live in love.” Her identification with the Cross appears as a part of her early ministry as was the experience of darkness: “I have more often as my companion ‘darkness.’ And when the night becomes very thick . . . then I simply offer myself to Jesus.”
Mother Teresa’s experience during this period appears to be similar to the spiritual or purification processes of John of the Cross’ “night of the senses” and “night of the spirit.” What is obvious is that her unique spirituality and vocation was early in place as she was being prepared by Providence for an unusual ministry—a ministry that was more deeply than most grounded in or prepared to flow from the spiritual dynamic of the cross and resurrection of Jesus.
Crucial for Mother Teresa was the private vow made in April 1942: “I made a vow to God, binding under [pain of] mortal sin, to give to God anything that He may ask, ‘Not to refuse Him anything.’” This was one of her greatest secrets, which, she said, “hides everything in me,” as she revealed seventeen years later—“to say ‘Yes’ to God in all circumstances.” Irrevocable vows (besa) were a part of her Albanian heritage and a matter of honor: “She was determined to be faithful to her word given to God, even at the price of her life.” “The confidence to so abandon herself to God came out of her certainty that God loved her unconditionally. In fulfilling this vow she found her joy in life. She was a fun-loving and cheerful person for as one who knew her observed, “cheerfulness is often a cloak which hides a life of sacrifice, continual union with God, fervor and generosity.”
On the train September 10, 1946, as she journeyed for her annual retreat to the Loreto Convent in Darlington, she experienced a decisive mystical encounter with Christ. Although she kept the details veiled in silence, years later she did reveal to Malcom Muggenridge that
[It] was a call within my vocation. It was a second calling. It was a vocation to give up even Loreto where I was very happy and to go out in the streets to serve the poorest of the poor. It was in that train, I head the call to give up all and follow Him into the slums—to serve Him in the poorest of the poor. . . . There was no doubt that it was going to be His work.
This day, which she celebrated later as “Inspiration Day,” she considered to be the real beginning of the Missionaries of Charity. This mystical experience or call took place in the context of Calvary when Jesus, dying on the Cross, cried out “I thirst.” For her the expressed aim of the Missionaries of Charity was “to satiate the thirst of Jesus Christ on the Cross for Love and Souls.” Jesus’ saying, “I thirst,” became central to her calling and to what the Missionaries of Charity were to be.
The validity of Mother Teresa’s special call, however, had to be tested and discerned by her spiritual director and by her superiors in the monastic order and in the Church. Her spiritual director, for example, forbade her for a season to think or speak about it. After four months, however, he had no doubt that her inspiration was from God and gave her permission to write to the archbishop, which she did on January 1, 1947. After several pleading letters to the archbishop and a period of prayerful waiting on the part of those in authority, the permission came to her to found the Missionaries of Charity on January 6, 1948. The process of discerning the will of God for such a radical undertaken had taken a year and three and one-half months from when the call first came to her on September 10, 1946. Her desire to become a European nun living outside the convent walls identifying with the poor in their local culture and conditions was soon to reach fulfillment.
On August 17, 1948, clad in a white saris with blue border, Mother Teresa set out, a European nun alone in India, to begin life as a Missionary of Charity. She possessed only five rupees, her entire capital. Her confidence was in the promise God made to her two years earlier: “Do not fear—I shall be with you always. . . . Trust me lovingly—trust me blindly.”
On December 21, 1948, for the first time Mother Teresa went to the slums as a Missionary of Charity—“a light has dawned in the darkness of the slums.” The poverty she met was staggering. As she had foreseen, “this new life was bringing her ‘for the most part only suffering.’ Yet she accepted that it had to be so, for this was ‘the dark night of the birth of the Society.’” Mother Teresa began her work with only volunteer help, but was soon praying for followers to help her and by June 1950, her community numbered twelve. On October 7, 1950, the archbishop officially established the Missionaries of Charity in the archdiocese of Calcutta.
Suffering was taken by Mother Teresa as a means in her vocation. The care for the poor became more and more demanding. Soon she found a place for the “hopeless” cases, the dying that no hospital would take. For her, “the neglected, the rejected, the underserved closely resembled the suffering Christ—‘Christ in distressing disguise—gave her the opportunity to put her love into living action.’” These sufferings, she took as her own, “uniting her with Christ in His Passion and with the poorest of the poor in their pain.”
By 1953, Mother Teresa’s inspiration of 1946 for a flourishing community serving the poorest of the poor was now a living reality, and all the challenges and sufferings had been worth it. Yet, she was experiencing a painful interior ordeal for which she repeatedly sought spiritual support and finally revealed. As she wrote on March 18, 1953, to the archbishop on her interior state that had been developing since the founding of the Missionaries of Charity:
Please pray specially for me that I may not spoil His work and that Our Lord may show Himself—for there is such terrible darkness within me, as if everything was dead. It has been like this more or less from the time I started “the work.” Ask our Lord to give me courage.
The accomplishments of the community soon attracted admiration and praise, and accounts of their work soon appeared locally and internationally. This deeply concerned her for she was fearful that they were getting too much publicity.
In the midst of such fruitfulness, Mother Teresa’s darkness continued. Summed up, “Interior darkness was Mother Teresa’s privileged way of entering in the mystery of the Cross of Christ.” We are beginning to see the context of and the unique role her “darkness” played in her vocation: “Pray for me—for within me everything is icy cold.—It is only that blind faith that carries me through for in reality to me all is darkness.”
Mother Teresa’s life was a contradiction in that she could not sense the presence of God in her life, yet she was in the throes of “a torturing longing for God.” But paradoxically “she clung steadfastly to the faith she professed, and without a drop of consolation, labored wholeheartedly in her daily service of the poorest of the poor.” Absence and presence go together as the hidden power of her ministry. Her darkness motivated the intensity of devotion that enabled her demanding ministry; it invigorated her impulse to mission.
Mother Teresa’s followers perceived her as a very balanced and joyful person, even when things went wrong. In response to the counsel of Father Neurner, Mother Teresa in 1961 even expressed gratitude for her darkness :
For the first time in this 11 years—I have come to love the darkness.—For I believe now that it is a part, a very, very small part of Jesus’ darkness & pain on earth. . . . Today really I felt a deep joy—that Jesus can’t go anymore through the agony—but that He wants to go through it in me.—More than ever I surrender myself to Him.\
A turning point in her understanding of her darkness came with the realization that the darkness was the spiritual side of her work as she shared in Christ’s redemptive suffering identifying with those she served: “she was drawn mystically into the deep pain they experienced as a result of feeling unwanted and rejected and, above all, by living without faith in God. As the transformation was taking place in her soul, the darkness was actually the mysterious link that united her to Jesus.
John of the Cross’s “purificatory” night of the spirit was now being transformed into a “reparatory” night of the spirit. As she wrote to her sisters in July 1961, “My dear children—without our suffering, our work would just be social work, very good and helpful, but it would not be the work of Jesus Christ, not part of the redemption.” She had grasped the meaning of her trial and would say with the apostle Paul in Colossians 1:24: “I am now rejoicing in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church.”
Mother Teresa’s darkness, which she saw as the price of lighting “the fire of love,” seems to increase, “Pray for me—for the life within me is harder to live. To be in love & yet not to love, to live by faith and yet not to believe. To spend myself and yet be in total darkness.” Yet she could say, “Thank God we don’t serve God with our feelings, otherwise I don’t know where I would be.” It appears that she had not read John of the Cross carefully, and did not realize that her “agonizing and interminable darkness was reparatory rather than purgative,” that is, not to purify her faith, but to empower her ministry.
Kolodiejchuk’s work shows us clearly that Mother Teresa’s darkness was part and parcel of her unique anointing for her also unique, blessed of God, ministry. Even with this absence of a vivid sense of God’s presence in prayer, her life was one of uncompromising fidelity to prayer: “People were fascinated just watching Mother pray. They would sit there and watching her be really drawn into this mystery.” In November 1979, she was again elected superior general by the Missionaries of Charity. Shortly after, on December 11, 1979, she received the Nobel Peace Prize. Mother Teresa understood that the Nobel Peace Prize had helped many people find their way to the poor that prompted her to guard against any lessening of zeal in serving the poor. She handled the attention of the world’s great with great grace: “I am too small to understand it all.”
In July 1997, Mother Teresa returned to Calcutta after a journey to Rome, New York, and Washington, D.C., quietly observing, “My work is done.” On September 5, in the evening, the electricity failed, and thus “while Calcutta was in darkness, the earthly life of the one who had brought so much light to this city and to the whole world was extinguished.
The fruit of silence is prayer, The fruit of prayer is faith, The fruit of faith is love, The fruit of love is service, The fruit of service is peace.
Appendix: Georgia Harkness
An admirable 20th century theologian whose life and work illustrates our concerns is the pioneering, Georgia Elma Harkness (1891-1974). This brilliant Methodist lady fought the cultural restrictions on women in the male-dominated world of theological education and ministry as she obtained an education and sought a career as a theologian in academia. She became the first woman to obtain a full professorship in an American theological Seminary. As Professor of Applied Theology she was concerned in her teaching and prolific writing to communicate the Christian faith in an accessible manner to her students and the educated laity. For this she endured criticism and non-acceptance as not being a scholar’s scholar! As a Christian and a scholar, she was a churchman of prophetic courage.
Our concern is to see Georgia Harkness as a Christian. As a framework for understanding her, we note that she was an ecumenist, a pacifist, and deeply interested in social justice, for example, women’s rights, civil rights, and justice for both Jews and Arabs in the Middle East. Georgia grew up in an evangelical church and a church-going family. Her education, a story in itself, climaxed in graduate work at Boston University under the influence of Edgar S. Brightman, a Personalist philosopher and a churchman. These were years that continued her development in the understanding of Christianity and who she was as a Christian.
Georgia Harkness’ Christian faith as it matured before the 1940s was summed up by her biographer as “Triumphant Religion.” Her religion was “a way of life” that functioned in her words “to make men better and make men stronger.” To provide, in her words, “keenness of moral vision, strength to meet the storms and battles of life—these have been the dual gifts of religion.” She was an ethical idealist with an emphasis on moral effort.
Consistent with this Georgia Harkness thought of the death of Jesus on the cross as “the eternal symbol of a loving suffering God.” Jesus’ resurrection was “the means to ‘triumphant living’ that Christianity calls salvation.” The primary gift that Jesus gives to those who would follow him is “the model of a ‘Christlike personality.’” As her biographer puts it, “the Christlike personality added up to a beautiful well-rounded way of life and grew out of a solid biblical base,” Georgia, however, “believed that a person came to such a personality through high moral striving.”
Georgia Harness, at the age of forty-eight, in 1939, had her faith journey neatly and rationally all-together. Her career and calling appeared to be on the rise. She was viewed as “a woman of almost invincible physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual strength.” Not only did she have “the satisfaction of living her life in service to God,” she “stood alone as the famed woman theologian in a field dominated by men”; to continue such success, however, “would continue to be an uphill climb.”
But unaware of it as yet, writes her biographer, “Georgia was setting forth on a deeply inward spiritual journey, a dark night of her soul, that would extend for several years until the mid-1940s.” She began to question if she had fallen far short of the goals of her triumphant religion and of her calling. Her use of the language of triumphant religion, significantly, had come “primarily from Georgia’s academic study of philosophy, not from her evangelical background.”
Although still working out of the perspective of philosophical idealism, Georgia Harkness had not forgotten “the essential language of her evangelical Christian background rooted in the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus Christ” while she “held fast to the precept of triumphant religion that ‘I can do all things through Christ.’” In early 1937, when her father became seriously ill, her pace of work came to a sudden halt. In his lingering days he asked Georgia “to recover the roots of her Christian faith” and to “write more about Jesus Christ.” Her father’s death began to release the hold of triumphant religion over her “and she began her journey towards spiritual maturity.”
The process was a lengthy one extending to mid-1944 when Georgia Harkness wrote The Dark Night of the Soul (1945), one of her most important books. This period was marked by physical problems and depression for which she put herself under the care of physicians and psychiatrists, and by a sense of the absence of the presence of God. As her biographer describes it, “at its heart, her dark night was a spiritual crisis. ‘And this is no way for a Christian to be!” she wrote out of the depth of her pain—physical, emotional, and spiritual.” As she studied the saints and their similar experiences, she was gradually coming to terms with her long-held faith in triumphant faith and life. Her biographer sums it up for us:
Before she worked out of a faith that human beings gained their own spiritual victory, that salvation lay in the ability to live out of high ideals. Through the redemptive experience at the heart of the dark night, Georgia now knew that the victory was in God’s gracious giving of divine grace—and in human acceptance.
May we say that Georgia’s life of believing “with Christ” became transformed into believing “in Christ” as she came to the end of saving herself in dedicated quality Christian service and saw her life and service as fully dependent on the grace of God in Jesus crucified and risen?
Frank G. Carver Professor Emeritus of Religion Point Loma Nazarene University San Diego, California August 2014