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The Salvific Body of Christ

This document contains an honors project by Greg Van Buskirk (2006) titled 'The Salvific Body of Christ: Wesleyan Christology Embodied in an Ecclesiology of Love.' The project examines the relationship between Christology and ecclesiology, specifically critiquing the potential for a 'monophysite' Christology in John Wesley's works—where Christ's human nature is subsumed by his divinity—and exploring how Wesley's ecclesiological practices might offer a pathway to healing this theological tension. The document also includes a brief evaluative note by Frank G. Carver, which assesses the quality of the undergraduate research, notes the influence of process theology and sacramentalism on the work, and questions the extent to which the author's views reflect his professors.

THE SALVIFIC BODY OF CHRIST: Wesleyan Christology Embodied in an Ecclesiology of Love An Honors Project Greg Van Buskirk, 2006

Something peculiar is facing our church services today, and it has the power to fatally weaken the Church’s evangelical value. Listen to the music. So few songs today address Jesus Christ, affirm him as the only way to salvation, or confirm the divine mystery of the Incarnation. Most focus on us as individuals addressing the transcendence of God. Observe the events within the service. So few liturgies include the Lord’s Supper weekly. Indeed, churches today prefer to partake in the Eucharist once a month or even once a quarter. Study the sermons. Few messages today boldly preach the transforming power of Christ in, through, and for the Church. The pulpit has been reduced to a self-help lecture series. So, what is this peculiarity that afflicts today’s Church? Simply, it is the lack of Jesus Christ as the center of our salvation and worship. It should not come as a surprise that any one of these previously mentioned problems initiates the others. When we eliminate the Second Person of the Trinity from our lyrics, how can we realistically gather around the Lord’s Table to break bread? When our sermons are reduced to self-help lessons, how can we join together as a Church Body to lift up the name of Jesus as a community? And when we do not frequently nourish ourselves with the Eucharist, how can we be a healthy Church that proclaims the vitality of Christ? What we do as a Church – our liturgy, our sacraments, our sermons, our practices – bears a profound message about who Christ is. Thus, when we maintain an inadequate Christology (the understanding of who Christ is essentially both as fully human and as fully divine), our ecclesiology (Gk., ekklesia, “assembly, church,” literally “called out”; the theology of the Church, including its practices and beliefs) becomes incredibly weak. In the words of 20th century theologian D.M. Baillie, “if we have not a sound Christology, we cannot have a sound theology either.” Therefore, when we witness a strong, healthy church that is actively involved in the sustaining practices that affirm Christ – the Eucharist, baptism, outward ministries – we might expect a strong, healthy doctrine of Christ to accompany it. More to the point, we might expect that the human side of Christ is equally as strong and relevant as the divine side of Christ since Church practices originate, sustain, and reveal the human Christ. In the course of Church history, we find that the Methodist movement, started by John Wesley (1703–1791) in the 18th century, boldly adopts this healthy church model. In it, we witness a strong call to partake in the Eucharist, to minister to those in need, to preach from Scripture, and to live as a transformed Body of Christ. As such, we might expect a strong Christology – particularly one emphasizing Christ as human – from Wesley’s movement. However, Wesley’s Christology appears otherwise. In Wesley’s Christology, Wesleyan scholar John Deschner notes “two peculiarities” within Wesley’s works: “The first is the very heavy emphasis on the divinity [of Christ] throughout Wesleyan writings. … A second…is a tendency in some statements to speak of Christ’s divinity as a substance or abstract quality, which can be seen, judged, measured, and, when deserved, ascribed to Jesus.” Eminent Wesley scholar Randy Maddox goes so far as to suggest labeling Wesley’s Christology “monophysite,” by which he means that “[Wesley] allowed Christ’s human nature to be subsumed within the divine from the very beginning of the Incarnation.” Clearly, something is tremendously askew if Wesley’s ecclesiology may be considered healthy and strong while his Christology appears weakened by a lack of emphasis on the human nature of Jesus Christ. To be sure, ecclesiological practices without a healthy backing by body-affirming beliefs concerning the Messiah (the unfortunate position embodied by monophysitism) seem hollow. These preliminary statements ought to trigger a few mandatory questions. First, is Wesley properly classified as a “monophysite”? Indeed, to believe that Christ’s divine nature subsumed his human nature is heresy, so we must tread cautiously. Second, what effect would Wesley’s potential monophysitism have on his understanding of salvation? For many reasons, a weak Christology would only seem to nullify salvific potency theologically. Third, what effect would Wesley’s monophysitism have on the Church? Since Wesley was a practical theologian who was seriously involved in nourishing the Body of Christ pastorally, we must consider how to reconcile his healthy ecclesiology with his apparently incomplete doctrine of Christ. As such, we will first explore John Wesley’s Christology, paying close attention to areas where he tends to stray from Christian orthodoxy into heresy. To do this, we will have to briefly investigate Christological history to understand Wesley’s position and the effects of his Christology. Next, we will move from Christology to ecclesiology by looking into the Biblical language of the Body of Christ. By this, we intend our overall discussion to be continuous and justified as we finally turn to a potential pathway for the healing of Wesley’s problematic Christology through his ecclesiology. This will include an understanding of his practices for the Church in terms of its sacraments, ministries, and sermons. As such, it is our goal to provide healing for the Body of Christ of Wesley’s Christology through the Body of Christ of Wesley’s ecclesiology so that we, the Church, may ultimately be the salvific Body of Christ. Before journeying into this great endeavor, it is appropriate to offer some working definitions of the key terms presented herein. Throughout the course of this essay, I will be referring to Christology as the branch of Christian theology relating to the person(s), nature(s), and role(s) (including activities) of Jesus Christ. This brings up Christ’s two natures: the divine nature, by which I mean that Jesus is fully God, and the human nature, by which I mean that Christ is fully human. These definitions comply with Christian orthodoxy and the tradition of Christian creedal statements. Additionally, we have mentioned ecclesiology, which again pertains to the doctrine of the Church, including its practices and beliefs. We will also discuss σωμα (Gk., soma, “body”), which Paul uses in his metaphor of the Church as the “Body of Christ.” Lastly, there are two similar heretical belief systems: monophysitism, the doctrine that the Incarnate Christ is of one nature (wholly divine or subordinately human), not two; and docetism, the doctrine that Jesus was not truly human (particularly in reference to his physical body), but was instead an apparition. With a clearer understanding of the terminology used henceforth, we may begin the task of exploring John Wesley and his Christology.

I. WESLEY’S CHRISTOLOGY When Christianity appeared in history, its earliest preachers brought a message of salvation – particularly, that God’s salvation was true and real in Jesus, and that others may enter into the new salvific order only through Jesus. As we have already begun to see, these statements bear Christological implications. Richard Norris, Professor of Church History at Union Theological Seminary, elaborates upon Christology with the following: Christology asks what is presupposed and implied by the fact that Jesus is the elect “Son of God,” the one through whose life, death, and resurrection God has acted to realize his purpose for humanity; and this fact imposes, from the beginning, a certain logic on Christology. To understand or evaluate Jesus christologically means, on the one hand, to ask about his relation to God and, on the other, to seek a way of expressing his representative character as a human being—his status as the one in whom humanity’s common destiny is both summed up and determined.

Therefore, throughout history, these are the two criteria by which Christology is judged: Jesus Christ in relation to God, and Jesus Christ in relation to humanity. It is no surprise that Christological controversy began to erupt within 150 years of Jesus’ ascension. On the one hand, the Church was growing rapidly. Faithful disciples were spreading the Gospel to new cultures and societies with new languages, new practices, and thus new hurdles. With the increase in converts, it was clear to see that formal statements of Christian belief – creedal and doctrinal statements – were needed to ensure the univocality of the Christian message. On the other hand, Christian persecution was also on the rise within this pre-Constantinian context. It was therefore important to compose doctrinal and creedal statements detailing the beliefs for which the Christian martyrs were willing to die. Thus we see many Christian apologists who were also martyrs contributing to the canon of Christological literature from the early patristic period (which ended, more or less, in 451 with the Council of Chalcedon). To properly understand Wesley’s placement within the Christological traditions, we must first understand those traditions and arguments that constituted the Christological controversy. From these early writings we will see some major categories of Christological belief – including the various traditions that proved heretical, and the traditions that constructed orthodoxy. Following this, we may then assess Wesley’s Christology in terms of Christological orthodoxy and heresy, thus concluding with the effects of Wesley’s Christology on his overall theology of salvation, holiness, and love.

A Brief History of Early Patristic Christological Controversies From the beginning of the Christological debates, there was a fundamental paradox concerning the God-human Jesus Christ. To be sure, bearing the title “Christian” held with it a set of beliefs testifying that salvation had become real through Jesus. Additionally, this new cultic movement bore witness to the truth that Jesus was the one through whom we are delivered into the new order of salvation. Herein existed (and exists) the ultimate paradox: that one living, breathing entity – a human, no less! – should also be fully indwelt with God: fully human and fully God in one person. Many early theories (including New Testament writings) tended to portray this “divine paradox” in such a way so that Jesus had a “dual character—as embodying in himself the unity of two ways of being, spiritual and fleshly, divine and human.” Thus began the debates concerning whether or not Christ was of (or “in”) two natures. Language even became hazy and convoluted to incorporate the minutiae: here we see the use of the Greek hypostasis (literally, “substance”) to denote Christ’s “being” or “substantive reality,” thus used similarly to the Greek ousia (“being”). “From the mid-4th cent., however, it was contrasted with ousia and used to mean ‘individual reality’, especially in Trinitarian and Christological contexts. The formula ‘Three Hypostaseis in one Ousia’ came to be accepted as an epitome of the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity.” Hence, a new language was required even to talk about Christ, for the concept of a God-human was (and, frankly, still is) so foreign to human thought. Another term that began circulating with the Johannine writings of the New Testament was the “Logos” – that Jesus was the Logos, or “Word,” of God (e.g., John 1:1-14). The second century apologist Justin Martyr (100–165) quickly adopted this language; however, he equated “logos” with “reason,” therefore making Jesus God’s “divine power which orders and maintains the world-system,” though it was not the “first or ultimate deity. It was derivative, ‘begotten.’” As such, Justin’s Logos-theology portrayed Christ as inferior to God – a “slightly lower level of divinity…between the pure divinity of God and the nondivinity of creatures.” This created for Justin a problematic Christological situation wherein a divine cosmological (theory of the universe) structure was created that placed Christ as an inferior mediator between humans and God, thereby discrediting God’s ability to enter into a direct relationship with humanity. This essentially subjugated the Good News of salvation. It was inconceivable to Justin that God should fully dwell – without language of inferiority – in a human being of one hypostasis; moreover, Justin’s position proved inconceivable to orthodox doctrine as it developed over the next centuries. Next came Melito of Sardis (died c. 180), whose Christology stood in opposition of the docetic Christologies rampant in his and Justin’s time. Instead of claiming that God could not possibly exist within humanity in bodily form, Melito affirmed the full humanity of Christ. For him, “Christ is a glorious, divine figure who becomes incarnate for the sake of the redemption of humankind from the suffering and death which were its inheritance from Adam.” Further, Melito tied Christ to the history of Israel, understanding him to be the “fulfillment of the whole dispensation of the Mosaic covenant,” thereby offering a reading and understanding of Scripture that modern scholars and theologians might describe as “narrative.” For Melito, the fundamental unity in history presented in Christ – that Christ is the fulfillment of God’s covenant – necessitated a fully fleshed Christology. Clearly, such a position brings God to a human level in the face of Jesus Christ, whose grace-filled presence truly heals and salves humanity. Melito understood that without a full incarnation, salvation suffers. Subsequent theologians, such as Irenaeus of Lyon (c. 135–202), continued to stress God’s involvement with the creaturely (something we actually read about in the very first pages of our Christian Bible). Irenaeus attempted to adopt the language of Logos-theology without the complications of mediation and inferiority. For him, God was immanent through the Logos, and mediation occurred because the Son took on a full humanity (not because the Son was a go-between). It is no surprise that Irenaeus adopted what we may call a recapitulation theory of atonement: that “[t]he incarnation is the point at which the beginning and the end of human existence are focused in one human life, the human life of God’s Logos.” Like Irenaeus, Tertullian of Carthage (c. 155–230) also argued against Justin’s problematic Logos-theology, not to mention the widespread gnostic (denying the goodness of the created world and thus Christ, the Son of God, in the human flesh) movements of the time. It is an interesting point that Tertullian’s concern was primarily ecclesiological: Christological controversy easily could have created disobedience in the Church. He stressed this in his argument against the gnostics (especially Marcion), where he insisted that flesh is an object of God’s love. Also, we begin to see the specification of language developing in Tertullian: Christ was one “person,” but one who was constituted of two “substances” – flesh and Spirit. In turning to Origen of Alexandria (c. 185–251), we see a slight return to a more gnostic line of thought. Origen’s writings and teachings disclose Christ in terms of a divine Wisdom that acts as a mediator: it is the divine knowledge of, in, and through Christ that expedites our education towards redemption. Essentially, we extract from this Alexandrian an extreme dualism that actually disconnects God from humanity. “As the Logos mediates God to the soul, so the soul mediates God’s Son to the body.” By creating an extreme mind/body contrast, Origen and similar theologians subsequently jeopardized the salvific act of the Crucifixion by obfuscating the true nature – the essential hypostasis – of the One on the Cross. Years later, the teachings of Arius (256–336) brought a return to the mediatorial role of Christ, whereby the Logos was not God, but was a mediator between God and the world. Athanasius of Alexandria (298–373) contested that “the Logos made a human body his own in order to restore humanity to the state which God had originally intended for the human race.” Perhaps it would not be foolish of us to think of this return to our originally intended state as “sanctification,” for the overall thrust of the triune God of Scripture reveals a Being interested in the restoration of all Creation. For Athanasius, the Cross accentuated redemption, which was continued by Christ’s active presence as God in the world. This incarnational Christ had to be fully human and fully God in order for restoration to occur. However, Athanasius did not believe that the divine Logos dwelled within a whole human being: he never mentioned a human soul in Jesus. “For practical purposes, [Athanasius] regards Jesus, as the Arians did, as Logos plus body or flesh.” As a result, he had to deal with Jesus’ ignorance of events, which he did by explaining that the Logos restrained itself so that Jesus acted as if he were a human being. Such backtracking created for Athanasius a stance teetering upon docetism and a very incomplete humanity of Jesus. While Athanasius only suggested the idea that Jesus lacked a human intellect, Apollinaris (“the Younger,” died 390) proclaimed it. For him, Jesus was “enfleshed intellect,” though he insisted that Jesus was a unity. To do so, he argued for what we have come to term an “exchange” or “sharing” of properties: communicatio idiomatum: that “the human characteristics of Christ belong to the Logos, and the divine life is conferred on the body.” It is against this position that Gregory of Nazianzus’s (329–389) quote occurs in history: “If anyone has put his trust in Him as a Man without a human mind, he [the “anyone”] is really bereft of mind, and quite unworthy of salvation. For that which He has not assumed He has not healed; but that which is united to His Godhead is also saved.” A millennium and a half later, we will read something similar to Apollinaris in Wesley’s Christology, both in regards to the communicatio idiomatum and to monophysitism (Apollinarian thought persisted in the Monophysite school). For now, suffice it to say that the Church’s typical labeling of Apollinaris as a heretic is for good reason. For the next century – up until the Council of Chalcedon in 451 – Christological controversy continued. To account for Christ’s dual natures, the Christological language developed through such writers as Theodore of Mopsuestia (c. 350–428). For him, Christ existed in two hypostases, thus creating a “two nature” Christology. However, basic to Theodore’s teaching was a divine indwelling of God in Jesus “as in a Son.” In the resurrection, it became evident that the Logos and the human being had been “one functional identity” all along – one prosōpon, or, to roughly translate this to English, one “person.” “Thus Theodore teaches a ‘prosopic’ union—a union which has its root in the fact that by God’s gracious initiative this human life is perfectly at one, in its willing and acting, with the Logos.” Christ’s work did not result from human initiative, for it was all God’s active presence. “Thus the incarnation becomes a case of the Logos’ gracious self-identification with a human being.” Such identification as a gracious initiative sounds of Maddox’s formulation of Wesley’s orienting concern of “responsible grace,” and thus we will heed this position at a later point in our Christological discussion. Naturally, controversy continued to spring forth, but we should fittingly end this section with a proper understanding of what became orthodox. From Cyril of Alexandria (376–444), we capture the fullness of Jesus’ humanity, both in body and soul (against the likes of Athanasius and Apollinaris), thus summarized as a “hypostatic union.” His insistence upon Christ’s one hypostasis was such that Christ’s humanity and the Logos were so intricately and intimately woven that only one “substantive reality” existed: Jesus Christ. It is from this tradition that we arrive at the fullness of the Council of Chalcedon’s “Definition” of Christology. It begins with an affirmation of the mystery of salvation in Christ, moves on to denounce heretical teachings (i.e., Apollinarianism, Nestorianism, and Eutychianism), and concludes with a statement of Christ’s fullness in both natures. Jesus Christ was (and is) therefore one hypostasis in two natures – one substance, the Logos of God with us as fully human. As we have seen, one without the other has direct implications for Christ’s redemptive act on the Cross because salvation is jeopardized if Christ had not been God’s active, redeeming presence among us humans.

Placing Wesley Within the Christological Traditions The task of labeling John Wesley’s Christology is a particularly difficult one, as it is in labeling any person’s thoughts. As we have already discussed, Wesley is not what we might refer to as a “systematic theologian,” or one who produced volumes of dense theological musings (nothing against systematic theologians!). That said, pinpointing Wesley on a Christological continuum is rather difficult, especially when we consider what could be on the line: labeling Wesley as a heretic. Having just sampled some of the Christologies from the Patristic Era of the Church, we should have the proper criteria and language with which to judge Wesley’s Christology. However, this position is an extremely delicate one, particularly when a Wesleyan is the critic! By no means should we intend to discard Wesley’s overall theology should his Christology prove incomplete, anemic, or just plain heretical at times. Therefore, the purpose of identifying Wesley’s Christology in the terms of the aforementioned theologians is to examine the potential problem areas, including their implicit and explicit results on Wesley’s theology, so that we may see what a full Christology (i.e., the Chalcedonian model) has to offer Wesley. Consequently, our search for Wesley’s Christology begins with the secondary source material of other scholars who have discovered traces of a problematic doctrine of Christ throughout Wesley’s work. From here, we must turn to Wesley himself with a particular emphasis on his Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament, where he offered commentary rich with Christological statements. From this sampling, we will then evaluate Wesley’s Christology. John Deschner’s 1960 publication, Wesley’s Christology, is regarded as the standard text for theological discussion concerning Wesley’s doctrine of Christ. In fact, nothing has been published since explicitly addressing Wesley’s Christology. Therefore, we fittingly begin our investigation with Deschner’s scholarship. In his book, Deschner does not officially brand Wesley’s Christology as heretical, though he does raise some red flags throughout his study. One such red flag we have briefly mentioned already: “an emphasis on the divine nature, with its attendant problems for the personal union.” However, digging deeper reveals further drawbacks. In an intriguing find, Deschner relates a story told by J.E. Rattenbury on the English hymnbook committee in 1932. After poring over all 6,000+ of Charles Wesley’s hymns, the committee could only find two that illustrated the earthly life of Christ, “and one of those was an allegory on the healing of the sick.” Deschner continues with an explanation in the subsequent sentence: “This fact may serve as a signal for one of the problems of Wesleyan Christology: the lack of emphasis on the human nature of Jesus Christ.” Though the example comes from Charles Wesley’s hymns (not John’s sermons, letters, or biblical commentary), it serves to illustrate a fundamental point: something is amiss with this Christology. Further in his book, Deschner continues with another interesting discovery: Wesley never published a Christmas sermon. On the surface, this would not seem peculiar; however, an implicit understanding of this omission causes us to contemplate what a Christmas sermon covers: the Virgin Birth, whereby God physically and humanly entered the world through Mary’s womb, thus fully participating in humanity. Jesus, the representation of God on earth, has come to us in the flesh as a newborn. Directly following an Easter Sunday sermon, a Christmas sermon seems to be the most important message a minister could preach (especially Christologically). This is the sermon that Wesley does not author. Such a fact could be attributed to Wesley’s condensed appropriation of the Church of England’s Thirty-nine Articles for his own churches. Article II of the Anglican Articles yields a Christological section that is very much in accordance with the Chalcedonian framework. Accordingly, the Son “took man’s nature in the womb of the blessed Virgin, of her substance.” Wesley’s version omits “of her substance.” “It is the only deletion Wesley troubled to make in this article,” comments Deschner. However, this substantial deletion places Wesley near the Nestorians, whose position was that the divine Logos could not possibly be born of a human mother. Instead of Mary being called theotokos, the “mother of God,” Nestorius (c. 386–451) claimed that she was theodochos, the “recipient of God.” Wesley ventures dangerously close to this position in his deletion, flirting yet again with heresy. We find more examples within Maddox’s “Nature of Christ” section from Responsible Grace, in which we also see the tentative labeling of Wesley as a monophysite. “To begin with,” writes Maddox, “there is no suggestion at all in Wesley that the person of Christ came into being with the specific union of natures in the incarnation. Rather, he clearly assumed that the person of Christ was the Son, the second ‘Person’ of the Trinity. The Son was simply taking on human nature, not becoming a human person” (emphasis mine). Continuing with Maddox, “Wesley did not depict the Son’s act of taking on human nature as an act of kenosis (emptying), where the Son laid the Divine attributes aside. … Wesley maintained that Christ was simply veiling the divine attributes from sight, not renouncing them.” Deschner, too, speaks of Wesley’s Christ in terms of a veil: Christ’s body was a “‘veil’ through which rays of indwelling deity dart at the transfiguration.” “Veiling” is not the kenotic outpouring of God into the immanently human Christ; rather, it bespeaks docetism. Consequently, a “veiled” Christ is not a tangible Christ; a veiled Christ is an apparition, an appearance of a Being without the full attributes of being in the flesh. To deal with the issue of divine and human attributes simultaneously existing within one “body,” Wesley calls upon the doctrine of shared attributes (communicatio idiomatum – vital to Apollinarianism), which we shall soon witness firsthand. Maddox’s scholarship, though, helps point out Wesley’s key problem in utilizing this doctrine, which aims to defend how Christ’s two natures somehow exist – even communicate and share – within the context of one person. “[Wesley] was quick to assume that divine properties are communicated to the human nature. … But he showed little interest in the transfer of human properties to the divine nature. In effect, he allowed Christ’s human nature to be subsumed within the divine from the very beginning of the Incarnation.” To summarize both Maddox’s and Deschner’s main points, Wesley’s emphasis continually sides with Christ’s divinity. To be sure, “when Wesley did offer a defense of Christ’s deity his fear was explicit: to deny this deity would be to remove the foundation of all our hope.” This justification for Wesley’s seemingly one-sided Christology is not very convincing. Deschner’s hypothesis is a bit more revealing: “The answer must lie in Wesley’s concern to emphasize the divinity of Christ, and in his reserve about associating human weaknesses too closely with the divine Lord.” Whatever the case may be, that topic is one suitable for further study and is outside the scope of this particular paper. For our purposes, it is sufficient to say that Wesley’s concern falls upon the divinity of Christ, not the humanity. However, to properly defend this statement, we ought to shift from secondary materials to Wesley’s writings themselves – namely, Wesley’s New Testament Notes, in which Maddox recognizes “a discomfort…with those biblical accounts that highlight Jesus’ humanity.” One of the best places to begin looking at Wesley’s commentary on the New Testament is a classic Christological passage: John 1. To be sure, this chapter supported many of the Logos-theologies of the Patristic Era and beyond. In verse 14, we read that “the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14, NRSV). Wesley’s translation adequately handles this Christological passage (he even adopts a full meaning of “lived among us” in his translation “tabernacled among us”). However, we turn to his commentary to see something utterly different. Here, he offers very little emphasis on “became flesh,” giving most of his attention to Christ’s glorification. When he speaks of the human nature, he refers to it in terms of “our miserable nature” (emphasis mine). He continues with an expanded digression on Christ’s glory, which “shone forth not only in his transfiguration, and in his continual miracles, but in all his tempers, ministrations, and conduct through the whole series of his life” (emphasis mine). From this selection, Wesley’s Christ has not human tempers and conduct, but divine tempers. Simply put, in this passage affirming the fleshly dwelling of Christ in our world, Wesley’s Christ does not act through human faculties. Continuing in John 1, we read this: “No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known” (John 1:18). Wesley translates the Son as “in the bosom of the Father,” and comments that “[t]his expression denotes the highest unity, and the most intimate knowledge.” Knowledge is not intrinsically negative; thus, on the surface, Wesley’s note does not seem alarming. However, we ought to keep in mind that Wesley’s Christ, according to Maddox, is not the kenotic emptying of the divine attributes within Jesus. This “intimate knowledge” therefore presents a problem because Wesley must create a system in which the human Son knows all that the Father does. Matthew’s Gospel presents a telling verse related to this topic of the Son’s knowledge: “But about that day and hour [of judgment] no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” (Matthew 24:36, emphasis mine). This verse seems to offer a strong defense for an emptying of Christ’s divine attributes – that Christ’s knowledge is not an “intimate knowledge” of everything the Father knows, and that Christ himself makes this claim. It is no surprise, then, that Wesley omits this phrase (“nor the Son”) from his translation and fails to provide comment on its omission. In this line of reasoning, Wesley creates for himself a major Christological quagmire – one which he attempts to address in his note on John 3:13. In the NRSV, this verse reads as follows: “No one has ascended into heaven except the one who has descended from heaven, the Son of Man.” Wesley’s version reads a bit differently: “For no one hath gone up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, the Son of man, who is in heaven” (emphasis mine). Granted, Wesley did not have the resources available to us today that indicate that the “who is in heaven” is generally omitted; nonetheless, Wesley’s note upon this often-omitted phrase begins, “Therefore he is omnipresent; else he could not be in heaven and on earth at once.” In the chronology of the Gospel narrative, this is the pre-Resurrection Jesus. As a human, we would expect Christ not to be omnipresent, (a kenotic argument). However, Wesley emphasizes Christ’s divinity, which prompts his use of the communicatio idiomatum. Wesley continues: “This is a plain instance of what is usually termed the communication of properties between the Divine and human nature; whereby what is proper to the Divine nature is spoken concerning the human, and what is proper to the human is, as here, spoken of the Divine.” Let us remember the position of Apollinaris, who was mentioned earlier as a condemned heretic because of his defense of the communication of properties. Even if Wesley’s Christology subscribes to this communication principle, it would be enough to label Wesley as a potential heretic (perhaps even an Apollinarian). But, Wesley’s Christology, as Maddox argued above, fails to demonstrate the equal transaction of attributes between the two natures; instead, Jesus’ divine nature subsumes the human nature, which this passage exemplifies. Though John 3:13 is the only verse in which Wesley explicitly offers his doctrine of the communicatio idiomatum, many other verses demonstrate similar Christological glitches. Matthew’s Gospel concludes with Christ offering a statement concerning his own nature: “And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me’” (Matthew 28:18). Wesley’s version only differs in regards to syntax; the semantics of his translation is identical to that of the NRSV. However, Wesley comments that this power has been given to Jesus “even as man. As God, he had all power from eternity.” Once again, Wesley has worked himself into a corner whereby Christ’s divine nature has subsumed the human nature. Wesley interprets against a kenotic reading and places Jesus’ humanity in the inferior position. In Luke’s Gospel, we find yet another Christological statement from the text that Wesley construes problematically. Scripture reads, “And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor” (Luke 2:52). Without explicitly stating that Jesus is omniscient, Wesley implicitly conveys this message by means of omission (a common occurrence throughout his Notes). To Jesus’ increase in wisdom, Wesley replies that it is “as to his human nature.” The omission is not an insignificant one, for by it Wesley implies that Jesus’ divine nature was incapable of growing in wisdom – hence an implied omniscience belonging to Christ. Wesley subsequently devotes the remainder of his commentary on this verse to explain how even Christ (and therefore we as well) had “room to increase in holiness.” Granted, Wesley’s point is to convey that we all must put forth effort to be a sanctified people, but the implication of this note must not be overlooked. Wesley’s note on John 17:10 offers more fuel for this predicament. When Christ says “All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them,” he is addressing God the Father. It is a family prayer, for he considers his disciples to be a part of his family, of which God is the Father that unites them (and us) all. Wesley comments as follows: “These are very high and strong expressions, too grand for any mere creature to use; as implying that all things whatsoever, inclusive of the Divine nature, perfections, and operations, are the common property of the Father and Son.” Consequently, a unity of perfections exists between God the Father and God the Son within Wesley’s doctrine. John 3:13 shows that Christ is omnipresent; Matthew 28:18 reveals that Christ is omnipotent; and Luke 2:52 implies that Christ is omniscient. However, the unity of perfections, which would have to be upheld via the communicatio idiomatum, consistently reduces to a common denominator: the divine attributes of Wesley’s Christ overpower the human attributes. We now look to common New Testament verses that point towards Jesus’ human feelings and tempers. Surely, the portrait of Christ that we have from the Gospels manifests a true human with emotions, especially in responses to trying events. For example, at the death of his friend Lazarus, we read that “Jesus wept” (John 11:35, NIV). Here, Jesus authentically experiences human emotional pain resulting from the death of his friend. Wesley deflects his commentary from the human response to an intellectualized and spiritualized one: Jesus weeps “out of sympathy with those who were in tears all around him, as well as from a deep sense of the misery sin had brought upon human nature.” According to Wesley, Jesus’ actions do not result from the pain of losing his friend, but from philosophizing about the sinful human nature that leads to death. Instead of a passionate Christ, Wesley paints a pathetic, aloof one. Even on the Cross – quite possibly the most trying event for a human to endure – Christ and his divine nature is emphasized by Wesley. Luke 23:34 records some of Jesus’ final words: “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” Wesley’s translation is consistent with modern versions, but his commentary is slightly askew. He awes at this passage as we all ought to: as Christ is dying, he prays for our very forgiveness. But Wesley shifts elsewhere quickly. “While they are actually nailing him to the cross, he seems to feel the injury they did to their own souls more than the wounds they gave him; and as it were to forget his own anguish out of a concern for their own salvation.” While Christ’s actions and words upon the Cross are nothing shy of “miraculously loving,” we should not deny that Christ endured the physical pain of crucifixion. While Wesley does not reject this latter proposition, his emphasis discloses that Jesus as a human falls second to Jesus as divine: Jesus’ thoughts are upon divine matters in such a way that they displace his humanity. From the very beginning of 1 John, another key Christological text, the author establishes a platform against Gnosticism by continually asserting the humanity of Christ. His opening line attests to this Christological truth: “We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life” (1 John 1:1). Wesley’s note on this verse neither refutes Christ’s existence from the beginning nor rejects that Christ is “be-hold-able.” However, there exists a key omission in Wesley’s commentary of this verse: touching Jesus “with our hands.” After the portions on seeing Christ with the eyes and beholding him, Wesley skips to “the word of life” without giving pause to the physical contact with Jesus. What we can observe but not touch we do not consider “human”; instead, we likely refer to such a being as a ghost or an apparition. If this holds true in Christ’s case, Wesley is not only a monophysite; he is an implicit docetist! Further passages concerning the possibility of a docetic Christ within Wesley’s Christology come from post-Resurrection accounts of Jesus. One example is from John 20:27: “Then [Jesus] said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.’” Though most theologians focus on Thomas’ reply to Christ – a powerful Christological statement that Jesus is God – verse 27 still commands our attention. Here, Christ invites Thomas to touch his fleshly wounds as a physical sign of his bodily resurrection. Wesley offers a fairly detailed note on verse 28 that explicates Thomas’ Christological response. However, it concludes with a statement that “all this [Thomas] did without putting his hand upon [Jesus’] side.” At face value, this statement is true: Thomas did not have to place his hand upon Jesus’ side. However, when we couple this with the fact that Wesley fails to produce a note for verse 27 (Jesus’ invitation to be touched), we begin to see a docetic Christ emerging. Even more intriguing and illustrative is the scholarship that Deschner contributes to Wesley’s post-Resurrection Christ. In a footnote explaining Wesley’s warning against any attempt to “know Christ after the flesh,” Deschner again sheds light upon Wesley’s editing of the Anglican Thirty-nine Articles. “Where the Anglican Article on ‘The Resurrection of Christ’ says that He ‘took again His body, with flesh, bones and all things appertaining to the perfection of man’s nature,’ Wesley deletes the words, ‘with flesh, bones.’” Therefore, Wesley’s omission in John 20:27 is strikingly consistent with his omission in the Anglican Article on “The Resurrection of Christ” – both neglect Christ’s physical resurrection in the flesh. A post-Resurrection account of Jesus appearing to his disciples confirms Wesley’s docetic/monophysite tendency. We turn again to Luke, where we hear Jesus’ words: “‘Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have” (Luke 24:39, emphasis mine). Jesus confirms his own physical, fleshly, bodily resurrection, thereby discrediting a docetic reading of the Resurrection. But let us turn to Wesley’s Notes, where there is no comment on verse 39! Again, Wesley omits explanatory reference to the human nature of the risen Christ. Granted, these examples come from a post-Resurrection Christ. Many have argued that in this state, Christ’s physical nature was indeed different (after all, he appears in the locked room with the disciples in John 20:19). That topic is one for a separate and future discussion, though. Nevertheless, we expect the pre-Resurrection Christ to share in our human nature enough not to be an apparition. With this in mind, when Jesus “passed through the midst of them [the crowd at Nazareth that wanted to hurl him off the cliff] and went on his way” (Luke 4:30), we think nothing of it. Wesley’s proposition, found in his Notes, gives us reason for concern: Christ’s passing is “perhaps invisibly; or perhaps they were overawed; so that though they saw, they could not touch him.” When John’s Gospel tells of a similar incident of Jesus in the Temple about to be stoned (John 8:59), Wesley’s note is identical: “Jesus concealed himself—Probably by becoming invisible.” As far as we know, humans do not possess the ability to become invisible upon a whim, nor would we expect this from a human Christ. While a resurrected Jesus offers room for interpretation, a pre-Resurrection Christ should not be able to become invisible twice. Further, Wesley’s note on Luke 4:30 adds that the crowd was perhaps “overawed” – a far stretch considering they intended to kill him! Following this, Wesley adds a third explanation for Jesus’ escape: that the crowds could see him without touching him (i.e., he’s a ghost). Once again, this is the portrait of a docetic Christ, for such is one that we can see with our eyes without touching with our hands. To conclude Wesley’s Christological position, we return to John’s first epistle. The NRSV translates 1 John 4:2 as follows: “By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.” We must pay close attention to this verse’s syntax as we approach Wesley’s translation (provided in his Notes): “Hereby ye know the Spirit of God: every spirit which confesseth Jesus Christ, who is come in the flesh, is of God” (emphasis mine). Deschner recognizes the importance of this translation: “The human nature appears in a relative [subordinate] clause.” In the NRSV, the statement affirming Christ’s humanity is not separated from the main clause, thus implying that Jesus Christ’s humanity is an essential part of his being. In Christian orthodoxy, what we mean by “Jesus Christ” is the person, the one hypostasis, in two natures: human and divine. Though Wesley’s translation contains the same information, it does so in a manner that implicitly subverts Christ’s humanity via the relative clause. Wesley demotes Christ’s human nature syntactically, thus adversely affecting the semantics of a holistic Christology! The NRSV translation captures this essential meaning by including Christ’s humanity in the main clause. However, Wesley’s translation literally subordinates Jesus’ humanity. Consequently, we arrive at the first question proposed in this paper’s introduction: “Is Wesley properly classified as a monophysite?” When introduced, we acknowledged that such a position flirts with heresy. Furthermore, we have read from the Christological traditions and have witnessed for ourselves what such a classification has to offer a theologian. Taking all this into account, Wesley’s Christology seems to be exceptionally monophysite – to the point where the label is not strong enough. Indeed, Wesley writes like a docetist many times throughout his Notes. On this theologically unstable ground, we will continue by attempting to answer the second question proposed at the beginning: “What effect would this classification have on Wesley’s theology and soteriology?”

The Effects of Wesley’s Problematic Christology As we have already been able to see from the Christological controversies of the Patristic Era, a problematic Christology leads to major theological problems in many regards. Emphases that perhaps begin with healthy intentions soon develop into outlets for heresy and, eventually, to explicit condemnation of that theologian’s work (oftentimes through creeds). The reason for such outcomes is crucial to Christianity as a whole. In the claim that we are Christians, we bear Christ’s name and attest to the world who Christ is: God in the flesh “tabernacling” with us. We see the validity of this claim by asking ourselves the rhetorical question: “What would the Christian faith be if Jesus Christ as a human had not been present in our midst and on the Cross?” If we then consider Wesley’s Christology as placing an unhealthy emphasis upon the divine nature of Christ at the expense of the human nature, the issue infects Wesley’s theology as a whole, including soteriology and atonement. Michael Lodahl, professor of theology at Point Loma Nazarene University, captures the importance of both natures fully expressed in Christ: To insist on Jesus’ deity apart from an equal recognition of His humanity leaves Christians with God masquerading in human form, essentially unrelated (and irrelevant) to our human weaknesses and struggles. But to insist on Jesus’ humanity apart from an equal recognition of His deity leaves us with a good teacher and examples who perhaps reminds us of God—but who is not, and cannot be, our Redeemer.

The Cross and the Resurrection are then most appropriate to begin with in seeing the implications of Wesley’s anemic Christology. Upon these two pillars we claim what the good news of the Gospel is. Furthermore, these two events signify chief moments of Christological interpretation, for the good news would be incomplete if Jesus, Son of God and boy of Nazareth, had not been nailed to the Cross. As Christians, we tether our own salvation to what occurred on Good Friday – that both God and humanity died in the one person of Jesus Christ. We connect with Christ’s humanity on Good Friday, thus reading into the kerygma (the Gospel story) our own death in sin. However, we likewise affirm an incredible and miraculous death to sin when we observe Easter Sunday and Christ’s bodily resurrection from the dead. This, then, is the hope of our salvation: “Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his” (Romans 6:4-5). But none of this is possible if Jesus is not a human, the man from Nazareth, as much as he is God, the divine Logos. In the case of Wesley, it has been demonstrated that Jesus Christ is something less than fully human: he is anemic, very much overpowered in his human nature by the divine nature. By extension, this anemic, monophysite (perhaps even docetic) Christology of Wesley’s consequently demonstrates a soteriological (concerning the doctrine of salvation) weakness as well. In my own interpretation, it appears that Wesley begins with soteriology (including the atonement) and works backwards to create a Christology that supplements it. This is not to say that Wesley presents a weak soteriology – neither that topic nor a developed examination of Wesley’s theory of atonement is within the scope of this paper – only that he weakens his Christology in doing so. If the doctrine of Christ offers the basic foundation for Christianity, how then can it be that an incomplete Christology leads to a complete soteriology? It is impossible. Digging deeper, we now want to examine Wesley’s Christology in terms of the traditional offices of Christ: Christ as Prophet, King, and Priest. Both Deschner and Maddox subscribe to this formula for Wesley’s Christology, and so we are in good company to continue by interpreting Wesley in this framework. Christ as Prophet affirms that Christ fulfills the Old Testament prophecies, and that Christ continues in the Church through the Scriptures and the Spirit. As prophet, Christ is also a lawgiver – but what type of law does he bring? Deschner raises the possibility that Christ redefines the moral law “as the demand to love,” which is consistent with the Great Commandment (Matthew 22:34-40; Mark 12:28-34). However, Deschner continues that “a question arises about a possible diminution of the law’s demand when this love is understood as an inherent ‘temper,’ abstracted from participation in the active obedience of Christ.” As an “inherent ‘temper’,” love is for Jesus Christ not something that he necessarily chooses; rather, it comes naturally. While this sounds appealing on the surface, it is to say that Christ has no other option than to love, which consequently discounts his agency as a human. Love becomes a passive action for Wesley’s Christ. This finding seems awkward when considering the whole Wesley. For him, love is the defining characteristic of God and is therefore the generative force that propels Christianity, especially in regards to outward signs of faith (works). Love’s outwardness is sanctification! Deschner notes the problem adeptly: “Here the door is opened for a definition of the good and holy which…is not necessarily learned from the revelation of human holiness in the Man, Christ Jesus. It is not the Wesleyan emphasis on sanctification but the content or character of that sanctification which is opened to question here.” Without the full humanity of Christ, we lose grasp of what holiness (and thus sanctification) is for us humans. If love is not an activity for Christ, we witness an unattainable holiness in the life of the Messiah. Should this be the case, we are void of the capacity to love one another and to be perfected in our love (the root of Wesley’s doctrine of entire sanctification). As such, Christ’s Prophetic work crumbles under an emaciated Christology. Next we turn to Christ the King, where Wesley emphasizes the victory that Christ has won over sin. Deschner reveals that the Wesleyan motifs of the penal substitution and of Christ’s victory over Satan are unified by Christ’s mediatorial office as well as “the notion that it is guilt which puts [humanity] in the power of Satan” (emphasis mine). Indeed, Wesley’s view of the Fall helps create this understanding of guilt as “the basis for the power of sin.” In his sermon entitled “The End of Christ’s Coming,” Wesley writes concerning the progression of the Fall: So unbelief begot pride. [Eve] thought herself wiser than God, capable of finding a better way to happiness than God had taught her. It begot self-will: she was determined to do her own will, not the will of him that made her. It begot foolish desires, and completed all by outward sin: ‘she took of the fruit and did eat.’ She then ‘gave to her husband, and he did eat.’ And ‘in that day’ yea, that moment, he ‘died.’ … [H]e was full of sin, full of guilt and tormenting fears.

Of note in this excerpt is how Adam – though we may read into this text the adam, or all humanity – was “full of sin” and contemporaneously “full of guilt and tormenting fears.” The progression is natural and simultaneous for Wesley – which, in view of his own journey of faith, makes sense – from sin to guilt and even to fears that plague and persecute. Therefore, we see a critical emotional aspect in human sin: guilt, which is our emotional reaction to sin. If Christ is to be victorious over sin, he must then also be victorious over guilt because “[i]t cannot be brushed away by [humans themselves]. And as long as it stands, it poisons the life-giving fellowship with God.” Deschner continues that the only way for this endless cycle of sin and guilt to cease is by the All Powerful recognizing it for what it truly is. This, Deschner says, “while at the time reaffirming the relationship with the sinner, is the Wesleyan justification, based on Christ’s satisfactory atonement.” Wesley’s words certainly bear good news, for they affirm a gracious, loving God who restores a relationship with humanity that is life-giving. Here we see that Wesley’s soteriology is strong and healthy. Yet we must turn to the Christology presented in two related issues. First is the atonement as it pertains to judgment. These seemingly different theological genres necessarily share similarities through a Christological reading: it is Christ whose atonement offers us salvation; and, in the Wesleyan model, it is Christ’s human nature that provides a norm against which we are judged. Deschner observes Wesley’s emphasis on the human nature and offers the logic that Christ represents perfect obedience, “a standard which discovers and illumines human sin before the judgment seat, in addition to presenting in some sense, even there, atonement for those who believe.” But, as we have already seen, Christ’s human nature is painfully short of being whole. As noted earlier, love is not an active case for Jesus Christ; it is abstracted from his active obedience. Additionally – and this is the second issue – Christ’s relation to the human emotional construct within the Wesleyan Christological framework is significantly skewed. We see this in Wesley’s commentary on John 11:35 where Jesus weeps not out of pain of the loss of his dear friend Lazarus, but out of “a deep sense of the misery sin had brought upon human nature.” Though Wesley emphasizes the role of Christ’s human nature at the judgment, we must ask ourselves what kind of human nature it is that judges. It is not one that participates in the dynamic reality of human emotion. Likewise, Christ the victorious King cannot be victorious over something to which he has no relation. Plainly, if Jesus was unable to experience human emotion, how on earth can he possibly heal it? Appealing to Gregory of Nazianzus’s insight from earlier, it is impossible. Consequently, Christ’s Kingly role suffers tremendously due to a monophysite Christology; he emerges trounced rather than triumphant. The third and final office of Christ – that of Priest – plays the largest role in Wesley’s Christology, for it is understood to be the foundation upon which the other two offices are placed. In assessing Christ’s Priestly role, we need to be mindful of the distinction between active obedience and passive obedience. In short, active obedience is the deliberate response to God that prompts action on our behalf; it is a response out of grace to God’s grace. Passive obedience, on the other hand, is the response to God that occurs naturally, intrinsically, and effortlessly. As such, it does not fully reflect the human condition, even supposing that the person is entirely sanctified. Deschner comments that “even in [Wesley’s] justification there is a curious lack of finality which, related to an underemphasis on Christ’s active obedience, may be traced right back to the underemphasis on the human nature and the looseness of its participation in the mediatorial act of the one person, Jesus Christ.” Even in mediation, Christ lacks the active obedience. This is possible because the mediatorial role is a Priestly one, and it is Christ’s act upon the Cross – which also demonstrates Christ’s lack of active obedience – that most notably defines Christ as Priest. Indeed, Christ’s role on the Cross serves as humanity’s penal substitute and initiates his heavenly intercessory role both immediately and eschatologically (concerning the end-times). This should not come as any surprise; rightly understood, the Cross marks God’s love towards humankind and the desire to restore relationship with these creatures. This is Christian doctrine (cf., Johannine literature). But to Wesley, Jesus’ love is a temper and is thus part of the passive obedience. For the Cross to be emblematic of Love, Christ’s passive obedience is (unfortunately) accentuated in the Wesleyan framework. However, this deemphasizes the human role in our atonement to the point that “[Wesley] denies Christ’s active obedience any role in purchasing our redemption, i.e., in justification” (emphasis mine). To be sure, Deschner defends Wesley by explaining how an elimination of Christ’s active obedience in the atonement is an attempt to resist the Calvinist antinomians (the view that, through grace, Christians are released from the obligation to observe the moral law). The situation worsens when Wesley’s theology bespeaks “an imputation of the active obedience,” though only “in relation to justification, never in relation to sanctification.” To simplify, sanctification is our perfection in love as humans. For Christ, love is the result of passive obedience, not active, and so Christ cannot possibly become sanctified as we can. In short, an imputed active obedience is empty in relation to our sanctification because it cannot take its model from Christ. This position betrays Wesley’s concern that we continue to “work out our own salvation with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12, emphasis mine). Additionally, talk of imputation opposes our own active obedience in justification as well as in sanctification. To do justice to Wesley, though, it should be noted that “[t]alk of an imputation of the active obedience [is] primarily a defensive position in reply to the Calvinist attack.” Bearing in mind that Christ’s Priestly role is fundamental to Wesley’s Christology, it is appropriate to investigate why he deemphasizes Christ’s active obedience, especially upon the Cross. In Maddox’s section dealing with Wesley’s Christology, he looks into how Wesley’s concern could generate a “practical monophysitism.” Maddox synthesizes Wesley’s Christological agenda as follows: He was interested in Christ primarily as the locus of God’s activity in our midst, rather than as an example of what the Divine power can effect in human nature. In other words, Wesley’s consuming emphasis on the deity of Christ was an expression of his conviction that God is the one who takes initiative in our salvation; it is God who died in Christ to make possible our pardon; it is God who awakens us to our need of grace in Christ the Prophet and drives us to Christ the Priest; it is God who initiates our restored relationship in Christ the Priest; and it is God who guides us as Christ the King, leading us into all holiness and happiness. … By emphasizing Christ as the pardoning Initiative of God in salvation, Wesley has underlined the prevenience of grace to our response.

Of course, Maddox is reading Wesley’s Christology through the lens of his own “orienting concern” for which he wrote his book: responsible grace. In other words, Maddox’s interpretation exists within the Wesleyan conviction that it is by God’s grace that we have the ability to respond to God in faith, which then produces love, and ultimately yields works of love, mercy, and grace. By all means, I believe this to be the strength of Wesley’s theology, and Maddox’s Responsible Grace is by far a monumental offering to Wesleyan scholarship. However, I must question Maddox’s final sentence in the selection above. It is proper that we read it in terms of his second sentence from this same selection: we must equate the emphasis of “Christ as the pardoning Initiative of God in salvation” with “Wesley’s consuming emphasis on the deity of Christ.” The two are inextricably linked, for Wesley’s Christ appears with an emphasis on the divine nature. Maddox’s final phrase now draws our attention: that “Wesley has underlined the prevenience of grace to our response.” Is this true, particularly in light of the emphasis on Christ’s divine nature, which necessarily brings along with it an emphasis on the passive obedience? Without an emphasis on Christ’s active obedience as a human being, how can we possibly tie the prevenience of grace with response? By emphasizing the passive obedience over the active, Wesley’s Christ is unable to respond to God’s grace, which includes participation in the fullness of humanity (who respond freely to God’s grace). If we flesh this idea a bit more, we see a predestination Christology emerging. Wesley’s own Notes lean toward this very reading, where Christ is “a victim, to be sacrificed.” Simply, Christ had no other option than to be “a victim, to be sacrificed,” and in this position, there is no possible way that we can see Christ freely responding in an active sense to the grace of God. Our Pardoning Initiative of God in salvation is therefore the only figure known to not have the ability to disobey God. In this light, we cannot logically think of Christ as a human! And so it is here that I must object to Maddox’s conclusion that this Christological emphasis on the divine nature underscores the prevenience of grace to our response. Rather, I propose that a full Christology – one that equally supports the human and divine natures – provides a stronger Wesleyan basis through which to understand prevenient grace and our response to it. If Jesus Christ, who carries the markings both of humankind and of God, is able to actively obey and/or disobey God, then and only then do we properly unlock Christology and, as a result, the whole of theology, especially within a Wesleyan understanding. For it is in this context that a fully human Messiah dies on the Cross for us and offers us salvation; only in this context do we understand what it means to be a holy, sanctified people whose faith leads to love leads to works evidencing the truth of the Gospel. A whole and healthy Christology actually underlines Wesley’s concern with God’s gracious initiative; it is the sending of the Son, who is fully human and fully God, that is the ultimate act of love only if that Son is be a real human! I therefore must disagree with Maddox’s conclusion due to the fact that a strengthened Christology inevitably entails strengthened doctrines of prevenient grace, sanctification, and the Church. Deschner’s concluding remarks point to a “stronger alternative course” than the elimination of Christ’s active obedience in the atonement: [This is an emphasis on] the intercession of Christ as that doctrine which interprets the believer’s participation in Christ as participation in the Body of Christ. The congregational Body of Christ, with its demand and power for mutual admonition, encouragement, and service in Christ, would then have become theologically what it was practically in the Wesleyan societies, the matrix of the believer’s sanctification.

We thus turn to the practical aspect of Wesley’s theology: ecclesiology, the actively outward Body of Christ, which may, in-deed, offer a potent antidote to his anemic Christology.

II. CHRISTOLOGY EMBODIED IN ECCLESIOLOGY Though the progression from Christology to ecclesiology may indeed make sense cognitively – particularly at this point in our overall discussion dealing with Wesley’s theology –we must stop to question whether the development is logical, theological, and Biblical. To be sure, turning to ecclesiology in order to heal a problematic Christology could certainly prove efficacious, but is that construct valid? Is the leap from the doctrine of Christ to the doctrine of the Church a large one, or is it a leap at all? Is the turn to ecclesiology a vain attempt to haphazardly paste together a “quick fix” for Wesley’s doctrine of Christ, or does it have a solid foundation? These are all questions to which we must find answers before we are able to seek Wesley’s potentially curative ecclesiology. To initiate this connection, we may logically return to our historical discussion of Christology. Whether the theologians of the Patristic era agreed or not, they shared at least one trait in common: they were not isolated thinkers. On the contrary, their ideas were oftentimes the results of a community of believers thinking and living together – a corporate body. Hence, before doctrines of Christ were written, there was a Church. In fact, the Church was initiated before thinkers synthesized thoughts concerning Christ and his nature(s). As a result, we may foundationally understand the development of Christology to be a product of the Church. At this level, we begin to witness the first glimmers of the connection linking Christology with ecclesiology. But this is far from the whole of it. John A. T. Robinson reverses the progression within the Pauline framework when he says that “the whole of [Paul’s] doctrine of the Church is an extension of his Christology.” How can this be, though, if Christology is a product of the Church? The logical difficulty is that both cases are true: Robinson’s exquisite scholarship does not negate what we see historically as the development of Christological thought from and through the Church. It is a unity between the two. Robinson continues: “The clue to the unity of Paul’s thought at this point lies in the connection, made in the verse quoted above [Romans 7:4], of all this with the flesh-body of the incarnate Jesus.” Robinson’s language is extremely particular, especially his hyphenated phrase “flesh-body.” Indeed, he devotes a portion of his slim volume to tracing these two connected concepts (“flesh” and “body”) as they are revealed in Paul’s original Greek. As we progress through Paul’s epistles, we constantly stumble across a phrase that is unique to his writings: σωμα του χριστου, the Body of Christ. Through this phrase, we may also make the logical, theological, and Biblical connection between the doctrine of Christ and the doctrine of the Church. To begin, Greek does not have one particular word for “body.” Paul demonstrates this when he uses two terms, σαρξ (sarx) and σωμα (soma), though not interchangeably. Sarx (σαρξ) is basically “flesh-substance”; it is the outward person existing physically and in the flesh. But Robinson adds that “[f]lesh [sarx] represents mere [humanity], [humanity] in contrast with God—hence [humanity] in [its] weaknesses and mortality.” A few pages later he continues by drawing out the inferences: “For, [humanity] as σάρξ [sarx], as part of the world, stands always in a relation of ambiguity to God, since the world to which [humanity] is bound in the flesh is a world fallen under sin and death.” It is no surprise, then, that sarx is something which decays and is temporal. To attempt to know Christ after the flesh misses the entire point of God’s New Creation, which is transformative and restorative. It does not make sense, for example, that resurrection would take place in the sarx because it is always deteriorating. “While the concept of σάρξ [sarx] is the key to Paul’s anthropology,” writes Robinson, “it is unable to provide the foundation for the remainder of his theology. When it has established [humans] in [their] ‘otherness’ from God, in [their] frailty and mortality, it has nothing more it can do. σωμα [soma], on the other hand, while it can be identified with σάρξ [sarx] in all [humanity’s] sin and corruption, is also the carrier of [its] resurrection. It is therefore the link between Paul’s doctrine of [humanity] and his whole gospel of Christ, the Church and eternal life.” In the shift from sarx to soma, we begin to trace the strong logic between Christ and the Church as represented in Paul’s language. For Paul, the σωμα του χριστου – the Body of Christ – is the language of Christology and ecclesiology. Undoubtedly, soma means something much more than a fleshy body (though it may be used to refer to “the external presence of the whole [person]”). “Indeed,” writes Robinson, “σωμα [soma] is the nearest equivalent to our word ‘personality.’” This is not to say that soma strictly deals with our psychology as humans; rather, as “personality,” soma refers to everything that constitutes a human. In the same way that Theodore of Mopsuestia’s language of prosōpon (roughly “person”) attempted to capture the unity of Christ’s natures in one entity, soma incorporates the relational fullness and the social wholeness of the human experience. “The body [σωμα; soma] is that which joins all people, irrespective of individual differences, in life’s bundle together.” How true it is that our lives as humans are constituted by our relationships to one another – to other “personalities” – so that what we have termed as the human race is one interwoven soma! Paul even uses this language as a collective singular in Romans 8:23, where we await the redemption of “our body,” not “bodies.” Soma likely makes most sense to us today in reference to the Body of Christ as the Church. Without question, Paul intends for this meaning. However, at the time when he was authoring this image of the Church, the language was not accepted as it is today; in fact, it was an attempt to describe our incomprehensible and indescribable “one-ness” with Christ as Christians. To be sure, it is not erroneous to presume that Paul’s audience initially understood his language to refer to Christ’s bodily presence and person. For us, too, this latter reading becomes relatively difficult to understand, especially considering the corporal language inherent in soma. Surely we value the community essential to the Church, but to ascribe this community aspect to Christ in a literal sense sounds quite strange and is bound to raise questions. To seek answers to puzzling situation, we return to Paul’s language concerning the resurrection of the body. In 1 Corinthians 15:50 (nearing the culmination of his fascinating chapter on the resurrection), Paul clarifies that sarx does not and cannot inherit the Kingdom of God; rather, only humanity as soma can inherit the Kingdom. Robinson crystallizes this doctrine eloquently: “While σαρξ [sarx] stands for [humanity], in the solidarity of creation, in [its] distance from God, σωμα [soma] stands for [humanity], in the solidarity of creation, as made for God.” Of course, both sarx and soma are made by God. The difference is that sarx is caught within a cycle of decay while soma is “being transformed continuously, in so far as [it] is a member of the Body of Christ.” This resonates with resurrection language because resurrection itself is a transformation – as is baptism (the typical sacrament of justification and regeneration) and the Eucharist (the typical means of sacramental sanctification). As the Son of God who righteously reigns in and over the Kingdom, Christ must be resurrected as soma. It is important to note that Christ as soma (not just as sarx) dies upon the Cross, just as the soma of Christ lives at the Resurrection. Both events deal with the same soma, which again is the identical language that Paul uses to describe the Church. To go deeper, we proclaim that it is through Christ that we sinners have the ability to be “children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ” (Romans 8:16-17). In other words, we are co-heirs of the Kingdom along with Christ, whose soma has been resurrected. Robinson magnificently draws the connection: Christians have died in, with and through the crucified body of the Lord…because, and only because, they are now in and of His body in the ‘life that he liveth unto God’, viz., the body of the Church. It is only by baptism into Christ, that is ‘into (the) one body’ (1 Cor. 12:13), only by an actual ‘participation in the body of Christ’ (1 Cor. 10:16, R.V.M.), that a [person] can be saved through His body on the Cross. The Christian, [who] is in the Church and united with Him in the sacraments, is part of Christ’s body so literally that all that happened in and through that body in the flesh can be repeated in and through [the Christian] now (emphasis Robinson’s).

Therefore, the soma that is Christ’s crucified body must also be the soma that is the Church body. This being the case, Christ’s physical body now fits together with a literal community aspect. But to fully see the connection, we must again return to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. As we have already discussed, the soma of Christ was crucified on Good Friday. Likewise, the soma of Christ was raised on Easter Sunday. But Paul’s language of the Body of Christ carries with it not only implications of the Church but also inevitable effects for it. “Christians…are in literal fact the risen organism of Christ’s person in all its concrete reality.” That is to say that the Church, the soma of Christ, is in every way Christ’s resurrected soma, which itself is Christ’s soma of earthly ministry. In truth, it is soon after Christ’s resurrection that the Church is unified as a body (Pentecost), and it occurs in such a way that Christ’s ascension does not mean that his soma ceases to exist on earth; rather, it continues through the Church. “In the same way as no clear distinction can be drawn between the flesh-body of Jesus and the body of his resurrection, so there is no real line between the body of His resurrection and the flesh-bodies of those who are risen with Him; for they are members of it.” But we come to the soma as sinners, as individuals torn apart from community. We come as sarx. Through the grace of God, we gather as sinful fleshes in the One Body, wherein we begin transformation – a resurrection into a New Creation and a New Body: the Body of Christ. Like a marriage (a concept that Paul uses to describe our connection to Christ) where two people (“fleshes”) become one body, many people (“fleshes”) form together as a Church to create the Body of Christ. Transformation cannot occur on the individual level because it deals with soma, which is corporal in nature. Therefore, resurrection is not from the body, but of the Body, and is thus fundamentally social. Likewise, “the new creation is not a fresh start, but the old made new.” By participating in the Body of Christ, we become who we are and who we have been designed to be: whole and complete – Christ-like. This is the picture that we see in Genesis when “God created humankind in his image” (Genesis 1:27). And it is in Christ that we witness “the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation” (Colossians 1:15), who is “the head of the body [soma], the church” (Colossians 1:18). As Church, we are one in the Body that is Jesus Christ, who was and is himself soma. All this is to say that the line between Christology and ecclesiology is impossible to draw because the two come from one soma. There is but one Body. Therefore, we should see in ecclesiology a rich Christological tradition that testifies to the life and ministry of Christ because the two bodies exist in radical continuity. As we now turn towards Wesley’s ecclesiology, let us remember that the Church is the Body of Christ (both an ecclesiological and a Christological statement). Consequently, we may look to his doctrine of the Church as potentially salvific and therapeutic in regards to his anemic Christology.

III. WESLEY’S ECCLESIOLOGY To this point, we have discussed Wesley’s Christology – including an understanding of Christological history, primary and secondary sources evidencing Wesley’s anemic Christology, and the results of Wesley’s weakened doctrine. However, we have also seen how Christology cannot be limited to the doctrine of Christ alone. In the previous chapter, we connected Christology with ecclesiology through the use of Paul’s metaphor “the Body of Christ.” We concluded that the Church is the resurrected soma of Christ that is actively present in the world and through which Christ’s ministry is now revealed. As such, we have justified our turning to Wesley’s ecclesiology as healing and restorative in regards to his Christology. In this chapter, our objective is to reveal how Wesley’s practical doctrine of the Church effects this healing. We begin with Wesley’s definition of the Church, which he once again adopts from the Church of England. Wesley’s Article XIII, “Of the Church,” reads as follows: “The visible Church of Christ is a congregation of faithful [persons], in which the pure Word of God is preached, and the sacraments duly administered according to Christ’s ordinance, in all those things that of necessity are requisite to the same.” Wesley’s definition pulls out the two main features of the Church: God’s Word is preached and the sacraments are administered. By aligning the Church with the administration of the sacraments and with preaching, Wesley foundationally defines the Church as a “means of grace.” In his sermon entitled “The Means of Grace,” Wesley explains what this phrase means: “By ‘means of grace’ I understand outward signs, words, or actions ordained of God, and appointed for this end—to be the ordinary channels whereby he might convey to [humans] preventing, justifying, or sanctifying grace.” Therefore, “means of grace” entail “outward signs” – symbols and actions that are perceptible and oriented in this created world – that are the result of the Church living in response to God. We see such ordination by God in the life of Christ, whose earthly ministry was grace itself to a desperate world. Wesley continues in this sermon with a definition of sacrament that complements his definitions of “Church” and “means of grace”: “a sacrament is ‘an outward sign of inward grace, and a means whereby we receive the same’.” According to Wesley, the sacraments are graceful insomuch as they are the actions of a life of faith. Further, this reiterates that the Church is a means of grace wherein the sacraments are administered. Comprehensively, we glean the crucial aspect of Wesley’s Church: it is outwardly visible grace-filled practice that exists due to the inward grace it has received. But, as the Body of Christ, the Church must continually orient itself around its Head. In his fascinating book Outward Sign and Inward Grace, Rob L. Staples, Professor of Theology emeritus at Nazarene Theological Seminary, aids us in grounding the Church in Christ as a means of grace: [T]he establishing of the Church by the Spirit signifies the realization of the reign of Christ. All means of grace must be defined by the Christ event. The Word (both written and preached) is a means of grace because its center is in Christ, the Living Word. Prayer is a means of grace because it is prayer in Christ’s name. Certainly the sacraments are inseparable from the work of Christ. Baptism in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is an identification with Christ (Rom. 6:3-8). The Lord’s Supper receives its content from the sacrificial life and death of Christ. Christ is thus the ruling power of the means of grace. In other words, the means of grace are the modes of the Holy Spirit’s activity in creating the Church, since the Holy Spirit is also the Spirit of Christ.

Hence, the activities of the Church are means of grace that continually point to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. As a Church, what we do directly reflects Christ’s character (or at least ought to) because the Church finds its origin in Christ. While we will devote much greater time and attention to the role of the sacraments later, now is the appropriate time to address the other outward signs of the Church that are integral to Wesley’s ecclesiology. Clarence Bence, current Professor of Historical Theology at Indiana Wesleyan University, demonstrates how Wesley’s Church is meant to include “both a message proclaimed and a life-style manifested to others. Wesley never tolerated a truncated soteriology [the doctrine of salvation] that divorced the crisis of conversion from the pursuit of personal or social holiness.” Thus, our immediate discussion will look into Wesley’s sermons and the lives of those who constitute the Body of Christ. Before moving onward, Bence’s inclusion of the phrase “social holiness” needs further explanation. To be sure, this Wesleyan phrase is often torn from its context and misinterpreted. However, Bence’s interpretation is insightful: Social holiness is the penetration and permeation of the gospel into all aspects of the social order with the intent of changing that order into the kingdom of God. Wesleyan ecclesiology as an expression of his soteriology must be transformational in its deepest sense. The goal of the Church is to be the firstfruits of the coming kingdom, to be the first installment of God’s reign on earth.

First, this helps explain why Bence connects soteriology with ecclesiology in his first statement. Salvation is a transformation that occurs within the soma of Christ (which is capable of transformation and resurrection). Because the Church (the soma of Christ) is concerned with transformation (the activity of the soma), holiness must be social in Wesley’s ecclesiology. Second, the Church is concerned with outward actions because holiness (the Wesleyan thrust for Christianity) is meant to permeate our entire lives, making us a holy Body. Third, Bence’s point that the Church is transformative is crucial, particularly in the way he notes a transformed social order. The Church is the outward manifestation of God’s Kingdom presently active in this world, of which Christ is the rightful King. Therefore, the message and the actions of the Church should be patterned after the coming Kingdom. We may now turn to Wesley’s preaching in the Church, especially since it is a key part of his definition of the Church. It is an understatement to say that Wesley left behind many printed sermons. In The Works of John Wesley, we may read no fewer than 151 of his sermons. Even more telling is that Wesley devotes 13 sermons to the Sermon on the Mount. In light of Bence’s words above, the Sermon on the Mount is Jesus Christ’s message to us that offers a glimpse of Kingdom life. Through Jesus’ sermon, we witness the heart of God and are able to see what transformed living is. Most importantly, the proclamation of the Kingdom of God, as shown in the Sermon on the Mount, is most readily witnessed in the life of Jesus Christ, who, as soma, continues ministering through the Church today. Therefore, Wesley’s 13 sermons on Christ’s Sermon is itself a statement for the lifestyle demanded of the Church. As Bence says, we are to be “the firstfruits of the coming kingdom.” Accordingly, Wesley’s ecclesiology establishes a Church that is meant to fulfill God’s design for Creation. The Methodist movement Wesley founded has intended to rekindle a zeal for the Church that would re-orient it with this central concern for fulfilling God’s design – an image presented in the Sermon on the Mount and in the ministry of Christ. Contemporary Methodist theologian Theodore Runyon summarizes that “‘zeal for the church’ only makes sense if it is zeal for those tasks the church was created to accomplish. Here it is of interest that Wesley gives priority to works of mercy (feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting those that are sick and in prison).” Wesley’s practical theology takes Matthew 25:31-46 seriously, for it is in these works of mercy that grace is bestowed upon the Body of Christ. But Wesley’s works of mercy (the activities of the Church, which are means of grace) go far beyond this short list that Runyon offers parenthetically. Runyon also includes a large passage from M. Douglas Meeks concerning Wesley’s intensely practical ministry with the poor: [Wesley’s ministry included] feeding, clothing, housing the poor; preparing the unemployed for work and finding them employment; visiting the poor sick and prisoners; devising new forms of health care education and delivery for the indigent; distributing books to the needy; and raising structural questions about an economy that produced poverty. Wesley’s turn to the poor, however, was not simply service of the poor, but more importantly life with the poor. … He actually shared the life of the poor in significant ways, even to the point of contracting diseases from their beds. … To be in Christ meant to take the form of Christ’s own life for and with the poor. To be a disciple of Christ meant to be obedient to Christ’s command to feed his sheep and to serve the least of his sisters and brothers.

Wesley’s ecclesiology directly takes it shape from the ministry of Christ who was soma and who presently exists as soma in the Church. This pertains to our discussion of the Body of Christ in relation to Christ’s ministry and existence on earth, for we are arguing that the two are inextricably linked. A proper ecclesiology takes its directive from the ministry and institution of Christ because the Church is the risen soma of Christ. Most intriguing about the aforementioned list from Meeks is that each ministry meets a physical, bodily need in the recipient. Indeed, Christ’s earthly ministry centered on meeting many immediate needs of suffering bodies. As a foretaste of the Kingdom, Christ brought salve-ation – true health, comfort, healing, and peace – through his ministry. Likewise, Wesley’s ecclesiological practices mirror Christ’s actions because they meet physical needs. However, these practices are Christological as well. When the Church becomes involved in the physical needs of the world, it testifies that Christ’s concern remains with the poor, the needy, the sick, the imprisoned, the widows, the orphans, the dying. In-deed, the Church, through its outward actions – which are themselves means of grace (God’s grace present in the Church’s ministry) – provides blessing to the poor in spirit, the mourners, the meek, the seekers-of-righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, and the persecuted. As Jürgen Moltmann has written, “The hidden presence of the coming Christ in the poor therefore belongs to ecclesiology first of all, and only after that to ethics.” Consequently, the Church acting for Christ’s sake is also acting for humanity’s sake. The practices are Creation- and life-affirming, thus pointing to the humanity of Christ Jesus, which, as part of Creation, is necessarily a good thing! These means of grace that occur in the created world are foretastes of the New Creation, and the Church is called to be the bearer of this New Creation. Hence, the Church has an eschatological focus and thrust in its presence here and now. The Body of Christ testifies through its ministry that Creation is indeed “very good” (Genesis 1:31), for the consummation of all things is a New Creation – God’s peace-filled Creation without end! Of these outward means of grace and ministries that we have named within Wesley’s ecclesiology, none compares with the importance of the sacraments – the “outward sign[s] of inward grace, and a means whereby we receive the same.” It is through the sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist (the two Protestant sacraments that we will be discussing) that we most readily and completely witness Christ’s active presence in his Body that simultaneously affirms the goodness of Creation and its redemption as New Creation. Stapes prepares us for sacramental discussion with this: Whenever we submit to being baptized with water (matter), or each time we approach the Lord’s table and eat a piece of bread (matter) and drink the fruit of the vine (matter), we are affirming something about our redemption. But in addition to that—and admittedly secondary to it—we are saying something about the creation. We are striking a blow against all forms of dualism. We are saying: This water, or this bread, or this wine is a vehicle, a residency, a “mean” of divine grace; it is therefore good!

Accordingly, we now turn to baptism and the Eucharist within Wesley’s ecclesiology to further understand the activities of the Church. From there, we will see how the sacraments affirm, initiate and sustain Christ’s Body, and how they potentially heal Wesley’s anemic Christology.

Baptism in Wesley’s Ecclesiology As a sacrament, baptism ties together a physical sign – a token of remembrance – with a symbolic meaning that exists separately and is pointed to by that physical sign. Baptism strongly presents this truth, for on its own, the physical action of baptism is not very effective as a bathing ritual! Indeed, baptism requires a symbolic significance to gain its full meaning, but we must remember that it must not be divorced from its physical sign. Consequently, baptism as a whole must be considered in our ecclesiological discussion both physically and symbolically. Baptism signifies the most crucial aspect of who we are as the Church: those people who have been graced by the lasting presence of the Holy Spirit. We first see this in Jesus’ baptism by John the Baptist (Matthew 3:13-17), where “suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him.” Here, alighting means to rest, to reside, to remain with; the Spirit of God thus dwells in Christ Jesus, and the event at which this occurs outwardly is his baptism. In this regard, it is the indwelling of the Holy Spirit – God’s Spirit, which is the Spirit of Christ – that marks the birth of the Church (Acts 2). The same Spirit (which Wesley often identifies as “grace”) that “alighted on” Christ at his baptism comes to the gathering at Pentecost and is breathed into this band of followers (as God breathed into humanity in Genesis 1) so that they may become the Church. Subsequently, 3,000 were baptized as a means of initiation into the Church – an outward sign of inward grace (Spirit). For John Wesley, baptism is “the initiatory sacrament, which enters us into covenant with God. It was instituted by Christ, who alone has power to institute a proper sacrament, a sign, seal, pledge, and means of grace, perpetually obligatory on all Christians.” When Wesley uses language of covenant, it is important that he tempers it with language of grace as well. As the old covenant marked an agreement between God’s grace and our response, so too does this new covenant, which is marked by baptism. He adds to this that “it was instituted in the room of circumcision,” meaning “in the place of circumcision.” Baptism replaces the mark of the old covenant with a new one rooted in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. As such, baptism – the initiatory sacrament of the Church – is intensely Christological! In Romans, Paul explicitly notes baptism’s Christological thrust by grounding it in Christ’s death and resurrection: Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. … But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him (Romans 6:3-6, 8).

As baptism points to Christ’s death and resurrection, it is important to notice Paul’s language that Christ was raised “by the glory of the Father,” not by Christ’s own abilities. Resurrection is by God’s grace, not by human effort. Our role in the matter is a passive one. Interestingly, so too is our physical role in baptism: we assume a passive posture whereby it is not by our own ability that we are baptized – someone else must baptize us! Christ realized this when he asked John to baptize him. However, as we have already discussed, baptism is to be viewed in light of Christ and his death and resurrection. “This means that Jesus is baptized in view of His death, which effects forgiveness of sins for everyone. For this reason Jesus must unite himself in solidarity with all His people and be baptized ‘to fulfill all righteousness’ (Matt. 3:15).” This fact is notable for two reasons. First, Jesus’ baptism points to his own death, which must be read alongside his resurrection. Out of the Resurrection comes the Church, which is initiated through the gift of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and is established in the sacrament of baptism. These pieces all unfold to reveal the same story, for Christ’s baptism ushers in a permanent dwelling of the Spirit, which the Body of Christ inherits at Pentecost. Second, through baptism, Jesus unites himself with “all His people,” enabling him to be the atoning sacrifice that is salvific for all humans. He is united with us precisely because baptism points to his blood on the Cross. Indeed, “we have been united with him in a death like his.” Thus, for Wesley, baptism is “the ordinary instrument of our justification.” Baptism represents “the washing away the guilt of original sin, by the application of the merits of Christ’s death.” We see a full Christology in Wesley’s understanding of baptism since Christ’s death takes place in Christ’s body, as does the Resurrection. As such, we enter into Christian covenant with God through baptism – a physical act. In the Old Testament, God graciously cuts covenant with Noah through the rainbow, with Abraham through circumcision, with Moses through the Passover – all physical tokens. In this light, Staples declares that “baptism is precisely such a sign in the covenant of grace.” God’s covenant now occurs within the Church, the Body of Christ, into which we are baptized as believers and “from which spiritual, vital union with him, proceeds the influence of his grace on those that are baptized.” Again, Wesley’s language adopts a healthy Christology since we are vitally – in our essence and being, fully, soma-ly – connected with Christ in baptism, which is explicitly a means of grace. Accordingly, baptism reflects an outward action of an inward grace: it is the response to God’s loving grace present in Christ Jesus, who lives in the Church. Staples reinforces this connection: “[I]f we are to follow the New Testament pattern, our inward response of faith will be accompanied by the outward symbol of baptism, which is the covenant symbol of God’s prior grace. Baptism makes visible our faith response, but this is only secondary to its primary function of making visible God’s action toward us.” In Christian thought, baptism initiates our new identification as “the children of God.” Wesley expands on this new identity and life a few lines later: “By water then, as a means, the water of baptism, we are regenerated or born again. … [It is not] the outward washing, but…inward grace, which…makes it a sacrament.” With this new identification of who we are – Christians, followers of Christ who bear his name as our marking – comes a transformation of what we do. Our new births are marked by our deaths and our participatory death in Christ; therefore, we are likewise united with his resurrection. No longer do we pattern our lifestyles after this world; instead, we “walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4). Staples revisits the scene of Jesus’ baptism to bring light to this new lifestyle: At His baptism, Jesus heard His Father’s call to be a Suffering Servant. His work centered in His death and resurrection. In our baptism, we become united with Christ in all He does. We become God’s servants [who] make the work of Christ our work [which] involves suffering and servanthood. That is what it means to live the life of Christ.

This understanding further illuminates the previously mentioned tangible means of grace that Wesley continually administered to those in need. Their significance is rooted in Christ’s life and ministry to the poor, afflicted, sick, widows, orphans, prostitutes – the marginalized of society. Jesus the Messiah became the Suffering Servant for humanity. Baptism, as the initiatory sacrament of the Church, binds us to his very real, physical work. We, the members of Christ’s Body who are joined in his death and resurrection, thus “walk in newness of life.” Wesley concludes that as children of God, “we are heirs of the kingdom of heaven.” Hence, baptism also has an eschatological focus. Since the Church has been founded upon the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, which is the heart of baptism (the physical act that reenacts the birth of the Church in each new convert), we are called to live Spirit-filled lives in word and in deed. As Staples notes, “the new life of the baptized is described as an ascended life, in which we set our hearts and minds on things above (Col. 3:1-4). The whole series of divine acts accomplished in the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus is spiritually reenacted in the life of the Church. Christians therefore must see that this happens visibly in their everyday behavior.” Staples adopts Wesley’s language of sacrament – “an outward sign of inward grace” – to discuss the lifestyle of the Body of Christ. This language affirms the sacramental role of baptism in the formation and preservation of the Church, which acts outwardly as a response of an inward grace. Finally, it is important to see how Wesley affirms that through baptism, we become the Body of Christ. Pentecost – in which we see the formation of the Church and the sacrament of Christian baptism – is inherently a “corporate affair.” Certainly, this is an example of what Wesley means by “social religion”: solitary religion is detrimental to the Body of Christ because the Church has been created as a bonded unity. In other words, one cannot be sarx – a disconnected “flesh-substance” living solitarily – within the soma of Christ. Through baptism, we are joined with Christ’s corporal soma. To reiterate, baptism initiates us into a community of fellow believers through the bond of love so we may be transformed and holy people. “Because [we] have died and risen with Christ in baptism,” concludes Staples, “the other sacrament of the Church—the Eucharist—is possible; and because [we] await the final resurrection, the Eucharist is necessary.”

The Eucharist in Wesley’s Ecclesiology If baptism is the initiatory sacrament into the Body of Christ, the Eucharist is the sustaining sacrament that sanctifies the Church. This emphasis comes as no surprise, for it is by his doctrine of sanctification that Wesley has contributed most uniquely to theology and to Christian spirituality/living. As we have already learned, sanctification begins for Wesley with the “new birth” (“regeneration”), which we see in baptism. But baptism is a one-time event, and we have learned from experience (as did Wesley) that salvation typically occurs as a series of stages over time. The Wesleyan understanding of “Christian perfection” – whereby love occupies the entirety of the Christian’s heart and soul – is a process. We see this sanctifying process in Wesley’s understanding of the Eucharist. “The Lord’s Supper was ordained by God,” writes Wesley in his Journal, “to be a means of conveying to [humans] either preventing, or justifying, or sanctifying grace, according to their several necessities.” In his sermon on “The Duty of Constant Communion,” he writes, “As our bodies are strengthened by bread and wine, so are our souls by these tokens of the body and blood of Christ. This is the food of our souls: this gives strength to perform our duty, and leads us on to perfection.” Wesley’s language of “leading us on to perfection” implies a certain journey of faith, not an instantly achieved perfection. Our participation in the Eucharist, the sanctifying sacrament of the Body of Christ, signifies that our sanctification is a “work-in-progress.” Nowhere do we see this emphasis more explicitly than in Wesley’s “true rule” for our frequency of receiving the Eucharist: “so often are we to receive as God gives us opportunity.” Being the sustenance for the Body of Christ, the Eucharist is for Wesley to be given and received as often as possible. Maddox explains how Wesley “averaged communing about once every five days through his adult life.” The reason for this frequency we find in Wesley’s sermon. First, “it is a plain command of Christ. That this is his command appears from the words of the text, ‘Do this in remembrance of me.’” “If then you receive three times a year because the Church commands it,” Wesley continues, “receive every time you can because God commands it.” Second, it offers the recipient benefits: “the forgiveness of our past sins and the present strengthening and refreshing of our souls.” Again, “the oftener you come to the Lord’s table the greater benefit you will find there.” To understand the Eucharist as a sanctifying ordinance is to enact it as a sign of our total reliance upon God’s sustaining, nourishing, and communal grace. Our Christian character as the Body of Christ takes shape from our gathering at the Lord’s table. But it is not without effort that we join as the Body. We must make a habit out of it – hence the constancy of our communion. William H. Willimon, theologian and bishop in the United Methodist Church, writes that “the constancy of the Eucharist is part of its power. This meal need not be special, nor exhilaratingly meaningful (though sometimes it is both). This is the normal food of Christians, the sustaining, nourishing stuff of our life. We return again and again to the Lord’s table, to the source of our life together.” Additionally, we must remember that the Eucharist is a sacrament, and that by this it is “the continual remembrance of the death of Christ, by eating bread and drinking wine [physical symbols], which are the outward signs of the inward grace, the body and blood of Christ.” Staples summarizes the richness of this sacrament: The Eucharist [is] that means of grace, instituted by Jesus…, to which we are invited for repentance, for self-examination, for renewal, for spiritual sustenance, for thanksgiving, for fellowship, for anticipation of the heavenly kingdom, and for celebration in our pilgrimage toward perfection in the image of Christ. All these are involved in our sanctification, and all these are benefits available to us at the Lord’s table.

Through Staples, we see the aspects and the images that the Church has used to describe the Eucharist and through which we will presently continue our assessment of the Lord’s Supper in Wesley’s ecclesiology. These include thanksgiving, remembrance of Christ, our own sacrifice, Christian fellowship, and the foretaste of the Kingdom of Heaven. First, we understand the Eucharist to be a meal of thanksgiving unto God, for this is what “Eucharist” means: “thanksgiving.” And there is good reason to be thankful! In the Eucharist, the Body of Christ recognizes God’s redemptive and salvific work that reconcile us in the life of Christ Jesus. Says Staples, “It is thanksgiving for all that God has accomplished in the history of salvation. It is thanksgiving for what God is accomplishing now in the world and in the Church. And it is thanksgiving for the future fulfillment of God’s kingdom we anticipate each time we gather at the Lord’s table.” As such, the Eucharist is a time for festivity, not for a funeral dirge; hence, we celebrate the Resurrection of our Savior in the Eucharist! Wesley’s words on the Eucharist certainly agree with this joyous occasion of thanksgiving found in the Lord’s Supper. In his previously mentioned sermon, he implores his reader to “Consider the Lord’s Supper…as a mercy from God to [humanity]. As God, whose mercy is over all his works,…knew there was but one way for [humans] to be happy like himself, namely, by being like him in holiness…he has given us certain means of obtaining this help.” God’s mercy is inseparable from God’s loving grace, and we celebrate this truth in the breaking of the bread and in the drinking of the wine at the Lord’s Supper. We give thanks for God’s unfailing mercy and salvific work throughout Creation. Second is the explicit act of remembrance in the Eucharist. This is indeed where Wesley begins his argument for our “constant communion”: that it is Christ’s command that we should “Do this in remembrance of me” (1 Cor. 11:24). Much is interwoven with the sense of remembering. It is more than simply “not forgetting.” It is commemoration by participation and by reenactment. In Staples’s words, “He told us to remember Him by the very act of doing what we do three times a day—eating and drinking! This would enable us to remember. The Christ of the Communion table also wants to be the Christ of the breakfast table, the lunch table, and the dinner table.” Again, we see the topic of the frequency of the Eucharist entering the picture through the association of this sacrament with the ordinary practice of nourishing our physical bodies. Originally, the Eucharist was celebrated in a liturgical setting involving a “love feast” (Jude 12). This was no meager meal, but a banquet. Staples insightfully expounds on this amazing feast of remembrance: “These events were intended to supply a free meal to the poorer members. It appears, from the available evidence, that the sacramental meal and the social meal were originally one.” How fascinating it is that Christ’s meal of remembrance brings physical nourishment to the poor, the first in the Kingdom! As such, the memory we invoke in the Eucharist not only spans back in time – i.e., to Christ’s Passion, and even to Creation itself – but also forward in time – i.e., to the future Kingdom and the promise of Christ’s Second Coming. Third, the Eucharist symbolizes a sacrifice of ourselves. Wesley refers to the Lord’s Supper as “the Christian sacrifice” – but we must consider what this sacrifice consists of and how this sacrifice is enabled. Staples rightly suggests that these sacrifices include our prayers and our praises. To this, we might include our tithes and offerings, our observance of the Lord’s Day (including our time of worship), our commitment to Scripture, our Christian way of life, and our ministries. However, as part of the sacrament of the Eucharist, these sacrifices are means of grace that are initiated by God. Communion is a response to God’s loving grace that enables us to sacrifice and call upon Christ as our only source of salvation. In Staples’s words, “It is only by grace that we are enabled to offer the sacrifice of praise.” Fourth, the Eucharist displays true Christian fellowship due to the unity that we have in the Body of Christ. This fellowship is understood by the rich Greek word koinōnia. When we refer to the Lord’s Supper as “Communion,” we embrace the inherent fellowship (koinōnia) in the Eucharist. Fundamentally, our fellowship derives from the fact that we become one soma in the Body of Christ, and that Christ is our glorious Head. Wesley offers another point of unification in the Body: we are all unworthy to receive the sacrament by our own merit. However, Wesley refines this by saying that “If you resolve and design to follow Christ you are fit to approach the Lord’s table. If you do not design this, you are only fit for the table and company of devils.” We remember that it is by grace that we are able to approach the Lord’s Table and partake of this sacrament, which is itself a gracious gift of mercy that sustains the Body of Christ. Also, it occurs within a liturgical framework that necessitates community over isolation – the Eucharist solidifies the community of believers as one Body of Christ. This Body exists in Christ because the sacramental focus that sustains it continually refers to the Passion of its Savior. Indeed, to partake of the Eucharist in a worthy manner is to “discern the body” (1 Corinthians 11:29). When we practice the Eucharist, we recognize the primacy of Christ in the Church’s constitution, and this recognition quells all of our petty quibbles as humans. Divisions are to be cast aside in the Body. We approach the Table of the Lord as brothers and sisters in Christ who need both to be sustained by grace and to undergo the process of sanctification. The meal is for all who are hungry for holiness, and in it, Christ has promised us satisfaction in the context of the Body. Fifth, the Eucharist reveals a foretaste of the Kingdom of Heaven. Wesley’s understanding of the Meal as a means of our sanctification places an emphasis on the future dimension of the Lord’s Supper. Maddox writes concerning this topic: Not only did the Wesleys [both John and Charles] recognize this future dimension, it has been argued that they gave more prominence to the Eucharist as a celebration of Christ’s resurrection and an anticipation of messianic banquet than had been common in the West since the beginning of the Middle Ages! Such anticipation of our future full salvation surely provides hope to sustain us within the struggles and disappointments of our present imperfect setting and lives.

In clear tones, the Lord’s Supper rejoices in the eschatological hope of the Body of Christ: it looks back to remember Christ’s triumph on the Cross, and it looks forward in confidence of his final triumph over the powers of evil. Wesley joins his voice in this eschatological reading of the sacrament: “One of these [means of obtaining God’s help] is the Lord’s Supper, which of his infinite mercy he hath given for this very end: that through this means we may be assisted to attain those blessings which he hath prepared for us; that we may obtain holiness on earth and everlasting glory in heaven.” The sanctifying focus of the Eucharist – “that we may obtain holiness on earth” – is necessarily connected to the beautiful future hope of Christianity – “everlasting glory in heaven.” Thus, it is to join with Jesus’ words, “on earth as it is in heaven.” The Meal is a foretaste – an authentic taste, but incomplete – of the Kingdom of Heaven. As such, it points towards our banquet in the Kingdom and “opens up the vision of the divine rule that has been promised as the final renewal of the creation.” As a foretaste of the Kingdom of Heaven, the Eucharist is a bold example of the openness of God’s call to salvation for humanity. The churches in the Wesleyan tradition have never practiced “closed Communion” – that is, limiting its availability by some denominational or theological purpose. Accordingly, Staples notes, “The universality of the invitation [to the Lord’s Supper] makes every Eucharistic celebration an evangelistic or missionary event. It is the offer of salvation to all who will accept.” After all, at the first Eucharist we see Jesus’ betrayer gathered around the table. Is it too much for us to accept that God’s grace through Christ Jesus was offered to Judas through the sacrament? The Eucharist is a call to repentance, even to the one who betrayed the Messiah. This emphasizes the responsive nature of grace inherent to the sacraments: they are outward actions of a received inward grace. It is not that the Lord’s Supper lacked efficacy to save Judas; rather, its power resided in Judas’s response to the grace given unto him (which he denied). And so it is with us: the call to repentance meets us every time we join to share in the Lord’s Supper. Maddox reflects on this “co-operant nature” of the Eucharist, writing, “the Spirit (i.e., grace) is always present in the means, but we must responsively welcome this Presence for it to be effective in healing our lives. Full response…is rarely instantaneous. … Likewise, the healing which our sin-distorted lives require is a long-term project.” This is why Wesley urges the Church to partake of the Eucharist frequently! Our sanctification is the gradual acquisition of the nature of love in Christ Jesus that we adopt as members of his Body.

The Effects of Wesley’s Ecclesiology upon his Christology in the Context of Love At this point in the argument, we have seen how Wesley’s rather anemic Christology leads to a weakened doctrine of salvation and even jeopardizes our understanding of what it means to be a sanctified people. We argued this point on the basis of love and whether or not it is actively or passively present in Wesley’s Christ. Deschner’s reading of Wesley interpreted Christ’s love as an “inherent ‘temper’, abstracted from participation in the active obedience of Christ.” Wesley, then, understood that Christ’s love did not result from his active obedience. Therefore, Christ does not participate in the human condition of choosing to love actively. We investigated several examples from Wesley’s Christological writings that seem to identify him as a monophysite and, at times, a docetist. In these examples, we saw how Christ appears to shirk human emotion and how this lack counters his ability to heal (and thus be victorious over) our guilt and sin. These examples also undercut Christ’s physical existence as a human. In these contexts, we remembered Gregory of Nazianzus’s words: “For that which He has not assumed He has not healed; but that which is united to His Godhead is also saved.” On the whole, Wesley’s Christology dilutes his understanding of our salvation through the redemptive acts of Jesus Christ. However, at the culmination of our discussion of Wesley’s Christology, we found evidence that, by turning to Wesley’s ecclesiology, we might find a strengthened notion of the physical Christ. We then looked to Paul’s language of the Body of Christ, which we interpreted (through his use of soma, “body”) to be both the Church Body and Christ’s body. Further, we saw how the Church emerges as “the risen organism of Christ’s person in all its concrete reality.” Therefore, the Body of Christ that is the Church is in radical continuity with the Body of Christ that ministered physically 2,000 years ago. In the shift to ecclesiology, our hope was to find a fuller understanding of the physical Christ upon whom the Body of Christ has been established. If the Church, through its ministries and sacraments, were to demonstrate an active obedience of response to the grace of God – thereby being a means of grace to a desperate Creation and also creating a path for the salvation and sanctification of its members – we would be able to offer healing and strength to Wesley’s anemic Christology and restore Christ’s character as the One who is fully human and fully divine. In other words, if his ecclesiology holds in regards to love as an active response to grace in the form of physical ministries and sacraments, we have a way to heal Wesley’s Christology. Undeniably, this is the portrait we have found in Wesley’s ecclesiology! Fundamentally, Wesley’s doctrine of the Church understands the community of believers to be a “means of grace”: “outward signs, words, or actions ordained of God, and appointed for this end—to be the ordinary channels whereby he might convey to [humanity] preventing, justifying, or sanctifying grace.” Additionally, Wesley’s definition of sacrament – “an outward sign of inward grace” – demonstrates how the chief activities of the Church have a responsive nature to them: what we do as the Body of Christ is out of response to the gracious love we have been shown by God. And the ultimate demonstration of this love is Christ, for whom the Cross and the Tomb are not the final word! In Chapter 2, we argued that Christ’s soma is present at the Crucifixion. It is soma (not sarx) because it is transformational – it is capable of sanctification into Christ-likeness in love. The Church’s active obedience as the Body of Christ thus relates to Christ’s existence as a physical soma. As the Church, we take our cues for ministry from Christ’s practices, wherein Christ brought both physical and spiritual nourishment to us humans. As we have seen in this chapter, Wesley’s ecclesiological practices put forth an extremely rich understanding of Christ’s physical ministry as means of grace. According to the lifestyle displayed by Wesley and his churches, the Body of Christ is to minister to the physical needs of humanity through works of mercy. This we do corporally. Additionally, we are to preach the Word of God and administer the sacraments – both of which are Christological. Preaching is Christological because its content focuses on God’s spoken, living Word (John 1:1-18). The sacraments are Christological because they exist in the reality of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. By baptism we are initiated into the Body of Christ, and by the Eucharist we are nourished as the Body of Christ. Together, the sacraments join in establishing the eschatological character of the Church. We look ahead in hope of our resurrection and final glory because we have been united in Christ’s Body, which we know has been resurrected by the glory of the Father (Rom. 6). Since we now exist in the power of the Spirit (grace), our actions are eschatological. We proclaim an era of peace, of restoration, of new life. We bring justice to the poor, comfort to the brokenhearted, nourishment to the weak. We join together in the feast of our Lord as a foretaste of what is to come, ensuring that no person leaves the Lord’s Table hungry. In-deed, we “bear one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” (Ephesians 4:2-3, emphasis mine). Wesley comments on this passage in his sermon “Of the Church”: The ‘forebearing one another in love’ seems to mean not only the not resenting anything, and the not avenging yourselves; not only the not injuring, hurting, or grieving each other, either by word or deed; but also the bearing one another’s burdens; yea, and lessening them by every means in our power. It implies the sympathizing with them in their sorrows, afflictions, and infirmities; the bearing them up when without help they would be liable to sink under their burdens; the endeavouring to lift their sinking heads, and to strengthen their feeble knees.

Wesley adds to this that to “maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” is to “preserve inviolate the same spirit of lowliness and meekness, of long-suffering, mutual forbearance and love; and all these cemented and knit together by that sacred tie, the peace of God filling the heart. Thus only can we be and continue living members of that church which is the body of Christ.” Love, properly understood, is long-suffering, mutual forbearance, meekness – all descriptions of Christ’s earthly ministry. Therefore, the works of the Church (the Body of Christ) are outward signs of inward grace. They are the response of faith. Wesley demonstrates his zeal for this topic in his concluding words from “Of the Church”: Show them your faith by your works. Let them see by the whole tenor of your conversation that your hope is all laid up above! Let all your words and actions evidence the spirit whereby you are animated! Above all things, let your love abound. Let it extend to every child of [humanity]; let it overflow to every child of God. By this let all [humans] know whose disciples ye are, because you love one another.

Wesley’s conviction is that God’s love enables us to reciprocate love to God and to extend love towards others. By definition, “God is love” (1 John 4:8). Wesley comments in his Notes that “God is often styled holy, righteous, wise: but not holiness, righteousness, or wisdom in the abstract: as he is said to be love: intimating that this is his darling, his reigning attribute; the attribute that sheds an amiable glory on all his other perfections” (emphasis mine). Wesley joins his voice with the epistle’s writer as to the consequence of this proposition: God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us (1 John 4:9-12).

To put these verses into Wesleyan terms, it is by our love as the Body of Christ that we attain to Christ-likeness. This is what it means to be sanctified and made holy through the gift and grace of God through the Incarnation of Jesus Christ who lived and died bodily, and whose Spirit sustains this very Body as the Church. Hence, we have witnessed for ourselves how the practices of the Church, particularly its sacraments, tie Christology with ecclesiology. The sacraments sustain the Church and have been established by Christ to nourish his Body. The Church’s practices thus bring a healing to the Body of Christ both Christologically and ecclesiologically because they are means of grace to all people whether or not they are members of the Body. Plainly, the sacraments exist for the sake of Creation! However, they also focus the Church around the person, ministry, and ordinances of Christ. In the sacraments, we remember our Lord’s Passion as well as the glorious hope of the Resurrection. This points us as a Church toward the Kingdom of Heaven, wherein Christ is the righteous and rightful King. And, as members of Christ’s Body, our chief operative is love that is our free, active response to God’s dramatic grace. It is then with confidence that we proclaim Wesley’s ecclesiology as salvific in regards to his Christology, for a healthy doctrine and application of the Body of Christ necessarily results in a full Christology that presents Christ as fully human and fully divine.

A SERMONIC POSTSCRIPT: “LIVING AS THE BODY OF CHRIST TODAY” “The Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, ‘This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me’” (1 Corinthians 11:23-24).

As I compose these very words, I cannot help but consider the context in which I do so. Being the first Sunday of the month, today the church I attend celebrated the Lord’s Supper. Looking ahead, next Sunday marks Palm Sunday, which means that Easter Sunday is two weeks from today. Looking behind, I have spent the past year immersed in Wesley’s doctrines of Christ and the Church. Needless to say, my mind is spinning concerning these familiar words that Paul relates to us concerning “the night when Jesus was betrayed.” Be that as it may, I cannot help but consider the sacrament that I received this morning in light of the events that came before it (namely, my studies of the past year) and those that are to come after it (namely, Good Friday and Easter Sunday). With these in mind, I ask myself, “What did Christ mean when he said ‘This is my body’?” and “How are we to ‘remember’ this sacrament?” In faith, and as a member of the Church, what is to follow is my best understanding of how we are to live as the Body of Christ today. We begin with the first line of Jesus, “This is my body that is for you.” Perhaps it is best to picture the setting in the dining room on that night to see what Christ is saying fully. He and the Twelve have just entered Jerusalem and it is the day of Unleavened Bread. Jesus has sent them to make preparations for the Passover meal, and now they are gathered together to celebrate a meal of remembrance of how the LORD delivered them out of slavery in Egypt to (eventually) the Promised Land. It is a time of remembrance and a time of anticipation, for they have been eagerly expecting the Messiah, and they are convinced (to various degrees) that this Jesus, whom they are following, is He. They are gathered around the table – a close group of friends (one of whom will betray the leader) – to share a meal. In this setting, Jesus takes a loaf of bread and tears off a piece in his hand. He holds it up and says these words: “This is my body that is for you.” Pause. Stop to look at this scene. We can see Jesus. In his hand there is a piece of bread. With him at the table are the Disciples. And in these three angles we see the three meanings bound up in Jesus’ sacramental words. In the first sense, “This is my body” refers to what Jesus is holding in his hand: the piece of bread. Jesus is using symbolic language to speak of his initiation of what we consider the sacrament of the Eucharist. In fact, the word “Eucharist” is simply an English cognate of the Greek word for “thanksgiving.” We call the sacrament “Eucharist” because Jesus took the bread and gave thanks for it. So, in one sense, “This is my body” refers to the piece of bread in his hand. It works nicely with the cup being the metaphoric blood of Christ, so this reading holds together. In another sense, “This is my body” can also literally refer to Jesus himself. All throughout his ministry, Jesus has been speaking in very strange ways to his Disciples. Yes, they consider him to be the Messiah, the Christ, the Savior from God. But they are expecting to be saved in terms of their then-present social order: they expect a political king who will overthrow the power structure and reign on a throne in this world. Instead, Jesus keeps telling them about suffering, servanthood, and sacrifice. We can read this phrase to mean Christ’s actual body which, within 24 hours, will be nailed to the Cross. Again, taken together with the cup/blood of Christ, this reading holds: Christ’s blood will be shed on the Cross – where his body will also be broken. But there is also a third way to read Christ’s sacramental phrase, “This is my body.” It might take a moment to see, but if we change “body” to “Body” (capitalize the b), we might see it. When Jesus says “This is my body,” we can also read it as “This is my body, the Church.” Gathered around the table are his Disciples, the (shaky) foundations upon which his Church will be built. In this group we find people like ourselves: doubters, defectors, deserters. However, “this body” is “for you” – “you” meaning those who are gathered: the nucleus of the Church, the Body of Christ. In light of Paul’s subsequent writings, this interpretation gains a lot of strength. Which reading is “correct”? In a sense, each reading is. This is because all three reveal something about the character of who Christ is and all through one simple action: an action that we have come to incorporate as one of our two Protestant sacraments, no less! But what does it mean to read this cryptic phrase in three views? What does it reveal about who Christ is? First, reading “This is my body” to mean the bread in Jesus’ hand relates to Christ’s role as our High Priest. In the Jewish tradition, it was the Priest who offered the peoples’ sacrifices up to God because it was the Priest who was righteous enough to do so. He was the person who had ritually purified himself explicitly for this task. He scrupulously kept to the letter of the Law because he was to be an intercessor between God and God’s people. As such, Jesus becomes our High Priest at the Lord’s Supper. He is the One who first administers the sacraments. It is his righteousness that we invoke as we partake of the bread and the wine. We affirm his obedience to God and the means through which our sacrifice may be made. Because of his holiness, we too may become holy; and because of his sacrifice, we too may offer our own sacrifices through him. Therefore, Jesus’ words establish him as our High Priest who brings us the elements with which we recognize the sacrifice that he makes with them on our behalf. Second, reading “This is my body” to mean the body of Jesus himself relates to Christ’s role as our victorious King. Again, those gathered around the table have been expecting a Messiah who will conquer the powers of the world and vanquish the enemy. They expect a violent overthrowing of their surrounding political system. Instead, though, they receive a Suffering Servant who spends his time with children, prostitutes, tax collectors, lepers, the blind, the beggars – the “unclean” and marginalized of society. In John’s gospel, Jesus stoops so low as to wash feet! Certainly, this is not the picture of a victorious King, nor is the image of him hanging on the Cross. But that is just the point: Jesus Christ is not what they have been expecting. Christ represents the King of a New Kingdom: the Kingdom of God, where he is the only One righteous to rule. He is righteous because he takes on the role of a servant and suffers for Creation. He serves Creation as a body – a person, broken physically in the ultimate act of love. In Christ’s words, we therefore read his identification as our true King. Third, reading “This is my body” to mean the Body of Christ, which is the Church, relates to Christ’s role as Prophet. In one sense, Christ is prophesying the formation of the Church out of those seated with him at the table. It is true that by the Disciples’ next Passover Christ will be in heaven and they will be the Church. In another sense, Christ as Prophet is also a lawgiver. But, just like the law that the other prophets bring, Christ’s law is not a new command: it is to love. Indeed, the sentiment around the table is one of love. In John’s gospel, the Eucharist scene is replaced with the scene of Jesus washing the Disciples’ feet (John 13:1-20). This act of servanthood is also an act of love. Later in John’s gospel, Jesus asks Simon Peter whether he loves him or not (John 21:15-19). Peter answers “yes” three times, to which Jesus replies “feed my sheep.” Jesus wants Peter, who represents the Rock upon which Christ builds his Church, to live the life of a shepherd: to love, serve, and feed the Body. And what is he meant to feed the Body with? Why, the bread of the Eucharist – the sustaining meal for the coming Church! Together, we understand Christ to be our Priest, our King, and our Prophet because we understand “This is my body” to mean the bread, Jesus, and the Church. Now we want to look at the second part of Christ’s words surrounding the initiation of this sacrament – “Do this in remembrance of me” – to answer the question of how we are supposed to remember this meal. Just as the Passover marked a time of remembrance and anticipation, we read the Lord’s Supper as a commemoration and as an expectation of what is to come, both of which impact how we are to live in the present moment. In looking back, the Eucharist invites us to remember its context: a Passover meal where a lamb is slaughtered as an offering unto God as a sign of God’s faithfulness to the people God has chosen. Thus we see that, in this new meal, Christ is the Lamb who is slaughtered as an offering unto God on our behalf. In a unique way, Christ is both the sacrifice and the priest of the offering. As members of the Body of Christ, we must first remember the tradition out of which the new covenant of and through Christ is initiated: the sign of remembrance for God’s chosen people. Second, the Eucharist invites us to remember our need and reliance upon God’s grace to sustain us and to change us from sinners and slaves of this world into a holy people. As we share the bread of the Eucharist, we encounter God’s active and present grace in our lives as members of the Body of Christ. This remembrance inherently places Christ as the Head of the Body, for he is the ultimate sign of God’s gracious initiative. We proclaim that God is incarnate in the human Jesus when we eat the bread. Third, and as a result of God’s gracious initiative, we remember how we approach the Lord’s Table as a response. We remember how God’s grace has beckoned us and we respond to it by stepping forth to receive the elements. Thus there is meaning in serving the elements at church altars (as opposed to serving each aisle separately): we physically take the step of responding to God’s gracious initiative to join together at the Table. We gather at the Table because we need Christ’s provisions to nourish our identity as the Church. As a sustaining sacrament, the Eucharist reminds us of how we must continually return to receive “our daily bread.” Therefore, we are reminded that we are a people who respond because of God’s continual grace. But the sacrament also pushes us forward in thinking about the age to come and the Kingdom. First, we are to commemorate the meal with rejoicing and hearty praise and fellowship. Our worship is to celebrate Christ’s victory over death and sin. This is the image that is revealed to us in Revelation: the Kingdom of Heaven is full of praise to the Lamb who is worthy because he has been slain. The Eucharist should therefore be surrounded with songs of praise and words of worship that exalt Christ as victorious and resurrected. In the sacrament, we look forward to our own resurrection because of our participation in the Body of Christ. Our praise and worship is just a foretaste of the coming Kingdom! Second, we are to come to the table peacefully and lovingly, for this is the character of the Kingdom of Heaven. We live as members of the Kingdom though we are members of this present world. Hence, we live like Christ, who is simultaneously the righteous King and the Suffering Servant. We are to image the peace and the joy of heaven that we see in the Genesis account of Creation because in Christ we are a New Creation! Peace and love are to be our guiding principles. Violence has no place surrounding the Lord’s Table, for violence bespeaks competition, and all join together as One Body at this Meal. Those who hunger will be filled. Those who make peace will be God’s children. Those who are poor in spirit and persecuted will inherit the Kingdom. At this Meal, no one is to go hungry! Third, we are to come to the table as members of the Body who bring healing to a hurting world. We testify to the restoration of Creation because we are the community of God’s restorative, redemptive, and renewing grace. Indeed, we too are people in a world of hurt, but we have received effective and continual healing because of Christ. Our participation and remembrance of the Eucharist is thus like scheduled rehabilitation appointments with a doctor to restore us to health. Over time, we become how we were intended to be: fully functioning creatures free through the grace and love of God. What this means for us today is that we are called to be a sacramental people who join together as the Church to proclaim the Good News of who Christ is, what Christ has done, and what Christ will do in us. As the Body of Christ, we identify ourselves with Christ’s ministries as means of grace in a hurting, broken world. We align ourselves with healing the Body and serving one another in love. We are called to preach Christ, to worship Christ, and to live Christ – becoming a holy, sanctified people who live in Christ-likeness – because it is in Christ that we have our identity as the Body. We are to be tenants of Creation, living by God’s precepts for how we should live. And our model for this life is Christ because through Christ, we witness the life of the Kingdom. Therefore, it is our calling to become who we are: one Body – the Body of Christ, unified in the Spirit, to the glory of the Father for ever and ever. Amen! ENDNOTES

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D.M. Baillie, God Was In Christ: An Essay on Incarnation and Atonement (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1948), 65. The Eucharist symbolizes the body and blood of Christ, given to us the night before his death. Baptism connects us to the death and resurrection of Christ. Ministries mirror Christ’s earthly acts of grace, especially to the poor, the widowed, the outcasts, the sick, and children. The question still remains, though, why Wesley’s Christology appears to be weak. While the answer to that question is not within the scope of this paper, a brief reflection is nonetheless necessary. To be sure, Wesley’s writings come to us from an Enlightenment England wallowing in deism (that God created the world and has since “stepped back” entirely, allowing the world to run without intervention whatsoever). By applying a historical criticism to Wesley, there might be an explanation for his over-emphasized deity of Christ: Wesley very well could have been reacting against his context, which de-emphasized the deity of Christ since Incarnation and immanence would argue for a God who is not deistic. In these regards, Wesley could be focusing his attention purposefully on the deity of Christ while implicitly accepting the orthodox position concerning Christ’s humanity. Whatever the case may be, one point is for certain: Wesley’s Christological writings are nothing shy of heretical! With this knowledge, we proceed gracefully with Wesley’s Christology. John Deschner, Wesley’s Christology: An Interpretation (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1988), 17. Randy Maddox, Responsible Grace: John Wesley’s Practical Theology (Nashville: Kingswood Books, 1994), 117. This task is not an easy one, though, since Wesley was not a systematic theologian who left behind volumes of categorized writings. Instead, we have his sermons and Biblical commentaries with which to understand his theological positions. Richard A. Norris, Jr., The Christological Controversy (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980), 2. See Norris’s “Introduction” in The Christological Controversy. Ibid., 5. “hypostasis”  The Concise Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. E. A. Livingstone. Oxford University Press, 2000. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press.  Point Loma Nazarene University.  14 February 2006   http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t95.e2845. Norris, The Christological Controversy, 6. Ibid., 7. Ibid., 9. Ibid. Ibid., 12. Ibid., 16. Ibid., 18. Ibid., 20. Ibid., 22. Ibid., 23. As quoted in William C. Placher, A History of Christian Theology (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1983), 81. Norris, The Christological Controversy, 24. Ibid., 25. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., 27. Deschner, Wesley’s Christology, 15. Ibid., 24. Ibid., 29. Ibid., 25. Norris, The Christological Controversy, 26. Maddox, Responsible Grace, 116. See Maddox’s footnote to this quotation, wherein he cites Wesley’s Works to demonstrate the rejection that Christ was the union of a human being with the divinity of the Father. Ibid. Deschner, Wesley’s Christology, 24. Language of “veiling” was not unique to John Wesley. In Charles Wesley’s “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,” we have this stanza: “Veiled in flesh the Godhead see;/Hail th’incarnate Deity,/Pleased with us in flesh to dwell,/Jesus our Emmanuel.” More intriguing are Charles’s original lyrics: “Veiled in flesh, the Godhead see,/Hail the incarnate deity!/Pleased as man with men to appear,/Jesus! Our Immanuel here!” In the original version, we see a major distinction: Jesus does not dwell with us in the flesh; rather, he appears to us veiled in flesh. Even in Charles’s hymns, we see an overflowing of John Wesley’s Christology. This point demonstrates how an incomplete Christology adversely affects ecclesiological worship – e.g., John Wesley’s Christology has been permanently etched into our hymnbooks and Christmas carols! Maddox, Responsible Grace, 117. Ibid., 115. Deschner, Wesley’s Christology, 31. Maddox, Responsible Grace, 115. Unless otherwise noted, all biblical citations will be from the New Revised Standard Version. See Maddox’s endnote #128 on page 311. Here, we see how Wesley misread John’s Gospel in fairly docetic terms. Maddox writes that “Wesley does indeed miss the clearest affirmations of Jesus’ humanity in the Gospel of John! He assumes from John 1:1 that John was writing to counteract some who were doubting Jesus’ deity!” John Wesley, New Testament Notes, John 1:14. Ibid. Wesley, NT Notes, John 1:18. Wesley, NT Notes, John 3:13. Ibid. Wesley, NT Notes, Matthew 28:18. Wesley, NT Notes, Luke 2:52. Ibid. Wesley, NT Notes, John 17:10. Wesley, NT Notes, John 11:35. Wesley, NT Notes, Luke 23:34. It is interesting to note that 1 John is Wesley’s favorite book of the Bible – after all, it contains one of his favorite phrases: “perfected in love” (1 John 4:16-18). However, it is odd how, for all the time he spent in 1 John, Wesley seemingly misses the author’s central message established from the first lines: Christ is fully human! Wesley, NT Notes, 1 John 1:1. Wesley, NT Notes, John 20:28. Deschner, Wesley’s Christology, 41. Wesley, NT Notes, Luke 4:30. Wesley, NT Notes, John 8:59. Wesley, NT Notes, 1 John 4:2. Deschner, Wesley’s Christology, 28. Michael Lodahl, The Story of God: Wesleyan Theology and Biblical Narrative (Kansas City: Beacon Hill Press, 1994), 150. Deschner, Wesley’s Christology, 193-194. Ibid., 194. Ibid. Ibid. John Wesley, Sermon 62, “The End of Christ’s Coming,” §I.9-10. Deschner, Wesley’s Christology, 141. Ibid., 142. Ibid., 132-133. Ibid., 32. Ibid., 195. Ibid., 156. Ibid., 195. Ibid., 154. Ibid., 155. Maddox, Responsible Grace, 117-118. Wesley, NT Notes, John 17:19. Deschner, Wesley’s Christology, 196. John A. T. Robinson, The Body: A Study in Pauline Theology (Chicago: Regnery, 1952), 49. Ibid. Ibid., 19. Ibid., 22. Ibid., 26. Ibid., 27. Ibid., 28. Ibid., 29. Ibid., 31. Ibid., 76. Ibid., 47. Ibid., 51. Ibid., 53. Ibid., 82. John Wesley, Sermon 16, “The Means of Grace,” §II.1. Ibid. Rob L. Staples, Outward Sign and Inward Grace: The Place of Sacraments in Wesleyan Spirituality (Kansas City: Beacon Hill, 1991), 99. Clarence Bence, “Salvation and the Church: The Ecclesiology of John Wesley,” The Church: An Inquiry into Ecclesiology from a Biblical Theological Perspective (Anderson: Warner Press, Inc., 1972), 304. Ibid., 314. Theodore Runyon, The New Creation: John Wesley’s Theology Today (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1998), 106. Ibid., 185-186. Jürgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit: A Contribution to Messianic Ecclesiology (London: SCM Press, Ltd., 1977), 127. Staples, Outward Sign and Inward Grace, 112. John Wesley, “Treatise on Baptism,” §I.1. Ibid. Staples, Outward Sign and Inward Grace, 135. Wesley, “Treatise on Baptism,” §II.1. Ibid. Staples, Outward Sign and Inward Grace, 128. Wesley, “Treatise on Baptism,” §II.3. Staples, Outward Sign and Inward Grace, 143. Wesley, “Treatise on Baptism,” §II.4. Ibid. Staples, Outward Sign and Inward Grace, 148. Wesley, “Treatise on Baptism,” §II.5. Staples, Outward Sign and Inward Grace, 141. Ibid., 155. Ibid., 160. John Wesley, Journal, “Saturday July 28, 1740.” John Wesley, Sermon 101, “The Duty of Constant Communion,” §I.3. Ibid. Maddox, Responsible Grace, 202. John Wesley, Sermon 101, “The Duty of Constant Communion,” §I.1. Ibid., §II.20. Ibid., §I.2. Ibid., §II.19. William H. Willimon, The Service of God (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1983), 127. John Wesley, Sermon 101, “The Duty of Constant Communion,” §I.5. Staples, Outward Sign and Inward Grace, 202-203. Ibid., 229. In the Greek, 1 Corinthians 11:24 – “and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, ‘This is my body that is for you. Do this is remembrance of me.’” – reads as follows: “και ευχαριστησας εκλασεν και ειπεν τουτο μου εστιν το σωμα το υπερ υμων τουτο ποιειτε εις την εμην αναμνησιν.” In the second word, ευχαριστησας, we see the root of our word “Eucharist.” Staples, Outward Sign and Inward Grace, 230. John Wesley, Sermon 101, “The Duty of Constant Communion,” §II.5. Staples, Outward Sign and Inward Grace, 234. Ibid., 210. John Wesley, Sermon 101, “The Duty of Constant Communion,” §I.4. Staples, Outward Sign and Inward Grace, 239. Ibid. John Wesley, Sermon 101, “The Duty of Constant Communion,” §II.13. Ibid., §II.14. Maddox, Responsible Grace, 205. John Wesley, Sermon 101, “The Duty of Constant Communion,” §II.5. Staples, Outward Sign and Inward Grace, 249. Ibid., 259, 261. Ibid., 261. Maddox, Responsible Grace, 204. Deschner, Wesley’s Christology, 193-194. Robinson, The Body, 51. Wesley, Sermon 16, “The Means of Grace,” §II.1. An interesting side-note is the relation of Gregory of Nazianzus’s words in regards to Christ’s miracles of physical healing. Through Gregory’s understanding, Christ cannot effect bodily healing if he is not himself bodily. Wesley, Sermon 74, “Of the Church,” §II.26. Ibid., §III.27. Ibid., §III.30. Wesley, NT Notes, 1 John 4:8.

Reflections on THE SALVIFIC BODY OF CHRIST: Wesleyan Christology Embodied in an Ecclesiology of Love An Honors Project Greg Van Buskirk, 2006

Taking his clue from John Deschner, Wesley’s Christology: An Interpretation (1988), and a few comments in Randy Maddox, Responsible Grace: John Wesley’s Practical Theology (1994), Greg Van Buskirk begins with serious criticism of John Wesley’s Christology, particularly the humanness of Jesus. Examing Wesley’s own writings noting omissions and changes with judgmental and emotional language he accuses Wesley of an anemic Christology, charging him with being docetic and monophysite, that is, essentially heretical. This seems to be Greg’s starting assumption (cf. note 3) with his task to be only that of “fleshing out” the charge from Wesley himself.

Yet one wonders, if we leave Wesley in his own time, how are some of his expressions of and emphases on the deity of Christ at the expense of his humanity different from that of most of pietistic evangelicalism (apart from the scholars) from his day to ours. And if Wesley were faced today with the question as Greg puts it how would he respond?

But when Greg examines Wesley’s Ecclesiology he works out a healing response in Wesley himself to his anemic Christology—a strengthened notion of the physical Christ. But how can he accuse Wesley on the one hand of a Christology that undercuts sancitification, and on the other hand appeal to his ministerial practice to correct that Christology? Or did Wesley just not have his language all together enough to satisfy “some” current (postmodern?) sensibilities?

Theological research has often been characterized by the search for something “new” rather than something “true”! Greg in his enthusiasm to discover and to be critical of the usual escorts out the front door by his research what he invites to return through the back door in a concern to conserve what is essential in the heritage This modus operandi is prevalent among scholars, particularly a tendency of young, bright, and eager theological researchers. Everyone seeks a new tack, a new way to look at a sacred icon. So we should not be surprised.

Current process theology has a strong emphasis on the humanity of Christ at times appearing to do so at the expense of his deity, at least as traditionally understood. Is this an evident motif at work in the opening attack on Wesley’s Christology? Also Greg seems to work from within a strong sacramentalism. To what extent does his work reflect the leanings of his professors? If so, that would be natural.

Greg has produced an admirable piece of work for an undergraduate showing good ability to research, think, and to write. An enjoyable read!

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Cite this document

Carver, Frank G. “The Salvific Body of Christ.” Sermon, n.d.. The Frank G. Carver Archive.

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