Doctrinal renewal for the GMC
One of the things that attracted me to the Global Methodist Church was the stated emphasis on recovering Methodism’s doctrinal heritage. We have said over and over that we are not leaving The United Methodist Church over the acceptance of alternative sexualities. We are wanting doctrinal renewal. That starts with a recommitment to the authority of Scripture, but it doesn’t stop there. One of the essentials of doctrinal recovery centers on the ecumenical Creeds, which embody the Church’s understanding of Christology. Toward that end, we have added the Nicene Creed and the Chalcedonian Definition of the Faith to our Doctrinal Standards.
We need to recover the language of the Creeds, for they represent the authoritative exegesis of Scripture upon the subject of the nature of God in Christ. The Creeds define Jesus as fully God and fully Human. This means that right out of the gate, all the sub-Christian, not-quite-really-God Jesuses that are preached by most of the clergy of Mainline Protestant Christianity are shown to be defective. At the same time, the fact that Jesus has a fully functioning human nature through his mother leads us to ponder what, precisely, human nature is. This has consequences for our teaching, for many people today do not accept human nature as it has been usually understood. They believe that it is malleable instead of fixed; whereas Jesus becoming fully human requires a fixed human nature for him to adopt. Recovering a sense of the nature of God (and seeing Jesus as possessing that nature by right, not merely by adoption) and recovering a sense of the nature of Man (and seeing Jesus as possessing that nature and wrestling with its limitations) are both revolutionary within our society with its deficient view of both God and humanity. Furthermore, these two natures are both expressed within the one Person of Jesus Christ. And personhood is a subject that our society in this age no longer understands properly. So many of our wrangles are about what it means to be yourself. Jesus stands as a corrective to our damaged and deficient sense of personhood.
Beyond the Scripture and the Creeds, another area of doctrinal recovery for Methodists is the doctrine of Sanctification, particularly “entire sanctification” or “Christian perfection” as taught by Wesley. We need to come at this afresh, for there are many formulae expressing this doctrine held by various churches, such as the Wesleyans, Free Methodists, Nazarenes, etc., and some of them are, well, kind of worn and ugly. I’ve heard more than one person say, “If what you’re offering is what I’ve encountered before in that other church, then no thanks.” To properly recover the doctrine of Sanctification, I would encourage people to avoid the old formulae out there. We need a fresh approach. The doctrine of Sanctification has, in fact, been taught and lived by many teachers and witnesses in many places across the ages of the Church. We could start with Clement of Alexandria, from whom the Eastern Orthodox Churches ultimately derive their doctrine of theosis. We could profit from re-reading Brother Lawrence’s Practice of the Presence of God. The best modern writer I know on holiness is Charles Williams, who was an Anglican of the mid-Twentieth Century. Read He Came Down From Heaven. If you want the doctrine in poetic form, read Taliessin Through Logres and The Region of the Summer Stars.
In our post-Christian, mixed-up world, we need a new way to talk about conversion, too. The formulae about the New Birth, while true, are sometimes in danger of becoming canards. They are tribal markers of lowest-common-denominator evangelicalism. The change from being a non-Christian or a cultural Christian to a (pick your adjective) Christian is not merely an internal spiritual experience. It is accompanied by a rejection of certain modes of thought and behavior and the adoption of others. In the early Middle Ages, for instance, those attempting to convert the non-Christian peoples of Europe emphasized 1) not sacrificing to idols anymore; 2) reception of baptism – a social marker that separated you from all the un-baptized; 3) coming to church – a new habit. They assumed spiritual re-birth, but in a world where there were genuine pagans, showing that you had converted to Christ was easy to define. It has not been easy for moderns, since we mostly haven’t had idol-worship (at least, we haven’t formally recognized the idols that compete with Christ in our hearts and behavior). Many people have been baptized but not converted (a problem that Wesley dealt with). And mostly we have lived out of a Christendom-consciousness where we assume that most of the people we deal with already come to church or have a family history of doing so. We still have the cultural Christians, but we now have a large number of people who are definitely NOT Christians. They do NOT follow Jesus, and they may define God all kinds of different ways. We have to address them where they are and work with the Holy Spirit to bring them to see that Jesus is not merely a tribal mascot they might consider adding to their charm bracelet, but a comprehensively different Somebody to organize your life around. Receiving Christ in today’s society means dealing with all kinds of issues that didn’t used to be issues. The old formulations leading to the altar call still have their place, but we have a bunch of folks who need us to invite them to a whole different kind of conversion. And we need to be talking to those folks, not merely rehearsing the old formulae among the ever-dwindling number of the church-broke.
Other things that we could stand a refresher on would include a recovery of the sacraments. A lot of evangelicals have a pretty low view of the sacraments. Wesley would be appalled. But I’ll talk about that another time.
We need to recover the language of the Creeds, for they represent the authoritative exegesis of Scripture upon the subject of the nature of God in Christ. The Creeds define Jesus as fully God and fully Human. This means that right out of the gate, all the sub-Christian, not-quite-really-God Jesuses that are preached by most of the clergy of Mainline Protestant Christianity are shown to be defective. At the same time, the fact that Jesus has a fully functioning human nature through his mother leads us to ponder what, precisely, human nature is. This has consequences for our teaching, for many people today do not accept human nature as it has been usually understood. They believe that it is malleable instead of fixed; whereas Jesus becoming fully human requires a fixed human nature for him to adopt. Recovering a sense of the nature of God (and seeing Jesus as possessing that nature by right, not merely by adoption) and recovering a sense of the nature of Man (and seeing Jesus as possessing that nature and wrestling with its limitations) are both revolutionary within our society with its deficient view of both God and humanity. Furthermore, these two natures are both expressed within the one Person of Jesus Christ. And personhood is a subject that our society in this age no longer understands properly. So many of our wrangles are about what it means to be yourself. Jesus stands as a corrective to our damaged and deficient sense of personhood.
Beyond the Scripture and the Creeds, another area of doctrinal recovery for Methodists is the doctrine of Sanctification, particularly “entire sanctification” or “Christian perfection” as taught by Wesley. We need to come at this afresh, for there are many formulae expressing this doctrine held by various churches, such as the Wesleyans, Free Methodists, Nazarenes, etc., and some of them are, well, kind of worn and ugly. I’ve heard more than one person say, “If what you’re offering is what I’ve encountered before in that other church, then no thanks.” To properly recover the doctrine of Sanctification, I would encourage people to avoid the old formulae out there. We need a fresh approach. The doctrine of Sanctification has, in fact, been taught and lived by many teachers and witnesses in many places across the ages of the Church. We could start with Clement of Alexandria, from whom the Eastern Orthodox Churches ultimately derive their doctrine of theosis. We could profit from re-reading Brother Lawrence’s Practice of the Presence of God. The best modern writer I know on holiness is Charles Williams, who was an Anglican of the mid-Twentieth Century. Read He Came Down From Heaven. If you want the doctrine in poetic form, read Taliessin Through Logres and The Region of the Summer Stars.
In our post-Christian, mixed-up world, we need a new way to talk about conversion, too. The formulae about the New Birth, while true, are sometimes in danger of becoming canards. They are tribal markers of lowest-common-denominator evangelicalism. The change from being a non-Christian or a cultural Christian to a (pick your adjective) Christian is not merely an internal spiritual experience. It is accompanied by a rejection of certain modes of thought and behavior and the adoption of others. In the early Middle Ages, for instance, those attempting to convert the non-Christian peoples of Europe emphasized 1) not sacrificing to idols anymore; 2) reception of baptism – a social marker that separated you from all the un-baptized; 3) coming to church – a new habit. They assumed spiritual re-birth, but in a world where there were genuine pagans, showing that you had converted to Christ was easy to define. It has not been easy for moderns, since we mostly haven’t had idol-worship (at least, we haven’t formally recognized the idols that compete with Christ in our hearts and behavior). Many people have been baptized but not converted (a problem that Wesley dealt with). And mostly we have lived out of a Christendom-consciousness where we assume that most of the people we deal with already come to church or have a family history of doing so. We still have the cultural Christians, but we now have a large number of people who are definitely NOT Christians. They do NOT follow Jesus, and they may define God all kinds of different ways. We have to address them where they are and work with the Holy Spirit to bring them to see that Jesus is not merely a tribal mascot they might consider adding to their charm bracelet, but a comprehensively different Somebody to organize your life around. Receiving Christ in today’s society means dealing with all kinds of issues that didn’t used to be issues. The old formulations leading to the altar call still have their place, but we have a bunch of folks who need us to invite them to a whole different kind of conversion. And we need to be talking to those folks, not merely rehearsing the old formulae among the ever-dwindling number of the church-broke.
Other things that we could stand a refresher on would include a recovery of the sacraments. A lot of evangelicals have a pretty low view of the sacraments. Wesley would be appalled. But I’ll talk about that another time.