Doctrinal Renewal in the Global Methodist Church
The GMC’s stated reasons for separation from The UMC include, at the head of the list, a desire to lift up authentic Methodist doctrine as set forth in our established standards of teaching. And not just say, “yep, there they are” and teach whatever we like, but hold each other accountable for actually believing and teaching authentic Methodist doctrine. This will require us to give better attention to our doctrine than we have hitherto.
And it will require us to face the fact that authentic Methodist doctrine is not the same thing as Lowest Common Denominator Evangelicalism. Ever since I have been in ministry, which goes back forty-some years at this point, traditionalists have been nested in a church-within-a-church. We have been, to greater or lesser degree, a resistance group standing over against the dominant liberal/progressive culture of The UMC. We have been in the habit of making common cause with other evangelical groups and denominations, so that we have often felt more comfortable among Baptists or Restorationists or Pentecostals or Calvinists than among members of our own denomination. But Wesleyan-Arminianism is not really the same thing as Baptistry or Restorationism or Pentecostalism or Calvinism. It has a distinct history and a distinct voice, and if we are to pursue our own calling to the world-which-is-our-parish, we need to recover that unique history and voice.
Allow me to suggest four areas of doctrine in which we need to recover and renew authentic Methodist doctrine.
The Methodist Message
The old Methodist Message went something like this: Everyone can be saved; Everyone can know one is saved; and Everyone can be saved to the uttermost. Each of these embodies a particular doctrinal stance that is not shared across all conservative/evangelical/traditionalist groups.
Everyone can be saved is not something which Reformed/Calvinist theologians would buy into. Their understanding of predestination would say that only the elect can be saved. The non-elect cannot. We have a different understanding of election. We also have a different understanding of total depravity. And we talk about prevenient grace, that God has given to each person sufficient light to understand and respond to his offer of grace; and indeed, he speaks to us long before we understand whose voice we are hearing.
At the same time, we do not believe in what is commonly called Free Will. That is Pelagianism, the idea that we can just get tough on ourselves and decide to quit sinning. But to “make a decision for Christ” doesn’t mean that we have the power to effect our deliverance. We are broken and enslaved. The doors of hell have been wrenched off their hinges, but unless Christ help us rise – even carry us out – we cannot get up and leave of our own power. We are like addicts, born addicted to sin like a crack baby born addicted to cocaine. We can, by God’s prevenient grace, imagine/desire a different life, but we cannot make it so. It is his will that frees us, not our own, his faithfulness and his power that effect our deliverance, not ours.
Everyone can know one is saved is the Methodist doctrine of Assurance. For followers of Wesley, Christianity is an experiential religion. We know God, even as he knows us. And we increasingly know ourselves by the power of the Holy Spirit. We believe in the Bible, which tells us we are saved. But we also experience the Witness of the Holy Spirit, telling us we are saved. And we are aware of our own inner experience giving the Witness of Our Own Spirit, telling us we are saved. We are not left to wonder about it. We can leave our doubts behind. Unlike some of our friends who keep giving altar calls to the already saved, and who keep returning to the altar trying to make sure, we learn to take God’s Yes for an answer.
Everyone can be saved to the uttermost. This is the doctrine of Entire Sanctification, or Christian Perfection, which says that we can be so filled with the love of God that there is no longer room in our souls, from moment to moment, for the intention to break God’s law. This requires real change in our personalities by the power of God. It implies an eventual point at which we are effectively made perfect in love. It does not mean that we are immune to sinning, or that we are incapable of misunderstanding and error. It means that the intention to do something which we know is wrong is not something we give in to any more. It can take a long time to reach that point – for most people, it would take their whole lives – but there is no time limit. As we are filled with God, so there is less and less room for anything ungodly; when we are completely full, remaining so still requires us to depend on God to supply what we need. Wesley believed that this doctrine was the Grand Depositum entrusted to the Methodists. But it really isn’t new. The old western monks talked about Counsels of Perfection – and behold, Methodism is simply monasticism for the masses. The Eastern Orthodox talk about it in other ways.
The Creeds
I am happy to see that we have added the Nicene Creed (with the filioque) and the Chalcedonian Definition of the Faith to our doctrinal standards. These were always a part of our heritage, but then, we got our Articles of Religion from the Church of England’s Articles, and they wrote Articles because that’s how the churches of the Reformation distinguished their doctrinal stances: through Articles and Confessions and so forth. The Creeds were always there.
The Creeds are not a competing source of doctrine to the Bible. The Creeds are the ancient Church’s best exegesis of the Scriptures concerning God-in-Christ. And the Christology of the Creeds directly addresses several contemporary issues, which makes their recovery and use the more urgent.
First, we need to teach the Trinity again. This was not dreamt up in an academic seminar. Reconciling the divinity of Christ with the requirements of Scriptural monotheism – that is, figuring out exactly how Jesus of Nazareth and the God of Israel are related – is what set this in motion. The Nicene Creed is the ultimate expression of an argument that went on – sincerely argued, on all sides – for two hundred years. Strange as the result may seem, it was finally the only solution that accounted for all the evidence.
So, Jesus as a great human teacher is out of court. There are lots of preachers, in many denominations, who will go thus far and no farther. They are not to be countenanced. Deism and Unitarianism are still as popular as ever, and both are heretical. Meanwhile, some of our more rompin’ stompin’ brethren, who call themselves Charismatics or Methocostals, may think the Apostolic/Pentecostal movement is a kindred group, but their theology of Oneness is just Sabellianism/Modalism rehashed. Jesus is not a man pretending to be God, nor is God remote, unitary, or playing various roles in succession. The divinity of Jesus and the fullness of God are things that matter. People who shy away from them will show other defects in their teaching as well. Recitation of the Creeds, especially the Nicene Creed now and then, helps to set the parameters for this discussion. And lest you think I’m overstating the case, let me say that I have heard an ostensibly orthodox pastor of our company go from John 1:4 (“In him was life, and the life was the light of men”) directly to Genesis 1:3 (“And God said, ‘Let there be light”) and tell the congregation that this was the origin of the Word of God – which is straight-up Arianism.
Even as we must safeguard the doctrine of God and the full divinity of Christ, we also need to lift up the full humanity of Christ. Jesus was a real human being, with a real human soul, raised in a real human family sharing personality traits among them – even while being the everlasting God. He was not God pretending to be a man, a god wearing a meat suit (Apollinarianism). Nor is the incarnation of Christ a temporary expedient, now abandoned as Jesus has returned to the Father. If the Resurrection means anything, it means that our bodies will be raised to glory along with Christ; therefore, his body is still a part of him, which means that God and his creation have been fully joined. As the Athanasian Creed puts it, “not by the conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by taking that manhood into God.” And while you might think that misunderstanding the humanity of Christ would not be a problem for moderns, in fact, the whole problem of what it means to be “fully human” is very much in contention these days.
The title of Mary, Theotokos, the “God-bearer,” was given to her by the Council of Ephesus in order to make the point that the union of God and Man in Christ is from his conception. There was never a time when what was in her womb was not fully God, though she is not the origin of his Godhead. So, there was never a time when what was in her womb was not fully human, either. Not to get too far in the weeds about abortion, but it’s obvious that a great many people want to employ euphemisms to effectively deny that what is being gotten rid of is fully human, even if not in a shape and condition recognizable as a child yet (and even that form is recognizable far sooner than many are comfortable with).
For that matter, to be “fully human” means being born either male or female. Jesus had to be born one or the other simply in order to be human. This doesn’t imply anything about the relative status or prerogatives or ability of males vs. females; it’s just a matter of definition. Nor does it make any comment upon how anybody feels about one’s maleness or femaleness. It’s simply a matter of fact: we are all one or the other. You can impersonate the other by how you dress, by using cosmetics, by acting a part, by using drugs, or even by surgical modification (and by combinations of these strategies), but you do not thereby change your sex; your sex is encoded in every cell of your body. Nor is it possible to be “born in the wrong body,” except metaphorically. This should not be taken to mean that people who want to act as the opposite sex are not of equal worth, nor should it imply that any one course of action regarding their desires is obviously right and true, end of discussion. It’s just that to be human you’ve got to be male or female, and this is not changeable. Males cannot be mothers, because only women can be mothers: Mary cannot be Joseph, nor Joseph Mary, though both had an influence on the child who grew up to be the Savior of the world.
And then there are the transhumanists, who believe that someday soon, you will be able to download your mind into a computer and achieve immortality. No. AI may be able to reshuffle your characteristic turns of phrase in response to others asking questions of it, but this is no more your soul living on in a machine than a collection of Shakepeare’s Greatest Quotes is the Bard of Avon, now quietly resting in his grave.
The Chalcedonian Definition of the Faith also goes to great lengths to point out that Jesus, though fully possessed of both divine and human natures, is only one Person. In other words, he has a thoroughly integrated personality. He is himself, and knows himself, and doesn’t have to have a committee vote to decide if he wants a snack or to take a nap. And again, today’s ideologies that make so much over various forms of Identity all show a defective understanding of Personhood. Jesus is always himself. He is not merely the overlapping and competitive categories of God, Human, Israelite, Galilean, Male, Member of the House of David, Aramaic-speaker, subject of Rome, sometime Carpenter, etc. He acts as himself, and he takes full responsibility for doing so: of all people who ever lived, no one has ever been able to accuse Jesus of False Consciousness. In this, as in all the foregoing, the great Creeds give us tools with which to analyze and deconstruct the follies of our age.
The Sacraments
Doctrinal renewal for Methodists should also include reacquainting ourselves with the sources of our sacramental theology and practices. Too many Methodist evangelicals see baptism and eucharist as ordinances, rather than sacraments, and share Baptist or Restorationist beliefs about them. Wesley was until he died a member of the Church of England, which he called “one of the best-reformed Churches in Europe.” Despite what we think of as his doctrinal distinctives, he never challenged the existing standards of doctrine in the C of E. Not only our doctrine and practice of baptism and eucharist, but our theology and practice of ordination and our use of confirmation, come from the C of E. We are all just downmarket Anglicans in this regard.
By the way, if the C of E was a reformed Church, it might be useful to ask what it was a reformation of. I tell people that Methodism was intended to be a revived form of Anglicanism, and Anglicanism was to be a reformed kind of Catholicism. The English Church tradition was born and came to flower in the Seventh and Eighth Centuries. I could perform a Sarum Mass from the 12th Century (in English) and other than all the extra invocations of Mary and the saints, nobody would think it was anything other than the service from the back of the old hymnal. Yes, Thomas Cranmer was a spiritual and literary genius, but most of the content in the Book of Common Prayer was just a translation and tidying up of very ancient material the English had been praying in church since before the days of Alfred the Great. Without denying the very obvious need for the Reformation, the continuity across the centuries among the People of God outweighs all discontinuity.
We believe that God is the primary actor in the sacraments. Yes, the sacraments are also us acting toward God, but their efficacy is born of the fact that God first acts toward us in them. This is why we call them Means of Grace. We are not disputatious about the exact mechanism of that grace, but we believe it to be real. God acts through the bread and wine of the Supper and the water of the Font and is really present in them – and not just when we find it convenient or uplifting. Baptists and Restorationists emphasize that You must decide when these things count; in this, their theology is very anthropocentric. We acknowledge that one must appropriate the Means of Grace by faith, but whether we “meant it” that time or not, God always means it.
Hymnody
It may seem odd to many that I place the songs we sing in worship on this list of means toward doctrinal renewal. And let me make clear from the start, I have no interest in re-igniting the “worship wars” between people who like Praise & Worship/Contemporary Christian Music (P&W/CCM) and those who prefer traditional hymns, nor between those who like to sing off screens and those who like to have a hymnal in their hands. I have no beef with guitars or drums, claim no special charisma to rest upon an organ. Style is not something I’m going to comment on. Content is.
I will go so far as to say that I think a goodly proportion of our songs should incorporate the actual words of Scripture, and many do. I also think we should be careful to feature songs that praise God objectively, for who he is and what he has done, and watch out for too many subjective songs that go on about how I (the believer) feel about God. (Some of the worst of modern hymnody has earned the nickname, “Jesus-is-my-boyfriend Music.”) And while we don’t normally sing the Psalms these days, I give extra high marks to services which include their recitation. It boggles my mind that traditionalists who bang on about how much they value Scripture can worship week after week while ignoring the canonical hymnbook of Christians and Jews. This is a flat-out contradiction in their stated values. But all that said, there are lots of good songs out there, of all types and in all styles.
And yet, no less an authority than John Wesley has made hymnody a doctrinal standard. In his introduction to the first Methodist hymnal, Select Hymns (1761), he wrote the following in his “Directions for Singing,” which have been reprinted in hymnal after hymnal among the People called Methodist.
Now, there are good songs all around. We sing lots of songs written by people from other Christian traditions. “Rock of Ages,” by Augustus Toplady, in fact contains a jibe at Wesley’s theology that most of us miss; we sing it anyway. We sing explicitly Roman Catholic songs – not only new ones like “Here I Am, Lord,” but old favorites like “Faith of our Fathers” (we just drop out the verse that begins, “Faith of our fathers, Mary’s prayers shall bring all England back to thee.”) We sing Lutheran material, Baptist material, Shaker material (“Simple Gifts”). And, of course, we sing ancient and medieval hymns and carols. I’m not saying we shouldn’t sing good songs, wherever they come from. But we need to be mindful of the need for our (musical) testimony to match our (doctrinal) teaching. And the more we repeat Methodist doctrine in Scripture, creed, sermon, and singing, the more effective our teaching will be.
And it will require us to face the fact that authentic Methodist doctrine is not the same thing as Lowest Common Denominator Evangelicalism. Ever since I have been in ministry, which goes back forty-some years at this point, traditionalists have been nested in a church-within-a-church. We have been, to greater or lesser degree, a resistance group standing over against the dominant liberal/progressive culture of The UMC. We have been in the habit of making common cause with other evangelical groups and denominations, so that we have often felt more comfortable among Baptists or Restorationists or Pentecostals or Calvinists than among members of our own denomination. But Wesleyan-Arminianism is not really the same thing as Baptistry or Restorationism or Pentecostalism or Calvinism. It has a distinct history and a distinct voice, and if we are to pursue our own calling to the world-which-is-our-parish, we need to recover that unique history and voice.
Allow me to suggest four areas of doctrine in which we need to recover and renew authentic Methodist doctrine.
The Methodist Message
The old Methodist Message went something like this: Everyone can be saved; Everyone can know one is saved; and Everyone can be saved to the uttermost. Each of these embodies a particular doctrinal stance that is not shared across all conservative/evangelical/traditionalist groups.
Everyone can be saved is not something which Reformed/Calvinist theologians would buy into. Their understanding of predestination would say that only the elect can be saved. The non-elect cannot. We have a different understanding of election. We also have a different understanding of total depravity. And we talk about prevenient grace, that God has given to each person sufficient light to understand and respond to his offer of grace; and indeed, he speaks to us long before we understand whose voice we are hearing.
At the same time, we do not believe in what is commonly called Free Will. That is Pelagianism, the idea that we can just get tough on ourselves and decide to quit sinning. But to “make a decision for Christ” doesn’t mean that we have the power to effect our deliverance. We are broken and enslaved. The doors of hell have been wrenched off their hinges, but unless Christ help us rise – even carry us out – we cannot get up and leave of our own power. We are like addicts, born addicted to sin like a crack baby born addicted to cocaine. We can, by God’s prevenient grace, imagine/desire a different life, but we cannot make it so. It is his will that frees us, not our own, his faithfulness and his power that effect our deliverance, not ours.
Everyone can know one is saved is the Methodist doctrine of Assurance. For followers of Wesley, Christianity is an experiential religion. We know God, even as he knows us. And we increasingly know ourselves by the power of the Holy Spirit. We believe in the Bible, which tells us we are saved. But we also experience the Witness of the Holy Spirit, telling us we are saved. And we are aware of our own inner experience giving the Witness of Our Own Spirit, telling us we are saved. We are not left to wonder about it. We can leave our doubts behind. Unlike some of our friends who keep giving altar calls to the already saved, and who keep returning to the altar trying to make sure, we learn to take God’s Yes for an answer.
Everyone can be saved to the uttermost. This is the doctrine of Entire Sanctification, or Christian Perfection, which says that we can be so filled with the love of God that there is no longer room in our souls, from moment to moment, for the intention to break God’s law. This requires real change in our personalities by the power of God. It implies an eventual point at which we are effectively made perfect in love. It does not mean that we are immune to sinning, or that we are incapable of misunderstanding and error. It means that the intention to do something which we know is wrong is not something we give in to any more. It can take a long time to reach that point – for most people, it would take their whole lives – but there is no time limit. As we are filled with God, so there is less and less room for anything ungodly; when we are completely full, remaining so still requires us to depend on God to supply what we need. Wesley believed that this doctrine was the Grand Depositum entrusted to the Methodists. But it really isn’t new. The old western monks talked about Counsels of Perfection – and behold, Methodism is simply monasticism for the masses. The Eastern Orthodox talk about it in other ways.
The Creeds
I am happy to see that we have added the Nicene Creed (with the filioque) and the Chalcedonian Definition of the Faith to our doctrinal standards. These were always a part of our heritage, but then, we got our Articles of Religion from the Church of England’s Articles, and they wrote Articles because that’s how the churches of the Reformation distinguished their doctrinal stances: through Articles and Confessions and so forth. The Creeds were always there.
The Creeds are not a competing source of doctrine to the Bible. The Creeds are the ancient Church’s best exegesis of the Scriptures concerning God-in-Christ. And the Christology of the Creeds directly addresses several contemporary issues, which makes their recovery and use the more urgent.
First, we need to teach the Trinity again. This was not dreamt up in an academic seminar. Reconciling the divinity of Christ with the requirements of Scriptural monotheism – that is, figuring out exactly how Jesus of Nazareth and the God of Israel are related – is what set this in motion. The Nicene Creed is the ultimate expression of an argument that went on – sincerely argued, on all sides – for two hundred years. Strange as the result may seem, it was finally the only solution that accounted for all the evidence.
So, Jesus as a great human teacher is out of court. There are lots of preachers, in many denominations, who will go thus far and no farther. They are not to be countenanced. Deism and Unitarianism are still as popular as ever, and both are heretical. Meanwhile, some of our more rompin’ stompin’ brethren, who call themselves Charismatics or Methocostals, may think the Apostolic/Pentecostal movement is a kindred group, but their theology of Oneness is just Sabellianism/Modalism rehashed. Jesus is not a man pretending to be God, nor is God remote, unitary, or playing various roles in succession. The divinity of Jesus and the fullness of God are things that matter. People who shy away from them will show other defects in their teaching as well. Recitation of the Creeds, especially the Nicene Creed now and then, helps to set the parameters for this discussion. And lest you think I’m overstating the case, let me say that I have heard an ostensibly orthodox pastor of our company go from John 1:4 (“In him was life, and the life was the light of men”) directly to Genesis 1:3 (“And God said, ‘Let there be light”) and tell the congregation that this was the origin of the Word of God – which is straight-up Arianism.
Even as we must safeguard the doctrine of God and the full divinity of Christ, we also need to lift up the full humanity of Christ. Jesus was a real human being, with a real human soul, raised in a real human family sharing personality traits among them – even while being the everlasting God. He was not God pretending to be a man, a god wearing a meat suit (Apollinarianism). Nor is the incarnation of Christ a temporary expedient, now abandoned as Jesus has returned to the Father. If the Resurrection means anything, it means that our bodies will be raised to glory along with Christ; therefore, his body is still a part of him, which means that God and his creation have been fully joined. As the Athanasian Creed puts it, “not by the conversion of the Godhead into flesh, but by taking that manhood into God.” And while you might think that misunderstanding the humanity of Christ would not be a problem for moderns, in fact, the whole problem of what it means to be “fully human” is very much in contention these days.
The title of Mary, Theotokos, the “God-bearer,” was given to her by the Council of Ephesus in order to make the point that the union of God and Man in Christ is from his conception. There was never a time when what was in her womb was not fully God, though she is not the origin of his Godhead. So, there was never a time when what was in her womb was not fully human, either. Not to get too far in the weeds about abortion, but it’s obvious that a great many people want to employ euphemisms to effectively deny that what is being gotten rid of is fully human, even if not in a shape and condition recognizable as a child yet (and even that form is recognizable far sooner than many are comfortable with).
For that matter, to be “fully human” means being born either male or female. Jesus had to be born one or the other simply in order to be human. This doesn’t imply anything about the relative status or prerogatives or ability of males vs. females; it’s just a matter of definition. Nor does it make any comment upon how anybody feels about one’s maleness or femaleness. It’s simply a matter of fact: we are all one or the other. You can impersonate the other by how you dress, by using cosmetics, by acting a part, by using drugs, or even by surgical modification (and by combinations of these strategies), but you do not thereby change your sex; your sex is encoded in every cell of your body. Nor is it possible to be “born in the wrong body,” except metaphorically. This should not be taken to mean that people who want to act as the opposite sex are not of equal worth, nor should it imply that any one course of action regarding their desires is obviously right and true, end of discussion. It’s just that to be human you’ve got to be male or female, and this is not changeable. Males cannot be mothers, because only women can be mothers: Mary cannot be Joseph, nor Joseph Mary, though both had an influence on the child who grew up to be the Savior of the world.
And then there are the transhumanists, who believe that someday soon, you will be able to download your mind into a computer and achieve immortality. No. AI may be able to reshuffle your characteristic turns of phrase in response to others asking questions of it, but this is no more your soul living on in a machine than a collection of Shakepeare’s Greatest Quotes is the Bard of Avon, now quietly resting in his grave.
The Chalcedonian Definition of the Faith also goes to great lengths to point out that Jesus, though fully possessed of both divine and human natures, is only one Person. In other words, he has a thoroughly integrated personality. He is himself, and knows himself, and doesn’t have to have a committee vote to decide if he wants a snack or to take a nap. And again, today’s ideologies that make so much over various forms of Identity all show a defective understanding of Personhood. Jesus is always himself. He is not merely the overlapping and competitive categories of God, Human, Israelite, Galilean, Male, Member of the House of David, Aramaic-speaker, subject of Rome, sometime Carpenter, etc. He acts as himself, and he takes full responsibility for doing so: of all people who ever lived, no one has ever been able to accuse Jesus of False Consciousness. In this, as in all the foregoing, the great Creeds give us tools with which to analyze and deconstruct the follies of our age.
The Sacraments
Doctrinal renewal for Methodists should also include reacquainting ourselves with the sources of our sacramental theology and practices. Too many Methodist evangelicals see baptism and eucharist as ordinances, rather than sacraments, and share Baptist or Restorationist beliefs about them. Wesley was until he died a member of the Church of England, which he called “one of the best-reformed Churches in Europe.” Despite what we think of as his doctrinal distinctives, he never challenged the existing standards of doctrine in the C of E. Not only our doctrine and practice of baptism and eucharist, but our theology and practice of ordination and our use of confirmation, come from the C of E. We are all just downmarket Anglicans in this regard.
By the way, if the C of E was a reformed Church, it might be useful to ask what it was a reformation of. I tell people that Methodism was intended to be a revived form of Anglicanism, and Anglicanism was to be a reformed kind of Catholicism. The English Church tradition was born and came to flower in the Seventh and Eighth Centuries. I could perform a Sarum Mass from the 12th Century (in English) and other than all the extra invocations of Mary and the saints, nobody would think it was anything other than the service from the back of the old hymnal. Yes, Thomas Cranmer was a spiritual and literary genius, but most of the content in the Book of Common Prayer was just a translation and tidying up of very ancient material the English had been praying in church since before the days of Alfred the Great. Without denying the very obvious need for the Reformation, the continuity across the centuries among the People of God outweighs all discontinuity.
We believe that God is the primary actor in the sacraments. Yes, the sacraments are also us acting toward God, but their efficacy is born of the fact that God first acts toward us in them. This is why we call them Means of Grace. We are not disputatious about the exact mechanism of that grace, but we believe it to be real. God acts through the bread and wine of the Supper and the water of the Font and is really present in them – and not just when we find it convenient or uplifting. Baptists and Restorationists emphasize that You must decide when these things count; in this, their theology is very anthropocentric. We acknowledge that one must appropriate the Means of Grace by faith, but whether we “meant it” that time or not, God always means it.
Hymnody
It may seem odd to many that I place the songs we sing in worship on this list of means toward doctrinal renewal. And let me make clear from the start, I have no interest in re-igniting the “worship wars” between people who like Praise & Worship/Contemporary Christian Music (P&W/CCM) and those who prefer traditional hymns, nor between those who like to sing off screens and those who like to have a hymnal in their hands. I have no beef with guitars or drums, claim no special charisma to rest upon an organ. Style is not something I’m going to comment on. Content is.
I will go so far as to say that I think a goodly proportion of our songs should incorporate the actual words of Scripture, and many do. I also think we should be careful to feature songs that praise God objectively, for who he is and what he has done, and watch out for too many subjective songs that go on about how I (the believer) feel about God. (Some of the worst of modern hymnody has earned the nickname, “Jesus-is-my-boyfriend Music.”) And while we don’t normally sing the Psalms these days, I give extra high marks to services which include their recitation. It boggles my mind that traditionalists who bang on about how much they value Scripture can worship week after week while ignoring the canonical hymnbook of Christians and Jews. This is a flat-out contradiction in their stated values. But all that said, there are lots of good songs out there, of all types and in all styles.
And yet, no less an authority than John Wesley has made hymnody a doctrinal standard. In his introduction to the first Methodist hymnal, Select Hymns (1761), he wrote the following in his “Directions for Singing,” which have been reprinted in hymnal after hymnal among the People called Methodist.
II. Sing them [the hymns] exactly as they are printed here, without altering or mending them at all, and if you have learned to sing them otherwise, unlearn it as soon as you can.Why such a degree of persnicketyness? Well, if you look over Charles Wesley’s 6,000 hymns (which formed the basis of that first hymnal), you will notice that line after line states Methodist doctrinal distinctives. Prevenient grace, free grace, everybody can be saved, the witness of the Spirit, and Christian perfection are expressed and explained. Prayers for justification, for assurance, for holiness (as taught by Wesley) abound. The singing of Methodist hymns thus complements the Methodist Message, above. (Wesley also shows high standards for using the words of Scripture and for maintaining a good balance of objective vs. subjective.)
Now, there are good songs all around. We sing lots of songs written by people from other Christian traditions. “Rock of Ages,” by Augustus Toplady, in fact contains a jibe at Wesley’s theology that most of us miss; we sing it anyway. We sing explicitly Roman Catholic songs – not only new ones like “Here I Am, Lord,” but old favorites like “Faith of our Fathers” (we just drop out the verse that begins, “Faith of our fathers, Mary’s prayers shall bring all England back to thee.”) We sing Lutheran material, Baptist material, Shaker material (“Simple Gifts”). And, of course, we sing ancient and medieval hymns and carols. I’m not saying we shouldn’t sing good songs, wherever they come from. But we need to be mindful of the need for our (musical) testimony to match our (doctrinal) teaching. And the more we repeat Methodist doctrine in Scripture, creed, sermon, and singing, the more effective our teaching will be.