Initial Sanctification

Initial sanctification describes the initial moment when you are sanctified, also commonly referred to as regenerated. This born-again experience marks you as a renewed being by the power of God, setting the tone for how you are meant to grow. This new birth is the renewal of our sinful fallen nature, beginning the Holy Spirit’s work in our hearts. John Wesley explains this concept in his sermon “The New Birth”:1

John Wesley describes our initial sanctification by saying, “In that instant we are born again, born from above, born of the Spirit: there is a real as well as a relative change. We are inwardly renewed by the power of God.”2 Initial sanctification flows from our justification, or when we are pardoned. It is when we are born again that the work of the Spirit begins to grow within us. Again, Wesley provides clarity in his sermon “The Scripture Way of Salvation,” saying, “We feel ‘the love of God shed abroad in our heart by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us;’ producing love to all mankind, and more especially to the children of God; expelling the love of the world, the love of pleasure, of ease, of honour, of money, together with pride, anger, self-will, and every other evil temper; in a word, changing the earthly, sensual, devilish mind, into ‘the mind which was in Christ Jesus’.”3 As born-again believers, we do not merely receive assurance about avoiding God’s wrath. The sinful love we once had for worldly pleasures is expelled upon our regeneration. This is the fruit of initial sanctification.

Gradual Sanctification

At the moment of regeneration, gradual sanctification also begins. Gradual sanctification is not isolated from initial sanctification, and it is not necessarily to be viewed as the 2nd or 3rd “step” in the salvation process. Instead, the words “initial” and “gradual” describe the kind of condition in which one is growing in sanctification. The initial component of sanctification is instantaneous. Gradual sanctification, then, is the spiritual standing before God in which the majority of born-again believers exist. This position is what most other church traditions articulate when they use the word “sanctification.” Unfortunately, this narrower view of sanctification limits their definition of God’s grace, excluding entire sanctification. Wesley encourages believers to lean into a life of gradual sanctification when he says in “The Scriptural Way of Salvation” that “From the time of our being born again, the gradual work of sanctification takes place. We are enabled ‘by the Spirit’ to ‘mortify the deeds of the body,’ of our evil nature; and as we are more and more dead to sin, we are more and more alive to God.”4

In this sermon he devotes only one relatively short paragraph to gradual sanctification. He certainly does not demean the importance of this work of God, but it reveals where his focus is at. As believers, we should not merely want to sin less than we already do. Instead, we ought to want the Holy Spirit to completely transform us into how we were originally made, which is in God’s image, free from the power of sin.

The modern evangelical church often deemphasizes this, leading to a practical abandonment of the work of the Holy Spirit. This results in a misunderstanding about the breadth of the Gospel, which only acknowledges “getting saved.” In this understanding, sanctification is attributed to merely being a better Christian, representing Christ in a way that might lead to unbelievers “getting saved.” It leaves unanswered, ‘What is our faith supposed to grow into?’ John Wesley would say all of Scripture, including the Old Testament, establishes our need to be transformed by God to right relationship with Him.

Entire Sanctification

This leads us to the natural end of gradual sanctification. Entire sanctification is not merely implied in Scripture, it is promised in the same way heaven is promised. Often when some Christians reject the idea of entire sanctification, they say that man is incapable of perfection. They are not wrong; man is completely and utterly incapable of perfection. That is why the work of holiness in one’s life is completely a work of the Spirit of God. This is the message of holiness. In order to return to the way we were originally created, we must be made new and then transformed by the Holy Spirit. Wesley points out that this is God’s promise for us; he adds that, “It is a divine evidence and conviction, secondly, that what God hath promised He is able to perform. Admitting, therefore, that ‘with men it is impossible’ to ‘bring a clean thing out of an unclean,’ to purify the heart from all sin, and to till it with all holiness; yet this creates no difficulty in the case, seeing ‘with God all things are possible’.”5

It is significant that Wesley alludes to Matthew 19:26, contending this passage is talking about holiness. I would imagine that he would not be agreeable to how that verse, and similar verses like Philippians 4:13, are used in modernity. They are often used to justify all sorts of trivial excesses and rarely used to talk about the work of the Holy Spirit. This indicates the Holy Spirit’s role in the church has been greatly diminished. Some of the contributors to this phenomenon are lazy preaching, revivalism, and bad theology.

An Invitation

To take care of our holiness problem, it is vital that we understand the process of sanctification. Man was made in the image of God, and due to our sin, we cannot return to that former image by our own efforts. Through the work of the Spirit, we are justified and sanctified. Initially, we are being sanctified at the moment of regeneration. Flowing from that, we gradually grow in holiness. Eventually this gradual work of holiness can lead to entire sanctification. This experience describes the opportunity we have to allow the perfect love of God to fill us. This love can move us to a place where his love is “excluding sin” in our lives. The Holy Spirit then makes us into the person we were created to be.6

Andy Miller IV is a dual enrollment student at Wesley Biblical Seminary and Asbury University. He is aspiring to ministry in the Global Methodist Church. He co-hosts The Praislandia Podcast on Spotify. You can find him on Instagram @andymillerfour.

At the 2024 General Conference, the Global Methodist Church empowered the Discipleship, Doctrine, and Just Ministry Commission to “synthesize the content of the Articles of Religion and the Confession of Faith into a single document.”1 An exception was added to the Restrictive Rule to allow for this task.

On April 1, 2026, the Commission announced via a Facebook post it had completed a proposed synthesis document, the “Articles of Faith,” and would receive feedback on it for 20 days, after which a final version will be sent to the upcoming 2026 General Conference for proposed adoption. I have not seen an announcement make such large waves in the Wesleyan online world since the UMC split. I am not a Global Methodist, so I do not feel the need to wade into the controversy about the language of the proposed Articles of Faith.2 Instead, I invite you to join me in examining what the original Methodists and their faithful heirs believed about confessions generally and Articles of Religion specifically, offering a historical perspective on the current discussion grounded in the principle of reception.

The Wesley Family and the Articles of Religion

To begin examining the importance of confessional statements in the Wesleyan tradition, we must look before the foundation of Methodism. The issue of conformity to the Articles and the received faith of the Church of England was a central issue in the lives of the entire Wesley family for generations preceding the Methodist movement. John and Charles’ paternal great-grandfather, paternal grandfather, and maternal grandfather were, alongside many other nonconformist clergymen of their day, ejected from their ministry and parishes for refusing to conform to the doctrinal and liturgical standards of the Church of England.

John and Charles’ father, Samuel, and their mother, Susanna, were both raised nonconformists. They decided to independently study the faith and were convinced by the teachings of the Church of England. They joined with the English Church and broke from the dissent of their parents and grandparents (for Susanna, this was at the age of 12!). The lives of John and Charles are irrevocably shaped by their parents’ decision to conform to the Articles of Religion against continuing in the Puritan and nonconformist faith of their families.

John and Charles grew up intimately familiar with the controversies surrounding nonconformity. Samuel, who came into conformity in his 20s before marrying Susanna and later being ordained in the late 1680s, was writing tracts against nonconformists as early as 1693. For the rest of his life, he would be a learned advocate of the Highchurch party and English Arminianism. In many ways, John and Charles were following in their father’s footsteps.

As J.R. Watson summarizes, “…for the Wesley brothers, the subscription to the Thirty-Nine Articles at their ordinations was an act which was filled with more than usual significance, because they would have been aware of all the accumulated arguments, ejections, sufferings, quarrels, and problems of the preceding half century. In subscribing to them, they were taking their place in an established church which had been intolerant of Dissent…”3 The Wesley men—the patriarch Samuel and his sons Samuel (Jr.), John, and Charles—all took vows of canonical obedience as ministers in the English Church, including subscription to the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion. As those whose families a generation and two earlier were nonconformists and Puritans, this was not a vow taken lightly. Subscription did not mean reluctant or even qualified assent. They studied and understood the theology of their decisions.

Charles Wesley and the Articles of Religion

Charles Wesley is not often cited as an authoritative voice in Wesleyan theology outside his hymns, but his views on the Articles of Religion are well recorded. His hymns themselves contain direct language borrowed from the Articles. Most famously, his hymn ‘Hark! The Herald Angels Sing’ meticulously reflects the same Christological outline of Article II, ‘Of the Word or Son of God, Which Was Made Very Man.’

Likewise, in several of his sermons, he directly teaches from the Articles of Religion. Sermon 6, found in Newport’s critical edition, soundly condemns those who subscribe to the Articles of Religion without holding to the plain meaning. He calls them “infamous evaders… worse than the schismatics.” In the same sermon, he explains Article XVII ‘On Predestination’ is “purposefully so worded as to take in people of different sentiments, yet without giving the least sanction to the horrid doctrine and decree of reprobation.”4 In this statement, he articulates his complete subscription to the full Thirty-Nine Articles as compatible with his Arminianism. Canon law required an ex animo—meaning sincerely and from the heart—subscription to the Articles. Direct evidence such as this sermon, as well as Christian charity, requires we not assume Charles, nor John, should be thought to have their fingers crossed behind their backs in their subscription.

This invites us recall his family dynamics: Charles is the son of two originally nonconformist parents, both children of learned and defrocked nonconformist ministers. Charles, when ordained as a deacon and later priest, took vows of canonical obedience himself. It is no wonder he balked at those who would take those vows without the seriousness he personally knew they entailed. He knew of the consequences his grandfathers’ and great-grandfather faced as a result of their dissent. It is also no surprise he viewed his own theological convictions as perfectly compatible with the confession. Further, his belief that the Articles reject the “horrid decree… of reprobation” confirms the teaching of Article XVI, that “we may depart from grace given.” The Thirty-Nine Articles called both Calvinists and Arminians to a reasoned scriptural balance, affirming the doctrine of predestination alongside the possibility of apostasy.

John Wesley and the Articles of Religion

John Wesley took the same ex animo canonical vows as his brother. Several times in his sermons, writing, and treatises, he affirmed the doctrine of the Methodist societies was found in the doctrine of the Church of England, including the Thirty-Nine Articles. Like Charles, he taught from them in his sermons, for example in Sermon 74 ‘Of the Church.’ In his journal and letters, we find many entries where he defends himself against accusations that he or the Methodists did not ex animo subscribe to the Articles.

Early in the Methodist movement and at the outset of his field preaching, John would state his beliefs most clearly in his journal on September 13th, 1739.5

In a letter from December 30th, 1745, he responds to the accusation that he does not teach Predestination as outlined in Article XVII, echoing Charles’ sermon.6

In a sermon later in his ministry on April 21st, 1777, he preached ‘On the Foundation of a Chapel’ (Sermon 132) and answered critics who were claiming the Methodists were a new sect with divergent beliefs from the Church of England.

Earlier in the same sermon he says “the doctrine of the Church of England, as contained in her Articles and Homilies.” This undoubtedly demonstrates the “authentic records” positioned alongside the Homilies and Book of Common Prayer (her Liturgy) are the Articles of Religion.7 These three examples highlight his subscription to the Thirty-Nine Articles, and his expectation of Methodist doctrine to adhere to them, as his long standing belief from the earliest days of his Methodist societies to his later ministry.

John’s Abridgement

The most important part of John’s relationship with the Articles of Religion, however, is his purposeful abridgement of them from Thirty-Nine to Twenty-Four, which he published in 1784 alongside his commissioning of Coke to superintend the Methodists in North America.8 Other than the record that his close associate John Fletcher encouraged the task, requesting “39 rectified Articles,” we know little of the methodology of the project.9

The chief inquiry about the Methodist Articles is: ‘What exactly does the abridgement mean?’ Unfortunately, Wesley himself would not publish any justification for his abridgement before his death. The direct heirs of Wesley, such as Methodist systematican William Burt Pope, believed his abridgement was not an abrogation.

Paul F. Blankenship, in his article “The Significance of John Wesley's Abridgement of the Thirty-Nine Articles,” helpfully outlines three criteria in which the abridgement operates. First, there are deletions which are occasioned by the American Revolution and political realities. For example, the mentions of princes and English magistrates were inapplicable. Second, there are the deletions which may indicate doctrinal difference. What Blankenship then outlines is areas where Wesley was often defending his theology against critics who accused him of violating these Articles. The implication is not that he disagrees with these doctrines, but did not want disputation to unnecessarily obstruct the Methodists in America. The third criteria is edits for the sake of clarity and precision. This is essentially where Blakenship places the remaining edits where the aforementioned criteria do not clearly apply and we have no other reason for them except Wesley perceiving a clarity issue. Some evidence for this is the few Articles where Wesley retranslates words, revisiting the Latin version of the Articles and offering a small change, such as ‘traditions’ to ‘rites.’

Blankenship concludes that Wesley’s decision to conduct a mere abridgement instead of a revision was a statement in itself. He says, “A revision would have given a more complete picture of Wesley's doctrine and would have provided early as well as contemporary American Methodism with a more complete set of Articles. For instance, it would have been helpful to have Wesley's clear distinction between absolute and conditional predestination included in the Articles. However, he chose to make an abridgement rather than a revision.”10

Methodist Heirs and the Articles of Religion

To understand how faithful Methodists viewed the Articles of Religion post-Wesley, we will briefly consider three important heirs: William Burt Pope, Thomas C. Oden, and William J. Abraham. It is important that heirs are identified if confessionalism is to be properly inherited.

William Burt Pope and the Articles of Religion

William Burt Pope is one of the most significant theologians in Methodist history, and is routinely cited as her chief systematic theologian.

Pope’s extensive writing is useful to help us understand first what a confession is. In defining the difference between creeds and confessions, he says, “Generally speaking, the creeds were the authoritative statements of the faith in the ancient and undivided church; the confessions, or standards, or articles, or formularies, are those of the divided church in its individual communities.”11 This is an important distinction to understand. Creedal beliefs confirm us as mere Christian, confessions define us as particular Christian traditions. Why not prefer to have only creeds, then? Without confessions, it is hard to define with authority much about the Scriptures and Christian faith except who God is. And we have to define more because from these specific confessional beliefs flow our soteriology, social teaching, ethics, and basically every theological category.

Pope clarifies further, confessions are “that which represents the several views of Christian faith held by the divisions of Christendom since the sixteenth century: the dogmatic and polemical testimony and teaching of each communion, viewed in its relation to the others.”12 This definition is careful to speak of confessions as ‘polemical’ and ‘viewed in relation to the others.’ Confessions do not merely say who we are as Christians, but who we are as Presbyterians, Methodists, Lutherans, etc. If we are to be divided, we better have really good reasons why we believe our doctrines are more faithful to God’s Word than other traditions’ are. This does not mean confessions need to be endless, but they do clearly establish principles from which we do the work of theology within a tradition without departing from it. This justifies Wesley’s abridgement not necessarily being a step backwards when taken alongside his Sermons, Notes, and General Rules.

Additionally, Pope’s utilization of the Articles in his systematic writings is particularly noteworthy. For one, he takes them seriously as a doctrinal standard. He also claims direct succession with John Wesley in holding not merely to the Twenty-Five Articles but to the entire English Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion. He claims this is an expression of the full reception of doctrine for the Methodists.

In particular, Pope concentrates on what Methodism has received and inherited as an authoritative canon of doctrine. A canon is the rule, an agreed upon authoritative body of works, like the 27 books that make up the New Testament canon. Pope does not seek new formulations for Methodism’s doctrinal canons. He says:

In essence, he contends Methodism does not, in his day, require confessions that are unique to herself. Instead, she has received sufficient confessions from the English Church, which is the Thirty-Nine Articles, the three creeds, and the writings of “the Founder”—John Wesley. For Pope, Methodism not issuing its own confession matters naught because what it has inherited is Catholic, Reformed, and sufficient for the confessional task of doctrine.

Notably, he does not merely apply this principle of reception to the Articles, but applies the principle to the creeds as well. Notice in the quote from Compendium above Pope speaks of the “three creeds,” that third being the Athanasian Creed which is glaringly absent from the GMC’s Doctrinal Standards.13 Yet, its presence in Article VIII of the Thirty-Nine Articles provides it to Pope as Methodism’s own, therefore he magisterially cites it as part of the authoritative canon he has received. American Methodist systematician Thomas O. Summers also considers the Athanasian Creed as part of the Methodist inheritance.14

The Next Methodism and the Articles of Religion

Few modern voices were as impactful in Methodism as were the voices of Thomas C. Oden and William J. Abraham as they worked for renewal within Methodism and laid much foundation for the GMC. They also represent two perspectives on the Articles of Religion which are worth briefly exploring, as they more directly influence the present conversation while clearly expressing continuity with W.B. Pope.

Beginning with Oden, his book Doctrinal Standards in the Wesleyan Tradition contends that the Articles of Religion are part of the ‘Conciliar Formulae’ of Methodism. He quotes Nathaniel Burwash, who says, “They indicate that which we have received as our common heritage from the great principles of the Protestant Reformation, and from the still more ancient conflicts with error in the days of Augustine and Athanasius.”15 The language of ‘common heritage’ and ‘the great principles of the Protestant Reformation’ is significant. This indicates it is not merely about saying the right things, but being in continuity with those who have walked before us in the same faith. It is also important he notes a fundamental feature of the Articles is their rejection of specific errors.

Oden also outlines six ways doctrinal standards function within the church. To highlight the third way, he says, “They serve as a trustworthy source by which the truth is attested to and received.” The principle of reception (inheritance) ought to not be divorced from confessionalism because Christians do not operate in a solitary faith, but exist within the Church, receiving the “the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” that St. Jude commands us to “fight” for (Jude 1:3)!

Abraham, in his chapter in The Next Methodism, makes a similar argument from a place of canonicity. Anticipating the question of ‘Why must Methodists retain the Articles?,’ he answers twofold: “First, they reiterate our commitment to the classical faith of the church and, second, they identify those elements of the Reformation and the evangelical awakenings that are pivotal for our intellectual and spiritual welfare.”

Departing from Pope and Oden, Abraham articulates one manner in which he believes the Articles need change. He says, “We need, of course, to excise the relevant anti-Catholic material but, otherwise, the case for the Articles and Confession is secure.”16 He does not qualify this statement or expand on it, but it is important to note he is a source of the desire to reform the Articles in this way without speaking in favor of the synthesis rewrite that is presently being undertaken. You can see his suggestion being adapted in principle through the GMC’s Proposed Articles of Faith which do not contain any apophatic articles and go as far as to comment such aspects of the Articles of Religion are “irrelevant.”17

Blankenship, earlier mentioned concerning his scholarly work on Wesley’s abridgement, also contends the Articles must change. Interestingly, he does not argue for a replacement document such as the GMC is undertaking, or more deletions such as Abraham proposed. Instead, he suggests they need to be extended “until they constitute the revision of the Thirty-Nine Articles that Wesley chose not to make.”18 This is an interesting proposition which leads us into a discussion of new confessions.

New Confessions

I have aimed to demonstrate that, historically speaking, Methodism was not intended to have its own unique confession that displaces the Articles and supersedes them. Rather, as purposely designed by John Wesley, Methodism was originally intended to have confessional reception. William Burt Pope understood and applied this principle better than anyone else. He was unafraid to authoritatively appeal to the fuller Thirty-Nine Articles as needed, saying for example of the Article ‘Of the Sacraments,’ one of the articles abridged by John Wesley (XVI in the Twenty-Five and XXV in the Thirty-Nine), “The definition in the English Article strikes the true note.”19

I believe it is well established in Christian tradition that new confessions can and should be articulated when the need arises. Recall Pope’s definition of a confession. The two great periods of Catholic creedalism in the first five centuries and Protestant confessionalism in the 16th and 17th centuries were marked up and down with creeds and confessions. The demands of the time necessitated their writing. Heresies were in need of condemnation, and distinctives in need of articulation. The several Reformed confessions often interacted and built off one another, such as the heavy influence of the Augsburg Confession on the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion.

A Humble Note of Concern for the Global Methodist Church

I wonder if the GMC’s Proposed Articles of Faith take the historical perspective of confessionalism fully into account. For example, in the Global Anglican Communion and Anglican Church in North America to which I belong, we recently articulated the Jerusalem Declaration in 2008. It functions as a confession, but does not replace or supersede the inherited formularies. Instead, it binds us even more rigidly to them, affirming, “We uphold the Thirty-nine Articles as containing the true doctrine of the Church agreeing with God’s Word and as authoritative for Anglicans today.”20 It then proceeds to confessionally declare things the Church determined were necessary to articulate in a new confession in this age about anthropology, marriage, jurisdiction, and more. The Jerusalem Declaration takes Anglican confessional reception seriously.

Reception is also a much simpler method of doing confessionalism than synthesizing, which, no matter how you slice it, is actually articulating a new confession to replace the old at the end of the day. New language will be used. Old language will be discarded. New and unforeseen problems will be created. The direct connection to the historical formulations, with their centuries of standard interpretations, precedents, and commentaries, will slowly be relegated to an even more forgotten and inaccessible state than they already are. A new canon of interpretation will need to be crafted around the new confession, which will take decades to begin to flesh out. Modernisms will be unavoidable in the process. This is why I so strongly contend that confessional reception and confessional synthesization are two distinct and even opposed ways of doing confessionalism. The latter will inevitably be something new with many unavoidable complexities and losses.

Thomas O. Summers wrote critically of changes to the Articles in his day among offshoot denominations, saying, “Some of the minor Methodist bodies have attempted to improve the Confession by both omissions and additions; but their experiments are not encouraging. The Confession is, of course, susceptible of improvement; but there is great advantage in settled formulæ. ‘Meddle not with them that are given to change’.”21

Reception is a fundamentally more faithful principle, and is inherent to the principles of Methodism itself (see: Wesley’s sermon 132, ‘On Laying The Foundation Of The New Chapel,’ esp. II.1-5). W.B. Pope once instructed students, “If you are beginning your course of Methodist theological instruction, do not descend to the moderns until you have imbued your mind with the teaching of our standard writings.”22 My concern is not that a new confession is being written, as I said, they should when the need arises. Rather, I am concerned that, in the GMC’s case, a replacement confession is being written which at worst abrogates and at best confuses the confessional and doctrinal inheritance the Methodists have providentially received from the primitive church, the Protestant Reformation, and most directly from John Wesley himself.

As I said at the beginning, I have no dog in the fight about the language of the GMC’s Proposed Articles of Faith, the revision process, polity, or anything like that, and don’t feel a need to wade into it. For what it’s worth, I do not think the adoption of the new confession will make or break the GMC, but its adoption could be a choice to fundamentally reject direct confessional reception in its canon of doctrine, which will have a wide ranging impact on how theology is done in the Methodist tradition for a very long time to come.

As one trying to live peaceably as a student of Original Methodism within the Anglican tradition and who subscribes to the Thirty-Nine Articles, I hope others, especially my brothers in the GMC, will choose to take up the shield of reception and sword of inheritance. To do so is not merely to keep the received Articles on paper, but also requires intentionality to truly receive the faith once delivered to all the saints in a manner that fosters true belief and holiness of heart and life.

Let us pray:

Gracious Father, we pray for your holy Catholic Church. Fill it with all truth, in all truth with all peace. Where it is corrupt, purify it; where it is in error, direct it; where in anything it is amiss, reform it. Where it is right, strengthen it; where it is in want, provide for it; where it is divided, reunite it; for the sake of Jesus Christ your Son our Savior. Amen.23

Prayer Book Confession

The Book of Common Prayer contains some of the most powerful and well-articulated prayers in the English language including several prayers of confession. Since its publication in 1549, the prayer book has undergone revisions from time-to-time based on the furthering of the English Reformation (1552-1662), local/national adaptation (America, Kenya, etc.), and changes in practice (Compline, expanded Pastoral Rites, explicit Epiclesis, etc.); yet generally to be a prayer book requires adhering to the principles, form, and shape found the Book of Common Prayer (BCP) published in 1662, the gold standard.

In America after Independence, the American church adapted the prayer book for its own local use. This is in keeping with the Reformation principle of the liturgy in the language of the people for the people of that place and time. This is most explicitly spelled out in Article XXXIV of the Articles of Religion.

However, many prayers and liturgies went rather unchanged. It was still the BCP, whether in England or America. One prayer that did not change through the years is the prayer of confession in the liturgy of the Lord’s Supper. It is appropriately the central confession of prayer book worship. This prayer will be examined in this essay for closer consideration. It reads:

ALMIGHTY God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Maker of all things, Judge of all men; We acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness, which we, from time to time, most grievously have committed, by thought, word, and deed, against thy Divine Majesty, provoking most justly thy wrath and indignation against us. We do earnestly repent, and are heartily sorry for these our misdoings; The remembrance of them is grievous unto us; The burden of them is intolerable. Have mercy upon us, have mercy upon us, most merciful Father; For thy Son our Lord Jesus Christ’s sake, forgive us all that is past; And grant that we may ever hereafter serve and please thee in newness of life, to the honour and glory of thy Name; Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

This is an incredibly beautiful and reverent prayer of repentance. It persisted alone until the liturgical revisionism of the 20^th century, when alternatives were introduced in the Episcopal Church’s 1979 BCP. In the ACNA’s 2019 BCP, the prayer book my parish worships with and is the province’s norm for worship, the prayer regrettably only appears in an altered form in the Anglican Standard Text liturgy—one of two options. This altered form of the prayer, undoubtedly an attempt to faithfully modernize the prayer, unfortunately neuters the cadence of the prayer and removes some of the substantive language that helps us understand sin and repentance. The changes are noted side-by-side below in red.

The Prayer of Confession

The traditional prayer works through pairs in a chiasm, as demonstrated in the graphic below. In this article, I will examine the traditional prayer as a mechanism that invites us into the Lenten season in repentance. I will also note the areas the 2019 BCP makes changes disrupting the intentional flow of the prayer as an invitation to the penitent life.

As demonstrated, each word cooperates with both the word it is parallel to and the word that follows to clarify for us how it is that we ought to understand sin and repent. The first word in each pair can be categorized as an act of the will. The second word in each pair can be called a disposition of the heart. On the chart, the squares are primarily about us, and the circles primarily about God. They are rooted in Scripture and emphasize the true doctrine of grace and salvation by faith. The prayer itself is a journey through the life of a Christian. Let us now examine the pairs.

Act 1

The first act of the prayer is a presentation of the law. We, having heard the preached Word in the sermon, the Exhortation, and throughout the liturgy, are confronted with the sickness of man: we are fallen to sin and death. We are directly confronted with the result of sin: God’s wrath. If the prayer were to only contain Act 1, it would rightly identify the end state of man under the law. St. Paul reminds us, “through the law comes knowledge of sin” (Rom 3:20), “all who rely on works of the law are under a curse” (Gal 3:10), and “the law brings wrath” (Rom 4:15) because, as St. James reminds us, “whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it” (Jas 2:10). And we are guilty. Act 1 guides us through recognition, contrition, and judgment under the law.

Acknowledge and Manifold Sins

How does one begin to acknowledge their sins? Faith. Katherine Parr, King Henry VIII’s last wife and a devout Protestant, described the faith that leads to acknowledging sin in this manner: “We shall never know our own misery and wretchedness but with the light of Christ crucified.” This contrasts Isaiah 59:11-12, where the people “growl like bears” and “moan and moan like doves,” looking for justice and salvation but unable to find it. Yet the Word illuminates that which is hidden. When “transgressions are multiplied before thee [God]” is when “our sins testify against us.” In the light of Christ, the Sinless One, sin is revealed.

Parr continues, “Then we shall see our own cruelty, when we feel his mercy; our own unrighteousness and iniquity, when we see his righteousness and holiness. Therefore, to learn to know truly our own sins is to study in the book of the crucifix [the Scriptures], by continual conversation in faith; and to have perfect and plentiful charity is to learn first by faith the charity that is in God towards us.”1 It is not only mere sins, properly speaking, that we see, but through them we begin to see the disposition of our sinfulness.

When we begin to see our sinfulness under the lens of the truth contained in Scripture, we see how vast it is—“the works of the flesh” become “evident” (Gal 5:19). The 2019 BCP is not wrong: our sins are many, somewhat echoing Isaiah 59:12. Yet, manifold captures some of God’s response to our many sins seen in verse 13 of that chapter, “transgressing, and denying the Lord, and turning away from following our God, speaking oppression and revolt, conceiving and uttering from the heart lying words.” For when we recognize the depth of our sin, we see its variety. We are not mere liars. Show me a law and I will show you a law-breaker. Our sin is manifold, multi-faceted, in a way that turns back justice, drives away righteousness, assaults truth, bend uprightness, and displeases God (Isaiah 59:14-15). We must recognize this vast manifold reality. It is not a matter of mere quantity of what we do in our wills, but the quality—dispositions—of our heart.

Bewail and Wickedness

Acknowledging something like manifold sins, however, requires and leads to more than mere knowing. More than mere acknowledgement, the correct response to sin is bewailment, a deep regret, connoting disappointment and even putting a bitter taste in one’s mouth. This is a mourning, the kind which St. Paul says will occur in his heart if he finds the Corinthians unrepentant of “uncleanness, fornication, and lewdness” (2 Cor 12:21 NKJV). Just as these sins St. Paul mentions are outward and vile sins, so our bewailment is that which recognizes the nastiness and begins to place in us a want of undoing it. This is not mere lament, wishing it were not so, but a discomfort budding in us—the kind of wailing that accompanies sackcloth and ashes.

But why are we so inclined to sin that we must learn to bewail in the first place? Because we are a fallen race. As virtue of being members of Adam’s race, “there is none who does good, not even one” (Psalm 53:3 RSV) Addressing the Corinthians in his first letter to them, St. Paul warns, “Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither the immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor sexual perverts, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor robbers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you” (6:9-11a RSV).

The 2019 BCP totally misses the mark here, changing wickedness to offenses. The point of moving from manifold sin to wickedness in the progression of the prayer is not to merely restate our sinfulness in light of God’s glory, as does offenses, though it does at least that. Rather, in denoting the wickedness to which our natural birth entails us to, we press deeper into the issue at hand. This affirms the doctrine of original sin, bringing it to our attention, and the deep roots of our rebellion to the surface. As the Homilies state, our vainglory and pride must be pulled down on the way to humility.2 As will become apparent by the end of this essay, the 2019 BCP’s prayer misses the parallelism of acts of the will and dispositions of the heart working in tandem within the traditional prayer, often substituting the latter with more acts, or removing one side of the parallel all together.

Wrath and Indignation

Now we turn from confessions about who we are and what we’ve done to God’s response. It is rightly God’s wrath. The 2019 BCP’s change from wrath to righteous anger is again not false. But it does temper God’s anger somewhat, as though that were not apparent in His character from our assault against His “divine majesty.” Anger is also a step away from wrath lexically. Anger is primarily an emotion. Wrath can be spoken of as an emotion (wrathful), but more formally is an act. From God, wrath is justice delivered. God’s anger is flamed by abuse of His glory, and therefore those who abuse His glory rightfully are deserving of His wrath (Psalm 90:11). His deeds are just and even tempered, not merely emotive.

In Romans, St. Paul makes it clear this is what we deserve, this is the “righteous judgment of God” (Rom 2:5). If hardness and impenitence be the disposition of our hearts, sinful and wicked, we are deserving of this justice. Our manifold sin and wickedness speak of the true disposition of our hearts—we abuse God’s glory, hating Him and those made in His glorious image in our thoughts, words, and deeds.

Indignation is completely removed in the 2019 BCP, destroying the pair. This omission is pernicious as indignation speaks of the heart of God. He has contempt with our sinful selves, sins, and the state of the world. There is profound injustice against God and our fellow man, and we are perpetrators of it. God is not tolerant of this! Indignation indicates an aversion. It is not mere bitterness, as we have in our bewailment, but disgust. God hates our sin and injustice far more than we do. God will not settle for anything less than perfect justice, perfect peace, perfect love, and His glory revered. Recognizing the true depths of our condition requires looking even beyond our sin to the heart of God, where we recognize we will not escape God’s judgment (Rom 2:1-3).

For the man under the law who does not proceed past this point to repentance and grace, this is the end. In this way, the prayer is a warning, and a preaching of the Gospel. To stay under the law is to rightly suffer God’s wrath and indignation. John Calvin compares the law to a mirror, saying, “In it we contemplate our weakness, then the iniquity arising from this, and finally the curse coming from both—just as a mirror shows us the spots on our face.”3 In the narrative journey of the prayer, we have reached a crossroads; knowing the spots present demand action or inaction.

Climax

St. Augustine apprises the situation as such: “If the Spirit of grace is absent, the law is present only to accuse and kill us.”4 Will the potential penitent remain under the law, under God’s wrath and indignation, or proceed into His mercy and grace by the power of the Holy Spirit? The climax of the prayer is the great pivot, moving us from under the law to the Gospel. But how does man get there? The prayer explains it is by repentance beyond words, inviting us to this great act.

Earnest Repentance and Heartfelt Sorrow

What, then, can we possibly do, knowing of God’s indignation? The disposition of our hearts must change. Flowing from the contriteness of our bewailment, recognizing we are deserving of God’s wrath, we must earnestly repent as a deliberate act. If, as St. Paul said, impenitence is the disposition of those who under God’s righteous judgment, we must be penitent. Repentance is not a mere asking for forgiveness, but a turning of the heart, the will, and the mind toward God when it is was not directed to Him. Our response to our state is not merely to do good, restrain from evil, or feel worthless, but to throw ourselves at the mercy of God, recognizing our great need for Him in light of our deep rebellion. Knowing we have not the strength to save ourselves under the Law, we turn to God.

But if we are to be penitent, and earnest in our repentance, what is the condition of the heart? What is the faith of this man? Heartfelt sorrow underlines the disposition of the heart that accompanies earnest repentance. Parents will understand this well. We endeavor to teach our young children to apologize when they do wrong. In the beginning, we teach them when to merely say “I’m sorry” to us, and they learn to oblige. But every parent recognizes the first time their young child is truly sorry. The sorrow that accompanies that true “I’m sorry” is tangible. There is a sense of remorse, pain even, in that true confession. It is heartfelt because we can often physically feel this sorrow in our hearts. This is likely because contrition flows straight from the heart of God to us (Isa 66:2). We must feel this true sorrow about our sins, as it separates the type of repentance which is heartfelt from that which is transactional.

Unfortunately, the 2019 BCP removes the mention of earnest repentance in favor of combining the two statements by saying “deeply sorry.” Yet again, this disrupts the chiasm and is lexically castrating.

Act 2

As Act 1 served to remind us of the law, Act 2 gives us the antidote, the Gospel. As we receive the antidote, our heart changes still. God, not content to leave us as redeemed sinners who continue to sin and live hopeless lives, invites is to become more like Him—to be sanctified, to be holy. The second act of the prayer teaches us what that change is like and invites us into the change.

Grief and Intolerance

Amidst the pain of sorrow comes another feature—grief. In Psalm 51, David considers the great blight of those who are far from the Lord in asking the Lord to restore him. He prays to be delivered from having an unclean heart and having a spirit that is unsteady. The fruit of his state is being cast away from the Lord’s presence and the Holy Spirit departing from him (Psalm 51:11-12). The grief that accompanies this is profound. Like David, when confronted with our sin, often our first reaction is anger (2 Samuel 12:5), but this is because of the misalignment of our own hearts, wherein we often selfishly seek to protect our sin and conceal it. Instead, we ought to pray to grieve our sin, in a way that we understand the deadly consequences and effects of it on ourselves, others, and how it separates us from God. In clarifying the danger for us, the Book of Homilies remind us, these prayers ought to “move and stir us to cry upon God with all our heart, that we may not be brought into that state [of separation from God]; which doubtless is so sorrowful, so miserable, and so dreadful, as no tongue can sufficiently express or any heart can think.”5

In our grieving our sin, we begin to understand why it must not be tolerated. In learning intolerance of sin, we are invited to become like God. Holy. Sanctified. Without sin. That is our goal and why we repent, to be free to perfectly love God and worthily magnify His holy name. In the use of intolerance as the conclusion of our response in this prayer, we see the genius of Cranmer and the English Reformation at work. Intolerance of sin sounds drastic. It is. It is our goal. “For what partnership have righteousness and iniquity? Or what fellowship has light with darkness?” (2 Cor 6:14 RSV).

John Wesley, echoing Homily IV, challenged his hearers toward this end in a sermon, saying, “Why should any man of reason and religion be either afraid of, or averse to, salvation from all sin? Is not sin the greatest evil on this side hell? And if so, does it not naturally follow that an entire deliverance from it is one of the greatest blessings on this side heaven? How earnestly then should it be prayed for by all the children of God! By sin I mean a voluntary transgression of a known law. Are you averse to being delivered from this? Are you afraid of such a deliverance? Do you then love sin, that you are so unwilling to part with it? Surely no. You do not love either the devil or his works. You rather wish to be totally delivered from them, to have sin rooted out both of your life and your heart.”6

Therefore, the next time you confess your sins, whether extemporaneously, to your brothers, in the presence of your minister, in the Daily Offices, or before coming to the Lord’s Supper, do devoutly pray with intolerance of sin in mind. Endeavour for that to be the desire of our hearts and content of our being. This is God’s heart for us, that we should love Him more than sin. Sin must be disgusting and intolerant to us too if we are to be made like God in Christ, our will and desires must be reordered by repentance until that is so.

In the 2019 BCP’s revision, the line “the remembrance of them is grievous unto us” is removed (as well as the earlier mention of grievous in the second line of the prayer) and intolerable is changed to “more than we can bear.” This not only removes the pairs working together again, but also makes it about us, our inability to handle our sin. While it is true that without God’s grace, we alone cannot bear the weight sin, this fundamentally alters the meaning of the prayer. God, in His patient mercy, bears with us though we sin, yet He does not tolerate it. We are to become like Him in our intolerance of sin, not stuck in a perpetual state of miserable inability to bear sin. Notice that intolerance is on the heart’s disposition side of the prayer. It does not concern quantity—weight; rather it concerns quality—the heart. “More than we can bear” creates yet another category error in the flow of the prayer.

Mercy and Merciful

Now, in the structure of the prayer, we move to God’s response. Firstly, we pray for God’s mercy. As people who have appropriately humbled ourselves, as David demonstrated in Psalm 51, then we make our appeal to a God who is so merciful that He does not despise a broken and contrite heart. First, we ask God to have mercy to relent from His wrath, though deserved it may be. Scripture teaches up that God gives of His mercy freely, it is abundant, available, and new every morning. It is because of the availability of it, a free gift, that we are able to appeal to His mercy. We must appeal to His mercy, because no good works, adherence to the Law, being restrained from further evil, or other thing we can do ourselves can possibly deliver us from the wickedness we grieve and are seeking to be intolerant of. Mercy is the first of three things the Homilies tell us to obtain in pursuit of righteousness, and it is from the act of God’s mercy that we see His mercifulness.7

This aspect of the prayer is just as much an affirmation of who God is as wrath and indignation. In this way, the prayer demonstrates another attribute of God we are to imitate. In the Beatitudes, Christ commands, “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.” (Matt 5:7 ESV). Uniquely, our reception of mercy is directly linked to one’s mercifulness. God, being one with infinite mercy, is infinitely merciful. This is only to our benefit that the One who is perfectly just is only infinitely merciful, for we know that no one else is capable of such steadfast and faithful love. If God grants us true mercy, it is true mercy.

Forgive and Grant

The second article Homily III states we must obtain for righteousness is Christ’s justice. By appealing to God for forgiveness “for thy Son our Lord Jesus Christ’s sake,” we are asking God to give us Christ’s righteousness, which comes only by Christ’s death and merit through God’s mercy, and embraced by faith. This is the righteousness spoken of by St. Peter in his first epistle: “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed” (2:24 RSV).

He will be a loving Father unto us, correcting us for our sin, but not withdrawing his mercy finally from us, if we trust in him, and commit ourselves wholly unto him, hang only upon him, and call upon him, ready to obey and serve him. This is the true, lively, and unfeigned Christian faith, and is not in the mouth and outward profession only, but it liveth, and stirreth inwardly in the heart.8

What the prayer invites us to ask of God is no small thing. We are asking for “newness of life,” such a life that allows us to serve God rightly and be pleasing to Him. This echoes the great regeneration statement in Romans 6:4, “We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” (RSV). As a penitent praying this petition, we appeal to the ongoing mercy of God which is “new every morning” (Lam 3:23).

The third article Homily III mentions is a true and lively faith. Living a life wherein we serve God and do what is pleasing to Him is a life where the fruit matches the tree (Article XII). Good works, the outgrowth of justification, finally makes an appearance, and it is central to our ongoing repentance and faith in Christ in the pattern given to us by this prayer. Living a life displaying by good works is not secondary, it is natural, inherent, for the Christian. As Martin Luther famously remarked, “Now, when I have thus apprehended Christ by faith, and through him am dead to the law, justified from sin, delivered from death, the devil and hell, then I do good works, I love God, I give thanks to him, I exercise charity towards my neighbour.”9 Further, what separates someone with true, lively, and unfeigned faith from someone who is falling from faith is continuing to walk in newness of life and being continually repentant, even if one does sin (1 Jn 2:1).

Notice the pattern; in Act 1 of the prayer, we, man, had two moves: acknowledge/sins and bewail/wickedness while God has one, wrath/indignation. Now, in the second act we have one move: grief/intolerance. God has a two-fold response: mercy/merciful and forgive/grant. In our sin, we were the focus. In our newness of life, God is the focus. He does this to us of His great mercy.

Conclusion

While this essay is in a sense literary criticism, my larger hope is that it invites you to see the prayer of repentance we confess approaching the Lord’s Table each Sunday in its fullness. The prayer was intentionally crafted. It is a narrative about man’s redemption from sin to newness of life. It is poetry. It invites us deeper into the life of God in Christ as penitents and holy people.

It is unfortunate the 2019 BCP modified it in such a way as to harm and even remove many of the unique qualities of the prayer (however, I am thankful the original prayer is completely restored in the 2019 BCP Traditional Language Edition). I hope that by working through the prayer line by line, you become more aware of the great qualities possessed by prayers found in the BCP such as this one. They teach us the faith. This prayer in particular is designed to remind us, every Sunday, about the journey of salvation. If we are not careful these prayers, which have such depth, can become rote—mere things we say repetitively without considering what we are saying. Therefore, I invite you to consider the things you are saying. Take them up. Ruminate on them and allow them to point you to the Gospel and change your inward parts.

The high school Bible study I lead is currently studying Philippians. As a teacher, it is encouraging to witness a hunger in their generation for studying the Holy Scriptures. Our normal routine is to study paragraph by paragraph. When studying Paul’s epistles, we are sure to capture the ‘big picture’ of what he’s trying to communicate. We then move verse-by-verse. Questions about what a particular phrase or word might convey arise. We’ll even sometimes paraphrase Paul’s language into modern ‘teenage’ vernacular. Yet, we take care to consider how Paul’s theology is directly correlated to the life and ministry of Jesus. And, of course, we want to ask how that particular Scripture shapes our own discipleship. Though this method moves at a slow pace, the depth of conversation has proven to be well worth it.

Recently, our Bible study focused on Philippians 2:1-11. This is the infamous ‘kenosis passage’ referring to how Jesus “emptied himself” for our sake. William Barclay’s work has long been a valuable resource for me. His colorful commentaries have filled the shelves of my dad’s library for as long as I can remember. Now I, too, have a shelf dedicated to his work. Barclay’s commentary on Philippians has proven useful during our current study. His section on Philippians 2:5-7 was especially impactful as our Bible study moved through the passage.

Philippians 2:5-7 reads, “Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men” (ESV). The question I was wrestling with was what do these “forms” of Jesus mean? Barclay writes:

“There are two Greek words for form, morphē and schēma. They must both be translated form, because there is no other English equivalent, but they do not mean the same thing. Morphē is the essential form which never alters; schēma is the outward form which changes from time to time and from circumstance to circumstance.”1

He goes on to give some examples to illustrate. He mentions how the morphē of a human is his humanity. All throughout a person’s life, his essence or nature is always as a human. Yet the schēma of a human can change. The human stages—infancy, adolescence, adulthood, and finally elderly years—represent the changing schēma of that human. Barclay then shifts from examples to the main idea of verse 6: “The word Paul uses for Jesus being in the form of God is morphē; that is to say, his unchangeable being is divine.”2

To say that Jesus “was in the form of God” is to say that Jesus is eternally God. Deity is Jesus’ eternal nature. He did not become God as if to say there was as a time when he wasn’t divine. Further, the divinity of Jesus forever remains divine. There is no shifting or change in Jesus’ divine nature. Conversely, there are elements of Jesus’ form that did change. His schēma was one that came to us as a helpless babe. He “increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man” (Luke 2:52 ESV). Though his schēma changed, his morphē never did.

Barclay is not alone in this interpretation. Another commentator came to my attention, that of Edwin Gifford. He affirms the same position that Barclay holds and, in some ways, develops it further. He writes:

“For the interpretation of ‘the form of God’ it is sufficient to say that (1) it includes the whole nature and essence of Deity, and is inseparable from them, since they could have no actual existence without it; and (2) that it does not include anything ‘accidental’ or separable, such as particular modes of manifestation, or conditions of glory and majesty, which may at one time be attached to the ‘form,’ at another separated from it.”3

The first point that Gifford makes here is that not only is Jesus fully God, but Jesus is existentially God. Put another way, there is no existence of Jesus without his divine nature. His second point highlights that Jesus’ divinity was not a conditional feature or addition.

To summarize Barclay and Gifford on verse 6:

1. When Paul says that Jesus is “in the form (morphē) of God,” he is saying that Jesus is in his very nature God;

2. This form is eternally true of Jesus—past, present, and future;

3. This form will not, and cannot, be changed.

If all of this is true, and I believe it is, then the rest of this passage will soon present a profound image of Christ.

With this basis in mind, let’s turn the focus now to verse 7. Here we read the phrase, “he emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant.” Can you take a guess at which word Paul uses here for “form?” Once again, Paul uses morphē. The implications here are astounding, yet mysterious. What is true of Jesus’ form of God is also true of Jesus’ form of servant. Returning to our conclusions from verse 6, we can now say that Jesus is, in his very nature, a servant. This form is eternally true of Jesus—past, present, and future. This form will not, and cannot, be changed. Exactly how this all plays out is a mystery. But as with all theology, we don’t start with how. We start with who. Jesus is, in his nature, the God-Servant. As Gifford points out, the servant nature of Jesus is not a particular mode of manifestation that he can be separated from. A servant is who he is.

Today being the feast of The Presentation of Christ in the Temple brings this reality to a grand measure. The schēma of the babe is at the same time the morphē of the Servant-God. The infant who was presented by his parents is the same one “that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:10-11 ESV). When Simeon laid eyes on that babe born a mere 40 days before and saw the face of God, the only appropriate reply was: “mine eyes have seen thy salvation” (Luke 2:30 RSV). Even as a babe, he is who he is.

Objection: The ESV is a Calvinist Bible

A common objection voiced on the internet, and one that I have even heard in the hallowed halls of the seminary, is that the ESV is a decidedly Calvinist Bible translation. Research for this claim will find it primarily resting on two pillars: 1) the ESV Translation Committee was largely made up of Calvinists, and 2) Crossway, the publisher of the ESV, largely publishes Reformed content. What people imply by presenting these two factoids is that the ESV could not have possibly been crafted without bias, at some point the Calvinist bias from Crossway and the Committee seeped in to their translation.

C.S. Lewis makes the point in one of his works of literary scholarship that translation is always commentary to some degree. When moving from one language to another you will always have to make decisions which will present things differently than they are presented in the original text, even in some small way. There is never a 1:1 translation of a word. No work, from Homer to Dostoevsky, is immune from this.

The controversy around Emily Wilson’s recent translation of The Odyssey is an example of critics pointing out when a translator’s commentary strays too far from the original work. Critics rightly claim her self-described feminism has negatively influenced her translation so far that she reinvents the narrative at places. Her advocates, of course, argue literary reinterpretation through modern lenses like feminism is required to destroy the narrative of the sexist masculine translations, but I will not entertain such outlandish ideas.1 A clear example of this type of thing occuring in the Bible world is found in the heretical Passion Translation (a misnomer) by Brian Simmons, which reinvents parts of the scriptural narrative through the lens of Pentecostalism.

So the question is: did the ESV translators make the mistake of Wilson and Simmons, allowing their personal bias to influence the translation too much to superimpose Calvinism on the text? The answer is quite clearly no. Undoubtedly, theological convictions influenced the translators just as much as any Bible translation has been influenced by the hands which guided it. One must recognize, the translators who were Calvinists were already Calvinists before they ever worked on the ESV. They already believed the Bible, as translated in English that they have been reading their whole lives, leads to theological conclusions supporting Calvinism, just as they do all the doctrines they believe in. Allowing bias to change a translation is completely unnecessary from their point of view. This also dismisses those on the Committee who are not Calvinist. Most concering, it assumes the worst of Christians who are working in good faith to translate what they believe is the inerrant word of God.

Additionally, the ESV is not a new translation, meaning it was not a project that began from scratch. It is an update of the Revised Standard Version, one of the most ecumenical translations ever. The ESV and RSV share a 94% similarity. So really, the implicit claim being made is that in the 6% of difference, the ESV snuck in a Calvinist bias. Now that we have identified the root claim being implied, is it true?

R. Grant Jones, perhaps the most underappreciated Bible content creator on YouTube, and no apparent friend to Calvinism based on the content he focuses on, made an extensive video in 2019 reviewing the supposed Calvinist changes in the ESV. His video thoroughly details how the ESV does not change any passages in the RSV’s rendering in a pro-Calvinist direction. In a few places, the ESV is actually less-deterministic in its renderings. I am embeding the video below. If you have the time, it is well worth the watch and I am indebted to him for doing much of the leg work that I won’t unnecessarily repeat. He does not shy away from offering his opinion and critizing the ESV where he believes the RSV was more accurate, and he notes where the ESV corrects some odd deviations and liberties the RSV took in moving away from traditional renderings. It is a more than fair analysis.

Finally, I believe sometimes people actually are not objecting to the ESV translation, but the ESV Study Bible, which is unapologetically Reformed in its notes and articles. (However, it is still the best study Bible on the market and many contributers were not Calvinists.) In the imagination of some, it may be hard to divorce the translation from the study Bible, despite the latter having no impact on the former and being formed by seperate committees. This prejudice is misguided. After all, no one judges the NIV by the NIV Study Bible or the NKJV by the NKJV Study Bible.

Objection: The ESV is a Complementarian Bible

The second objection commonly voiced about the ESV must be examined closer. The claim is the ESV is biased to a complementation perspective, implicity one rooted in a supposed oppressive dark-side-of-evangelicalism version of complementarianism. (I refuse to shoehorn all non-egalitarian positions which are in some way complementarian under one umbrella. Gender distinctions are clear in Scripture, after all.) Two seperate issues arise here: 1) gender-inclusive language, and 2) the translation of Genesis 3:16.

Gender-Inclusive Language

In the latter half of the 20th century, the English language, lead by academia, began to prescribe gender-neutral and gender-inclusive replacements for many words. Academic institutions and writing conventions began implementing guidelines enforcing this new standard. ‘Man’ became ‘human.’ ‘Mankind’ became ‘humankind.’ (BCE and CE began to gain traction at the same time in case you thought the language revolution is limited to gender.) In the world of Bible translations, led by the NRSV (1989), ‘brothers’ in Paul’s letters and elsewhere became ‘brothers and sisters.’ What was understood as implicit for hundreds of years or more in the English language, that man referred to the species and masculine nouns can be inclusive, was summarily declared obsolete, archaic, and even sexist. Justice and inclusivity demanded this change, or so it was justified. The RSV barely pre-dated this cultural shift. The ESV, instead of taking a position on the shift, decided it would be essentially literal in this matter (see the Preface of the ESV). So in the ESV, ἀδελφός, the Greek word literally meaning ‘brothers,’ is translated as such, though it is certainly often referring to the whole assembly being addressed of which women, ‘sisters,’ were a part. For what its worth, the RSV’s usage of brethren is a more competent choice in my mind than brothers.

Ironically, because of this position, in a few places the ESV is actually more ‘inclusive sounding’ than the RSV, translating the pronoun with the broadest possible but exact literal rendering. For example, in John 12, the RSV talks of “He who believes in me… he who sees… he who rejects…” The ESV, meanwhile, speaks of “Whoever believes in me… whoever sees… the one who rejects…” (R. Grant Jones reviews a few more passages where this occurs in his video embeded above). You may prefer the more inclusive rendering of words like ἀδελφός as ‘brothers and sisters,’ yet it is hard to claim it is motivated by complementarian bias when the translators stick to their principle and render things more inclusive when literalness demands it.

Genesis 3:16

In The King’s English, I lamented how often modern Bible translations force out textual updates. However, this is not historically uncommon. Contrary to popular belief, the KJV was not a stable text until after 1769, when Blaney’s Oxford text was released and would over time become the standard. Unfortunately, the 1611 text was not delivered to blessed King James by St. Paul and never revised. For the 158 years prior to Blaney’s work, the KJV existed in at least three main text editions and countless small variations.

The ESV, attempting to emulate the 1769 stabilization of the the KJV, declared their 2016 text edition to be the “Permanent Text.” This was after three previous minor textual updates in 2002, 2007, and 2011. It is fair to say this was a misguided decision, and it became apparent quickly. Crossway walked back their Permanent Text decision a mere month later.

What was most controversial about the decision to make the 2016 revision permanent was the change to the translation of Genesis 3:16, which was correctly reversed in last year’s (2025) textual update. Take a look at the change yourself:

• ESV (2001, 2002, 2007, 2011): To the woman he said, “I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.”

• ESV (2016): To the woman he said, “I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you.” Footnote: Or shall be toward

• ESV (2025): To the woman he said, “I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.” Footnote: Or to, or toward, or against

The 2016 translation is certainly exegetically justifiable and actually brings the text into alignment with how the preposition in question, אֶל, is used in the next chapter (see Genesis 4:7). However, is it a minority report and adds confusion to an already complex passage. What does it even mean for her desire to be contrary? Is that a result of God’s judgment? How does that relate to the man’s rule and birth pangs? It is all very unclear, while the traditional rendering is at least clearer in plain meaning.

Things in the Bible world blew up when Scot McKnight declared this was a “stealth translation” meant to “turn women and men into contrarians by divine design.”2 This is an absolutely silly reading of the 2016 translation, in my humble opinion, and assumes the worst of those on the revision committee. Around the time of the change, an article in the 1974/1975 Westminster Theological Journal by Susan Foh arguing for the “contrary to” translation was suddenly being reexamined and in vogue again, which assuredly led to this hasty decision. (You can read it here if you’d like.)

Nonetheless, this single passage is inconsequential to determine if the ESV is biased. Denny Burke, who teaches biblical studies at Boyce College and was partial to the 2016 translation, noted in his commentary on the change, “neither complementarianism nor egalitarianism stands or falls on the interpretation of this single verse. One can be an egalitarian and agree with the [Susan] Foh interpretation of ‘desire.’ One can be complementarian and believe that ‘desire’ should be defined in connection with Song of Songs 7:10.”3 As it is a minority report, he is assuredly right. Sandra Glahn, who teaches at Dallas Seminary and was critical of the 2016 translation, similarly noted, “There is not one strictly egalitarian nor one strictly complementarian ‘view’ of how to interpret this verse. Both camps have scholars who are ‘all over the map’ in terms of interpretation.”4

Finally, this is all really a moot point as the ESV has reverted to the previous and traditional rendering of the passage, anyway. The larger scandal to me was their willingness to make such a fundamental change that introduced confusion based on a minority report. I am comforted by the majority of changes in their textual updates over the years having been otherwise minor, conservative, and clarifying rather than confusing. Supposed “stealth” intentions aside, it is important to me that the translation of Genesis 3:16 was returned to the traditional rendering, as one of my four criteria for a standard Bible is the right handling of textual criticism.

Conclusion

If a supposed lack of gender inclusivity in the ESV by using ‘man’ instead of ‘human’ and ‘brothers’ instead of ‘brothers and sisters’ is truly a dealbreaker for you, then undoubtedly my apologetic will not move you. However, I hope to have dispelled the unfair notions that the ESV is biased to Calvinism or is somehow sexist. With the reversal of the 2016 rendering of Genesis 3:16, these claims simply have no merit when brought to proper scrutiny. At its core, the ESV is largely the RSV, with several of the more controversial renderings from the RSV returned to traditional rendering.

I see these criticisms of the ESV as boogeymen (or boogeyhumans, I guess). In a time when every English translation is opting for inclusivity against literalness, and moving away from traditional English renderings, even in conservative translations with English Bible pedigree in its DNA like the NASB, so far the ESV has chosen not to and has more faithfully preserved the English Bible tradition and Tyndale-King James lineage than any other translation. Thank God.

Revisiting my four criteria for a standard Bible, the ESV is the only translation that meets all four, and the criticisms commonly raised do not deter:

1. It must be translated in the English Bible tradition.

2. It must have the Apocrypha translated.

3. It must be widely available and accessible.

4. It must rightly handle textual criticism.

However, a predicament arises as there are various names for these books. The naming largely is based on tradition.

• Protestants generally call them the Apocrypha—contested authority.

• Roman Catholics call some of them Deuterocanon—the second canon.

• The Eastern Orthodox synods have used Greek, anagignoskomena—worthy to be read.

In Thēsauros, I argued for them to be called ecclesiastical books, but I doubt that’ll catch on anytime soon, so we really have to pick a word, don’t we?

As much as I like anagignoskomena, in English we really have the choice between Apocrypha and Deuterocanon. When it comes down to it, I believe Protestants should refer to them as the Apocrypha. I have one overruling reason for this: it is to identify our collection of books as distinct from the Roman Catholic collection of books, which is shorter. Secondarily, the King James Version calls them “The Books called Apocrypha.” Why deviate from a long-standing tradition and formulary?

The Belgic Confession of 1561 and the English Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion have identical canon lists. They list several ‘other books’ which the Reformed Churches and the English Church have both received—they are the books of the Apocrypha listed just as found in the King James Bible. Article VI of the Article of Religion says (the exact same list is found in Article VI of the Belgic Confession):

And the other Books (as Hierome saith) the Church doth read for example of life and instruction of manners; but yet doth it not apply them to establish any doctrine; such are these following:

The Third Book of Esdras, The Fourth Book of Esdras, The Book of Tobias, The Book of Judith, The rest of the Book of Esther, The Book of Wisdom, Jesus the Son of Sirach, Baruch the Prophet, The Song of the Three Children, The Story of Susanna, Of Bel and the Dragon, The Prayer of Manasses, The First Book of Maccabees, The Second Book of Maccabees.

The article does not claim this is the exhaustive list of the ‘other books’ (leaving open the possibility for us to be informed by the ones the East has received), but by listing the books it does, it separates the Protestant Apocrypha from the Roman Catholic Deuterocanon as two different collections. It is not really a matter of which term is better suited—in plain meaning deuterocanonical is better suited—but it is a matter of distinction.

Though this is primarily directed to Reformed and Anglican Christians, even Lutherans recognize the benefits of a larger Apocrypha. The Apocrypha: Lutheran Edition with Notes (Concordia, 2012) includes the full ESV Apocrypha, not just the books Luther included in his Lutherbibel. The principle of recovering what the Church in all time and in all places has maintained is a continuing Reformation practice.

Practically, this just means Protestants have more books than Roman Catholics. We simply have to distinguish our larger canon from the Roman Catholic canon, and referring to them as Apocrypha does that well and keeps us grounded in tradition. At the very least, we have the books spelled out in the two Article VI’s. At most, we have what is commonly being translated in modern Bibles like the ESV, recovering for us more of what the Orthodox have preserved. As these are for “example and instruction,” we have more example and instruction to receive. The Prayer of Manasseh, for example, is one of the finest prayers to imitate.

Therefore, next Michaelmas, the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels, remember the Archangel Uriel, who helped Ezra discern apart from the evil of the heart (Jeremiah 17:9).

You won’t find Uriel in a Roman Catholic Bible. Now, the next time a Roman Catholic apologist tells you that your Protestant Bible is missing books, you can confidently say, “no, actually, you are the one missing books!”

I am convinced there is. I believe we, as a Christian culture, must seek the ideal of a standard Bible. By this, I mean we need a shared DNA across Christian divisions and denominations that echoes the centuries of God’s Word coming off the lips of English-speaking peoples. We had this in the English-speaking world for centuries. The norm persevered until the 1970s, when the New International Version (NIV) was released and instantly became the second most popular Bible translation ever, only second to the King James Version (KJV). The NIV, for all its good, simply does not sound like the Bible in English in many instances.

In truth, I think any Bible that adheres to the English Bible tradition, and finds continuity with it, can be a standard Bible, as I’ll explain below. For example, If you are reading the NKJV every day and I’m reading the ESV, we are largely going to be on the same page about how Scripture sounds. I believe that is at the heart of why it is such a scandal of the mind when a standard Bible in the English Bible tradition has a textual update, like the ESV’s recent one. The fewer updates, the more spread out they are, the better. In recent decades, publishers have been too quick to issue updates.

Let me be clear about what I’m saying. I am not saying you shouldn’t read translations like the NIV. I am not saying these translations are bad. What I am suggesting is that when we make them our primary, or standard Bible (used in church readings, liturgy, families, and such) they erode the identity of how the Bible sounds. A standard is deviated from. Allow me to explain why that standard is so important in outlining my four criteria for selecting a standard Bible.

1. It must be translated in the English Bible tradition.

2. It must have the Apocrypha translated.

3. It must be widely available and accessible.

4. It must rightly handle textual criticism.

My Criteria for a Standard Bible

1. It must be translated in the English Bible tradition.

As I have argued elsewhere, in the English-speaking world we have a cultural memory of Scripture. The importance of this cannot be understated, and preserving the cultural memory is decidedly important. The words of Scripture being on the lips of believers and nonbelievers alike is a ministry of the Holy Spirit, and I fully believe He uses cultural memory to draw people to Himself, to instruct, and to admonish. Untold hours of blood, sweat, and tears have gone into establishing this cultural memory, and it must be preserved because it is a net societal good for the truth, beauty, and goodness of Scripture to be present in our culture. This has established a pedigree, an aphoristic quality, meaning there are certain words and phrases that sound ‘right’ when said in English, and evoke the brilliance of the language.

Of course, I greatly value translations that are outside the English Bible tradition—especially the CSB and the NET. I find them refreshing and good tools for study alongside the original languages. Yet, they can’t replace our cultural memory for a variety of reasons. Chief among them is our cultural memory grounded in the Tyndale-King James lineage. In the English world, before the publishing of the NIV in 1978, nearly every Bible was in this lineage: from Tyndale’s New Testament in 1525 to the Revised Standard Version in 1952, everyone was reading from Bibles of the same lineage and a shared base text. That means for over 450 years, the culture of the English-speaking world was influenced by one shared biblical basis, with only minor variations, but largely grounded in the stability of the King James Version (KJV) and those translations derived from her. It is impossible for a new Bible tradition to have that level of impact. New translations only divide the English pedigree, and the rise of new translations have not created new pedigrees. Rather, there is the traditional pedigree on one hand, and disarray on the other.

The CSB’s translation of Psalm 23:, which reads, “The Lord is my shepherd; I have what I need,” will never be ingrained in our imaginations like “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want” (KJV, RSV, NKJV, ESV, NRSV, etc.). The main differences of Psalm 23 in the Tyndale-derived translations are in punctuation, grammar, and pronouns, while the new translations introduce completely new English phrases and words in translation. These translations are not inaccurate to be doing so, but they are eroding the cultural memory, or at least not supporting it, hence why they do not qualify as a standard Bible in my criteria.

There is a liturgical and catechetical component to this argument that must be clearly stated. As the Scriptures are read within the congregation and over family dinner tables, they are being etched into the fabric of the family, congregation, community, and culture. Therefore, the translation being read from in worship settings ought to support the cultural fabric of the community and culture, not erode it. For example, if a family is teaching their children The Ten Commandments, or perhaps some of the family learned them in Sunday School growing up, they may be able to find themselves reciting nearly word-for-word as it is being read in the ESV. It is likely the older folks in the pews grew up on the KJV, RSV, or NKJV and taught their children and Sunday School classes from it. Yet, consider the mental gymnastics parishioners will undergo if the Bible is being read in the NIV:

Hopefully an example from my own life will make this more clear: I was not raised to read the Bible or memorize Scripture. The one exception to this occurred when my father sat me down and we memorized Psalm 23 together from a tiny red Gideon KJV. Aside from that, I should have come to the faith not really knowing any Bible. Yet, when I began attending a church, it was a UMC that used the NRSV, a Bible in the cultural lineage, and I found myself surprisingly being able to mouth some of the readings as they were happening. God blessed me and used the cultural memory of Scripture to give me grace, and I did not even know it! Later, when I was attending a church that mainly used the NIV, I found myself experiencing hearing the Word read as a roadblock. The reading of the translation in the midst of the congregation was warring against this special grace of cultural memory, eroding it, not supporting it. If this is the case for someone raised with little-to-no Bible like me, how much more profound is it for those who have more?

A consistent problem with modern translations unhinged from the Tyndale-King James tradition is they explicitly translate words so they do not sound like the Bible. This is stated in the prefaces of many of these translations. This is assumed to be an advantage, a good thing. Why? While it can be a good thing to explore the lexical possibilities of a word, it is not a good thing to purposely de-theologize it. Leland Ryken reports that, when discussing the translation of ἱλασμός (propitiation), a member of the NIV committee said, “Propitiation is exactly the right word, but we cannot use it because people do not know what it means.”1 This gets at the root of the issue: is the Bible meant to communicate to us, speak into our culture, lives, and hearts the Word of God? Or is it to fit the Word of God into the present vocabulary of our cultural moment? Certainly, there is a case to be made that simpler vocabulary-based translations have uses for evangelism and other use cases, but we seem to be choosing to degrade our theological vocabulary rather than maintain it when we purposely choose such translations as our standard Bibles.

I want to be clear: no matter what translation is used, the reading of God’s Word in the congregation is a means of grace, whether the NIV or KJV or whatever. My point is we can be inhibiting another, secondary, function of that grace when we ignore that we are warring against the cultural memory of Scripture, knowingly or not. It is the difference between flowing with the stream and letting it carry us, or putting an oar in the water, dragging it on the surface, and thereby fighting the current.

2. It must have the Apocrypha translated.

Few modern Bibles, especially those Bible translations initiated by Protestant bodies, have the Apocrypha translated. Elsewhere, I have argued why the Apocrypha needs to be maintained, read devotionally, and used liturgically in churches. In summary: it is ours, part of our religion, we dare not forsake it any more than we forsake Lewis’ Mere Christianity or the works of the Apostolic Fathers, even if it is not inspired Scripture. In fact, we have a higher duty to preserve and read it than Mere Christianity. Therefore, it is my second criteria for a standard Bible.

The glaring omission of the Apocrypha stands out most in the New King James Version (NKJV). For all intents and purposes, the NKJV should be the Bible I am using. It does everything I am looking for in points 1, 3, and 4 much better than the others. It is more readable and does a slightly better job at preserving the English Bible’s cultural memory. Yet, its origins from mostly conservative Baptists and Presbyterians left the Apocrypha on the cutting room floor, despite it being an integral part of the KJV. This exclusion is a hinderance to the NKJVs claim of being a direct successor to the KJV.2 The other major translations claiming continuity with the KJV—the RSV and its successors the ESV and NRSV—do include the Apocrypha. This is to their credit. Hopefully, translating the Apocrypha in the future is not outside the realm of possibility for the NKJV.

There is a factor of this that comes down to tradition: I am an Anglican and keep the Daily Office. Several times a year, we read from the Apocryphal writings both in the Daily Office and in Sunday worship. If this is not your tradition, it may seem less important. Whether this is your practice or not, however, I would still argue the availability of the Apocrypha is an essential component of what constitutes a standard Bible, as was the case until the late 1800s. I would also argue it is our duty as Christians to reclaim the significance of these writings as they are losing status.

3. It must be widely available and accessible.

It is important for a standard Bible to be readily available and accessible for obvious reasons: people have to be able to read it! It shouldn’t be hard for me to buy my children or friends Bibles in our family or parish’s standard Bible. When it comes to translations that meet criteria one and two, only a few translations remain: the RSV, NRSV, NRSVue, ESV, and the venerable KJV. Accessibility and availability narrow it down even further.

The Revised Standard Version (RSV), the predecessor and “father” of the ESV, has become my favorite Bible translation. In many places, it tastefully preserves the traditional second-person pronouns for God (thy/thou/thee/thine), which you can see in the example above. However, it lacks the ESV’s incredible lineup of availability and digital accessibility. The RSV is only available in print in one edition by Thomas Nelson, aside from a few Roman Catholic publishers who publish a niche revision which removes the thees and thous, defeating the advantage. This is in large part because the RSV was abandoned by its translator and license holder, the National Council of Churches, who produced and published the NRSV (and have pulled and abandoned that Bible, too) and currently only publish the recent NRSVue. Of course, used copies of the RSV are available in plenty, but it is a barrier-to-entry that the RSV is still widely unavailable today. While Crossway ever increases their publishing of beautiful ESV editions and has the bestselling study Bible ever, the RSV tragically barely hangs on to being in print.

It is unfortunate that market share has such a big impact, but it is the reality of the world we live in. Behind “market share” is consumer enthusiasm: enthusiasm drives publishing. If a Bible will sell, it will be produced. The enthusiasm behind the ESV is such that it is the most widely available and accessible translation today. Aside from print, the ESV app is easy-to-use, intuitive, and offers access to the whole lineup of Crossway’s study Bibles and other resources. While the RSV is available on the YouVersion Bible App, there is not much offering past that (and there are serious concerns about the YouVersion app being susceptible to drift).3 The ESV is wiping the floor with the competition in availability and accessibility, and there are multiple editions in print with the Apocrypha included. So, unfortunately, the RSV and original NRSV do not meet this criteria.

And then there were three: the NRSVue, KJV, and ESV.

4. It must rightly handle textual criticism.

There is a part of me that would like to discard textual criticism entirely and just use the King James! However, the insights of textual criticism, when rightly used, are indispensable. Take, for instance, the impact the Dead Sea Scrolls have had on our ability to rightly translate the Bible. Yet, textual criticism must not go as far as to destroy the text it is criticizing.

The New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition Does Not Meet This Criteria

The glaring example of textual criticism killing a good thing is the unfortunate case of the NRSV, Updated Edition (NRSVue), which is a recent revision of the NRSV, a 1989 update to the RSV. With the release of the NRSVue, it was announced the original NRSV, which for decades has been the standard in academica, would sadly be pulled from print and, unlike the RSV, all digital platforms as well.

Unfortunately, the NRSV’s successor, the NRSVue, took significant revisionist liberties with the biblical text that do not reflect accurate translation, opting for liberalism and mistranslating the sacred words of Scripture. In the most egregious instance, they devilishly affirm modern anthropology and sexual confusion as they translate 1 Corinthians 6:9 in this way: μοιχός (adulterer) as “male prostitute” and ἀρσενοκοίτης (homosexual) as “men who engage in illicit sex.” They comment on the translation with the same footnote on both: “meaning of Gk uncertain.” The truth here is the Greek is only uncertain to someone who fell asleep in their first-year Greek class or is just dishonest and is trying to rewrite Scripture to fit their agenda.4 In contrast, the ESV footnote of the same pericope conveys important context known to scholars. What gives? Has scholarly understanding changed? No, the NRSVue is actually just choosing to completely ignore all scholarship and do what they want.

This mistake is so egregious that the publishers have recently issued a slight change, an errata, changing the footnote on the passage to “Meaning of Gk uncertain, possibly men who have sex with men.”5 The errata matters little: the damage is done, and their hand is displayed: thousands of these Bibles have been printed and adding the accurate reading in the footnote as a possible reading does little to rectify the violence done to the text. As of today, the online edition of the NRSVue on BibleGateway does not even reflect the errata, as my screenshot demonstrates. They are altering their translation of the Word of God to fit Western postmodern cultural norms. The same ones who decry colonialism are committing colonialism of the text, imposing their modern Western views of sexual ethics. It is truly unfortunate because some great scholars worked on certain books in the NRSVue like Brent Strawn (Exodus) and David A. DeSilva (4 Maccabees). Yet, the whole project is tainted by those who made the egregious changes, the responsibility of which ultimately falls on the shoulders of the general editors who let this atrocity make it to press and whose hands may have tainted any part of the translation yet to be discovered.

Majorly disappointing is that the Roman Catholic Church has granted the NRSVue an imprimatur, official permission to be used, with zero changes. This is without precedence as the RCC required changes in the RSV, NRSV, and ESV, resulting in the RSV-CE, NRSV-CE, and ESV-CE, “Catholic Editions” which have minor changes to reflect Catholic theology—usually minor conservative changes. Apparently, the NRSVue’s theology of sex and gender do not require changes to conform to Catholic teaching, according to the RCC’s decision. This is beyond disappointing.

Needless to say, the NRSVue is not an option that meets my criteria because of how fast and loose it plays with the text, imposing a heterodox agenda and anthropology.

The King James Version Does Not Meet This Criteria

This fourth criteria will be where the King James Version runs into trouble, too. The King James is a fine Bible. If Tyndale and Coverdale are the roots of the tree of the English Bible tradition, the KJV is the trunk—the bulwark. For centuries, it has done the heavy lifting. Yet it can’t be ignored that there are two factors which negatively impact the use of the KJV in the 21st century.

Archaic Language, But Not What You Think

Firstly, there has been change in the English language since 1769 (the year of the final KJV revision and what we all read today when we read the KJV). Now, I am not talking about second-person pronouns. As with the RSV, they are perfectly acceptable and I do not believe them to be a barrier. In fact, I believe the traditional pronouns amplify our speech and understanding of God. By archaic, I mean the instances in the KJV where the word used in translation has completely changed meaning. For example, Psalm 5:6 (KJV) says, “Thou shalt destroy them that speak leasing…” In the 1600s and 1700s, to lease meant to lie, to be in falsehood, to deceive. Today, leasing is a contractual relationship. A “modern” translation of the verse: “Thou destroyest those who speak lies” (RSV). There are numerous examples like this that actually inhibit our understanding of God’s Word, which is the opposite goal of a translation, which is to make the Bible understandable in our language. It seems reasonable that every 300-400 years, a few words will have reached such a point.

The Dreaded Manuscript Conversation

Secondly, the manuscript corpus is very different today than in the 1600s. This is not a topic which is easily addressed, so please bear with me or ignore this entirely, which is acceptable.

To avoid unnecessary trifling, I will focus on the New Testament. The KJV was translated with Erasmus’ Greek manuscripts corpus as the primary source. One of Erasmus’ emphases was an early form of text criticism, and along with that, he sought to compile the best manuscripts he could at the time. He was also a frequent visitor to England and friend of Sir Thomas More. Tyndale, Coverdale, and the other English translators relied on his compilation to do their own work. The Reformation owes a lot to Erasmus! His manuscript tradition is called the Textus Receptus (TR). However, our manuscript corpus has increased dramatically since the early 1500s. We have what scholars believe are vastly more ancient and more precise manuscripts. None of them change any doctrine from what the King James translators were working with, but with more evidence we can be simply more precise in grammar, identify scribal errors, and lessen the effects of transmission.

For example, where Erasmus found gaps or his manuscripts were damaged, he had to reverse translate from the Latin Vulgate to Greek to complete them. We do not have the same problem with the Critical Text (CT), which is the main manuscript collection modern Bibles are translated by. They are complete and composed of very early manuscripts and manuscript fragments. Scholars are able to note all sorts of divergences that can be traced down to the source. For example, if a scribe in 218AD added a footnote, and his manuscript was copied in 220AD, his copier may have accidentally added that footnote to the body of the text. Then any copies of the copy have that addition. Afterward, this is confirmed with manuscripts that match the earlier one from a different time or place. Biblical scholars have largely tracked down these small discrepancies. It is important to again emphasize: none of these small discrepancies change Christian doctrine.

One of the clearest examples of this divergence is the Comma Johanneum, or John’s short clause. 1 John 5:7 (KJV) reads, “For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.” The first two editions of Erasmus’ manuscripts actually did not have the Comma Johanneum because he could not find a Greek manuscript with it included (though it is in the Latin). However, a single undated Greek manuscript was discovered in-between his editions with it present, and he decided to include it. Thus, it made it into the KJV. The Comma does not appear in modern Bibles because the manuscript evidence shows it is a marginal note. Clement, writing in the 200s, quotes 1 John 5 in his writings and his quotation is missing the Comma as do nearly all Greek manuscripts, as Erasmus’ earlier editions indicated. This is just one example, and is perhaps the most well-known and one of the largest manuscript divergences.6

A larger example is the tale of the woman caught in adultery (John 7:53-8:11). I commend my friend Jonathan Arnold’s article on HolyJoys to you for a proper walkthrough of that passage.

Now, it is true that the NKJV, in keeping with its claim of merely being an update of the KJV, is still based on the TR manuscript tradition. However, one thing it does that no other Bible does (but probably should), is have extensive footnotes about manuscript differentiation—thereby preserving the English Bible cultural memory, while incorporating the latest scholarship from the CT. It was a genius way to go about the NKJV as a project, and I would happily have this as a feature in any Bible. Unfortunately, the King James Version we all have ready access to today, the 1769 text, does not, and, along with the archaic words, means it does not meet my four criteria.

Final Thoughts

I hope in sharing my four criteria for what should make a standard Bible standard you are encouraged to think through the larger impact of choosing a Bible translation for your churches and families. It is not an insignificant thing. On the release of the New English Bible in 1962, T.S. Eliot remarked, “We ask in alarm: ‘What is happening to the English language?’” We are part of answering that question in the Bibles we choose to read.

These thoughts have led me to primarily use the English Standard Version (ESV) and the Revised Standard Version (RSV) in the majority of use cases in my life and as my family reads Scripture together. This is reinforced on Sundays as our Anglican parish reads Scripture from the ESV. Though I often compare translations when exegeting a passage or preparing a sermon, I find few use cases to read outside the deeply rooted English Bible tradition anymore.

And it has been admitted throughout that man has free will and that all gifts to him are therefore two-edged. From these premises it follows directly that the Divine labour to redeem the world cannot be certain of succeeding as regards every individual soul. Some will not be redeemed. There is no doctrine which I would more willingly remove from Christianity than this, if it lay in my power. But it has the full support of Scripture and, specially, of Our Lord’s own words; it has always been held by Christendom; and it has the support of reason. If a game is played, it must be possible to lose it. If the happiness of a creature lies in self-surrender, no one can make that surrender but himself (though many can help him to make it) and he may refuse.1

Then, Lewis admits that he wishes he could confess all will be saved, but cannot, for the violence it does to the doctrine of free will is extreme.

George MacDonald

Though Lewis was clear that he stood on orthodox Christian teaching, it is fair to say he was a hopeful universalist—one who recognizes Christianity does not explicitly teach Universalism, but still has a small hope that the mercy of God will extend to all men so they may be saved. A hopeful universalist essentially says: “God holds all the cards, and we do not see all the cards. The cards we do see do not leave an opening for universalism. Rationally, therefore, we ought to leave a small possibility that all men will be saved based on some cards, but concede man has no such knowledge and the cards are not in favor.”

Lewis had something of a fascination with purported Universalist clergyman and author George MacDonald, who appears as a character in Lewis’ The Great Divorce. In the book, MacDonald ironically declares to the main character that man actually does not get to know the intricacies of who will be saved. So, Lewis makes even MacDonald retreat from Universalism to being a mere hopeful universalist in the fictional literary afterlife version of himself.

Given the above context, I will state my understanding of the matter plainly: C.S. Lewis is not a Christian Universalist. He clearly affirmed the doctrine of eternal Hell, even though he was clear about his discomfort with the doctrine. I felt the preceding context was necessary for the discussion that will follow, and I hope you found it helpful. Now that the discussion about universalism has been had, and we have dispelled of the rumors surrounding it: what do we do with Emeth?

Emeth

Emeth is a curious figure. He appears in The Last Battle as a soldier in the Calormen Army. The army is brought to where the supposed “one god” called “Tashlan” is, residing in a stable. They parade this supposed god around. Emeth, enraged and recognizing this is not Tash or any other god, volunteers to enter. Shortly after he enters, a Calormen soldier is ejected from the stable. The false prophets lead everyone to believe this was Emeth, but actually it was someone they had setup to kill anyone who enters so they could not report the deception. When encountered by the Narnians Emeth reveals he fought the soldier and threw him out of the stable. Emeth deduced that anyone who would ambush someone seeking the true God was a villain. But when Emeth came about, he found he was not inside a stable, but in a country and promptly met Aslan.

Emeth Receives The Sacraments

Emeth immediately recognizes that Aslan is the true God, and admits sorrow in his heart for having served Tash. He expects he will die in Aslan’s presence, but considers this a great thing to have seen Aslan. Aslan, instead of killing Emeth, licks him. Do not miss this, this is not a silly detail Lewis includes. Aslan baptizes Emeth with the Word. This allegory for the Word is straight from Scripture: “Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits” (Proverbs 18:21). This is the same tongue that licked Lucy in Prince Caspian, which make her Aslan’s beloved. This is the same tongue that licked Caspian’s dead body, resurrecting him (Narnia’s Lazarus moment). We see this sacrament in Narnia given to humans. I assume this is because the animals of Narnia have sacraments of their own.

Aslan explains to Emeth that though he had believed he was serving Tash, he was not, because Emeth was seeking Truth and did not do the evil that would be part of being a Tash-follower. Echoing Jeremiah 29:13, Matthew 6:33, Matthew 7:7, and a whole slew of Scripture, Aslan says, “Unless thy desire had been for me thou wouldst not have sought so long and so truly. For all find what they truly seek.”2

Then Aslan breathes on Emeth. This is Emeth’s First Communion. While the Eucharist was inaugurated at the Last Supper, the crucifixion had not happened yet, there was no sacrifice to remember. It was not until after the Resurrection, when Jesus breathed on the disciples to receive the Holy Spirit, did the sacramental ministry of the Church begin, for the disciples saw Jesus’ wounds, enabling the anamnesis he commanded to accompany the Eucharist, true remembering. Then Jesus breathed on them, a purely spiritual Eucharist, where the Apsotles received the Holy Spirit and the ministry of pardon was imparted to them, a chief benefit of the Eucharist (John 20:19-23). In Narnia, Aslan regularly did sacramental acts with his breath that mirror the Eucharist: creation, recreation, judgment, and strengthening. The Eucharist is the Word received. When existence receives the Word, creation occurs (John 1:2-3). When fallen things receive the Word, they are recreated (Rev 21:3-4). When rebellious things receive the Word, they receive judgment (1 Cor 11:27-29). When those who are God’s beloved receive again the Word, they are strengthened (1 Cor 11:26). Emeth became God’s beloved when Aslan licked him and was strengthened by Aslan’s breath, causing him to immediately standing up in power!

In summary, Emeth has contrition, repents, is baptized, and receives the Eucharist. Then Aslan promised Emeth he would be with Aslan in Aslan’s Country, mirroring Christ’s promise to the Thief on the Cross (Luke 23:39-43).

Universalism Considered

As demonstrated, Emeth is not an allegory for Universalism—that all will be invited. If he were such an allegory, all Calormen who worshiped Tash would be able to enter Aslan’s Country. In The Last Battle, Aslan explicitly rejects all true followers of Tash and accepts only Emeth. Emeth even has a hand in this when he ejects the Calorman soldier from the stable. Talk about sovereignty. This is not Universalism by any stretch because every Calorman follower of Tash is damned. Only Emeth is saved.

Inclusivism Considered

“Lord, is it then true, as the Ape said, that thou and Tash are one?”

The Lion growled so that the earth shook (but his wrath was not against me) and said, “It is false. Not because he and I are one, but because we are opposites, I take to me the services which thou has done to him.”3

The character of Emeth is also not advancing inclusivism—the idea that God saves some in other religions, or some will be invited. Lewis, via Aslan, makes it clear: Emeth was not following Tash, not really. He did not hold to any of the tenants of the Calormen religion. Inclusivism would posit that even though Emeth served Tash, Aslan saved Emeth though he got some things wrong here and there. This implies the religion of Tash got just enough right that Emeth could squeeze in, so to speak. Again, this is clearly not the case because this is not an offer available to all Tash-followers who got some things right. This was not a case of the false religion getting some things right about God, just enough that some folks who adhere to it sneak in. Aslan makes it so clear this is not possible that the earth shakes. Tash is his complete opposite. His enemy. A vain mockery. Those who serve Tash receive wrath. Only Emeth is being invited.

The inclusivist says Emeth is being saved because of some of what he did for Tash. The reality is Emeth is being saved because of what he did not do for Tash, but for his heart for the True God.

A Reverse Hypocrite

In researching the case of Emeth I was surprised to find an ally in the Reformed theologian Douglas Wilson. He helpfully coins Emeth as a “reverse hypocrite.” What he means is Emeth’s claim is that he is serving Tash, but in actuality he is serving Aslan. Wilson puts it aptly, “Emeth had been going in the "wrong" direction, as far as Tash was concerned, since he was a boy. As far as Tash was concerned, Emeth had been a heretic for a long time.”4

We recognize the category of a hypocrite easily enough. For example, if someone claims to be a Christian, but consistently rejects the teachings of Christ by his actions, he is clearly a hypocrite. But can this go the other way? Can someone claim to serve another god, but reject that god so consistently that he is actually shown to be serving Christ? It seems rationally possible.

I do think we have to be careful with this concept of a reverse hypocrite, because it can be easily misunderstood to create a doctrine of “anonymous Christians,” as if there are people in all sorts of religions who are actually Christians, and they do not realize it. The example of Emeth is not necessarily proposing this because when Emeth encounters Aslan he recognizes Aslan, which is who Emeth has been seeking all along. He does not mistake Aslan for Tash. He does not wish to change Aslan to Tash. In confidence, he kneels before Aslan. He accepts the Truth. A true Tash-follower would never do such a thing. To put it plainly, when Emeth comes face-to-face with the True God, he willingly follows Him “further in and further up.” This reveals Emeth’s loyalties are not divided and he truly serves and even loves Aslan.

This is a necessary caution because Emeth does not adopt a secret identity. After encountering Aslan, he follows Him explicitly. He is not anonymous.

Is This Creating an Exception?

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me.” - John 14:6 (RSV)

It is fair to ask: is Lewis making a case for exceptions to the general principles of salvation in the example of Emeth? After all, we believe salvation is by Christ alone. I think it is clear he is not creating an exception to Christ alone. Aslan is not carving out an exception to welcome Emeth into Aslan’s Country, and God does not make exceptions to salvation through Christ, either. God is sovereign and has foreknowledge of every man’s use of his own free will. Instead, what Emeth is an example of is what can be called the extraordinary means of salvation.

The ordinary means of salvation are cited often in Scripture and in our theologies. When describing the ordinary means we use words like repentance, faith, Baptism, the Lord’s Supper, etc. We attempt to articulate the ‘how’ of salvation in the ordo salutis, the order of salvation. But Scripture is also clear that God often saves men without all or any of the ordinary means of salvation. Two examples in Scripture are most profound: the thief on the cross and those rescued from Hades.

In both of these examples, God in Christ is not saving those who reject Him, rather He has graciously extended the offer of salvation to those who would otherwise not have the opportunity to respond to Him without this extension of His grace. The descent to Hades speaks the most profoundly of this. “If I make my bed in Hades,” the Psalmist declares, “you are there!” This makes it clear: there is nowhere God’s offer of grace does not extend.

This is crucial because an exception would mean that salvation is not occurring through the name of Jesus, not by Christ alone. In the extraordinary means, however, Jesus goes to the one being offered God’s grace, bringing the hope of salvation to man. This is by Christ alone! It is actually only extraordinary to us, because we see the “ordinary” means of grace and regularize them. To God, this is the same outworking of the incarnation of Christ: God coming to man to reconcile man to God. It is not actually ‘extra-ordinary’ because God’s saving grace is always extraordinary from man’s perspective because He offers reconciliation to man. But from God’s perspective, His work of saving and reconciling is always ‘ordinary.’ This is what He does.

This, I believe, is why Lewis ends Emeth’s encounter with Aslan with the promise that Emeth will see Aslan again. This is the promise Jesus made to the Thief on the Cross, as I mentioned. Lewis is directly linking Emeth’s salvation with the Thief’s salvation.

This is where many interpreters of Lewis fail. As we discussed, Lewis is also careful to make it clear that Emeth receives the sacraments. Scripture does not unambiguously demonstrate the Thief received the sacraments physically, but he certainly did spiritually: his Baptism was in the blood dripping from him on the cross as he made his confession and his Eucharist was in the Word of eternal promise coming into his body directly from Christ’s mouth through his ears. The means may be extraordinary, but it is the same salvation we all receive from Christ. Maybe I am doing a disservice by saying it is extraordinary. After all we discussed how both Emeth and the Thief received the sacraments. It may be more prudent to simply say this isn’t the normal way things happen from our human perspective, but it is the same things happening.

The Sufficiency of Christ

When it comes down to it, the character of Emeth expresses Lewis’ profound hope in the sufficiency of Christ for salvation.

In modernism, there is severe doubt about the sufficiency of Christ alone for salvation. Liberal academics and theologians, popular authors, and those lacking sufficient faith are constantly looking outside of Christ to include others in salvation. They, like Lewis, are uncomfortable with eternal Hell. They might even have ‘good’ intentions. Yet, they do not yield to God as Lewis did, instead they corrupt the Gospel. This is, of course, a misplaced hope: there is salvation in no other name but the name of Jesus. It demonstrates a lack of true faith that God is both just and good.

And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. - Acts 4:12 (RSV)

Lewis offers us a helpful corrective to modernity, demonstrating how to have faith despite our faulty feelings. Do we not have faith that Christ is sufficient to save all who deserve salvation? Do we not think Christ will actually go to those with hearts aligned with God and offer Himself? We need this sort of faith.

When we are confronted with the question, “What is the eternal fate of those who never hear the Gospel in their lifetime?” The answer: Christ is sufficient.

“What about my Muslim neighbor, who seems more ‘Christian’ than some Christians?” Christ is sufficient.

Whatever the case Christ is sufficient. Jesus Christ Himself said directly to St. Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you” (2 Cor 12:9). We dare not doubt our Lord.

The answer is never Christ is not sufficient, which is what Liberal Christianity argues for. Christ’s salvation attested to in the Scriptures is not sufficient or at least is too restrictive, they argue, so we (humans) have to expand the concept of God’s salvation. This is a grave error. If it is not Christ’s salvation, it is not God’s salvation. It isn’t salvation at all and leads to false hope.

However, within the story of Arminianism, a gloomier tale is to be told, one warranting explanation. James Arminius, the namesake of Arminianism, did not live long enough to write his own systematic theology textbook. While we do happily have his Disputations given while at the University of Leiden, which do cover most of the topics found in a systematic theology, the truth remains that the untimely death of Arminius at age 49 prevented him from writing his own textbook that could have rivaled Calvin’s Institutes. To make matters worse, Simon Episcopius, his primary successor, likewise died prior to completing his own magnum opus, thereby leaving the world the first Arminian systematic theology textbook unfinished and incomplete!1 Unfortunately, our tragic story does not end there. Etienne (Stephen) de Courcelles, the primary successor to Episcopius, also died prior to finishing his systematic theology! Thus, Arminianism suffered from losing all three of its primary thinkers and leaders to untimely deaths in successive order.

It is not until the fourth generation of leadership that the Remonstrants, or Dutch Arminians, were able to produce a fully complete and finished systematic exposition of their faith: Philip van Limborch’s Christian Theology. However, by this time, Remonstrant theology had greatly changed since the original days of James Arminius. There are many reasons why Arminianism is so greatly misunderstood and poorly defined. There is no doubt that this constant delay and early failures to flesh out Arminianism in systematic form and in logical progression was one of those contributing factors.

The General Baptists, the Remonstrants, and the Numbers Game

The tragedy of Arminianism continues. Underappreciated and often ignored by much of the broader church, there was a small sect of Arminian Baptists known as General Baptists, and later, their successors of the faith, the Freewill Baptists. The founders of the General Baptists, John Smyth and Thomas Helwys, like Arminius before them, did not write out a comprehensive explanation of their faith backed by a series of arguments in favor of their position and counterarguments to objections. In other words, they did not pen a systematic theology textbook. However, Thomas Grantham, an early General Baptist did write Christianismus Primitivus, or the Ancient Christian Religion, his magnum opus. While not a systematic theology textbook per se, it is the closest to one that was written by an early General Baptist.

Then there is the numbers game. Given how small and persecuted the early Baptist were, had they penned a systematic theology—even if it was legitimately a good one—the chances are nobody outside their own tradition would have read it. In the 17^th and 18^th centuries, to be a Baptist was to be a social outcast. The numbers game likewise applies to the Remonstrants. The Remonstrants were a minority in the Netherlands and were defeated at the Synod of Dort—thereby becoming the scourge of the Reformed world and forever (wrongly) labeled as Socinians and Pelagians. However, with the greatest of ironies, it is precisely because they were placed under a microscope by the Synod of Dort, the closest Protestantism ever came to having an ecumenical council, the entire eyes of the Protestant world were upon the Remonstrants. Between that microscope, and the fact that the Synod of Dort expelled them out of the Netherlands which in turn helped them spread their message across Europe while in exile, the Remonstrants had a disproportionate effect and influence upon the wider church in the midst of the Dutch Golden Age of economic prosperity.

This is why, despite their small numbers, they had such an incredible influence upon the wider church—something the early Arminian Baptists did not experience. This is also why the more orthodox systematic theology of Adriaan van Catenburgh is less known than his predecessor and Episcopius’ nephew, Philip van Limborch. By the time of Limborch, the Synod of Dort was already becoming a distant memory. The Remonstrants had long since returned to the Netherlands, and the Netherlands itself was no longer the economic powerhouse it once was. After Limborch, the numbered Remonstrants largely faded into obscurity.

England

This now brings our story to the British Isles and to the Church of England. With the demise of the Remonstrants and the irrelevancy of the Baptists, the Church of England became the epicenter for Arminian theology. While Peter Baro, the Father of English Arminianism, predates James Arminius, the Father of Dutch Arminianism, the arguments over the five disputed points known as the Quinquarticular Controversy in England never reached the fervor and intensity as it did in the Netherlands. But there is a deeper reason, a two-folded reason, why Arminians in the Church of England failed to produce their own systematic theologies.

To begin with the primary and most important reason, Anglicans, whether Arminian, merely Anti-Calvinist, moderate Calvinist, hardline Calvinist, Anglo-Catholic forerunners, Anglo-Catholics, firmly Protestant, barely Protestant, neither Protestant nor Roman, liberal or conservative, and everything else in between, do not normatively “do theology” via systematic theology textbooks and robust confessions of faith or creeds. Rather, they tend to “do theology” via homilies (sermons) and liturgy. The Church of England is not united by a set of doctrines or common beliefs; the Thirty-Nine Articles from the very beginning were broadly written to accommodate multiple viewpoints and were only given lip service to in the 18^th century, openly ignored by the 19^th century and downright disparaged in the 20th century. Rather, the Church of England is held together by its shared ecclesiology and shared liturgy. The Church of England does not look for unity in a shared set of ideas, a shared doctrine, which is to say a shared comprehensive worldview, but rather they look for unity by a shared episcopacy and a shared Book of Common Prayer. Their unity is based upon institutional unity, not doctrinal unity.

However, in fairness to the Anglicans, a few, such as Thomas Stackhouse, did pen a systematic theology in the early 18^th century. More importantly, a premier 17^th century theologian, Thomas Jackson, wrote out a massive twelve volume commentary on the Apostle’s Creed which covered most of the topics a systematic theology textbook normally covers.2

The secondary reason why Anglicans have not produced much in the realm of systematic theology was their overreliance upon the Remonstrants. Largely forgotten and unknown by today’s academic scholarship, the writings of Episcopius, Courcelles, and Limborch were widely known and read among the High Churchman including, and especially, their three respective systematic theology textbooks. The five ‘disputed points’ never reaching the height and passion of debate in England as it did in the Netherlands explains why Anglican Arminians did not produce as many writings upon this subject matter. Likewise, because the Dutch did write so prolifically upon these five contended points, the English Arminians were happily willing to defer to the Dutch Arminians for guidance on these issues. (And in return, Remonstrants such as Gerhard Vossius and Hugo Grotius were happy to defer to the English Arminians for guidance and for their expertise on the writings of the Early Church Fathers.)

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Wesleyan-Arminianism

It is only now in our tragic story of Arminian Systematic Theology that the night gives way to the break of dawn—the arrival of Methodism. With the arrival of the Wesley family and of their Methodists societies, the epicenter of Arminianism now shifts away from the Church of England and into the Methodist camp. John Wesley, being an Anglican priest and in keeping with that tradition, wrote no systematic theology textbook. However, unlike the tragedy to befall the Remonstrants over a century earlier, the early Methodist Richard Watson, when he set out to write the first ever Wesleyan-Arminian systematic theology textbook, not only finished it without inconveniently dying beforehand, but he also succeeded well in the quality of its production. This set into motion a domino effect upon the Methodist world. Beginning with the production of Richard Watson’s Theological Institutes in the 1820s, Methodist theologians began their quest to hammer out a comprehensive worldview and Methodist identity.

From the 1820s to the 1910s, Methodist theologians produced roughly 40 systematic theology textbooks, the greatest of which culminated in William Burt Pope’s three volume A Compendium of Christian Theology.3 It was not until the late 19^th century when Methodism most disgustingly committed apostasy by embracing Theological Liberalism. Coinciding with that shift, Methodist theologians stopped caring about comprehensive explanations and defenses of their worldview. With the arrival of Theological Liberalism and Higher Criticism, Evangelical Arminianism began to die out among the people called Methodists.

Next in our story is the arrival of the American Holiness Movement and of Pentecostalism in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. Edgar Painter Ellyson, a general superintendent in the Church of the Nazarene, produced the first little systematic theology textbook in the Holiness tradition. However, it is to the early-mid twentieth century theologian, H. Orton Wiley, that the title of chief systematic theologian of the Wesleyan-Holiness movement goes to. With the fall of the mainline Methodists, the epicenter of Arminian theology shifted to the American Holiness Movement. However, by the late 20^th century, Wesleyan-Holiness systematics increasingly became more liberal, and the Arminian epicenter of systematic theology began to drift away from them.

Among the early Pentecostals, ‘robust scholarship’ and ‘an intellectually comprehensive worldview’ were phrases unfamiliar to them. It was not until the second half of the 20^th century that Pentecostals began to work out their theology in a more comprehensive manner, and even in more recent times, an intellectually robust systematic presentation of their doctrines and beliefs.

Arminianism Today

Where then, does the current epicenter of Arminian theology lie? Arguably, it is currently in the hands of the Baptists. The 20^th century saw a surge in Baptist membership, propelling them to become the largest branch of Protestantism in the United States. They have travelled a long journey since the early days of their persecuted and marginalized ancestors. The small Free-Will Baptists have produced numerous works in recent times on Arminian theology, including their primary systematic by F. Leroy Forlines, but more importantly than that, the Calvinist/Arminian debate that is raging throughout the Southern Baptist Convention has brought the issue to the forefront of attention once more. This has helped solidify an Arminian base within Baptist circles, including the production of their foremost systematic theology textbook that is Anti-Calvinistic, Adam Harwood’s Christian Theology.

However, like the so-called Arminianism of the Church of England from the English Civil Wars of the 1640s, and up until the arrival of Methodism in the 1730s, there is a concern about the authenticity of the so-called Arminianism of the SBC. Are the Anti-Calvinists in the Baptist world truly Arminian, or are they merely Anti- or Non-Calvinists? Among Southern Baptists who askew the Calvinist label, a new term has arisen, Provisionism. But the Provisionists, like certain wings of late 17^th and early 18^th century Anglican High Churchmanship, is simply too Pelagian to be considered genuine Arminians. Albeit like the Anglicans centuries before them, there are certain Southern Baptists wings that are genuine Evangelical Arminians. Nevertheless, this leaves the door open for yet another shift in the epicenter of Arminianism in general and Arminian systematics in particular.

As Sidney Johnson has already correctly noted in a previous article on The Earnest Wesleyan, there has been a recent re-birth in Methodist systematic theology textbooks.4

This is a much-welcome change that is long overdue. However, will future systematic theologians, converging round the new Global Methodist Church throughout the 21^st century, be genuine evangelical Arminians, or will they be merely non-Calvinistic in their orientation? This remains to be seen, and only time will tell.

Despite this uncertainty, and to conclude on a more optimistic note, with the formation of a coalition of Arminian Baptists, the rise in Pentecostal and Charismatic scholarship, the re-birth of Methodism in the Global Methodist Church, and the continuing contributions from the Holiness camp, the future of Arminianism is looking bright.

For Moses, the veil he was commanded to wear shielded him from God’s glory just enough that he could be in the Lord’s presence.

God also commanded the Israelites to fashion a veil to separate the Holy Place, where God resided, from the rest of the Tabernacle, and later Temple. The High Priest entered this place once a year, and God was seen clearly.

St. Matthew reports that when Christ was crucified, the veil was torn in two. St. Paul explains this to the Corinthians in this way: the veil was to shield God’s people from the calamity that was set before them because they did not have the boldness of Christ yet. However, Christ has split the veil so now, whenever someone turns their heart to the Lord, the truth is seen clearly.

“Since we have such a hope, we are very bold, not like Moses, who put a veil over his face so that the Israelites might not see the end of the fading splendor. But their minds were hardened; for to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away. Yes, to this day whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their minds; but when a man turns to the Lord the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.”
- 2 Corinthians 3:12-18 (RSV)

When The Earth Was Shattered

Yesterday, Charlie Kirk went to be with his Lord Jesus Christ. I’m not going to rehash the events, there’s no need, it’s the talk of the nation. This evil has particularly struck me. Charlie began speaking at colleges and gaining traction around the time I started college, so maybe it is because I heard him so much in such a formative time. We are also close in age and his kids are around the same age as mine, maybe that’s why.

But if I’m honest, what really strikes me is how it has become apparent many corners of Christianity in America has had a veil over their eyes for a long time.

Yesterday, when Charlie Kirk went to be with the Lord, that veil was lifted, at least temporarily. I truly believe this is because Christians everywhere went to the Lord in earnest prayer. The outpouring on social media was significant. I witnessed Christians who have never heard of Kirk or Turning Point USA lament and pray. I saw folks who I know have profound disagreements with the views Charlie espoused express they were turning to the Lord, lament, and pray.

The truth is Charlie Kirk was no racist, xenophobe, transphobe, Nazi, or any other pejorative commonly used before yesterday to describe him. That was the lie of the veil that went unopposed by so many who are not bold. He was a pretty run-of-the-mill traditional Christian from a Calvary Chapel background with traditional Christian beliefs about anthropology, marriage, and theology. He loved people and often witnessed about the love of Jesus Christ to those he engaged with in his work. He was a political conservative, and his views were not radical. Not only that, but he debated with people not to drown them out, but to bring ideas into the light and let reason win the day. Yes, of course he believed his opinions were correct, otherwise why would he espouse them? Don’t you believe you are correct and want others to come around to your preferred way of thinking? He was intelligent, composed, and respectful. He often quieted ‘his side’ to allow those who disagreed with him to have the floor, uninterrupted.

I shouldn’t even have to say this, but of course not all of his political opinions were correct. We all have wrong opinions about politics. Most political opinions are not transcendental truths that inform moral beliefs, however derived from truth, beauty, and goodness they may be. They are usually someone’s earnest but fallible opinion about the best way to guide a nation, state, or community.

Sometimes, though, someone’s earnest political opinion is immoral. The beliefs of the person who selfishly murdered Charlie Kirk are immoral. Murder, the taking of innocent life, is always wrong. Murder is an attempt to usurp God’s authority in matters of life and death.

As Christians, we have to be better about distinguishing what is good and true from immorality. When we hear the claim that another Christian is a [insert pejorative here] we must demand evidence. Because if it is true, it is a scandal. Even if the one being criticized is not a Christian, evidence is due for claims. It is unreasonable to not.

Why? Because if someone is falsely believed to be a [insert pejorative here], then the immoral, under Satan’s influence, will rise up and attempt to do evil in the name of their false morality.

I’ve specifically heard Charlie Kirk criticized by Christians before. Statements like: “I don’t agree with him being so mean about [insert pivotal Christian issue here]”, or “The way he talks about ____ isn’t loving”, or “People like him give Christians a bad name.” Christians have even taken up the prejorative labels like racist or woman-hater to describe him. I am sick to my stomach that I did not defend him or at least demand those saying these things give him the benefit of the doubt or produce evidence every time I heard something like that. Lord, forgive me.

Where did it happen? Cite the instance. Give the evidence. I’ve seen a good bit of his debate and campus tour content over the years, and I can’t remotely fathom it. The unpopular truth is American Christians often accept as default not speaking publicly on hard truths that violate the cultural status quo.

A Gospel Witness

Often cited is something akin to “we just have to be loving,” which means we can’t tell someone they are far from God unless we’ve established a deep friendship for many years and whisper about it over coffee, and by then they’ll have seen the light of Christ in us anyway and accepted something vaguely defined because of how good you loved them. This is a works-based salvation, where another’s salvation is dependent on our good works. (You won’t find this sort of “witnessing” anywhere in the Scriptures, by the way. That is not what is meant by being salt and light.)

Actually, when the Gospel is proclaimed, the Spirit moves to convict sinners. The Spirit is moving before we do anything. Really, we can’t save people. Only God can.

My friends, we cannot shirk from run-of-the-mill Christian beliefs.

It is not unloving to tell a person who believes they are transgender that God created them and is calling them to a much more beautiful life than one in which they destroy their bodies. The self-destruction of the body is evil.

It is not unloving to oppose the mutilation of children. It is evil.

It is not unloving to tell a person who believes they can only romantically and erotically love the same sex that God restores even sexuality and Christ lived a celibate life—in fact it was the pinnacle of humanity. Sexual immorality is evil.

It is not unloving to women (or men) to tell them that abortion is a heinous evil and God has so lovingly created every child who is a human life from conception. Murder is evil.

It is not unloving to talk openly about the goodness of marriage and the joy it brings in the face of feminism. Self-centeredness is evil.

I could go on and on.

These are not bigoted beliefs. They are at the core of the Christian faith. “Well, I wouldn’t say it like Charlie Kirk did”, one might object. Friends, few people are going to waltz into our churches and accept these world-shattering truths. Charlie went where the primary population who are suffering from these nefarious and evil deceptions are—colleges (and, by extension, online)—and witnessed to God’s truth. Yes, his vocation was politics, and no you do not have to agree with him on whatever pet political issue you have (I am honestly sick and tired of qualifying that, that ought to be always assumed), but he never shied away from the truth of Gospel when it mattered, and he was reasonable and kind. He was just unafraid to talk about things our culture says are unacceptable in polite conversation. He was not an evangelist like Billy Graham but because of his willingness to unapologetically address spiritual matters in his line of work, where there was overlap with politics and where there was no political agenda, God used him in a profound way. Maybe we should reflect deeply on why we acquiesce to our fallen culture’s demands and restrictions on polite conversation so easily. It stifles the proclomation of the Gospel.

So Easily Deceived

Moving forward, we cannot continue to let Christians be falsely accused of what our present culture views as the most heinous of crimes and not speak up. Words are not violence. So what if someone voices their conservative political opinions, too?

“You shall not go up and down as a slanderer among your people, and you shall not stand forth against the life of your neighbor: I am the Lord.”
- Leviticus 19:16 (RSV)

Ask yourself: what even is the source of claims like “This person is a transphobe” or “He hates women”? It’s often leftist secular media, social media, or provocateurs who take words out of context, use doublespeak, and weaponize subtlety to defame and misrepresent others. This is rumor-milling and gossip. Why would we default to their claims about a brother or sister in Christ, instead of listening directly to that brother or sister? The Father of Lies uses those who would ignore the Word of God to kill the truth (John 8:39-59). Why believe those who have opened themselves up to the Father of Lies? What kind of upside down logic have we been deceived into when we believe those who openly oppose God and not a baptized Christian?

I pray the veil is more than temporarily lifted, and the Overton window shifts. American Christians must stand boldly in the faith. You do not have to agree with someone line-by-line and point-by-point to give them the benefit of the doubt, or to understand none of us agree politically 100% of the time, or to understand that when the immovable truths of the Christian faith are at stake we cannot shirk. This ought to be how American Christians operate. That is what Charlie Kirk did with everyone, Christian and non-Christian alike, who disagreed with him. He let them speak for themselves and not through media, rumor mills, and gossip. He also told them the truth, the best way he knew how, and with respect to boot. We can not go back to how things were before, or we will have more days like yesterday. Punching right and speaking softly to the left is not acceptable, it enables evil.

Pray for Charlie’s wife, who has lost her husband. Pray for Charlie’s two young and beautiful children, who lost their father. Every time I see a picture of him with his little ones, my heart breaks and I can’t help but come to tears.

Lord, have mercy.

It is necessary to say a brief word about what systematic theology is and why it is needed. Systematic theology is an attempt to present Christian dogmatic teaching in a coherent and unified manner beginning from first principles—truths about God and Scripture. As a systematic theology works outward from first principles, it seeks to bring together Christian teaching in a manner that avoids contradiction. This is an important task because if an aspect of doctrine does not comporte with the principles that precede it, a contradiction is possibly created that reveals we are believing something to be true which is not true. This is potential evidence that a theological work is misrepresenting God. (For more on the process of systematic theology, check out Gerald Bray’s essay.)

In some sense, there are certain “marks” of systematic theology in the same way thinkers articulate marks of the church. Dr. Jason Vickers, writing in Firebrand Magazine, proposes three marks of good systematic theology: 1) it begins with God, 2) it is about God, and 3) it leads to God.2 These are good guiding principles, and I believe that the last mark he proposes is infinitely important. When reading John Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion, I began to notice Calvin breaking into doxology and even prayer in the midst of his grand systematic theology. Consider the following excerpt from Institutes:

To conclude once for all, whenever we call God the Creator of heaven and earth, let us at the same time bear in mind that the dispensation of all those things which he has made is in his own hand and power and that we are indeed his children, whom he has received into his faithful protection to nourish and educate. We are therefore to await the fullness of all good things from him alone and to trust completely that he will never leave us destitute of what we need for salvation, and to hang our hopes on none but him! We are therefore, also, to petition him for whatever we desire; and we are to recognize as a blessing from him, and thankfully to acknowledge, every benefit that falls to our share. So, invited by the great sweetness of his beneficence and goodness, let us study to love and serve him with all our heart.3

No, my friends, Calvin’s Institutes is not the dry, hopeless work of predestinarian horror some may have led you to believe. His work clearly led him to God, and still leads others to God to this day, which is why it stands at the forefront of systematic theologies ever written, finer points of disagreement aside. If we are to think about systematic theologies in the Wesleyan tradition that coherently bear witness to God, they should bear these marks as well.

Historic Methodist Systematic Theologies

While I had not found recent works of Wesleyan systematic theology when I had looked previously, what I did find when I looked for systematic theologies many years ago was a treasure trove of now oft-neglected works: it turns out there is actually a rich history of systematic theology in Methodism! Buying one of Logos Bible Software’s “Methodist & Wesleyan Starter Packs” for example will bring you into possession of several Methodist systematic theologies such as William Burt Pope’s Compendium of Christian Theology (1877-1879), Miner Raymond’s Systematic Theology (1879), Thomas O. Summers’ Systematic Theology (1888), John Miley’s Systematic Theology (1892), Richard Watson’s Theological Institutes (1823), or H. Orton Wiley’s Christian Theology (1940).

Did you notice a pattern as I listed off these seminal works? Aside from Mr. Wiley’s, they are all 19th-century works! The 19th century was, in some manner, the century of Wesleyan systematic theology. Wayne Grudem, the modern Calvinist systematic theologian, took time to commend Pope’s Compendium in his own recent systematic theology, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine. In the same volume, he also applauded Wiley’s 1940 systematic. One Methodist work that seems to stand out above all, however, is Richard Watson’s Institutes. It was the standard text for ministers-in-training in both American and British Methodism for decades after being published. Dr. Ben Witherington III contends that Watson’s systematic was invaluable for Welseyanism because, “He showed that Methodist theology was not just "lay" theology or "revival" preaching but was just as capable of producing systematics as the Lutheran or Calvinist traditions—systematics that made sense especially of the doctrine of salvation without compromising the doctirnes of oringial sin, God’s soveringinity and grace, or human responsibility for human actions and for responding to the Gospel.”4 In other words, Watson’s systematic theology takes Wesleyan theology seriously and presents a coherent vision for a comprehensive theology.

Based on the historical evidence, a systematic or holistic look at theology is not foreign to Methodist and Wesleyan thought. I’ve unfortunately heard it remarked time and time again that “Wesley was not a systematic theologian, so ‘we’ should not have a systematic theology.” Yet this criticism ignores what systematic theology actually is for a caticure and opens Wesleyan theology to all sorts of strange doctrines based on fallible human experience. It is telling that, after Wesley, his heirs began work on several systematic theologies which dotted the 19th century. This was no mistake or fluke—rather, they viewed articulating a holistic and coherent theology as essential to continuing Wesley’s movement and justifying Wesleyan soteriology as coherent with classical Christian orthodoxy. If Wesleyan theology was not coherent, then they were doing little good giving it to the world, so they set about arguing that it did cohere. Yet, aside from Wiley’s three-volume work and a few one-volume works, Wesleyan theology largely conceded the space of systematic theology to other theological traditions in the 20th and 21st centuries. The 20th century largely failed to see a definitive systematic theology published that could steer the entire tradition through the 20th century. Perhaps this is one of the reasons Methodism has had the theological tumult that it has experienced.

The 20th century was not a silent century, however. Wiley published his systematic work, and some others will be mentioned in due time. Additionally, some work was done in the areas of paleo-orthodoxy and Wesley studies that has relevance to this conversation. It is beneficial to mention some of the work done in these areas before looking at the current state of Wesleyan systematic publishing.

Thomas Oden

Paleo-Orthodoxy

When I began seminary at Asbury Theological Seminary, our standard systematic theology text was Thomas Oden’s Classic Christianity. It is a magnificent work, to be sure, but not uniquely Wesleyan, despite Oden being a Methodist. Oden’s systematic theology, originally released in three volumes from 1987-1992, is his magnum opus of paleo-orthodoxy. Paleo-orthodoxy is a movement that focuses on the first 1000 years of church history, before the Great Schism, to find Christian theological consensus. What is coined paleo-orthodoxy includes the influence of many Wesleyan theologians, but is not exclusive to Wesleyans by any stretch. Paleo-orthodox scholars use the basis of the consensus of the first millennium and trace a thread through the rest of Church history to construct an “ancient” (paleo) orthodoxy. Much like the task of systematic theology itself begins from first principles and works outward, paleo-orthodoxy begins from a place of Christian consensus and works outward. For example, in Oden’s systematic theology, he’ll regularly cite figures as distinct as Cyril of Jerusalem, Augustine of Hippo, Luther, Calvin, Wesley, and Kierkegaard on the same page and for a particular doctrine! It is a unique, thoughtful, and helpful project to be sure, but Oden’s systematic theology is not exactly a Wesleyan systematic theology, though a Wesleyan may find himself justified in subscribing to it. Rather, it is a distinctly paleo-orthodox systematic theology.

Given the goals of paleo-orthodoxy, it may seem like the pinnacle of theology. “Why should we be Wesleyan, or Calvinist, or Lutheran?” you may ask, “Let’s just be paleo-orthodox!” Unfortunately, there are three glaring flaws in Oden’s project:

1. There was no perfect Christian consensus before the Great Schism.

2. Inevitably, a modern theologian, even a paleo-orthodox one, must at some point interpret the early church, which invariably leads to multiple interpretations.

3. There are areas of theology that are not explicitly addressed by the early church.

These flaws do not make Oden’s work dismissible by any means, but it does place natural limits on it. The reason this is important to note is that Wesley himself contended that his theology sought to return to “primitive Christianity.”5 By this, he meant the apostolic and early church. Therefore, anyone attempting to undertake a Wesleyan systematic theology must engage in the task of retrieving primitive Christian beliefs to some degree. Yet, retrieval is not necessarily the primary task of Wesleyan theology, unlike paleo-orthodoxy.

Wesleyan Systematic Theology—Not Merely John Wesley Systematized

Oden also has another work, John Wesley's Teachings. This project was an attempt to explain, or systematize, John Wesley’s teachings. The focus of Oden’s work here, however, was to condense the teaching found in the expansive works of John Wesley into a digestible theology. In many ways, it mimics a systematic theology. But it is not a Wesleyan systematic theology, but a systematizing of John Wesley’s personal theology based on what he wrote. Dr. Ken Collins has also completed a contemporary work titled The Theology of John Wesley, and there are other dogmatic sketches of Wesley’s theology widely available. This field is often called Wesley studies. These works in the field of Wesley studies are not equivalent to systematic theology because systematic theology is a holistic theological task, touching on doctrines Wesley may have written little about, or didn’t even address. This does not mean that Wesley had unorthodox views on the doctrines he rarely addressed or did not address, but it is simply a recognition that he never authored a systematic theology himself, so any task to systematize his theology does not rise to the definition of a true systematic theology. There is much more to be addressed. Indeed, if you would have asked Welsey, “What do you think of this doctrine you have never pubicly addressed?,” his response would be something like: “I believe the doctrine [I] preach to be the very doctrine of the Church of England; indeed, the fundamental doctrine of the Church, plainly laid down in her Articles, Homilies, and Liturgy.”6

The benefit of the surge in Wesley studies in the 20th and 21st centuries is that there has been a lot of theological work done in the areas of theology that are uniquely Wesleyan. The task of a Wesleyan systematic theology, as stated before, includes representing the Wesleyan theological tradition as a coherent tradition amid its unique theological claims. Any new systematic theology would benefit greatly from the recent work done in the field of Wesley studies.

A Revival Of Wesleyan Systematic Theology?

Over the past five years, I have noticed Wesleyan systematic theologies begin to be published. Some with fanfare, others quietly gaining traction. It hit me when I was watching ’s recent interview with Dr. John Oswalt (found below)—there have been at least five Wesleyan systematic theologies released, begun to release, or announced to be released just in the past three years or so (if you know of any more, please let me know). Given the timeline we explored earlier, where the 19th century was the golden age of systematic theology, followed by a sparse 20th century, this sudden resurgence of systematic theology is hugely significant for Wesleyanism. I have attempted to illustrate how divergent the last five years are, even compared to the 19th century, with the timeline below. Inevitably, the timeline is not comprehensive and will be missing a work or two (hopefully not your favorite), but nonetheless illustrates the massive uptick in writing and publishing since 2023.

As I have not had the time to read any of these new systematic theologies, I will, for now, forgo an attempt to review them or recommend them. Several of them are multi-volume works that are to be released in volumes in the coming years. It will take time to see if any of them stand the test of time like Watson’s Institutes, which uniquely preceded these new systematics by being republished in 2018 by Lexham Press in a new edition with an introduction by noted Methodist New Testament scholar Ben Witherington III. Without any additional commentary, I will simply list these recent systematics for the record.

1. Christian Theology by T.A. Noble (2023-future)

2. Holiness: A Biblical, Historical, and Systematic Theology by Chris Bounds, Caleb T. Friedeman, and Matthew Ian Ayars (2023)

3. Fundamental Wesleyan Systematic Theology by Vic Reasoner (2024)

4. Holy Love: A Wesleyan Systematic Theology eds. John Oswalt, Christianne Albertson, and Matthew Ian Ayars (2024-future)

5. Love Divine: A Wesleyan Systematic Theology by Jason Vickers and Thomas H. McCall (2026)

Is This A Revival?

In the five new systematic theologies listed above, we see several different visions emerge. Some of the brightest scholars in the Wesleyan world are contributing to these volumes. It certainly does feel like there is a revival of the writing and publishing of Wesleyan systematic theology. Yet, I can’t help but think there are other questions to be asked that are more important. Will any of these stand the test of time? Will they have a lasting impact on Wesleyan theology that goes beyond academia and preserves a traditional understanding of Wesleyanism? Will one or more of them play a role similar to Watson’s Institutes, becoming a modern standard universally upheld and upholding us? Only time will tell, but it is an exciting time!

If you enjoyed this article, you will likely enjoy learning more about systematic theology with and Dr. John Oswalt:

One of the rewarding aspects of being an ordained clergy person in the Global Methodist Church is to preside at Holy Communion. Knowing that after I and the congregation confess our sins to the Lord Jesus Christ, we get to hear, “In the Name of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven,” is a peace that I and the congregation need. The response to the one presiding is, “And also with you.” Further, the congregation and I then get to respond with the passing of the peace to one another. For not only do we receive forgiveness from God, but we also get to forgive one another.

That flow of forgiveness is easy to do. It was hard for our Savior, Jesus the Christ, to give to us–He did, after all, die on the cross to show us God’s forgiveness. Through this flow, we see Christ’s call to forgive one another being lived out (Matthew 6:14-15). This sweetness of forgiveness helps the body of Christ in the local church to flourish. How much goodness can grow from time of forgiveness?

Did you notice something about the flow of forgiveness described above? You read that the presiding clergy person (an elder, a deacon, or a transitional local pastor) tells the local church that they are forgiven. Then, the local church tells the presiding clergy person that they are forgiven. Describing this process is vital to the life of the local church and the presiding clergy person. For it is when the local church is gathered with a clergy person that Holy Communion can be celebrated.

There. Is. No. Other. Way. Of. Administering. Holy. Communion.

Walk with me through the newly updated and released Book of Doctrines and Discipline of the Global Methodist Church. In Part One, “Doctrinal Foundations,” we read about how we have adopted “Normative Standards for Wesleyan Witness” (¶106)1 from the Methodist Church and the Evangelical United Brethren Church. We find in the Methodist Church’s Article XIX “Of Both Kinds” these words:

“The cup of the Lord is not to be denied to the lay people; for both the parts of the Lord’s Supper, by Christ’s ordinance and commandment, ought to be administered to all Christians alike.” (emphasis mine)2

As we read further in the “Normative Standards for Wesleyan Witness,” from the Evangelical United Brethren Church’s Confession of Faith’s Article VI “The Sacraments,” this part draws our attention:

We believe the Lord’s Supper is a representation of our redemption, a memorial of the sufferings and death of Christ, and a token of love and union which Christians have with Christ and with one another. Those who rightly, worthily and in faith eat the broken bread and drink the blessed cup partake of the body and blood of Christ in a spiritual manner until he comes.3

We know from 1 Corinthians 11 that the church in Corinth had a problem. There were Christians who brought their bread and wine to the house church. Without waiting for other Christians to arrive, they consumed both before other Christians arrived. Paul wrote it this way, as translated by the NRSV, Anglicised:

³³ So then, my brothers and sisters, when you come together to eat, wait for one another. ³⁴ If you are hungry, eat at home, so that when you come together, it will not be for your condemnation. About the other things I will give instructions when I come.

Our Global Methodist practice can be only to encourage and to allow in-person Holy Communion. To further clarify this matter, we will visit more of the Book of Doctrines and Discipline. It will come to our attention that Global Methodist clergy, as appointed ministerial leaders of the various local churches, have great responsibility in this matter.

Global Methodist Elders specifically have this authority as outlined in ¶413:

“In keeping with the historic practice of the Christian church, elders are ordained to oversee the sacramental life of the church and thus have full authority and responsibility to preside at celebrations of Holy Baptism and Holy Communion.” (emphasis mine)4

The detail of “at” assists us to see where the elders are located during their presiding of Holy Communion. To extensively quote the Book of Doctrines and Discipline relating to Elders, here is this gem from ¶503.2:

“From among those ordained as deacons, some are called to carry on the historic work of the presbyteros or elder in the life of the Church to the ministry of Word, Sacrament, and Order. (Those who were not ordained deacon prior to ordination as elder will be granted deacon’s orders upon beginning their service in the Global Methodist Church. It is recommended that annual conferences recognize this grant through a special service.) Those called to the ministry of elder bear authority and responsibility to proclaim God’s Word fearlessly, to teach God’s people faithfully, to administer the sacraments, and to order the life of the church so that it may be both faithful and fruitful. Elders retain their calling as Laity to witness and service in the world, as well as their call as deacons to word, service, compassion, and justice among the people of God.” (emphasis mine)5

What a joy it is to administer the Sacraments! To administer, as defined by the Merriam-Webster’s second definition, part b is: “to give officially or as part of a ritual.”6 In other words, the ritual being performed is Holy Communion, at one location, with a clergy person presiding and Christians from the local church present.

This practice of the presiding clergy person and the local church receiving Holy Communion together, at one location, has been and will continue to be the practice of the Church Universal. This practice will only stop upon the return of Jesus Christ and the establishment of the Kingdom of God on the New Earth. However, in my previous denomination, and I hope not in my current denomination, there arose the practice of allowing online communion. Other variations of this practice included “drive-by Communion” and family communion throughout the day on Christmas Eve.

Online communion is faulty because the elements, the Body and Blood of Christ, are not shared among the participants. Even having the COVID response of church members picking up the pre-packaged elements at the church before Holy Communion is out of line. It takes being with one another for us to forgive one another. Forgiving a person when you are in the comfort of your own home, and they are at a distance from you does not exemplify being Christian. At most, it is cowardly, and at worst it is lazy.

“Drive-by Communion” and family communion also miss the point of addressing the Body of Christ. Though forgiveness within a family is admirable, the convenience of receiving when you have time disrespects the other believers in the local church.

Another form of doing Holy Communion is to have an Elder consecrate, or bless, the elements from a distance. I have heard that this practice involves churches who are without a clergy person to preside at Holy Communion. A nearby Elder, who serves another Global Methodist local church/charge, will be called upon to assist in remedying the issue. Literally, the Elder will be called, over the phone, to consecrate the elements. A variation of this practice is that a member of clergy-less local church will drive the elements to the Elder’s office for the blessing to happen in person. It may seem appropriate. Yet, the recognition of the Body of Christ is lacking. ‘Who knows,’ someone may say, ‘hey, the elements are consecrated, stop by when you can so you can have communion.’ It is like we have become a law unto ourselves. Or as Judges 21:25 (NRSV[A]) says, “In those days there was no king in Israel; all the people did what was right in their own eyes.”

What is the remedy for such a practice that has been shown to be foreign to the Global Methodist Church’s Book of Doctrines and Discipline? Thankfully, that same document prescribes remedies. As our new denomination pursues loving accountability at all levels, we do recognize that individual clergy may not practice all that is proscribed in our Book of Doctrines and Disciplines. In the pursuit of loving accountability, a clergy member of the annual conference can be charged with an offense. Paragraph 908.1d and e describe the chargeable offenses as:

“d. Promoting or engaging in doctrines or practices, or conducting ceremonies or services, that are not in accord with those established by the Global Methodist Church;

e. Disobedience to the order and discipline of the Global Methodist Church;”

It sounds harsh. It may be harsh. I would not want to have a chargeable offense brought against me for attempting to improve upon the practice of the Church Universal of having in-person Holy Communion. To keep our Global Methodist local churches and clergy from being placed in this position, I propose these alternatives.

For any Global Methodist local church within reasonable driving distance from me, let me know that you are without Holy Communion. Then, we can work out a time for me to be with your local church, other than Sunday mornings when I am at my appointment. At that time, I could preside over Holy Communion and your local church could receive Holy Communion. I would hope the Presiding Elders would find this advantageous for the churches in their district. I would also hope that the local churches could find a connection, beyond the name change on their respective doors to being a Global Methodist local church.

The other alternative is for a clergy-less Global Methodist local church to have love feasts. Kevin Watson describes, briefly, a love feast in his post, “Love Feast.”7 An ecumenical approach for Catholics and Anglicans, along with Methodists, can be found Paul Caleb Roland’s article “Wesley’s Method Part I: Frequent Reception of Communion and the Love Feast.”8 The Wesley United Methodist Church at Johns Island, South Carolina has the liturgy and background for a love feast.9

To my fellow Elders in the Global Methodist Church, what say you? Will you join me in being available for those clergy-less Global Methodist local churches to have Holy Communion? Will our Assembly of Bishops encourage us to be available, in person, for those clergy-less Global Methodist local churches to have Holy Communion? I think encouragement to have Love Feasts or a varied schedule for Elders to be in-person for clergy-less local churches sure beats the alternative of church trials for Elders who have gone away from the Book of Doctrines and Discipline. After all, is not Holy Communion about proclaiming the Lord’s death until he comes (1 Corinthians 11:26)? We can only proclaim the Lord’s death when we are in the same location, together.

The Rev. John L. Grimm is the pastor of the Ness City and Bazine Methodist Churches in the Northwest Kansas District of the Heartland Conference in the Global Methodist Church. He is married to his bicycling partner, the Rev. Maria W. Grimm (pastor of the Jetmore Methodist Church). They earned their Masters of Divinity degrees at Asbury Theological Seminary. This article was originally published on John's blog at www.johngrimmthemethodist.wordpress.com on December 5, 2024.

Initially, the REC was notoriously low-church. As one REC priest puts it, the early REC was “dispensationalism, a truncated prayer book, and black preaching gowns.”1 An Episcopal Dictionary of the Church describes the REC as follows: “This body rejects baptismal regeneration, any sacerdotalism with the Lord’s Supper, apostolic succession in the historic episcopate, and does not participate inn [sic] the ecumenical movement.”2 The definition is antiquated, and, as I will explore, that last bit about ecumenism is entirely contrived. The context of the founding of the REC centers around the controversy of the Oxford Movement: a renewed focus on the Catholic elements of the Anglican identity. In 19th century America, the perception was this renewed focus was to the detriment of the Protestant aspects of Anglican identity, and some felt endangered the faithful witness of what was then called the Protestant Episcopal Church, at the time America’s sole Anglican province (now the Episcopal Church). The founding of the REC was the reaction to this movement. Since the 19th Century, the REC has moved away from its original identity, especially in its most recent generations, claiming a more classical Anglican identity consistent with an Old High-Church expression of Anglicanism. What I will be exploring in this article is the close and surprising connection the REC had with Methodism in its early days.

George David Cummins

George David Cummins’ experience with Methodism began long before his birth. His grandfather converted under the preaching of Bishop Francis Asbury in Kent County, Maryland. However, the family remained Anglican. Cummins attended Dickinson College where a revival took place in April of 1839 under the preaching of Methodists. Cummins was greatly moved by this revival and consecrated himself to the Lord, responding to a call to ministry, and joined the Methodist Episcopal Church. His mother, widowed when George was four, also married a Methodist minister around this time.

In 1842, at just 20 years old, George was appointed to a circuit as a licensed minister in Maryland with the MEC. By all accounts, he served his circuit faithfully and hosted several camp meetings, including for African-Americans, who often attended his preaching. He remarked that his circuit was so busy that he preached almost daily. In 1844, the MEC sent him to preach in Jefferson County, present day West Virginia. Yet, he continued in his duties, even picking up other circuits and preaching many camp meetings and revivals. Apparently, Cummins was an electric preacher. One described a scene where he was preaching to a largely educated group, saying, “they were not able to resist the wisdom and the spirit by which he spake.” An Episcopal minister, hearing Cummins at this revival, said, “If that young man lives, he will be heard of throughout the length and breadth of this land.”

Though he was a skilled preacher and it is reported many came to the Lord under his ministry, his years as a circuit rider seemed to ignite in him a deep desire to pastor a single congregation, and also made him long for the liturgy of the Protestant Episcopal Church of his youth. In March of 1845 he departed his itinerant duties with the MEC and sought to study under Bishop Lee in the Protestant Episcopal Church and become a candidate for ministry. He again fell in love with the Anglican liturgy; he was confirmed by Lee, and after passing several exams ordained a deacon in 1845 and a presbyter on July 6th, 1847.

In his time as a presbyter and later a bishop, Cummins mentions continuing to preach in Methodist churches. He continued work as a presbyter spending stretches at parishes in cities like Chicago and San Francisco until his consecration as bishop in 1866. His election to bishop took place nearly against his will. He had just arrived in Europe on the advice of doctors, seeking an improvement to his wife’s health, when he received news he’d been elected to be assistant bishop of Kentucky. He was saddened by the news, as he knew God was calling him to accept the nomination, but he mourned the fact he would have to move on from stable parish life and once again take up a life of instability.

Cummins, through the years of his ministry, was a staunch evangelical of the low-church variety. As a bishop, he found himself at odds with the Anglo-Catholics and the Oxford Movement, which were gaining influence in the Protestant Episcopal Church at the time. “I had watched the rise and spread of the Oxford tract movement until it had leavened to a vast extent the whole English-American Episcopal Churches,” he wrote, “but I firmly believed that this school was not a growth developing from seeds within the system but a parasite fastening upon it from without and threatening its very life.” His views shifted considerably under the influence of tracts published by the counter-Oxford movement. He became convinced the prayer book needed further reform as sacerdotalism was dangerously on the rise, which he began to witness in his Kentucky parishes.

But if the dogmas of apostolic succession, baptismal regeneration, the real presence, and a human priesthood be 'another gospel,' as all Evangelical men hold and have ever held, then is it their highest and most solemn duty to cast them out of the Prayer Book, whatever may be the sacrifice.

Cummins was clearly at odds not just with the Tractarian movement, but also the classical Prayer Book tradition he once held. The influence of the radical counter-Oxford movement swayed him. Yet, being a convinced evangelical was not enough to exclude him from the spectrum of Anglican beliefs. Rather, while in New York attending the meeting of the Evangelical Alliance, Bishop Cummins took part in a joint communion service with a Presbyterian minister. This set off a firestorm, and instead of fighting what he knew would be an impending battle, Bishop Cummins determined to part ways with the Protestant Episcopal Church before trials or presentments could proceed. He and other like-minded clergy and laypeople then organized together as the REC.

His intertwining with Methodism continued as he departed the Protestant Episcopal Church and founded the Reformed Episcopal Church. It is important to note that the “reformed” in REC is not a denotation of Calvinism, but that the founders believed they were actually re-forming the Episcopal Church in a more evangelical and true sense; finishing the English Reformation where it didn’t go far enough. Hear how a Methodist newspaper described Bishop Cummins as they reported on him guest preaching in a MEC pulpit:

On Sunday evening, November 9th, Bishop Cummins occupied the pulpit of St. Paul's Methodist Episcopal Church in this city. His sermon, which was richly evangelical, was an exposition of the superior value of the knowledge of Christ to all other knowledge. At the close of his sermon a brief reference to the venerable Dr. Durbin—who was present as the means of his conversion more than thirty years ago, excited deep emotions in the congregation. Bishop Cummins should have the support of all Evangelical Episcopalians without exception; he has the sympathy of all evangelical Christians. We rejoice to see an Episcopal bishop throw compromise away, and dare to act out his honest convictions. But must he stand alone? With his strong convictions on this subject there was but one course open to Bishop Cummins, either to fight out the battle of true Christianity in the Protestant Episcopal Church or to quit it altogether…

To Cummins, the evangelical Episcopalians who departed with him, and other evangelicals, they viewed their fight as one for true Christianity against a tide of papalism and superstition. They found ardent and ready allies among the Methodists surrounding them, and who Cummins already had foundations and relationships with. His memoir reports it was actually the same day that he preached in St. Paul’s Methodist in New York—November 9th, 1873—that he made his decision to depart the Protestant Episcopal Church.

Cummins was sent by the REC General Convention as a delegate to the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1876. He was summoned to address the Conference and some of his words express his feelings toward the faith of his youth:

And above all, and this is my last thought, the great glory of Methodism today is that it is the Church for the poor, the Church of the masses; that she has reached a lower stratum of society than has been reached by any other Protestant Church in Christendom; that she has done a work for the Master in this land that no other Church has been able to do. I have often thought what would become of the poor if those who claim to be the successors of the apostles had been intrusted alone with their salvation. Methodism has been the missionary, the pioneer of the Gospel to the poor. I bear my testimony today that in one of the great States of the West, where I labored for seven years, I never could get ahead of the Methodist preacher. I never entered into the wild fastnesses of Kentucky but I found a Methodist preacher had gone before me; and I never found myself in one of those beautiful villages on the Ohio and the Mississippi, but the first sight that greeted my eyes was the small, humble Methodist church. Methodism has been an evangel to the poor, and it may take up to-day the language of her Lord and say without irreverence, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor.”

In response to his speech the Methodist bishops immediately passed a resolution establishing a reciprocal relationship with the REC, sending a delegate to their Convention. His wife, in his memoir, reports that when he arrived home from that Methodist General Conference, Bishop Cummins said the following: “I am very thankful to have been permitted to be there to day. It may be my only opportunity to express my gratitude for what I owe to that grand Church.”3

The Search for Co-Consecrators

Beyond Cummins’ continued love for the Methodist faith he was raised and preached in, I was surprised to learn there is more overlap between the ministries of the Methodist Episcopal Church and the Reformed Episcopal Church. Of particular interest is that in the beginning of the REC, MEC bishops functioned as co-consecrators at episcopal consecrations on at least two occasions. This makes sense as the early REC and Methodism both believed in presbyterial succession as opposed to episcopal succession. As John Wesley believed, presbyters (elders, priests) could validly ordain other presbyters, though it is properly (licitly) done by a bishop (who himself is merely a presbyter entrusted with the authority to ordain). This was the justification John Wesley used to ‘set apart’ Thomas Coke and ordain other presbyters, as he did with Richard Whatcoat and Thomas Vasey for sacramental ministry outside of England. Wesley felt the extenuating circumstances justified ordaining in the presbyteral mode because (according to Wesley) it would be valid, but abnormal.4

Generally, at the consecration of a bishop in churches with episcopal polity, the rule of thumb is that at least two other bishops are needed for a licit consecration of another bishop, though technically a bishop has the power to illicitly consecrate another bishop with only one or no co-consecrators. The “rule of three” is not a conferral of validity, as stated one consecrator is technically valid, but it is a statement of the collegiality that comes with being a bishop. Bishops exist not as sole proprietors of a church—they exist in a college with all other bishops. The rule of three expresses the collegiate consent of the whole church to the new member joining the college. The rule of three is ancient and can be found in the canons of the First Council of Nicaea in AD 325.

Fortunately for the early REC, and those wanting to maintain a valid trail of episcopal apostolic succession, they began with a bishop! The founder of the REC, Bishop Cummins, was validly consecrated in the Protestant Episcopal Church, so any ordinations or consecrations he performed are valid. It was not long until Cummins solely consecrated Charles E. Cheney as a bishop soon after the REC was organized. This consecration is valid but illicit under canon law, as he lacked co-consecrators. Yet in two future ordinations, co-consecrators would appear who belonged not to the REC or another Anglican body, but bishops of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

William Rufus Nicholson

In 1876, William Rufus Nicholson was consecrated for the work of bishop in the REC. His consecrators are listed as Cummins, Cheney, and “Rev. Dr. Hatfield of the Methodist Episcopal Church.”5 The 1876 Journal of the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church lists a Robert M. Hatfield as the bishop of Philadelphia.6 This makes perfect sense as the REC was organized in Philadelphia, it was the site of several of its initial General Conventions, and supporting evangelical parishes who joined the REC were in Pennsylvania. It’s impossible based on the limited information we have to tell if Bishop Hatfield was friends with Cummins, Cheney, or Nicholson, supported the REC, or what prompted him to act as a co-consecrator. But he did, and Nicholson’s connection to Methodism is also as long and involved as Cummins.

According to his obituary, Nicholson converted to the faith as a result of a local Methodist camp meeting. He attended Lagrange College, a Methodist institution, and was ordained in the Methodist Episcopal Church. In 1847, he was ordained in the Protestant Episcopal Church, first as a deacon and three months later as a presbyter.7 In his writings, especially Reasons Why I Became A Reformed Episcopalian, we find much of the same evangelical attitude as Cummins, complete with ecumenical praise for Methodists:

[Reformed Episcopalians] are a body of Christians loving a liturgical form, yet, by no means repressing extemporaneous prayer. We prize our own green pastures and still waters; but often through the boundless landscape would we walk together with our Presbyterian brethren, and Methodist, and Baptist, and all who love the Lord Jesus Christ. It is, indeed, a goodly heritage.8

Samuel Fallows

In the wake of the death of Bishop Cummins, Samuel Fallows was elected and consecrated as bishop, and he is the most interesting of the men we’ll examine. His consecrators are listed as Cheney, Nicholson, and Bishop Albert Carman of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Canada. Interestingly, there are also presbyters listed as co-consecrators from a variety of denominations including the Wesleyan Methodist Church (now known as the Wesleyan Church).

Samuel Fallows was a very successful Methodist minister in Wisconsin, a decorated Army chaplain in the Civil War (attaining the rank of brigadier general), a superintendent of Wisconsin public education, and was the president of Illinois Wesleyan University. He was also an immigrant, born and raised in a class meeting in what was called the Wesleyan Methodist Church (now the Methodist Church of Great Britain). When he came to America his family turned to pioneering, and they attended camp meetings. After graduating college and experiencing the New Birth, he was given a license to preach. Fallows was a Methodist’s Methodist.

He was a zealous chaplain in the war, seeing the action as a holy war. Yet the war had a profound impact on him, and he struggled with doubt, depression, and despair. His commanding officer desired the Episcopal liturgy read, so eighteen prayer books were given to Samuel for use in the course of his chaplaincy duties. Despite the appeal of the prayer book, he asked his wife to help him ensure he didn’t become Episcopalian on its account. “I love liberty of conscience and opinion too much,” he said, “ever to cut loose from the Catholic Methodist Church.” He would return home from chaplaincy sick, but after he recovered he helped raise a regiment, and in 1865 raised a second, serving as a Colonel.

Fallows continued his ministerial service after the war, becoming the most prominent and sought after preacher in Wisconsin, serving faithfully at the two most influential Methodist parishes in the conference. Then he turned his talents toward education, serving the state schools as superintendent, where he made great strides in establishing and funding secondary education across the state. It was in this role he began toying with the idea of joining a church in the prayer book tradition. This journey culminated in a prophetic vision, described as follows:

Turning the question over and over, on a trip to a remote Teachers' Institute, in the jolting train murky with kerosene fumes, he had a vision that seemed to open heaven. He saw a new Church with the old, beautiful Liturgy, a Church opening its pulpit to other ministers, bidding all Christians to its communion rail. He beheld it Episcopal and evangelical, stately but loving, combining the virtues of Episcopalians and Methodists, omitting the faults of each. He even saw its name! The Reformed Episcopal Church.

When the REC formed a short time later under Cummins, Fallows concluded this could only be the same church in which he has seen in his vision—complete with the exact same name he saw. Ironically, as the REC formed, Samuel was offered ordination in the Protestant Episcopal Church by his wife’s uncle, a bishop. He saw a clear fork in the road but instead took a third option, becoming President of Illinois Wesleyan University. Soon after, he politely declined the offer by the bishop and connected with the aforementioned Charles E. Cheney, both dreaming of a mighty University of the West that would revolutionize education sponsored by the REC. He kept this decision to himself and continued to serve as president of IWU, pioneering the idea of granting degrees to Methodist ministers in absentia as they studied at home, essentially creating the first hybrid ministerial education program in existence. After turning IWU into an educational and financial success, he resigned and accepted rectorship of St. Paul’s REC in Chicago. This was not a decision taken without the counsel of his wife, Lucy, whom he had already argued out of Unitarianism and into Methodism before they wed.

"It's the Apostolic Succession," said Lucy Fallows, torn by all those discussions with her [Unitarian] mother. “Has the Reformed Episcopal Church that Popish thing?” This was no girl of eighteen he had to convince, but a woman grown, with strong opinions. She had pulled away from her beliefs once for love. So much the harder was the second yielding.

“Yes, my dear,” her husband said. “l think the Apostolic Succession is ours. But its significance to us is as a very beautiful historic rite. It is not mystic.”

In the next half hour, he was able to persuade her that the devil and all his works had been driven out of the new Church. He made her see that there was no Popery in its service or in its gowns and that the Christ of the carpenter bench was as truly in its midst as in the Methodist Church.

The Fallows’ clearly saw in the REC a continuation of their Methodist heritage, but with new and exciting opportunities to reach different people, minster as if all Christians belong to the Church regardless of denomination, and seek real social change. Ministering in Chicago, Samuel befriended Dwight L. Moody and ministered alongside him. He was one of only three Chicago ministers to support the school board when it dropped Bible reading and the Lord’s Prayer from the curriculum. He mourned the loss of Christian education, but thought in a progressive city like Chicago, with a significant Jewish population, it was the only way forward. He and his wife were active participants in the temperance movement, brewing their own “Bishop’s Beer,” which contained little alcohol.

It was this man, a man of vision and change, who was elected a missionary bishop at the death of Cummins. He traveled the nation and the world. He called his great evangelistic project “the Crusade.” He is reported to have had a significant ministry ministering to the black population in South Carolina. Later, as Presiding Bishop, he traveled to England, preaching in the Wesleyan Methodist chapel where he first testified to his faith in Christ, holding up the book of Wesley’s hymns his teacher had given him as a boy. He was invited to hold an audience with the Archbishop of Canterbury. He administered the Lord’s Supper in a joint service alongside Charles Spurgeon. Returning to the States, he found himself the unofficial chaplain of the Grand Army Reunions, standing next to General Sherman. He chaired several committees at the Chicago World’s Fair. He happened to be passing through and ministered to the steelworkers at the Homestead Steel Strike of 1892. He was elected to preside over the relief committee for the violent 1902 Anthracite Coal Strike. Wearing a combination of his bishop’s clericals and his general’s uniform, he managed to command the respect of every Catholic and/or military veteran, coal miner and capitalist alike.

Not only does he embody the great missionary zeal of seeing the world as his parish like Wesley, and offered a more conservative and evangelistic take on the late 19th century and early 20th century Social Gospel, but somehow he seemed to be everywhere. Appropriately, his biography is titled Everybody’s Bishop.9 An epic globe-spanning biopic on the level of Forrest Gump seems to be in order for Bishop Samuel Fallows.

Coming Home

Methodism in the 19th and 20th centuries was undeniably America’s religion. Perhaps more than any other tradition, it shaped the social, moral, and cultural fabric of our nation. In examining three out of the first four bishops of the REC, we can see an undertold story of that influence that deserves to be reexamined. The lives of Bishops Cummins, Nicholson, and Fallows exude the zeal and piety of the Wesley brothers, Francis Asbury, and Thomas Coke. I would argue they are heirs of that same movement.

It has been said the Mother-Daughter relationship of Anglicanism and Methodism is unique among churches. The trail from Methodism back to Anglicanism has existed as long as Methodism itself, and many have walked it. The peculiar part about this trail in particular that isn't present in probably any other tradition, is that one does not necessarily shed their Methodism when encountering Anglicanism. Rather they can willingly bring the evangelical zeal of Original Methodism to Anglicanism with them, where it first began in a small room at Oxford University with serious men—Calvinist and Arminian, low-church and high-church alike—asking each other the same question Thomas Cranmer asked: “How can we love God more than sinning?”

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When I converted to Christianity and began attending church, I attended a small United Methodist congregation in rural south Georgia. We followed the standard order of worship in the United Methodist Hymnal pretty closely. Our Response to the Word was, like many such UM congregations, the Apostles’ Creed. Our order of worship went largely unchanged, minus the services where we threw together a choir, on Easter, or when we shared in Holy Communion on the first Sunday of the month.

One Sunday, our pastor broke from the lectionary and began preaching a series on the Apostles’ Creed. I loved this series as a relatively new Christian engaging with doctrine post-conversion. However, about halfway through his sermon series, the message was on something that wasn’t even in the Creed… or at least not as I had ever heard us recite it on a Sunday. Much to my shock, he boldly proclaimed from the pulpit that our church had been omitting a line from the Apostles’ Creed: “he descended to the dead.”

Reaching for the pew shelf in front of me I grabbed a United Methodist Hymnal and turned to #881 and discovered two versions of the Apostles’ Creed: the ‘Traditional Version’ and the ‘Ecumenical Version.’ Our pastor was right. The so-called Traditional Version omitted the line “he descended to the dead.” Or was it that the Ecumenical Version added it? There was also an asterisk where the line would be in the Traditional Version noting at the bottom of the page that “Traditional use of this creed includes these words: ‘He descended into hell.’” But isn’t it the traditional version already? Is it traditional with the line or without? Why does one say dead and the other hell? Let’s untangle this web and then explore what that line means, which will uncover why it is so important to affirm as part of the Apostolic Faith.

The Apostles’ Creed

The Apostles’ Creed finds its origins in the Old Roman Creed, a second century baptismal formula, itself an evolution of Matthew 28:19. Put simply, early Christians recognized the Great Commission, carried it out, and required affirmation of it for new converts.

In most liturgical churches, the Apostles’ Creed will replace the Nicene Creed during a service when Holy Baptism is being conducted. Converts or children’s parents will, on that day, affirm the Apostles’ Creed line by line. This expresses continuity with the Apostolic Church in one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism. It also reaffirms the long held tradition of the Apostles’ Creed being a baptismal confession.

The Descent to Inferos, Or Holy Saturday

The Apostles’ Creed declares one doctrine that is not expressed in the Nicene Creed. It contains the Latin phrase descendit ad inferos. Infero is a word that can be translated in a multitude of ways. At its root, it means “lower regions, that which lies beneath, under the earth” but can mean any place of death or suffering. In large part due to the translation of literary works like Dante’s Divine Comedy, the word became predominantly associated with hell when used in religious contexts.

What the Apostles’ Creed is describing with descendit ad inferos is the ancient Christian doctrine that Christ went to the place of the dead in the time between His death on the Cross and His Resurrection on Sunday. This is known as Holy Saturday. There are several articulations about what happened on Holy Saturday, ranging from Christ spiritually descending to the lower reaches of human existence, to Christ triumphantly leading repentant souls out of Satan’s grasp in the Harrowing of Hell.

So, what did happen on Holy Saturday? Scripture gives us several references that do not answer the question completely, but do establish that Christ did indeed descend to the place of the dead. Underpinning the events of Holy Saturday is the fact that Christ defeated death itself. In the same way that He bore all of our sins, and was tempted in every way we are, He also went through all the throes of death, including going to Sheol/Hades. “For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matt 12:38). At the very least, Christ descending to the dead means he fully identified with humanity in death in order to redeem it and defeat death, including going to the darkest pits of Sheol, so we can say with David, “But God will ransom my soul from the power of Sheol, for he will receive me” (Ps 49:15 ESV). Scripture is clear that Christ, in His death, experienced the same Sheol realities humanity has always experienced and conquered even that. This is, at minimum, what all Christians affirm when we say “He descended to the dead” as we affirm the Apostles’ Creed.

However, the following Scriptures point to a greater reality than that mere affirmation. Consider the following Scriptures:

Ephesians 4:8-10 (NKJV) - “Therefore He says: “When He ascended on high, He led captivity captive, And gave gifts to men.” (Now this, “He ascended”—what does it mean but that He also first descended into the lower parts of the earth? He who descended is also the One who ascended far above all the heavens, that He might fill all things.)”

1 Peter 3:18-20 (ESV) - “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water.”

1 Peter 4:6 (ESV) - “For this is why the gospel was preached even to those who are dead, that though judged in the flesh the way people are, they might live in the spirit the way God does.”

Both Paul and Peter in their epistles, cited above, seem to elude to something more taking place on Holy Saturday, more akin to the Harrowing mentioned earlier where something occured for those who are dead. This doctrine is a comfort for me when presented with a pastoral question like “What happens to all those who die without hearing the Gospel?” My answer is still “I don’t completely know,” but can be confidently followed up by “but I know Christ and His Gospel have been there, too.”

Our dialogue about defeating death, emptying the grave, and breaking down the doors of Hades are too often presented as spiritual realities divorced from physical realities. Put another way, all of this talk in the Bible about defeating death actually has signification about death itself, it is not merely some metaphorical way of talking about sin. Consider these words from Australian theologian Ben Myers:1

Ultimately, this doctrine effects how we as Christians view death itself and is deeply intertwined with the doctrine of the Resurrection. Some of the practices of early Christians may seem strange to us—indeed they were strange to the Romans who witnessed them. They would pray in tombs, honor the bodies of martyrs, celebrate with joy at funerals, and catechumens would learn the faith in the catacombs surrounded by the dead. In our contemporary churches, we scarcely resemble this sort of faith when confronted with death, and too often act and think like the pagan Romans looking at the Christians wondering, “What are those fools doing, so embracing death?” As Christians we believe in newness of life and the veracity of the resurrection, because we know death is no longer the ultimate power in our lives.

John Wesley

As I’ve stated before in a different article, while Methodism is well-postured to be a tradition that stands in the stream of the Great Christian tradition alongside Roman Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Anglicanism, and Lutheranism, it has a glaring problem: John Wesley. It is not his theology or anything he did that is the problem. Rather, it is how modern Methodists treat him as something like a Pope, for better and worse. Put differently, his teaching is sometimes regarded as infallible, sometimes completely disregarded, and other times taken completely out of context. This relates to the Apostles’ Creed because, of course, the confusion around it in Methodism traces back to John Wesley… or, more accurately, some folk’s interpretation of Wesley.

Wesley and Hell

John Wesley entered the debate about the phrase descendit ad inferos in his sermon “On Faith.” He argues that “by Christ descending into hell, they [the translators of the Apostles’ Creed from Latin into English] meant, his body remained in the grave, his soul remained in hades, (which is the receptacle of separate spirits,) from death to the resurrection.”2 What Wesley is doing is making a distinction between two Greek words which were commonly both translated as hell in English: Hades and Gehenna.

Hades (ᾅδης) properly refers to the place of the dead, where all the buried go. This is the word often used to refer to the Old Testament place of Sheol (שאול). Sheol is the Hebrew understanding of the afterlife. Sheol is important for establishing the doctrine of the Resurrection, and is often divided between Paradise and a place of anguish (Luke 16:19-31).

Gehenna (γέεννα) properly refers to the Valley of Hinnom (גֵּי הִנֹּם), the place between Judah and Benjamin, a place of great judgment. The Valley of Hinnom gained eschatological significance as being the place where Kings Ahaz and Manasseh sacrificed children to the pagan gods (2 Chron 28 & 2 Chron 33), what the prophet Jeremiah called the “Valley of Slaughter” (Jer 7:32), and this connotation continues through the apocryphal writings (i.e. 2 Esdras 7:36) and the New Testament (i.e. Matt 10:28, 23:33; Jas 3:6). Therefore, to refer to Gehenna or the Valley of Hinnom is to refer to a place of severe judgment.

Wesley was making the point that hell is no longer a suitable word for both Hades and Gehenna. Hell has it etymological roots in a meaning closer to “the underworld,” closer in meaning to Hades, but by Wesley’s day almost exclusively meant a place of judgment. The English Bibles of the period like the King James translated them both as hell. Hell more accurately refers to Gehenna to our modern ears, and even to Wesley’s 18th century ears. Needless to say, Wesley was right and this is why many contemporary translations of the Bible like the ESV either do not translate Hades and leave it untranslated, or translate it as “the place of the dead” like the NLT does. Following this pattern, modern translations of the Apostles’ Creed often translate descendit ad inferos as “he descended to the dead.”

Wesley and the Creeds

As some may know John Wesley was a priest in the Church of England. One of the formularies of the English Church is a document called the 39 Articles of Religion. When John Wesley determined that the newly independent United States urgently needed ministers, he consecrated Thomas Coke as “General Superintendent,” a title Coke and the American Methodists would later change to Bishop. Wesley sent him to America to superintend the Methodist societies there and provide the sacraments as many Church of England priests fled in the wake of the Revolution. Along with sending Coke, Wesley appropriated 24 of the 39 Articles of the Church of England to become standards of doctrine for the Methodist societies in America. These societies would organize as the Methodist Episcopal Church. Interestingly, some of the articles Wesley omitted directly concern the Apostles’ Creed and descendit ad inferos, namely Articles III and VIII. They read:

Some take Wesley’s choice to omit these two Articles as an argument from silence that he rejected the creeds or the line, despite him being bound by English law and his ordination vows to the contrary. However, a look at another document Wesley gave Coke will beyond doubt reveal he was indeed creedal and intended the Methodists to be. That document is The Sunday Service of the Methodists in North America which is often called ‘John Wesley’s Book of Common Prayer’ because it is exactly that—a slight revision of the 1662 BCP. In Sunday Service, Wesley retains the Apostles’ Creed in its entirety, including the line “he descended into hell.” It is true he had a problem with the translation from the Latin of inferos into hell. As stated before, this is why we often translate it as dead today instead of hell. However, he accepted the creed entirely even if he had this qualification, as noted by his inclusion of it in his prayer book intended for use by American Methodist societies. John Wesley had no qualms about making what he saw as necessary changes to the BCP, for example, changing every instance of priest in the prayer book to ‘elder’ or ‘minister.’ If he truly thought this line was out of step with primitive Christianity or was what the American societies needed in their context, he could’ve omitted it. But he didn’t.

Further, if John Wesley would’ve changed the Apostles’ Creed by removing “he descended to hell” he would’ve been plainly wrong and in error. Creeds are received by churches and express continuity with all Christians in all time and in all places. They define what one must believe about God at minimum to claim to be truly part of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. Wesley, ever the Churchman, knew this reality and did not edit the Apostles’ Creed, and therefore it is contingent on Methodists today to recognize that reality and claim their inheritance.

The Role of Sunday Service for Methodists

What purpose did Wesley intend Sunday Service to fulfill in American Methodism? While it is a service book for liturgy and order just like the BCP, it begs the question: does a prayer book have any other roles? The saying goes that when you ask an Anglican what they believe, they will respond, “Come pray with us.” This is the principle of ‘lex orandi, lex credendi,’ or ‘the law of prayer is the law of belief.’ Put more concisely, Christians pray what they believe, and they believe what they pray. For the Anglican Church, the BCP is more than liturgy and order, the book itself is a formulary, which means it declares, through the forms of worship and prayer, what Anglicans believe. The Preface to the ACNA’s 2019 BCP recognizes this saying the 1662 BCP (the prayer book Wesley used) is “the standard for doctrine, discipline, and worship” in Global Anglicanism.3

It is reasonable to conclude that Wesley fully intended the Sunday Service to be for the American Methodists what the Book of Common Prayer is for Anglicans: not mere liturgy but doctrine and discipline. This is seen clearly in his precision edits to Sunday Service that reflected his beliefs more deeply, such as his belief about the two-fold order of ministry and replacing references to priests with the word elder. Modern Methodists recognize this principle as they continue to use the word elder for the office of presbyter/priest today. This is the principle of lex orandi, lex credendi in action, and the treating of Sunday Service as a de facto formulary. With this standard, his inclusion of the Apostles’ Creed in its full form says magnitudes about what Wesley intended for Methodists. At the very least, it confirms Methodism’s tricky history with dodging the creeds is completely unnecessary and reinforces that attempts to change the Apostles’ Creed to satisfy some apparent secret longing of Wesley have no basis in reality. When it came down to it, Wesley included the Creed in its fullness. It is a shame the Sunday Service fell out of use by 1792 before all the formulaic implications it held could take hold in American Methodism.4

Back to Georgia

Boy-howdy, what a conundrum we had to process that Sunday in church as our pastor told us we’d been saying the Apostles’ Creed wrong the whole time! After much theologizing, our pastor did a faithful job preaching the texts about the ‘missing’ line, and that Sunday led us in adding that line back to its rightful place in the Creed. This practice continued for a while until appointment season came around one year and we received another pastor. I distinctly remember the first Sunday with our new pastor. As we all recited the Apostles’ Creed we were saying “he descended to the dead” while our new pastor was saying “On the third day.” Needless to say, the next week descended to the dead was missing from the Creed in our bulletins. Slowly, as the weeks went on, people stopped saying it. I don’t know if there was a conversation around it with the new pastor, there certainly was no mention from the pulpit, and I was too young and naïve to bring the matter up to the new pastor myself!

If there’s one thing I’ve learned since then it’s that the Christian faith at its core and in its creeds does not change. Indeed, any religion that changes its core doctrines is not worth following at all. So, why do some denominations let pastors pick and choose when it comes to the creeds? This is unfortunately an example of when our traditions have done damage to the tradition of the Church.

For more on the creeds of the Christian church, continue reading:

Shall this City, which is the hope and joy of all the Hellenes, the glory of the Eastern Empire, this splendid City, that flourished once like the rose of the field and was mistress of almost all peoples under the sun—shall it now be trampled on by blasphemers, and yoked in slavery? Shall our holy churches, where we have worshipped the Trinity, and sung the Liturgy, and celebrated the mystery of the Word made Flesh, be made shrines for the blasphemy of their driveling prophet Mohammed, stables for their horses and camels? Think of this, when you fight for our liberty.

The above quote is a fictionalized speech given by Constantine XI Palaiologos, the last Emperor of the Roman Empire, from Jill Paton Walsh’s fantastic young adult novel The Emperor’s Winding Sheet. Constantine was delivering the speech to his brave soldiers as they prepared for their last battle against the Turks who were about to storm Constantinople. Despite the legendary heroism of Constantine XI, the last-ditch efforts of Italian relief forces including the vaunted Giovanni Giustiniani, and the faith of the people, the city fell in the infamous siege of 1453.

The fall of Constantinople has been described by many historians as one of the great turning points in history. Oddly, it doesn’t get much attention today. What Walsh uniquely captures in her fictionalized account is something of the medieval mindset that we in the postmodern West fail to understand. The medieval mindset, aligned with almost every premodern mindset, understands that there are heavenly realities at play in everything. Right after Constantine delivers this inspiring speech, he rises from his throne and goes to each man in his company saying, “If ever I have wronged you, I pray you now, forgive me.” He begs this of everyone, then departs to the Hagia Sophia and attends the Divine Liturgy, names his sins publicly, and then receives absolution from the priest.

All of these actions are a requiem. Though the Emperor certainly intends to inspire hope in his seriously outnumbered defenders, everyone knows they are fighting a losing battle. The previous day there were numerous signs—supernatural and natural—that demonstrated, as Walsh puts it, “the Divine Presence was veiling its departure from the City.” One cannot miss the parallels between Jerusalem, of which Constantinople saw itself as a successor, and its Hagia Sophia as the continuation of the Temple. The fall of Constantinople has direct parallels to the fall of Jerusalem under Zedekiah. Like the Judahites, the people of Constantinople in 1453 believed God had abandoned them on account of their sins. Yet, Walsh fictionalizes Constantine saying in his great speech, “But if, because of my sins, God gives victory to the infidel, still let us face our ordeal in the true faith, bought with the blood of Christ.” Constantine, as thought of in the annals of Christian history, was no Zedekiah. He was a man of true faith.

The Third Rome

“I am afraid Heaven itself has turned against us.” - Constantine XI in The Emperor’s Winding Sheet

After the fall of Constantinople in 1453 an idea began spreading through Eastern Orthodox lands that Moscow was the “Third Rome.” Eventually, this theological concept turned into something of a legend before becoming a political policy of the Russian state as Ivan the Great took the title of Tsar (literally “Caesar”).

Despite the Russian dream of being a Third Rome persisting through much of the early modern period, Russia never liberated Constantinople (today called Istanbul) and this dream effectively died with the collapse of the Russian Empire and the rise of the atheist Soviet Union. The Soviet Union embraced atheism as the state religion, at times actively persecuting the Orthodox Church and other times doing their absolute best to ignore it.

Fast forward to today and the Soviet Union is no more. Orthodoxy, despite the persecution by state atheism, survived the Soviet period. There has been a resurgence of belief in God in Russia, but not without its qualifiers. Russia is a very different place than either Ivan the Great or Lenin envisaged it. Gone are the days of looking to Moscow as the great city of Christian resurgence, but also gone are the days of the fears of godless communism rolling over the green fields of Western Europe like a plague from the East.

On February 8th, 2024, American journalist Tucker Carlson interviewed Russian President Vladimir Putin. It was a very fascinating interview. No matter what your opinion of President Putin, Russia, or the current war in Ukraine is, it was a startling view into a possible future for what the West, particularly America, may look and sound like as we traverse the waters of postmodernism into whatever is next.

Postmodernism, or Post-postmodernism?

It is widely acknowledged that in the secular West, we live in a “postmodern” age, where faith and reason have departed the public square, and concepts such as objective truth and the soul are cast out in favor of relativism. Some have speculated that after postmodernism there is a “post-postmodernism” where faith or belief in God once again resurges but as a reluctant consort to reason, which is what is truly resurgent. Russia is unique in that it is far ahead of the rest of the West in its advancement through these ideas. Russia, under Soviet rule, already went through the Marxist reformations of dismissing truth, reason, the soul, and objectivity that we in the West are undergoing. It has come through this to the other side, becoming something else entirely. Russia, as Russian scholar Mikhail Epstein articulates it, has a phenomenon of “poor faith”. Essentially, after surviving atheism, faith did experience a resurgence as post-postmodernism contends—but thriving mostly in the bare minimum form of “belief in God,” devoid of the structures of religion.

This doesn’t tell the whole story of course. Orthodoxy is still statistically the predominant religion in Russia, even if preyed on by these post-atheist cultural factors, and has a massive cultural influence on the nation. I have no doubt there are faithful Christians in many churches across Russia, but the perception is that the statistical rise of Orthodoxy in the post-Soviet era is largely a resurgence of cultural Christianity. Looking closer at Putin’s interview with Carlson, however, we can begin to see what a post-atheist nation may look like where resurgent “poor faith” makes bedfellows with a resurgent cultural religion. I believe it also points us to a reality American Christians need to be thinking about more deeply: what does an effective Christian political witness look like going forward? In America, Christians have historically had convenient allies in political conservatives, with Christians often filling the ranks of that group. This is an alliance that may be fraught with inconvenience in the decades to come if American post-postmodern political conservatism looks too much like the conservatism of Putin.

In the interview, Carlson endures a history lesson from Putin befitting any college history department (it was actually pretty good). This lecture portrays the sense that Putin operates with something of a medieval understanding of Europe. Several times, he noted the Orthodox culture of Russia and seemed to cite ethnic and religious concerns as though they were naturally part of national security policy. Take, for instance, his mention of Russian policy toward Serbia in the 1990s: “Russia could not help raising its voice in support of Serbs, because Serbs are also a special and close to us nation, with Orthodox culture and so on.” This may seem like a foreign idea to Americans, but this was once the prevailing idea in Europe, up until the middle of the 20th Century. Russia, historically, saw itself as the defender of Slavs and Orthodox Christians in Europe, a policy called Pan-Slavism. Look no further than Russia’s defense of Serbia in what would become World War I, which dragged the great imperial powers of the world into what could’ve been a regional dispute between Austria-Hungary and Serbia. This idea was hardly unique to Russia, with similar pan-ethnic movements all over Europe in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, leading to the creation of many nation-states we take for granted, such as Italy, Germany, and Greece. However, this view of pan-ethnic identity has largely been rendered obsolete in the late 20th and 21st centuries. France does not view itself as the protector of Francophone speakers in Quebec, Belgium, or Switzerland any more than Germany sees itself as the rightful ruler of Kaliningrad (which was East Prussia as recently as 1945).

It is fascinating that Putin would mention this idea so frequently. It is the opposite of the Marxist ideal the Soviet Union pursued, which encouraged relativism even in ethnic identity, which Putin mentions in the interview as it relates to the creation of Soviet Ukraine. He also cites it as a policy Russia is currently pursuing in Ukraine—the protection of those who identify as ethnic Russians. In this way, Putin demonstrates that it is possible to reclaim ideals and elements of a worldview of the past.

Orthodoxy?

Later in the interview, Carlson, an Episcopalian, takes the interview in a specifically religious direction. He asks, “You have described Russia itself, a couple of times as Orthodox – that is central to your understanding of Russia. What does that mean for you? You are a Christian leader by your own description. So what effect does that have on you?” Putin initially begins to answer as he has the whole interview, detailing some of the history of Russia becoming Orthodox. Then, the answer takes a radical turn: Putin, almost as if quoting Mikhail Epstein himself, begins to describe a trans-religiosity where Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism exist in a sculpture of harmony: “We are together, this is one big family. And our traditional values are very similar.”

To be clear, this is where Carlson asked Putin about his personal Christian faith. I do not think Putin was dodging the question or it was lost in translation. For Putin, the most important part of his personal faith is a plurality where every faith is united in its cohesiveness which holds together the Motherland. In other words, one’s personal faith matters very little, if at all. One can even have, as Epstein puts it, “poor faith.” What matters is that the faith a person has directs one to certain ends that align with the trajectory of the state. Religion is purely utilitarian.

Carlson, possibly thinking the question was misunderstood, asks a follow-up question: “So do you see the supernatural at work? As you look out across what’s happening in the world now, do you see God at work? Do you ever think to yourself: these are forces that are not human?” To which Putin replies “No, to be honest, I don't think so. My opinion is that the development of the world community is in accordance with the inherent laws, and those laws are what they are. It's always been this way in the history of mankind.” This answer is particularly shocking.

In Putin’s answers, we can see the ideals of post-postmodernism at play. Reason is something he values highly, clearly appealing to historical reasoning, political reasoning, and even philosophical reasoning to make his arguments and deliver his lectures. Faith, or religion, however, clearly exists in subservience to reason, as a mere aid to it. Absolute truth is not needed, instead, as long as you can point to a fundamental truth—like a god is real—absolute truth claims like the Christian God is real are not needed or are secondary. If it were absolute truth that the Christian God is real, it would require contending with Divine intervention, which is not reasonable to Putin. Rather, laws are at play that have inertia and carry people, empires, and events to a certain end and only man has the power to intervene and rule over them. In this worldview, God is a nonfactor, not sovereign over nations. This is the reason that, despite relying on historical appeal at times, modern Russia has not returned to its birthright of being the Third Rome. This is a fundamentally different worldview.

This brings us full circle to Constantine XI. People with a truly traditional and conservative worldview, founded in Scripture, see the Divine at play. Like Constantine looking up at the supernatural lights through the thick fog in the night sky as the Divine Presence leaving the City, and like the later Rus people, imagining the Presence has now turned to Moscow, so that they may one day liberate Constantinople, have a deeply rooted understanding that there is a heavenly realm. God is at work. Angels and demons are real. There is a cosmic battle at hand. In the end, the Kingdom of God will rule every corner of the Earth. Maybe we don’t understand everything, but we must “face our ordeal in the true faith”. This classic worldview is diametrically opposed to the supposed conservative worldview found in post-postmodernism. Only one of them can be truly traditional.

It is not hard to see that American conservatism is on a trajectory toward post-postmodernism. If carried to its natural end, it will cease to be an appropriate ally for Christians. Like the “conservatism” of Putin, which seems to be supportive of traditional values like the nuclear family, traditionalism, national identity, and traditional sexual ethics, the conservatism of post-postmodernism actively promotes another god—a pluralistic, absent clockmaker who has little-to-no divine agency and serves to support something rather than be the foundation for it. If god is a nonfactor in the inertia of nations, as Putin claims, then it must not be the Christian God who gives authorities their existence and institutes them (Romans 13:1).

Another clear evidence of this is the glaring reality of the Putin interview—the callous disregard for human life he demonstrated. Toward the beginning of the interview, amid the history lecture, Carlson asks, “Do you believe Hungary has a right to take back its land from Ukraine? And that other nations have a right to go back to their 1654 borders?” Putin gives a non-answer, ending with a “possibly.” Even if everything in Putin’s narrative is true, his war does not meet the minimum criteria for just war. The cost is currently in the tens of thousands of lives. If the attempted usurping of the true God was not enough to convince you, perhaps the negation of the imago Dei, the image of God in man, does. In this worldview, man does not exist to serve God, rather man exists to preserve the current order, the state, and its values—or die trying. When an ideology gets to that point, what are you even fighting to conserve?

I am not the arbiter of the future. I can’t pretend to be able to prophetically understand geopolitics, much less the future of internal American politics. That’s way above my pay grade. It’s entirely possible America doesn’t experience a fall into post-postmodernism like Russia. Maybe prudent allies Christians must make and everything will turn out fine. But at the end of the day, we must know whom we will serve. Christ is Lord of all.

Often, we think of the ordained ministry as three-fold, or in three degrees: composed of the order of deacons, priests (or elders), and bishops. It’s no surprise, really. Since the inception of the Church of Jesus Christ, ordination has been a vital thing, signified by the laying on of hands. These three orders have stood the test of time and proven to be vital to the apostolic ministry of the Church of God.

The Church believes that in ordination and the laying on of hands, the Holy Spirit sets people apart for the work to which He has called them. Take for example Barnabas and Saul in Acts 13: “While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off.” (v. 2-3 ESV). Notice who is operative in this passage. It is the Holy Spirit.

Ordination is an essential sacrament and function of the Church. It exists to safeguard the Church, equip those who are called to set apart ministry, and ensure that candidates are truly “called, tried, examined, and ascertained to have such qualities as are requisite.”1 Through Ordination, the Holy Spirit commissions Baranbases and Sauls. Sometimes, though, because of the set apart-ness of Ordination, it can seem like there are two tiers in the Church: ordained and laity. Pop culture doesn’t help with this perception, often presenting ministers as holier-than-thou types. Bishops can seem somehow higher than the rest of us when we see them wear their miters, like in the picture above. It can sometimes seem like the white collar around the neck of a pastor is staring us in the heart, examining us, and making us think they have it all together. However, as Scripture and tradition teach us, this is not the whole story of the laying on of hands.

Another Laying on of Hands

Aside from Ordination to the diaconate, priesthood, and episcopate the Church has historically practiced an additional laying on of hands. This other laying on of hands is the rite or sacrament of Confirmation. Confirmation is a reception of grace from the Holy Spirit where, after a period of instruction called catechesis, the baptized publicly affirm their faith, renew their baptismal vows, and receive the laying on of hands.

In the Bible, we see this occur as the Apostles lay hands on new converts after the new converts received Baptism from St. Phillip the Deacon. We are told this is so they may receive the strengthening of the Holy Spirit from the Apostles, who received it directly from Jesus Himself in the Upper Room.2 This tradition continues today with Confirmation as the successors of the Apostles, Bishops, perform the laying on of hands.

“Now when the apostles at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent to them Peter and John, who came down and prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit, for he had not yet fallen on any of them, but they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Then they laid their hands on them and they received the Holy Spirit.” - Acts 8:14-17 (ESV)

Instead of viewing the Church as a two-tiered body where only some are ordained and are above the laity, Confirmation should be rightly viewed as an ordination to the fourth order of ministry: the laity. This is an order to which all people are called and all Christians are ordained. Just like in ordinations, in Confirmation the Bishop prays for the Holy Spirit to equip the Christian for the work of their particular ministry.

Almighty and everliving God, we beseech you to strengthen these your servants for witness and ministry through the power of your Holy Spirit. Daily increase in them your manifold virtues of grace: the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and true godliness, and the spirit of holy fear, now and for ever. Amen.3

Confirmation, even for those who will later be ordained to another office, serves as every Christian’s first ordination and calling. Bishop-elects are required to reaffirm the vows they made at their two previous ordinations before consecration. Priestly ordinands are likewise required to reaffirm the vows they made at their ordination to the diaconate. It is often said that priests and Bishops are first and foremost deacons—servants—and they never ought to forsake that first calling.

Taking that analogy one step further, everyone’s true first calling is to the Church, being a faithful disciple, and to the priesthood of all believers. This does not license everyone to preside at the Eucharist or mean anyone ought to carry out the functions of those set apart for specific purposes, like Saul and Barnabas. The Church still has order. But the Church does participate alongside the Spirit in setting all of us apart for what God has called us to, individually and universally as Christians. The Book of Common Prayer states as much in the Confirmation exhortation that duly prepared candidates “desire the strengthening of grace through the laying on of hands, that the Holy Spirit may fill them more and more for their ministry in the Church and in the world.”4

It is no mistake that Confirmation resembles Ordination so closely and they both share many parallels. The most significant part is in the laying on of hands, receiving a strengthening by the Holy Spirit, equipping Christians for the work of ministry. This is for every member of the Church of God. It’s for you, and it’s for me. We are all called to “the ministry”. Author Os Guinness puts it this way: “Our primary calling as followers of Christ is by him, to him, and for him.” He continues, “Our secondary calling, considering who God is as sovereign, is that everyone, everywhere, and in everything should think, live, and act entirely for him.” There aren’t tiers in the Kingdom: ordained ministers aren’t more beloved by God for their specific (secondary) calling than you are beloved for yours. On the contrary, St. James mentions that they will be judged more harshly.5 Quoting Guinness again, “Secondary callings matter, but only because the primary calling matters most.”6 Confirmation intimately expresses our primary calling and enunciates that laity are not second-class citizens of the Church, but the principal part of its ministry to the world, an indispensable part of the Body of Christ that participates in making it whole.

What is it that God has called you to in his Holy Church?

I come from a long line of mainline Methodists through my mother’s family, so from an early age, I was taught the unique emphases John Wesley put on the Christian faith. As many have noted before, Wesley’s evangelism was instrumental in contributing to the Great Awakening and reshaping Christianity over the last 300 years. I began to develop a love for philosophy in my late teens and early 20s, particularly a field known as epistemology, which is the study of knowledge or, more specifically, what it means to know things. I was interested in exploring the ways in which Christians justify our beliefs as a genuine form of knowledge and, as a good Wesleyan, that led to my first introduction to the Wesleyan Quadrilateral.

The Wesleyan Quadrilateral is, as described in the Free Methodist Church’s Pastors and Church Leaders Manual, “an effort to describe a Methodist methodology for theological formulation.” In other words, it’s meant to be a way for Wesleyans to determine spiritual truth.  And, in most of the Wesleyan circles I’ve frequented, it’s presented as *the* way to determine spiritual truth.

Theologian Albert Outler coined the phrase in the 1960s as his way of explaining how Wesley came to his theological decisions. It lists four sources of truth: Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience. The four are not supposed to be equal: Scripture is intended to be first and foremost, with the other three supporting it.

I’ve always felt a little uneasy about the Quadrilateral. It seemed that it tried to make something that is very complicated and messy – how we determine truth – fit into neat little categories. My qualms intensified as I saw my fellow United Methodists torturing the logic of the categories to turn personal beliefs into spiritual truth – Scripture was no longer treated as primary, and experience came to mean general life experience instead of the spiritual experience Outler intended. Thus, I encountered several Methodists justifying their theological opinions through the use of the Quadrilateral by claiming they’d witnessed particular things in life that made sense to them – never mind what Scripture and tradition had to say on the subject.

It was in the midst of my uneasiness that I came across the work of orthodox theologian and philosopher William J. Abraham, one of Outler’s successors at Southern Methodist University. As a theologian of epistemology and a Wesleyan scholar, Abraham piqued my interest with his critique of the Quadrilateral. Abraham traced the roots of the Quadrilateral not to Wesley but rather to Outler himself. Abraham, although a former colleague and an admirer of Outler, nonetheless bluntly said “Outler’s Wesley was an invented Wesley” in his 2005 article “The End of Wesleyan Theology.”

The Quadrilateral was born in the 1960s in the age of ecumenism that resulted in the formation of the UMC in 1968. According to Abraham within the same article, the Quadrilateral was intended by Outler as “a way to legitimize Methodism as a player on the world ecumenical stage” and as a way to help unify Methodists ahead of the merger of denominations that formed the UMC.

Abraham believed the Quadrilateral reflected both a bad historical understanding of Wesley and a bad epistemology of theology. According to Abraham, there was no other theological warrant for Wesley other than Scripture alone. “Wesley at his core was a staunch Protestant biblicist,” he wrote. “Drawing on a medieval vision of divine revelation, he was convinced that all proper theology had to be grounded in Scripture. Whatever bells and whistles we want to add either epistemologically or hermeneutically to this thesis, the ultimate test of truth in theology for Wesley was Scripture.”

Regarding the epistemology of the Quadrilateral, Abraham lists nine objections in his book Waking from Doctrinal Amnesia that he repeats in “The End of Wesleyan Theology.” Primary among those include the aforementioned misreading of the historical Wesley; the critical omission of special revelation as a means of knowledge; and, hinting at Abraham’s recommendation for a replacement for the Quadrilateral, “it provides for quick and easy proofs of critical Christian doctrine,” using the Trinity as an example, which is “easily proved…given its secure place in the tradition of the Church. If it is contained in tradition, then it is contained in a combination of Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience.”

A summary of the heart of Abraham’s critique is threefold:

1. The Quadrilateral is not a good representation of Wesley’s own theological process because, for Wesley, Scripture was the only arbiter of theological truth, despite the fact Wesley did indeed appeal at points to tradition, reason, and experience in his thought processes. This is Abraham’s point in stating “Whatever bells and whistles we want to add either epistemologically or hermeneutically to this theses, the ultimate test of truth in theology for Wesley was Scripture.” Otherwise, a person could associate basically anything after “Scripture” as something Wesley used as part of his thinking. Why not add emotion, for example, as Wesley seemed to be a very emotional person, so someone could make an argument that we should add that to the Quadrilateral since it surely would have impacted Wesley’s thought processes.

2. The Quadrilateral is not epistemologically or theologically sound. Theologically, it completely leaves out the category of “special revelation” as a means of acquiring theological knowledge. The Apostle Paul would likely have a bone to pick with that after his Damascus Road episode! Epistemologically, Abraham listed the following additional problems:

   1. “It treats Scripture and tradition as epistemic concepts on a par with reason and [sic] experience, an obvious category mistake.

   2. “When push comes to shove, as it inevitably will, reason and experience will be privileged over Scripture and tradition because the former are logically prior to the latter.”

   3. “Epistemologically, it is severely underdeveloped, assuming that we know what to make of reason and experience.”

3. Perhaps the most important point that underscores all the others: Wesley was not a systematic theologian, and to try to systematize something of his that he himself never recommended others emulate is a massive category mistake. Wesley is our spiritual father and a saint, but he was not a John Calvin or a Thomas Aquinas or an Augustine as a theologian, and that’s OK – that isn’t a criticism. We need to emulate him in praxis such as in evangelism, disciple formation, and sanctification, but that doesn’t mean we should likewise seek to model our entire lives after every single aspect of his life (specifically here, his process of theological thought).

Canonical Theism as a Replacement

Using Abraham’s statement that “If [something] is contained in tradition, then it is contained in a combination of Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience” as a reference point, Abraham’s unique contribution to theology is a proposed new way of determining spiritual knowledge as described in his most robust book, Canon and Criterion in Christian Theology and the anthology Canonical Theism.

Canonical theism takes a broad view of the Church’s tradition. The Reformation emphasis on sola scriptura, or Scripture alone for Christian authority, was a needed correction for the Church in the 1500s, but one should step back and truly ponder the question, “What is Scripture and its history?”

Scripture is of course the collection of writings from the Old and New Testaments, but how were those writings selected? The answer is: they were selected by the Church. The Old Testament was essentially inherited from Judaism, but the New Testament books represent only a fraction of Christian writing from the era roughly extending from 40 – 100 AD, give or take a couple of decades.

Who chose which of those writings should be included as Scripture, which writings were authentic, and where to set a kind of “cut-off” date for the documents? Again, it was the Church.

Another way to label “decisions the Church has made”  is the word “tradition.” So really, Scripture is best understood as a part of Church tradition. Making a distinction between “scripture” and “tradition” is a false dichotomy. Scripture is the written record the Church has decided is central to its tradition.

At this point, an additional question needs to be asked: “Why shouldn’t Scripture alone be sufficient for Christian authority as the Reformers claimed?” Simply put, we have the real-life evidence of thousands of Christian denominations to attest: because we can’t agree on how many parts of Scripture are best understood.

Yes, we can affirm Scripture is by itself sufficient to bring people to a saving knowledge of Christ, but there are many other issues left unaddressed by Scripture, and likewise, many issues within Scripture that Christians widely disagree on. What one Christian considers a “plain” reading of a portion of Scripture may indeed not be as plain as that Christian thinks.

As one classic example that resonates with Wesleyans, parts of Paul’s letters appear to “plainly” state women can’t lead in churches. Yet Wesleyan denominations rightly maintain that other parts of Paul’s letter provide a wider context in which to interpret those “plain” parts about women.

Put plainly (irony intended), there is less Scripture that can be understood plainly than we often like to think, as one might expect from a collection of books spanning about 2,000 years across multiple authors and cultures. The proof is in the array of Christian denominations forged by interpretational disagreement across hundreds of years. We need something more than our often-flawed individual ability to reason and our limited personal experience to make sense of our different interpretations of Scripture and the gaps left with issues not addressed by Scripture.

Canonical theism uses this logic as a starting point to launch into describing what aspects of shared Christian tradition, including Scripture, ought to be taken as definitive for a more robust, broader canon of authority. “Canonical theists call for a reevaluation of the standard scripture/tradition taxonomy,” writes Paul Gavrilyuk in Canonical Theism. “The canonical heritage of the church is constituted by materials, practices, and persons that formally or informally have been adopted by the whole church as canonical.”

Canonical theism considers the largely united theological consensus of the first thousand years of the Church as the authoritative heritage for all Christians. There were of course many sharp disagreements and heresies during those first thousand years (Arianism first among them) and one notable schism within the first five hundred years (Nestorianism), but through the first seven ecumenical councils, the vast majority of the Church was able to achieve consensus on matters of theology. It was only with the Great Schism in 1054 AD when the Eastern Orthodox Church separated from the Roman Catholic Church that divergent theologies began to rapidly increase.

Canonical theists list “eight components of the canonical heritage of the church,” according to Gavrilyuk:

1. Canons of faith (Confessional statements and creeds)

2. Canons of scripture (Lists of sacred writings)

3. Canons of liturgy (Guidelines for conducting worship services)

4. Canons of bishops (Approved lists of episcopal authorities)

5. Canons of saints (Lists of the saints venerated locally or universally)

6. Canons of fathers and doctors (Lists of authoritative theologians)

7. Canons of councils (Disciplinary and doctrinal guidelines imposed by the councils)

8. Canons of iconography and architecture (General rules regulating the depiction of God and the saints; rules of church architecture)

In short, these canons are inseparable from each other, because “scripture is a canon that developed alongside the canons of episcopacy, liturgy, and creed, interacting with them in a complex way,” wrote Gavrilyuk. “The canonical heritage, we argue, is a diamond with at least eight distinct facets, not a two-dimensional plane.”

A somewhat obvious critique of Canonical theism is that it doesn’t offer many clear-cut, definitive answers regarding what beliefs fall within the rubric of particular canons (the parameters of several canons appear somewhat vague), and I believe Abraham would agree. But I view this as a necessary reality – nothing in life is 100%, completely definitive this side of the eschaton, and to pretend otherwise is to be dangerously deluded. Yes, Scripture has authority and, yes, tradition has authority, but how they interplay with each other and mix with the authority of God divinely revealing truth to us is messy. If it weren’t, good Christians wouldn’t have so many disagreements because we could follow a rather clear chain of logic to arrive at the same or similar conclusions.

I think through Canonical theism, Abraham was trying to incorporate into Protestant consciousness a reality that our Roman Catholic and Orthodox brothers and sisters have recognized all along, and that is the uncomfortable truth that, in some ways, there isn’t all that much of a difference between the Bible and other forms of Christian tradition. Christians thrived for 300 years before the New Testament was officially organized, so (while they did have the Old Testament to rely on) it was, ultimately, the tradition of the apostles that guided their faith until the Church decided (via the Holy Spirit) to codify the New Testament as representative of – the exemplar of – that tradition.

The broader heritage outlined by canonical theism allows for a fuller and richer interpretation of scripture that assists in the understanding of its authority for Christians, and it helps in explaining how scripture is inseparable from tradition and what parts of tradition can be considered authoritative. While the Wesleyan Quadrilateral has elements of truth and was well-intentioned, perhaps it’s time we as Wesleyans accept that it has problematic historical and theological inaccuracies and look for a better way to explain how we determine knowledge and authority.

David S. Wisener is the pastor and church planter of Redeemer Free Methodist Church and is economic development manager for the city of Alachua, Florida.  He is the author of the newly-published Lost the Plot: Finding Our Story in a Confusing World through Resource Publications.  He has a BA in political science from the University of Florida and is pursuing an MA in ministry from Asbury Theological Seminary.  He lives in Alachua with his teenage daughter, Naomi.  More of his writing can be found at his blog, davidswisener.com.

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Creeds are an important part of the Christian tradition. However, they are often afterthoughts in Wesleyan and Methodist churches particularly when looked to as doctrinal statements. Historically, this can be attributed to Methodist churches not being creedal churches. Creedal churches are churches in which their foundational statements of faith are the historic Christian creeds.

“But wait!” you might protest, “we say the Apostles’ Creed every Sunday in our Methodist church!” That may be true, however, Wesleyan and Methodist denominations generally do not have anything directing creeds are doctrine, even if creeds are recited as part of worship and published in hymnals. There is one outlier among Methodists, the new Global Methodist Church. They affirm the Apostles’ Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Chalcedonian Definition as “foundational documents for doctrinal standards,” effectively making the GMC a creedal church.1 Aside from this new example creeds are not doctrinal standards in any other major Wesleyan or Methodist churches that I know of.

What makes this intriguing is that John Wesley, a Church of England priest, was a creedal Christian. Wesley scholar Billy Abraham noted, “Wesley’s theology is an intellectual oasis lodged within the traditional faith of the church enshrined in the creeds.”2 Something I have discovered in my own time in the Anglican church is that the necessity of the creeds is still fundamental to the Anglican faith, and indeed is to the faith of the vast majority of Christians worldwide. In the ACNA, creeds are the foundation of our catechism. The Nicene Creed, recited weekly in worship, must be affirmed by confirmands.3

But Wesley rightly observed in his sermon The Way of the Kingdom that mere intellectual assent to the creeds may make one orthodox in belief, yet have “no religion at all” or even be “a stranger to the religion of the heart.”4 Wesley essentially applies to the creeds that which Paul applies in 1 Corinthians 13: “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understanding all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing (ESV).” James also corroborates this in 2:19 of his letter, “You believe that God is one. Good! Even the demons believe—and they shudder” (CSB). Demonic faith is a faith that can be “orthodox”, or correct in belief, yet heteroprax — wrong in practice. This faith practiced by hypocrites is what Sts. Paul and James, as well as John Wesley, caution us about in their writings.

Though John Wesley consecrated and commissioned Thomas Coke to minster as superintendent to the Methodists in North America and provided much of what would be the foundation to what would become the Methodist Episcopal Church, the grandmother church of all American Methodists, somehow the creeds did not make it in as Coke, Francis Asbury, and others established the new American denomination on Christmas Day, 1781. The dangers of not clearly defining the Apostolic Faith can be seen when those charged to defend them fail to affirm the creeds as basic, orthodox Christian beliefs.  For example, UMC Bishop Joseph Sprague was well documented denying the Virgin birth and physical bodily Resurrection of Christ, both doctrines present in all creeds.5 While Bishop Sprague is far from the first bishop in history to deny creedal doctrines as we’ll explore, and certainly won’t be the last, one can infer the dangers to the Church that are presented when someone is charged with upholding the Apostolic doctrine of the Church and is a liar by lying through the questions asked of them in their presbyter and episcopal ordinations. Perhaps they were truthful but later ceased to believe those doctrines. Either way, Paul demands a bishop to be above reproach (1 Timothy 3:2). There is at minimum a conflict of interest as one is either an Apostolic bishop, upholding the Apostolic Faith, or a ‘bishop’ of a different religion (Matthew 6:24). I would go as far as to say these are the ones Jesus warns us of in the Sermon on the Mount, the “wolves in sheep’s clothing”… or maybe more appropriately wolves wearing purple cassocks (Matthew 7:15).

What is a Creed, anyway?

A creed, as stated earlier, is simply a statement of faith. Creeds were usually crafted for a specific purpose: to distinguish orthodox Christianity from heresy. The Nicene Creed in particular, the pinnacle of the creeds, was crafted to define orthodox belief about the person and work of Jesus Christ in opposition to Arianism, which claimed Jesus was created. While it is easy for us modern folks to know a church’s beliefs quickly thanks to denominations and websites, the Christian faith was distinguished from heresy for over a thousand years by the worshipping communities’ corporate confession of the creeds. If you were a Christian in Ephesus who traveled to Rome on business, how would you know if the “church” you were visiting was orthodox and not Arian? Because they confessed the creeds, taught them, and were baptized affirming them, just like the majority of Christians worldwide continue to do today! Creeds still serve the purpose of distinguishing orthodox Christianity from innovation and heresy.

Reciting creeds is also an act of worship. As Dr. Donald Fairbrairn, Professor of Early Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, puts it: “a creed is a pledge of allegiance to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Creeds answer the question, “In whom do you believe?” more than the question “What do you believe?””6 This is why, in most churches, we say a creed after the sermon and before Holy Communion. No matter what is said from the pulpit, we ground ourselves in who God is before coming to the Table to receive the Body and Blood of the One whose nature we affirm in the creeds. This focuses us on God, the true God. As we recite the creeds we can have confidence in who God is and what will come to pass. After all, it doesn’t make much sense to hear the Word of God, celebrate His presence in the Sacraments, or anything else if we don’t know (or agree on) who God is.

Additionally, creeds are tools of catechesis. A common objection to the use of creeds is one rooted in extreme biblicism, or the idea that the Bible is alone sufficient as a confession and the creeds are not, therefore, “biblical.” This view unfortunately misunderstands the creeds which are drawn directly from Scripture. J.I Packer notes that the Apostles’ Creed is, “a power-point declaration of the basics of the Christian message - in other words the Gospel itself.”7 He contends that we in the American church have replaced our ancient declarations of faith with a man-centered “ABC” creed of our own (All have sinned, Believe in Christ, Confess Christ as Lord) that is insufficient as a statement of belief. It may do well to define how we can be saved, but says little about Who is doing the saving! Even if we say something like “all we need is the Bible” or “no creed but Christ” we cannot avoid creating what surmounts to a creed of our own design. These “new creeds” ultimately fall short of accomplishing what the time-tested summaries of faith the church already has access to have accomplished. They disconnect us further from the church that has gone before us, further from the Scriptures the creeds affirm, and further from the boundaries of orthodoxy.

There are three creeds known as the Ecumenical Creeds. They are the Apostles’ Creed, Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed. Additionally, the Definition of Chalcedon mentioned previously is not a creed, but is a statement made at the Fourth Ecumenical Council, and therefore has much overlap with the Ecumenical Creeds (more on that below). I won’t be inserting the text of every creed in this article as that would really constrain the length, but they will be linked on each header so you can quickly find them.

The Apostles’ Creed

The Apostles’ Creed is the most ancient and concise of the Christian creeds. Its earliest iterations, called the Old Roman Creed, can be traced back to manuscripts attributed to the early 2nd century, though it was likely written before that. While modern scholars do not give much credit to the legend that each Apostle wrote an article of this creed, the early Church clearly believed it communicated their teachings. As time passed, the creed became the normal formula for training new converts preparing for baptism, a practice called catechesis. These new converts, called catechumens, would publicly confess their faith using the creed before their baptism. This was viewed by the Church as the catechumens being “built on the foundation of the apostles” (Ephesians 2:20) and being “devoted to the apostles' teaching” (Acts 2:42), as was the pattern of the earliest Church.

The Apostles’ Creed affirms the very Gospel itself. It affirms each person of the Trinity as God, various doctrines about Jesus including his divine conception, the Virgin birth, His crucifixion, death, burial, descent, resurrection on the third day, ascent to the right hand of the Father, and role as Judge. It also affirms there is one catholic Church, the communion of saints, forgiveness of sins, and a future resurrection and eternal life. It is the best concise summary of the Christian faith we have.

The Nicene Creed

The Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, often just referred to as the Nicene Creed, is perhaps the most foundational creed in the Christian Church. The original form was crafted by the First Ecumenical Council, the First Council of Nicaea. This is also the ecumenical council with the most false information floating around on the internet. A common meme might say something like: “At Nicaea, Constantine selected the books for the Bible, burned the rest, and killed everyone who didn’t agree.” Seriously. And before you dismiss this as a misunderstanding confined to atheist meme pages and subreddits, Wesley Huff, a Canadian apologist, notes this claim is so mainstream it actually appears in Dan Brown’s best-selling book The Da Vinci Code. He made a really great graphical summary of what did happen at this council, which I will include below. (He also has a breakdown of the graphic and more on the origin of this myth on his blog if you want to read more.) However, the story of the Nicene Creed and its importance to the Church is not simply told by looking at the Council of Nicaea but requires a deeper dive into the first four ecumenical councils.

The Council of Nicaea (First Ecumenical Council)

As the graphic notes, this council primarily dealt with coming to an orthodox understanding of exactly who Jesus is and what His nature is. The background of this disagreement about the nature of Christ started in the Alexandrian Church. Arius, a priest in Alexandria, and his proponents were teaching that Christ was a created being and did not exist eternally. St. Athanasius and others argued against this, stating Christ is eternal and not a created being, He is truly God. According to a popular legend, the Bishop of Myra, St. Nicholas (yes, our St. Nick of fame) gave Arius a punch to the face when he publicly denied the eternal existence of Christ at the council. The total consensus of the council (only two bishops out of 318 and Arius dissented) was that Arius was wrong and his teachings were heretical. He was banished and his works were ordered to be destroyed. Whether or not you agree with the order to burn his works, you can see how great big lies (Constantine burned books of the Bible) can be told and believed by many with their origins in small truths (Arius’ works were ordered to be burned).

The council crafted the Nicene Creed as a baptismal creed with the express intent to define orthodoxy and exclude Arianism from orthodoxy. Up until this point, early forms of the Apostles’ Creed was the primary creed used in baptism and worship alongside other creeds being used regionally. This creed united Christians everywhere in the Ephesians 4:5 sense; “one Lord, one Faith, one baptism.” In the creed, Jesus is defined as “true God from true god” explicitly “begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father.” If these claims don’t go far enough to exclude Arianism, the creed as written in AD 325 also states “But as for those who say, There was when He was not, and, Before being born He was not, and that He came into existence out of nothing, or who assert that the Son of God is of a different hypostasis or substance, or created, or is subject to alteration or change – these the Catholic and apostolic Church anathematize.”

The First Council of Constantinople (Second Ecumenical Council)

If you know the Nicene Creed, that last part might surprise you up a little. Despite Arius’ condemnation at Nicaea, he wasn’t done. He and his compatriots eventually accepted the creed and were welcomed back into the Church. Then, former Arian bishops forced St. Athanasius into exile for a time. Emperor Constantine died and his son, Constantius II, took his reign as emperor. He was a vocal proponent of Arianism. Another council was needed to course correct, and after Constantius II passed away after only a little over twenty years on the throne Theodosius ascended to the throne, a firm Nicene Christian. Thus, a Second Ecumenical Council was called in AD 381, also known as the First Council of Constantinople. Some had attempted to respond to Arianism by compromise, contending that Jesus had a human body only and a divine mind only, which became known as Apollinarianism, from its chief proponent Apollinaris. Also on the agenda in Constantinople was the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, which was under attack from the Pneumatomachi, who denied the divinity of the Holy Spirit. The Constantinopolitan Council reaffirmed the views of the Nicene Council, firmly rejected the innovations, and declared the new views promulgated since as heretical.

Thus, the creed written in AD 325 was expanded, adding an article on the Holy Spirit and the Church, respectively. The anathema was removed. We don’t know exactly why as most records of the deliberations from the AD 381 council are lost. In fact, it is the later Fourth Ecumenical Council that confirms for us both versions are received. Thus, the AD 381 version, more properly called the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, became the standard for its totality. It is the only creed affirmed by the whole Church—Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant—as authoritatively adopted by commonly recognized ecumenical councils as the definitively binding statement of the Christian faith.

The Council of Ephesus (Third Ecumenical Council)

AD 381 is not the end of the story for the Nicene Creed, however. In AD 431 another council was called to deal with Nestorianism, the belief that Christ has two separate persons, one human and one divine. These heretics believed they were solving a theological problem, namely, that Mary did not bear God (Theotokos; God-bearer), but only Christ (Christotokos; Christ-bearer). This time, it was Nestorius, the heretic, who requested the council to be called to prove his position was in fact the orthodox position. The council disagreed and stated that there is one person in Christ, his human and divine natures exist in perfect harmony in hypostatic union, and Mary is indeed Theotokos as she gave birth to the fully divine and fully human Jesus Christ.

Interestingly for the Nicene Creed at this council, they declared it is “unlawful for any man to bring forward, or to write, or to compose a different Faith as a rival to that established by the holy Fathers assembled with the Holy Ghost in Nicaea”.8 This claim by the council is profound. For those of us from evangelical backgrounds, to think of an ecumenical council of bishops and clergy as led explicitly by the Holy Spirit is, in many ways, contrary to the way we think. Yet, we would not deny that “where two or three are gathered” the Spirit is present. The Council of Nicaea, as the First Ecumenical Council, was also somewhat miraculous. While there had been councils and meetings before (look no further than Acts 15) this was the first time Christianity had a truly ecumenical council, meaning including everyone, since becoming a world religion present on at least three continents at the time. The logistics of bringing 318 clergy from all over the world to one place and meeting for three months in AD 325 is a very remarkable feat. Some denominations claim it at times cannot be done today with all our modern technology and transit. Not to mention they came to a complete consensus (minus the two whose views were on trial). When is the last time you saw 316 clergy come to a consensus about anything, especially doctrine? When you think about it, it is not so strange to believe that “the holy Fathers” were indeed “assembled with the Holy Ghost in Nicaea”.

A Quick Note on Filioque

If you already know Nicene Creed, then you might also know about the filioque controversy. Everyone should be at least aware of it, though understanding it completely isn’t necessary, so let’s examine it briefly.

This may be a surprise but Latin and Greek are two different languages. The Church in the West, being Latin-speaking, found that the Nicene Creed translated into Latin could technically still allow for Arianism, so some churches began clarifying that the “Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son (filioque)”, adding to the article on the Spirit and reaffirming Christ’s divinity again. Depending on how you translate that back to Greek, it could imply that the Spirit “comes out of” the Son or the Spirit’s coming “is caused” by the Son. The former view is problematic, and the latter is not so much. The Western Latin-speaking Church began to apply this change universally. Eventually, Rome adopted it in 1014. For the Eastern Greek-speaking Church, their position on this change is essentially ‘Hang on, you can’t just go changing the creed we all agreed on all willy-nilly.’ The addition of the word filioque is one of the reasons for the Great Schism in 1054, dividing the Church in the Latin-speaking West from the Greek-speaking East.

The Eastern Orthodox still to this day do not accept the Nicene Creed with the filioque as the ecumenical Nicene Creed, but as an innovation. Protestant churches, originating from reforming Roman Catholicism, received the creed with filioque. Since the dawn of ecumenicism some Protestant churches have recently come to the conclusion that filioque is doctrinally acceptable, but recognize it is not the standard adopted at the First Council of Constantinople in AD 381. This is largely part of an effort to revive ecumenical dialogue with the Eastern Orthodox churches. Some Protestant churches have been encouraging their congregations to remove the filioque in worship. While for some this change may be motivated by ecumenicism, and I do love unity in the Church, I agree more with the ideal that we should practice what we have received from tradition unaltered unless necessary, hence omitting filioque. This is essentially the position most Anglican churches take, including the ACNA, however, your mileage may vary from congregation to congregation as it is a recommendation.9

The Athanasian Creed

The Athanasian Creed is aptly named after the previously mentioned 4th-century Alexandrian bishop and defender of the faith, St. Athanasius. While there is little evidence the saint himself wrote the creed, it clearly reflects the orthodoxy he and the others of his time upheld in the face of Arianism. Interestingly, this is the only creed of the Ecumenical Creeds written originally in Latin and is not from a hereto known council. As such, it is not recognized by the Eastern Orthodox Church as binding though it is often found in their prayer books (minus filioque of course, which the Athanasian Creed also contains). In many ways, the Athansian Creed is the doctrine of the Council of Ephesus and Chalcedon (the Third and Fourth Ecumenical Councils) in creedal form.

The Chalcedonian Definition

While not a creed itself but rather a commentary on the creeds, which is why it gets the designation ‘definition’, the Chalcedon Definition is significant because it is a product of the Fourth Ecumenical Council at Chalcedon which reaffirmed the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed in its full form. Many Protestants consider this council to be the last of the truly ecumenical councils. Therefore, the teachings of this Council are particularly important for the entire Church today as their canons and definitions, and those of the three previous councils, define what is universally recognized Christian belief across Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestantism. As our present divisions would come about hundreds of years after this council, it is essentially the starting place for common doctrine and ecumenical conversations today. The Chalcedonian Definition itself is relatively short and explains in further detail the Nicene definition of Jesus Christ as “true God from true God.”

Why Chalcedon Is So Important

It is interesting that the Global Methodist Church has chosen the Chalcedonian Definition as part of its Foundational Documents. Commenting on the Transitional Book of Doctrines and Discipline of the Global Methodist Church, Rev. Walter Fenton says, “The Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds and the Definition of Chalcedon are printed so it is clear the Global Methodist Church is rooted in the classical confessions of Christian orthodoxy. Its members are to regularly affirm the faith that Christ followers have proclaimed down through [the] ages. With other Christian denominations[,] the Methodist movement traces its theological heritage all the way back to the New Testament.”10

In my estimation, this is an attempt by the authors of doctrine in the Global Methodist Church to rectify the glaring problem with many Methodist and Wesleyan churches: while apostolic Christianity was supremely important to John Wesley (what he called “primitive Christianity”), it has not always been so important in Methodism, especially in regards to official formularies. By identifying with the Chalcedonian Definition and the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, the GMC is essentially binding itself to the first four ecumenical councils and the Apostolic Faith they defended, which Methodism has historically only had a cursory connection to through its roots in Anglicanism, not a formulaic one in its doctrine and canons. This offers Methodists an opportunity to retrieve insights largely lost to them to answer questions like: ‘What faith have we received?’, ‘How does Wesley’s insistence on “primitive Christianity” shape our movement?’, and ‘Can we identify the faith of the Apostles and identify with it?’. Guardrails that should have always been in place are being reclaimed.

Apostolic Faith

What is so important to recognize about the ecumenical councils is that they were not defining new doctrine. They searched the Scriptures and the Apostolic Fathers for “primitive Christianity”. This is exactly what John Wesley did and exhorted Methodists to do. In fact, any attempt to create new doctrine is utter nonsense. The Christian faith does not change. If we aren’t receiving “the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 1:3), how can we have confidence the faith we are practicing is Christianity? How can we discern when wolves are in sheep’s clothing? The creeds, and the ecumenical councils, go a long way to assuring us our faith is the same faith received by the Apostles who walked, talked, and lived with Jesus. To borrow a definition from Rev. Ben Jefferies, an ecumenical council is “one that promulgates and defines the Faith of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church in such an orthodox manner that it is received by the universal church as bearing witness to the Faith that has been held from the beginning.”11 Creeds do not give us the Apostolic Faith, Scripture does that. Rather they keep us from making the same heretical mistakes all over again that have already been made. Lord willing, they aid us in running the same race as those who already have crossed the finish line and inhabit the Destination we are moving toward. May we all become better adherents to the Apostolic Faith.

“It’s so cool that we’re both going to be Asburians!” I told my wife as she opened her acceptance letter to Asbury University (AU) in the summer of 2022. I had been studying as a hybrid student at Asbury Theological Seminary (ATS), AU’s sister institution, for two years when we made the move to Wilmore last August. Little did I know what February of 2023 would be like.

The decision to move really wasn’t a decision at all. God had made it clear to us through prayerful discernment: I could keep seeking my Master of Divinity degree as a hybrid student and come out with a solid education, but that wasn’t all He had for me. With my clear call to ministry, studying in-person would give me the opportunity to be shaped in ways that would allow me to serve my future parishioners better, know Him deeper, and overall be a better minister. Don’t get me wrong, ATS’ hybrid program is a fantastic option for many to study, but when God calls, you answer, and He had called us very clearly in Estes Chapel on October 7, 2021. In town that week for a hybrid class, I found myself weeping at the altar in surrender to God knowing He was calling us to move to Wilmore. I didn’t understand how logistically any of it would work. But, as He does, things lined up perfectly for us to move and even for my wife to return to school at Asbury University right across the street too. So, we sold everything we could and packed the rest in a U-Haul and moved.

By the time we had moved to Wilmore, I already had an experience of God’s tangible presence in an Asbury chapel, so it wasn’t a surprise to me when my wife texted me on February 8th saying, “Apparently chapel is still going at the University.” She had been in chapel that morning but went to work after and heard from others something was happening. What I didn’t expect, however, was as soon as I received that text message a deep sense of longing filled my heart. I can’t explain it other than the Holy Spirit moving powerfully on me, but I knew I had to go to Hughes Auditorium, Asbury University’s chapel, right then and there when I received that message. So, I did.

I arrived to find what I can only describe as a sweet atmosphere encapsulated by the tangible presence of the Holy Spirit a little after 5 p.m. There were a few students on stage leading in worship, but it was oddly calm. By the time I had arrived many seminarians had begun making their way to Hughes, and the altars were busy. While people were praying at the altars, some prayed in their seats. Others were simply sitting or standing in awe, still others sang. It was like walking into the serenity of a monastery mixed with the awe-inspiring grandness of a cathedral.

I felt the initial pull to go to Hughes, but after I got there, I wasn’t sure why I was there. At some point after I arrived, the chapel speaker for that day, Zach Meerkreebs, grabbed a microphone and asked University students to find seminary students and go pray for them. A University student, who I would later in the week hear preach the Gospel clearly and faithfully, came over to me and asked what he could pray with me about. I awkwardly managed to ask for prayer for the semester, it was our first week over at the seminary. He prayed over me and we chatted a little afterwards, but my heart was increasingly unsettled. I knew there was something deeper I wanted prayer for, but I didn’t want to reveal any hurt I had. I was a seminary student after all – we were here to minister to the University students as God poured out on them, right?

I sat and began to seek God in prayer again, but before long I made eye contact with a fellow seminarian who was at the altars praying with the University students. I wondered if anyone had prayed with him when Zach had asked University students to pray for seminarians. Naively I thought that maybe he was so busy ministering to others that he needed prayer of his own! I got up from my seat and began making my way to him, intent on ministering to him, and he met me halfway in the side aisle. I asked him how he was handling everything, and he simply replied “I’m great, man.” Then, he asked me how I was and if I needed prayer for anything. My walls came tumbling down at his simple question.

Before my mind knew what my mouth was doing, I was pouring out my heart to him about the deep spirit of loneliness I had come under since moving to Wilmore and about relationship hurt I experienced that was keeping me locked in this spirit of loneliness. He listened attentively and then offered to pray for me, placing a hand on my shoulder. He prayed a simple prayer of release from loneliness, healing from hurt, and for the Spirit to renew me. When he finished and removed his hand from my shoulder, I felt a physical lifting of burdens from my body. The loneliness and hurt I had was gone as I felt the Holy Spirit wash His grace over me and pour out His love into my heart. The places in my heart that were previously occupied by loneliness and pain were replaced with supernatural peace and love. God truly healed me.

It was all I could do to stay standing and not weep. I reflected with my friend briefly before finding another seat. After I gathered myself, I just worshipped. There was nothing else I could do in response to what I was experiencing. I soon found that hours had passed and before I knew it, it was 10 p.m., but it felt like I had only been there an hour.

The next day we had a powerful morning chapel service at Asbury Seminary. We heard from a missionary to India, and in response to her testimony of full surrender I discerned God calling me to consecrate the filling I had received the previous evening. I knew that nothing short of full surrender was what He wanted – He wanted all of me. Letting the loneliness creep back in simply wouldn’t do. I found myself unable to do anything but hit the floor, fully submitting myself to the Triune God. I knew I’d never be the same.

The worship pattern of the Outpouring evolved over time, but the core elements stayed the same throughout: student-led worship, public Scripture reading, public testimony, and exhortations to repentance and holiness. On Saturday the 11th, we participated in Holy Communion; I would estimate nearly 2,000 were in attendance. What I saw in these acts of worship was a clear rejection by Gen Z of the seeker-sensitive evangelical church model. There were never stage lights, lyrics on the screen, or worship sets. This was no response to typical promises of free food, popular worship bands, or celebrity preachers (rather, those were turned away). Nothing was “hip” or “cool” about what I was witnessing and participating in. While people got excited at points, it was never hyper-charisma or fueled by emotionalism. I truly think what happened at Asbury is clear evidence the younger generation is tired of the Church trying to impress them. They just want to know and worship God for who He really is, not for what the Church has been trying to portray Him as. And they are right, to give them less than the full Gospel is a disservice. Young adults don’t need an easy Jesus. They need the real Jesus: the one who heals the brokenhearted, delivers the addicted, and saves the sinner. If the Jesus we are giving to young people doesn’t do that, He isn’t worth having.

In the following days I found myself returning to Hughes instead of home after class and work. While I had no routine established yet as it was just the first week of the semester, it felt like this was exactly what I was supposed to be doing. I took a book with me and got some reading done, I worshipped, prayed alone, worked on assignments, prayed with others, and even took a nap at one point. It is hard to pin words but going to Hughes simply felt like the right thing to do every day. I still went to work and school, but afterwards there was simply nowhere else I’d rather be but in the presence of God.

I believe God was reminding me (and the world) something important through that tangible presence that I was so drawn to in Hughes Auditorium. This is how it is supposed to be every day. Instead of us attempting to fill up our free time with things that are other, He wants us to abide in Him. He wants me. He wants all our undivided attention. It wasn’t about Hughes Auditorium, because God is omnipresent, He is everywhere; it was about Him calling us to abide in His presence constantly. There is no substitute. A call to full surrender to God is of course not only contained in one’s heart: it naturally extends to participating in the Body of Christ, meeting Christ in the sacraments, and serving the poor. While God cares about us individually and wants us, full surrender is actually antithetical to self; it is always about glorifying God and loving others. This is what John Wesley meant in that famous and oft-misquoted phrase about “no holiness but social holiness.”1

There is a truth we too often avoid in the name of comfort. We constantly have distractions vying for our attention, calling us away from practicing the presence of God. Distractions such as social media plague our culture as we attempt to fill every second with something “meaningful.” Yet, as we fill every moment with endless entertainment, we are denying ourselves the One from whom true meaning flows. We are also denying ourselves the means of grace through which full participation in the life of the Church entails. Finally, we are denying ourselves the healing power of serving others. This is what the tangible presence of the Holy Spirit poured out in one place like Wilmore reminds us of – that He is actually accessible at all times in all places, and He wants us to abide in the breadth of His presence and mission.

One of the things about the atmosphere in Wilmore is there was a desperation for God. Most people – students, faculty, and visitors – weren’t simply settling for feel-good mega-church style faith. They were desperate for God. People weren’t afraid to ask the hard questions like the Psalmists did. “Why God? Won’t you do this? Why is this happening? Have you forsaken me?” Those burdens were brought openly to the altars.

As the events at Asbury turned the page into a new week, I found myself desiring to serve the influx of people and so I volunteered for the prayer team. As with what I experienced in the first few days, it is also hard to pin words to what the remaining days were like. Trying to write about half of what I saw on the prayer team would take a novel. There was a prayer training session I undertook and somehow, after what I was told was a weekend training packed into a little over an hour, I felt supernaturally equipped to minister. I had experience doing altar ministry before, but it always was something I was anxious about. Yet, I never once experienced anxiety praying with others at the Outpouring and haven’t since. I can only credit this sudden change to the Holy Spirit.

Throughout the next days I prayed with people stricken with cancer, parents travailing in prayer for their prodigal children, and numerous pastors desperate for their churches and communities. I heard confessions of every sort of sin and wept with people experiencing deep brokenness. I prayed with young and old, every ethnicity, including a group from Brazil, and people from all walks of life. I joyfully prayed with a man who made a first-time commitment to Christ and connected him to our follow-up team (yes, that existed). Reflecting on it today, I feel like I did a decade of ministry in the course of a few days. It was exhausting, but I would immediately do it all over again.

While I spent a lot of time praying in the overflow chapels at the Seminary where the attendees skewed older, I also spent a lot of time praying in Hughes as well, which skewed younger thanks to the 25 and under reserved seating. Among nearly all age groups, however, there was a theme of three main struggles people were seeking prayer for: deliverance from anxiety, depression, and pornography. These three issues came up in probably at least half of the prayers I prayed with people. I can’t stress enough that these three burdens have such a stronghold over our society. Yet, people have a longing for freedom! They know that it ought not be like this. People need to know there is freedom in Christ, that His yoke is easy and His burden light! This is why we can’t keep giving people a feel-good Gospel. They end up with an absent Father, a halfway ticket-punching Savior, and a powerless Spirit. This isn’t the God we serve. This isn’t the God I saw at work in Wilmore. I saw contrition, repentance, renewal, healing, and deliverance in abundance. That can only come from the Triune God: a present Father who knows you intimately; His Son the Savior of the World who died for you, still intercedes for, and is coming back for you; and a powerful Holy Spirit who woos you, convicts you, dwells in you, and sanctifies you holy.

Now that some time has passed, I have had a chance to seriously reflect on what happened and what I saw. As it was happening, there was a significant temptation to add my voice to the plethora of voices online discussing the event. I am glad I did not. This piece, even, is not an attempt to add another “hot take,” respond to common criticisms, offer a theological deep dive, or defend what happened. I simply want to testify and share about what God has done. I pray it is received as such. In summary, I simply want to convey that I was profoundly changed, and I prayed with hundreds of others who experienced profound change as well.

I also pray this was not a one-off event. I pray the Spirit continues to pour Himself out into new wineskins all over the world and the Church follows His lead faithfully. I believe He will, I have already seen and heard evidence of it across the world. But ultimately it is up to us. God is always at work doing the exact same things he was and is doing in the little town of Wilmore, KY. This is the God we serve. He heals, delivers, and saves. That’s the norm for Him. It’s in His nature. Are you desperate for Him? Will you surrender to Him, fully surrender?