Wesleyan Way

The Absolute Basics of the Wesleyan Way

on September 30, 2020

Too many Methodists don’t understand the basics of their own tradition. Offering a remedy are Justus Hunter and Philip Tallon, with their new primer, The Absolute Basics of the Wesleyan Way, soon to be published by Seedbed. Hunter teaches at United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio. Tallon teaches at Houston Baptist University. Both are United Methodists and important young thinkers. Their work and this new book are encouraging. Enjoy our talk!

Tooley: Hello this is Mark Tooley, president of the Institute on Religion and Democracy here in Washington DC, and delightfully today interviewing two fellow Methodists about their new book on The Absolute Basics of the Wesleyan Way, if I’m recalling the title correctly, soon to be published by Seedbed. One author is Justice Hunter at United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio. The other author is Philip Tallon at the Houston Baptist University in Houston, obviously where despite its name a fairly unite, apparently United Methodist faculty are not only permitted but encouraged. So, we’re grateful for his Wesleyan witness there in Houston. I could elaborate on their biographies a little bit but they know themselves better than I do. So, Justice, tell us just a sentence or two more about who you are.

Hunter: Sure, I’m Assistant Professor of Church History at United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio, and I’m a scholar mostly of medieval scholasticism, interested in scholasticism writ large and United Methodist lay person, which is why we wrote the book. Tooley: And Philip? Tallon: Yeah, I’m an Assistant Professor of Theology at Houston Baptist, and we like scholasticism as well. I mean, so we already figured out how many angels can dance on the head of a pen but we know that they shouldn’t because dancing is a sin. So, and I’m the Interim Dean in the School of Christian Thought and I do a couple of other things here. We have a fine undergraduate Great Books program here in the honors college that I’m always very proud to promote to people who are looking for sending their young people to a place that values the classics and wants to lead them through the great books and allows them to pursue any major they want nursing, engineering, all sorts of things.

Tooley: Excellent and near as I can tell, your new book The Absolute Basics of the Wesleyan Way is basically a primer to introduce Methodists to their own tradition, the challenge being that many Methodists know very little about what it actually means to be a Methodist. Justice, is that correct?

Hunter: Yeah, that’s been my experience. That’s certainly been my experience. We wanted to write the book in a way that would sort of assume that, you know, you might grow up around Methodism, you might be a United Methodist or a Wesleyan of another sort, grow up in a church that is theoretically Methodist, but you would basically be exposed maybe like Phil and I were to bits and pieces of distinctively Wesleyan tradition and then bits and pieces of this, that, and the other. And depending on sort of the concoction of things you were exposed to, you may not really know how the whole Methodist and Wesleyan thing fits together. We wanted to write a book that helped people kind of piece together all those bits and pieces and understand what it means to be a part of this heritage that is, that is the Wesleyan tradition, and what our doctrinal and practical distinctives are so they feel proud about it and also a sense of ownership going forward.

Tooley: And Philip, if you had to summarize to someone with no background in Methodism, “What does it mean to be a Methodist?”

Tallon: Well, that’s a great question. I think that the way that, what Wesley shows us is that Methodists are serious about the forms of religion, which is to say they value practices, you know, take acts of piety very seriously. We’re not afraid of things associated with religion, right, with liturgy, with structure, with strong suggestions for “these are the things that we should do.” So, we’re willing to sort of be in danger at times of being accused of being legalistic because we see that there are just certain things that are just true- that if you do these things they’re much better for you, but we’re not legalists because we think that there’s this essential ingredient, which is the power of God, without which none of this makes any sense. And so, if Wesley shows us, right, that no matter how hard you, how many of these things you do unless you have the grace of God working within you none of it will ever give you the peace and the assurance, the joy, and the life that God has for you. And so, what Methodists really want is to kind of hold these two things together, and that’s why we occupy I think a sort of a unique place amongst the family of denominations as we’re a little bit high but not too high. We’re, you know, we like big tent revivals and repentance, but we also want to organize people into groups, into churches, societies, learning, you know, and teach them about liturgy as well.

Tooley: And Justice, obviously the trend in AmericanChristianity is towards non-denominational. If you were speaking to a non denominational Christian or Evangelical who says, “Why does it matter whether or not I adhere to a particular tradition?”, what would you say?

Hunter: Yeah, that’s a great question. I think there’s a, there is the sense in which, you know, you sort of can thin out Christianity to sort its basic bones, and let’s just sort of get along on this sort of very thin gruel, but I think that actually the time is done for that sort of thing, okay. What we need are traditions that are thick and substantive. And one of my favorite Methodist theologians, as you know Mark, is William Burt Pope. And William Pope says very clearly, you know, yes there is sort of a general broad set of doctrines we share, “a thin gruel,” as it were. Although, the gruel is quite, quite substantive, you know.It’s the trinity, it’s the hypostatic union, but what we need actually in order to practice a faith is a set of particular teachings about, you know, the way of salvation, about what grace looks like, and how it gets enacted into life. We need a thick set of particular doctrines, not that, not to diminish or take away from that sort of foundational substance we share with all other Christians, but which inform us on how we should live our Christian life in the day, in the day-out practices of prayer, of repentance, and of sort of personal piety. And I think that is really what we’re trying to push here in the book, is that what we want is a very thick account of what it means to be a Wesleyan, and that’s what’s really going to kind of deliver the goods going forward. As we see, of course as you know Mark, non-denominational Christianity had a burst, but it’s starting to decline as well, just like a lot of mainline traditions at this point. So, we want to kind of rebuild the foundation of the Wesleyan tradition and reorient it around his particular documents and practices.

Tooley: And Philip, if you’re walking across the campus of HBU and someone comes up to you and says, “I am a CalvinistBaptist. I reject infant baptism. I affirm predestination.” What do you say as a Methodist?

Tallon: Well, of course as a Methodist, I believe in predestination because it’s a biblical concept. The well, you know, someone who says it like that, I mean I’m not sure that there’s, you know, a good place to start. But if it’s about defending the distinctives obviously, you know, Wesley’stheology is Anglican in that regard, which is to say he’s, you know, we ourselves are situated within the Anglican tradition. And Wesley is clearly, you know, within Anglicanism defends an Armenian account of, broadly speaking, of how you defend that. And so, if I sort of, if I take your question to be something about like, kind of how to sort of, Methodist defend this sort of their distinct heritage, then I, you know, I think that there are plenty of good, sort of there’s a good scriptural case to be made for an Armenian account of salvation, you know, libertarian free will and so forth. So, the best place to go when you’re having a serious theological dispute of course is always the Bible, right. So, we go to Romans 9-11 and we say, “Let’s look at a different way of reading this than perhaps the way you’ve been taught.”

Hunter: Yeah, this is one thing that our book, we try to kind of do, I think is it’s not too explicit about this, but actually a heavy Reformation emphasis on the activity of God and grace in election, of election, actually fits nicely and this has always been the English imposition. And therefore, the Methodist position fits nicely with the doctrine with the view of infant baptism. Actually, in fact, God chooses you and your confession of faith, although important later in life in order to make your way along the way of salvation, there’s an affirmation that Methodists can make that grace is sort of operative in your life and that you are gifted with the opportunity to participate in it. And so, I’ve sometimes said, you know, to friends that you know one of the really interesting things about the Wesleyan tradition is that it’s a tradition that insists that both you must be, you should be baptized as an infant, your parents should make your confession of faith for you ideally, and then also you should be prayed through at an altar, you know, in kind of the holiness for this revivalist tradition as well. And I don’t really know of any other tradition that has that type of combination of things, but it all has to be grounded in a rich doctrine of operative divine grace and the grace of God, which initiates the pathway for our salvation. So, I think they sort of fit together actually in my mind.

Tooley: And the typical Methodist in America, whether they’re United Methodist or whether they belong to one of the smaller more evangelical Wesleyan denominations, what is their typical knowledge gap in terms of what it means to be a Methodist?

Hunter: What do you think, Phil?

Tallon: Well, you know, of course I’m not primarily concerned with how exactly United Methodists are doing. I think of course what we’re trying to do in this text is provide a resource that can be used by Methodists, but, you know, other people from other parts of the Wesleyan movement in some sense. You know,Wesley led a great revival tradition that sort of stooped to become a denomination here in the in the US and so, this is a much bigger heritage than our denomination. But within the United Methodist Church, where I spent most of my life, certainly the average layperson has a fairly low understanding of the prescribed things that you’re intended to learn and as laid out in the book of discipline, right. So, the discipline says you should learn United Methodist doctrine and Methodist history and United Methodist polity as the three parts of confirmation. And I think we do very little to educate people in polity, and also very little in the distinctives of our denomination’s theology. We do very little just in general theology as well. So, I think most, the average layperson, if you press them to just, “Can you just talk to me about what it means that Jesus is fully God and fully human?” wouldn’t get very far without falling into heresy or silence. And so, our, we live in an age where we have high levels of awareness of many, many things but very little ability to explain and articulate, you know, kind of core concepts of our faith or almost anything else. I mean, I sort of like, you know, I can use all this technology, right, but if I was transported back a thousand years and attempted to try and teach people about modern science and modern technology I couldn’t get very far, right. I mean, just like well you pressed a button and the thing sort of just works and there’s some power that flows through it. I don’t really deeply understand the most of the things that I use, my car, my computer, and I think most people are like this. They have a kind of an operational sense of church life but very little of a deep understanding, but that’s something that Christians traditionally have been instructed in and expected to know.

Hunter: Yeah, I think it’s a confluence of thing in sense of that perhaps there was a time we could sort of default and assume that sort of culture or basic Christian preaching would deliver this content. Maybe you’re seeing a lot of Charles Wesley, him, so you have kind of a robust trinitarian sensibility, but that’s sort of, that’s sort of gone. And so, the foundation that’s, I think, that’s it before he needs a little bit of care is my experience as well. Now, I do think there are some traditions in the Wesleyan family who’ve done a little better job. I was raised and I guess you would say catechized in the pre-Methodist Church, and there certainly been a sense of, sort of doctrinal distinctive but also especially a sense of emphasis on the activity of the holy spirit and making a life holy and pure. I actually think that actually there’s something in the Wesleyan tradition about this orientation toward, for Wesley, you know. As I said, grand deposit of Methodism was entire sanctification. You sort of fix in your constellation this point and it provokes a lot of questions about the God and whose likeness you’re being transformed and so forth, which are fertile soil to understand these things. But I think in, regrettably in United Methodism, you know, outside of the holiness realm that’s kind of been let go in a way for the most part such that you sort of are left in this very kind of compromise, drop doctrinal and theological position where, you know, the last thing you want to do is step on anyone’s toes, so just sort of sit back and be non-committal and hear everything, everyone out. That’s pretty much the recipe for disaster when it comes to catechesis and formation.

Tooley: Perhaps the greatest knowledge gaps among America’s Methodists, not just knowledge but experience, would be on these topics of holiness and entire sanctification. How would you explain those concepts to a novice?

Hunter: Are they from novices? I mean, the Wesleyan tradition hasn’t had a debate about this, you know, whether or not it’s sort of an experience which one should expect in the present here and now, which certainly seems to be Wesley’s heavy emphasis in a sermon like the scriptural way of salvation, which we made a kind of key point, a pivot, around. This book kind of pivots around that sermon in important ways but, you know, I think that, I think that Wesley’s own book on a plain account of Christian perfection, and I talked about this as we were kind of preparing, we ended up adding a whole chapter for our book The Absolute Basics of the Western Way on the doctrine of entire sanctification. So, we divide, devote a whole chapter to this topic, which I think is kind of a distinctive feature of the book, because we felt like we wanted to give the doctrine clear articulation to answer some questions and give us some objectives, which is exactly what Wesley does in the Plan of Christian Perfection. Phil, do you want to say anything about this, kind of the key objections you encounter?

Tallon: Well, the yeah, I think when you speak to a novice about it, and obviously there are some basic terminologies to talk about, and, you know, justification, new birth, the power of sin being thrown in us, and entire vacations from being a presence of sin being removed by divine grace. One of the ways we talk about it in the book is almost in more positive terms instead of letting, as it were, sanctification be about, just about sin removal. We talk about how sanctification is this sort of level of absorbing divine grace so that you’re, you know, at peace with God and at rest with God, right. And so, perhaps it’s a more sort of Augustinian, you know, “our hearts are restless until they find their rest,” in these, this experience of satisfaction with God such that we don’t look to anything else for our, for our needs.To compare it to a really good, right, have this really good meal and you’re satisfied with that.

Hunter: Yeah, that is a key image we use that sort of, you know, you have a beautiful meal and it’s not that it’s not that you’re sort of- you ever have these meals where you’re like sort of the food is so good but then there’s more, there’s too much of it? You know, you just want more and more and so you get all out of balance. It’s like the perfect meal, but also it sort of gives you the perfect proportion so that at the end of it, you’re perfectly satisfied in the sense of rest. And that’s exactly what the human, the human, the soul, and the will is. It desires to rest in God. And when God is given to it, it has that kind of perfect satiation, you know. I think that’s the positive picture we wanted to deal with. Of course, we also wanted to kind of answer, you know, what is, what is it that we are perfected in, what is that we leave behind? Will we no longer, we no longer willfully violate the known law of God? We kind of unpack, I think, a little bit about what that means. So, it’s not like you- you’ll still have toothaches. You know, Mark, you’ll still have eye problems potentially. You know, if you have, if you have an injury or something, that’s still going to happen to you. And you’ll also be, it might just make mistakes, you know. So, those are not what we’re talking about, but in terms of your heart being purified because it has been given such a gift of grace and been received so that you’re satisfied and that rest and inner peace will characterize all your actions, that’s what the doctrine should be.

Tooley: And then finally, and this topic is likely outside parameters of your book, but there is, and the two of you are part of it, a renaissance of Methodist Wesleyan scholarship. And it’s often, perhaps unfairly, said that Methodists and Wesleyan are not where some of the other Protestant traditions are intellectually and in terms of scholarship. But are the Methodists potentially catching up in the areas of intellectual life, or do we even have that capacity given our history is more focused on the action than on thought, perhaps.

Hunter: I’d like to hear Phil’s thought on this actually. I’ll share mine, too, but I’d like to see what Phil has to say.

Tallon: Well, I think there are, I think there are certainly promising signs. You know, there’s, there are kind of movements and kind of gatherings of people who are doing really valuable work. Certainly, there’s in Biblical scholarship, you know, some of the work and new perspective and so forth is very consonant with, you know, Wesleyan theology. And so, some of the most exciting work that’s, you know, that’s being done in terms of the Biblical scholarship can, you know, fits very well with the Wesleyan view. I’m not, I don’t have any strong sense, though, that we’re on the sort of cusp of a Wesleyan renaissance. I mean, I think in that’s partly because, you know, I think that in many ways when we really see people who are kind of influenced by Wesley and moved by Wesley sort of going out and doing sort of broader work, really doing work that would be the kind of, you know, sort of grand theological work in some ways, it won’t necessarily be recognizable as being distinctively Wesleyan. And currently because so much of Wesleyan, work on Wesley has been kind of, you know, focused on sort of the person himself and the sort of the recent movement. And so, but I do see a lot of Wesleyan scholars kind of going out and doing, you know, exciting work all over the place. Definitely people like Tom McCall, you know, and his philosophical work is incredibly exciting and wonderful to see in the area of analytic theology. And then we see, you know, Billy Abraham going to Baylor, starting up a Wesleyan study center, that’s certainly very exciting. So, there’s some things to be excited about. Who knows if it’s going to be a movement in any significant way?

Hunter: Yeah, I think that’s right. I mean, I think that there’s a, there’s a hope. I mean, there are a lot of us sort of committed to taking seriously the tradition we’ve received and trying to figure out how to get the mechanics of that thing working. There are, I would say that there are, more promising signs on the horizon than maybe there were at some point a generation or so ago probably. You know, I mean maybe this is self-interested, but I like to think that the kind of efforts of the John Wesley Fellows and Foundation for Theological Education has been fruitful. And so far as I mean, I don’t know that the foundation, I’m a John Wesley Fellowship, so, I don’t know the foundation achieved its goal of sort of revolutionizing all the seminaries in the United Methodist Church. Well, it was quite successful in supporting and launching a number of people who would be sort of committed to orthodox account of Wesleyan tradition in a robust and straightforward way, and I think we’re seeing to prove that in certainly my generation of scholars what will come of that. I mean, we’re in delicate times, Mark, as you know. We have to, we’re going to rely on our leaders and there’s the generations above us to kind of foster and make space for us to cultivate a culture that would be theologically enlivening. And so much will matter about the decisions made, about how the future of theological formation and education in the future, I’m not really sure what the answer is to that, but we definitely have significant need for support of this sort of nucleus of young scholars I think that are starting to kind of percolate and move into their own voice in the academy, in the church.

Tallon: Yeah, it’s sort of a good question as to whether, to what degree, you can have a, you know, genuine real theological revival unless there’s ecclesial revival. I, you know, it does seem like there are theologians who have done, you know, incredible work in the midst of a church that’s failing in some sense. But the, it’s very I mean, I can imagine it’s very possible within the United States, of course. It’s the context in which we’re working. There’s the best, you know, Wesleyan movement globally, but that, you know, if there is sort of significant kind of church revival and an excitement within the church, not just sort of given to sort of squabbling or just constantly having kind of like fight back and forth that we could, we could see a real sort of shift and perhaps kind of a new characteristic to Wesleyan theology. So, who knows what the next stage is for the United Methodist church, but that may in fact, you know, change things?

Hunter: I do have one thought on this, I’ll try to shoot quickly. I’ve written about this a couple different places, and I think in some future pieces we’ll talk about this. I think Tom Oden is actually the person to look to. The IRD will be interested for me to say this, of course. Because I think Oden saw that in traditions who had sort of crumbled in their foundations, when a theologian asked what they should do, what tasks they put upon themselves, going back to sort of the spirit and heart of early Christian biblical interpretation doctrine in life is always a good recipe for that, you know. So, and I think that’s exactly what a lot of us have done. What I’ve tried, certainly tried, to commit myself to and continue to commit myself to. I found a lot of energy amongst our clergy and students about this, that sort of going back and taking a deep investment in the early Christian tradition will actually kind of give you this sort of critical edge and renewal that you’re oriented to. That’s what the Oxford Movement did. That’s in some ways what Wesley did. You know, maybe sort of similar parallel to that amidst a sort of decaying church. And so, you know, soldier on, Oden followers, I think is my message there.

Tooley: On that reference to our favorite saint Tom Oden, who served on the board of IRD for many years, thank you, Justice Hunter and Philip Tallon for a very good conversation on your new impending book The Absolute Basics of the Wesleyan Way.

Tallon: Thanks, available for pre-order now from seedbed.com.

Tooley: Absolutely.

  1. Comment by Dan on October 1, 2020 at 4:11 pm

    “Armenian?!” Isn’t that an ethnicity. Don’t you mean Arminian?

  2. Comment by Search4Truth on October 30, 2020 at 2:43 pm

    Sort of lost me with “dancing is sinful.” Wasn’t Michael severely castigated when she condemned David for dancing before God? Please gents, read your bible before asking us to accept you as experts.

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