What
Wesleyans Believe about the Bible
In
the spring many of my students head to interviews with their denominational ordination
board or committee. To help these 22 year olds sort out what the Wesleyan
church believes about these things our faculty started a series of
“expositions” of my denomination’s positions—explaining what they mean going line
by line. These are not statements themselves, but explanations—after all, we’re
teachers and make our living explaining things.
The previous one I posted is What Wesleyans believe about sanctification. This one is
about the Bible. The bold print are words directly from The Wesleyan Church’s Articles of Religion, the regular type
is our attempt to explain these phrases as best we can.
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What Wesleyans Believe about the Bible 5. The Sufficiency and Full Authority of the Holy Scriptures for
Salvation a. We believe that the books of
the Old and New Testaments constitute the Holy Scriptures. Wesleyans do not take their cues
from the Quran or the Book of Mormon, nor do we
limit God's word to the Jewish Scriptures, which we call the Old
Testament. We believe that God has set aside the books listed at the
end of article 218 as the Holy Scriptures, the list that Protestants
widely consider to be the "canon"—the "measuring rod" against
which we must measure ourselves. We include the book of James even
though Luther criticized it. We include Hebrews and Revelation even
though it took a while for "all Christians in all places" to come
to agreement on them. We include the Pastoral Epistles and 2 Peter despite
ancient and modern debates over them. At the same time, we exclude other
books from the early centuries like the Shepherd of Hermas
and 1 Clement. It is not that these were not good books—we can
learn much from them—but they were not authoritative Scripture.
Similarly, we can no doubt gain from reading books we omit from the Old
Testament like the Apocrypha. Roman Catholics, the Orthodox, and other
early Protestants leave them in. But we Wesleyans accept as authoritative Scripture
only those books that are in evangelical translations like the NIV, NLT, or
ESV. b. They are the inspired and
infallibly written Word of God… Wesleyans believe
the Bible is inspired. We do not believe
these books were the mere opinions of people in the first century or ancient And we believe the
way they wrote it was infallible: every word accomplished and accomplishes what God ordains it
to do (Isaiah 55:11). God's word cannot fail in its purpose.
Indeed, we believe that the words of the biblical authors held an authority
they may not even have realized, as when Paul distinguished what he thought
was his opinion from what the Lord had said (1 Corinthians 7:12). God
had purposes for Paul's words of which Paul himself was not even aware. c. … fully inerrant in their
original manuscripts and superior to all human authority, Wesleyans not only
believe that God inspired and breathed the words of Scripture.
We not only believe that it is infallible and accomplishes everything
it sets out to do. We also believe that when it sets out to affirm a
truth, it is inerrant in what it
affirms. Some Wesleyans take these affirmations very narrowly, so might even go
to great lengths to show that the earth has four "corners"—bumps
where the globe is out of round (as in Revelation 7:1). Others think God revealed the truths of the
Bible more in the categories of its original audiences, so that we are
liable to misunderstand it if we try to force
modern categories of science, psychology, or economics on it. But we all
strongly believe that the affirmations of Scripture are the affirmations of
God, which trump any preacher or supposed human authority that might contradict it. We speak here of original
manuscripts because
we do not assign inerrancy to a particular version or translation of the
Bible. We refuse to diminish the gospel by arguing over which
translation of the Bible to use. We do not have the original manuscripts,
the original papyri on which Paul or James wrote. But we refuse to get
contentious over those few places where ancient manuscripts might vary from
one another. d. … and have been transmitted to
the present without corruption of any essential doctrine. We may not have the original
manuscripts of the Bible, but we have no doubts
about the faithful transmission of the
Bible through the years. You can confidently root your faith and
practice in the Bible as we have it today. At the same time, we do not rest
any important practice or doctrine on such a narrow basis as a single
biblical text. So we need not fret over a practice like snake handling,
which rests on a single verse in a contested text (cf. Mark e. We believe that they contain
all things necessary to salvation; so that whatever is not read therein, nor
may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man or woman that it
should be believed as an article of faith, or be thought requisite or
necessary to salvation. A person does not need a handbook
to the Bible, a Manual or denominational Discipline to figure
out how to be saved. It is all right there in the Bible for the Holy
Spirit to show you. We believe the Bible has in it all things necessary to
salvation. We believe no church can require
as an article of faith something that the Holy Spirit has not revealed
in the Bible. Certainly, God has worked through the ages to make the
full implications of Scripture clear to the church, such as in the doctrine
of the Trinity. But God sowed the seeds of these common beliefs in
the Scriptures, and the Holy Spirit unfolded these beliefs as the church
meditated on the meaning of Scripture. Some of our church rules and
preferences are not necessary to salvation, despite the fact that we
require them of our members. Our membership commitments are the way we
apply the values of the Bible to living a holy life in our own generation,
and these values work out differently as society changes. But we need
believe no other doctrine or follow any other practices than what God has
revealed in Scripture in order to be saved. Although we sometimes require our
members to live in ways that are beyond the explicit teachings of the
Bible (e.g., not holding slaves, abstaining from alcohol), we believe these
are not requirements for salvation. Of course the task of determining
what the Bible affirms is not just an individual task, as if the import of
the Bible is a matter of personal opinion. It is a path that we as the
church have trod for two millennia and that we continue to tread. The
Wesleyan Articles of Religion are an embodiment of our core conclusions as
Wesleyans. f. Both in the Old and New
Testaments life is offered ultimately through
Christ, who is the only Mediator between God and humanity. Wesleyans do not believe people in
the Old Testament were saved by works, while we are now saved by faith. We
believe that all people in all times have been saved in the same way—through
Christ. Even the priests and sacrifices of the Old Testament looked
forward to the only Mediator between God and humanity: Christ.
Adam, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph and Moses were saved by Christ just
as we are today. g. The New Testament teaches
Christians how to fulfill the moral principles of the Old Testament, calling
for loving obedience to God made possible by the indwelling presence of His
Holy Spirit. Wesleyans believe that the New
Testament shows us the moral principles of the Old Testament, which
Jesus and the New Testament summarize as the love of God and others.
God demands from us a life of loving obedience that is made possible by
the indwelling presence of His Holy Spirit. Distinctive of our fellowship
is the strong belief that God does not demand of us what He does not equip us
to do. God not only commands loving obedience of us.
Wesleyans believe He
empowers us to do it. To Wesleyans the Bible shows us
what God is like, and Christ shows us how to live. Wesleyans do not argue
much about statements of faith or doctrinal matters because we are especially
interested in loving obedience to God that issues in holy living.
Wesleyans offer their hand in fellowship to all kinds of people who love
God and love others, for we believe the Bible was given to us to teach
sound doctrine and to inspire sound, holy living which only the indwelling
presence of His Holy Spirit can make possible. h. The canonical books of the Old Testament
are: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth,
1 Samuel, 2 Samuel, 1 Kings, 2 Kings, 1 Chronicles, 2 Chronicles, Ezra,
Nehemiah, Esther, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, The Song of Solomon,
Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah,
Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi. The canonical books of the New
Testament are: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2
Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 1 Thessalonians,
2 Thessalonians, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon, Hebrews, James, 1
Peter, 2 Peter, 1 John, 2 John, 3 John, Jude and Revelation. Wesleyans list here
the canonical books of the Old and New Testaments, the books that are the
measuring rod of our faith, the Holy Scriptures, the God-ordained sacrament
of revelation. SIGNED, The Indiana
Wesleyan University Religion faculty. Spring, 2008 |
So what do you think? How does YOUR denomination’s position differ from this? How does YOUR own doctrine differ—how would
you write your own personal statement on the Bible? And, if you ARE a Wesleyan,
what would you drop or add or change in this statement?
During
the first few weeks, click here to comment or
read comments
Keith Drury April 20, 2010