John Wesley’s heart was to be a man of one book, the Bible. The 1996 edition of The Book of Discipline of the United Methodist Church explains,
“"Wesley believed
that the living core of the Christian faith was revealed in scripture,
illumined by tradition, vivified in personal experience and confirmed by
reason."
The authority
of Scripture is very much under attack these days. People of the Church are knocking it around
like a Ping Pong ball. How it will all play
out in the long haul, I’m not qualified to answer. I do know that my heart resonates with Mr.
Wesley’s. I believe in tradition and
personal experience and reason, but I also believe “the 66 books of the Old and
New Testaments, given by divine inspiration, inerrantly revealing the will of
God concerning us in all things necessary to our salvation, so that whatever is
not contained therein is not to be enjoined as a article of faith” (Article IV
of the XVI articles of Faith in the Church of the Nazarene).
In his book, Simply Christian, N. T. Wright says,
“The Bible is nonnegotiable” (173). I
think he is correct, and I also think there is a lot Biblical negotiation going
on in this, so called, post-modern world.
Jude said “Beloved, while I was making every effort to write you
about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that
you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the
saints” (vs. 3). His
reason for this appeal was based on the fact that “certain
persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for
this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into
licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ” (vs. 4).
I suppose the ball is in our court now.
How is the contend[ing] earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down
to the saints, going down in our culture and around the world these
days? I fear we have a negotiated Bible
now, and that it is being used to defend worldviews rather than shape
them. It seems we need the Bible to say
what we need it to say and once it says what we need it to say we, in turn, add
to it, “Thus says the Lord.”
At any rate, and whatever the true condition might be in these early
days of the twenty-first century, I invite you to hear the words of a Christlike
man I admire. John Wesley wrote,
To candid, reasonable men, I am not afraid to
lay open what have been the inmost thoughts of my heart. I have thought, I am a
creature of a day, passing through life as an arrow through the air. I am a
spirit come from God, and returning to God: Just hovering over the great gulf;
till, a few moments hence, I am no more seen; I drop into an unchangeable
eternity! I want to know one thing, — the way to heaven; how to land safe on
that happy shore.
God himself has condescended to teach the
way: For this very end he came from heaven. He hath written it down in a book.
O give me that book! At any price, give me the book of God! I have it: Here is
knowledge enough for me. Let me be homo unius libri.
Here then I am, far from the busy ways of
men. I sit down alone: Only God is here. In his presence I open, I read his
book; for this end, to find the way to heaven. Is there a doubt concerning the
meaning of what I read? Does anything appear dark or intricate? I lift up my
heart to the Father of Lights: — “Lord, is it not thy word, ‘If any man lack
wisdom, let him ask of God?’ Thou ‘givest liberally, and upbraidest not.’ Thou
hast said; ‘If any be willing to do thy will, he shall know.’ I am willing to
do, let me know, thy will.” I then search after and consider parallel passages
of Scripture, “comparing spiritual things with spiritual.” I meditate thereon
with all the attention and earnestness of which my mind is capable. If any
doubt still remains, I consult those who are experienced in the things of God;
and then the writings whereby, being dead, they yet speak. And what I thus
learn, that I teach.
