The Pietists, the Methodists and Our Beloved Stage 4 Faith

I've mentioned a few times before that I'm a fan of university courses on tape, mostly theology or church history (church drone that I am), but branching out to (as at present) great American lit or political history or whatever.

All to say, among the courses I'm listening to at the moment is one called The Lives of Great Christians.  (If you're the sort of person who'd purchase such a thing, note that this company puts all of its courses on sale several times a year, where the price of a given course goes down by, like, 80%.  That's how I've bought each of the courses from these folks I've listened to.)  It's super-fun. 

I'm currently listening to a lecture on the Wesleys, following one on Luther.  And I'm struck by Prof. Cook's description of the intervening century.  He talks about how the Reformation was against creeds and liturgy and formalism.  But such things still crept quickly into the new churches that got started.  It wasn't long before the Anglicans had the 39 Articles. 

The response to that was, initially, the German Pietists and then, in their wake, the Methodists.  The big insight of the Pietists, according to Prof. Cook, was that the bottom line of biblical faith was love, not credal conformity.  "The greatest (virtue) is love."  "God is love."  And so on.  And so the fruits of love were what they were committed to engendering.

The Methodists, with their love of the Bible, reframed this value to: "methodical" study of the Bible that leads to love. 

It strikes me that this has much to say to those of us in the waning days of modernist evangelicalism, with its great love of study of the Bible but its equally great love of believing the right things.  I can't help but see a good deal of the Methodist commitment in what we talk about here--biblical faith that leads to actual love, as if that's how we can tell it's biblical faith.  I see echoes of that in our conversation about Love is an Orientation.  And I think this historic commitment meets a yearning in a lot of folks I meet, in churches and outside of them.  "if faith leads to actual, greater love, I'm in!  If it leads to narrow, boundary-drawing 'orthodoxy,' I'm not interested." 

So earlier this summer Mark P-H pushed us to consider if we, in the end, were Catholic.  But, heck, maybe we're early Methodists.  :) 

Thoughts?

Comments

[Richard H]

"The Methodists, with their love of the Bible, reframed this value to: "methodical" study of the Bible that leads to love."

I'm a United Methodist, and I don't see that in our tradition. Yes, Wesley was grounded in scripture, and called himself a "man of one book." He was also a great organizer, and methodical enough in his approach to practicing the faith that people threw the epithet "methodist" at him. But if our tradition is characterized by "methodical study of the bible," that is of fairly recent vintage (with the advent of Disciple Bible Study about 20 years ago).

It is correct to say that Methodists have always been methodical. It is correct to say that Methodists have majored on love (Wesley preached "Christian Perfection," which he characterized as "being made perfect in love.") Part of our downfall has been that we remained methodical at the expense of Christian substance. If you've read Good to Great, we're the sort of institution that tends to be completely flexible when it comes to our mission, but utterly inflexible when it comes to our methods.

[steven hamilton]

ha! i love it, although rather than early methodists, perhaps we are (re)emerging pietists...given over to mutuality, love and mission...

[DJ Sybear]

I'm not sure if I can place myself in any specific sort of theological tradition. For that matter, I'm not all that convinced that most of the "saints" (read: followers of Jesus) could place themselves clearly in the historical communion of saints. Somehow, it just seems to me that placing one's current experience, still evolving, into the greater pattern of God's historical theological tapestry, is perhaps a bit impractical.

Nonetheless, it's probably worth giving some due consideration. What does tend to be clearer to me are the points at which I connect to various faith traditions. The Catholic in me still yearns for the kind of liturgical drama of the Eucharist. The Methodist in me probably connects to certain elements of biblical studies. The Vineyard in me still connects to many of the disciplines, in particular regarding worship and prayer. How any of that is supposed to fit together is beyond me.

More than that, though, I think I resonate with your proposed statement on behalf of the masses: "If faith leads to actual, greater love, I'm in! If it leads to narrow, boundary-drawing 'orthodoxy,' I'm not interested."

[Brent]

This is only loosely connected to the post, I guess, but though I like the idea of actual love leading to biblical faith, I sometimes run into the problem how 'actual love' is defined. Just a while ago, for instance, a church here in Gainesville demonstrated during the local gay pride parade with nasty signs and slogans and claimed they were doing it all in Biblical love for those sinful unsaved homosexuals. That it would in fact be unloving if they were to keep silent.

Seems like there has to be a definition of love in there somewhere, which, though perhaps not quite on the order of a creed or boundary-drawing orthodoxy, is still a definition, a way of drawing a line between what is and isn't Christian. Whadday think?

[Dave S]

I'll bite! How about: "The objects of our love feel loved by us.". If nothing else, this would rule out the Gainesville gang.

[Brent]

I think that works most of the time. But I can imagine a retort: Jesus died for the Romans and pharisees, but few of them felt loved by his actions. Some even delighted in his degradation, yet he died for them as well.

So, that Gainesville crowd might say, we are doing this in love even if it is not received as love.

[Dave Schmelzer]

So, okay, Jesus died for the Pharisees and Romans. But I'm remembering him saying as well that "he only came for those who are sick"--who felt a need for a doctor. For the rest, who regard themselves as well, he doesn't have much to offer. Technically, he died for all, even those who were uninterested. But he hung out with the tax collectors and sinners, who felt quite loved. The Roman CENTURIAN felt super-loved by him.

[Brent]

Sure. I doubt we'd disagree very much on what is and isn't loving. And for me it's like a lot of things - I know it when I see it.

But then I get confronted with other Christians who seem to be doing horrible things out of 'love' for others or 'love' for God. In fact, one might say Christians have a pretty strong track record for doing that throughout history. So, what's the course of action then? It seems that, in some way (formal or informal), we indeed draw a line between the Christians that 'get it' and those that don't. We get, in other words, a kind of boundary-drawing orthodoxy.

I'm playing the devil's advocate here a bit, but just enough to say that I guess we can't completely get away from definitions and boundaries if we are going to be distinctive at all.

[Maurice Ward]

Can I suggest rather than drawing boundaries which recreate stage 2, that we look at the book and see that the situation you describe is a bit like the 'conscience issue' in 1 corinthians 11:23-31.

If you are able to love more than others then your conscience may be better informed. You feel a freedom that they do not.

The advice in the passage is "not to cause anyone to stumble". Then Paul says "follow me as I follow Christ".

Maybe the problem is that we are not providing an example so that their consciences can be better informed. That is how we can love them.

[C. Jones]

Just a quick note on this interesting post. When thinking about the need (or not) for a working definition of what love is, I was reminded of M Scott Peck's observation that almost all of the patients he encountered in his psychiatric practice had one underlying feature in common. Peck felt that every patient he worked with had as a root cause of their mental health "unwellness" a misunderstanding as to what love is and what love is not.