The Secret Transcript of the Council of Bishops. Darren Cushman Wood
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times, it refers to all the believers who are both living and dead. Probably the broadest term he employed was “Church of God” to refer to everything from a national church to the Methodist societies.14 But at the heart of the church, whether it is a local congregation or the entire ecumenical movement, is this spiritual bond, a mystical union in the Spirit of Christ.
Temperate: But it is unity for the purpose of making disciples. What is running through this understanding of the church is his “order of salvation”—prevenient, justifying, sanctifying grace. The church, through the sacraments and preaching, saves sinners and edifies believers. We are brought together as the church in order to receive the grace that Christ channels through the church.
Anchor: This is what he meant by “social holiness”; believers come together to support one another in the common pursuit of sanctification. He never equated “social holiness” with “social justice.” However, works of justice are one part of our common, holy life.
Leeway: Obviously not every member has what Wesley called a “vital faith.” His understanding of the church presupposed a distinction between what he called “scriptural Christians” and nominal Christians. The authentic church members are those whose “inmost soul is renewed after the image of God” and “who are outwardly holy, as He who hath called them is holy.”15 In contrast, he criticized “nominal Christians” who “are not now vitally united to any of the members of Christ. Though you are called a Christian you are not really a member of any Christian church. But if you are a living member, if you live the life that is hid with Christ in God” then you are a true member.16 And so, formal statements of membership are not enough to constitute true church membership. All This reflected his goal of renewing the Church of England.
Temperate: You make Wesley sound too black and white in his understanding of church membership. Yes, he made a distinction between an “almost” and an “altogether” Christian, but he also had a porous understanding of membership. For example, his criterion For membership in the societies was only that they had a desire “to flee from the wrath to come,” not that they had already achieved it.17 Those experiencing the active working of prevenient grace were included before their hearts had been warmed. Thus, the church includes those who are struggling.
Credo: Struggling, yes. They have to be at least struggling with sin, not celebrating it and tolerating it. Earlier you mentioned outward holiness, which brings up something you and Embrace are downplaying. Wesley always begins with a bare bones definition, but then he moves beyond this to a deeper definition of the church. Wesley always saw the true church or true believers as being within and visible in the institutional structure of church discipline and they are marked by personal expressions of outward holiness.
In referencing Article Nineteen and Cyprian, he made the point that the church is always visible; it is more than a “spiritual” unity. It is seen in the sacraments, heard in good preaching, and felt through the loving actions of all true believers. He had no concept of an “invisible church.” If the church is the church, then it is always a visible church.
It is most visible in the holiness of its individual members and their relationships. This emphasis on holiness is reflected in his description of the church as those who are “called out” of the world.18 We cannot avoid the issue of sexual behavior in this discussion. There is an inseparable connection between one’s beliefs and one’s behavior; one must claim that Jesus is Lord in one’s actions.
Embrace: But Wesley also said, “The nature of religion . . . does not properly consist in any outward actions of what kind so ever.”19 By this he meant that Christianity is a religion of the heart, first and foremost, that leads to right actions. He avoided two extremes, legalism and moral indifference.
Credo: True, right behavior inevitably arises from an inner transformation. It bears fruit. What one does with his or her body is a mark of who is a true church member and who is not. By extension, when the church teaches and tolerates behavior that is not holy, then it ceases to the true church. There are four creedal marks of the church: one, holy, catholic, and apostolic. Right now, the mark of holiness is pitted against the mark of oneness. Thus, the issue of homosexuality strikes at the heart of the church and our unity. Homosexual behavior is clearly sinful behavior and to condone it is tantamount to surrendering our identity as the “Church of God.”
Leeway: But you are putting too much emphasis on this one issue as if there is a fifth mark: straight. Your narrow litmus test ignores that the inner transformation is first and primary. The profound insight of Wesley is that right action must spring from that inner transformation. By making the issue of homosexuality into something so crucial that we should separate over it, you are obscuring this deeper unity of the Spirit who transforms us from the inside out. You are implying that what really unites us is our outward expressions of holiness rather than the source of that holiness. To put it another way, is the unity of the church so tenuous that it stands or falls on one single, outward behavior or is it the Spirit that makes us holy and unites us? The Spirit gives us the gift of unity.
Can the Church be Holy and Wrong?
Credo: At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is whether we are a scriptural church. When we stop following the Bible, then we will stop being the church. Individual members may err, single congregations may be wrong, but the church cannot err and still be the true church because it is holy, by virtue of the Holy Spirit. What may be adopted by this General Conference will set in motion a situation in which the United Methodist Church will grieve the Spirit and ultimately cease to be an expression of the true church.
Leeway: It sounds like the holiness of the church depends more on our purity and obedience than on the presence of the Holy Spirit. For the sake of argument, I will accept for a moment your premise that homosexual behavior is a sin. Even so, there are two problems with your understanding of the “holy church.” First, you are assuming that church policies are at the heart of what it means to be the true church. If our policies are “holy,” then we will be a holy church. This assumption is too institutional. The true church is all those believers who are united in the Holy Spirit. At best, church policies create the structures in which this can take place, but they can never prevent the Holy Spirit from making those spiritual and missional connections among believers. That is what makes us holy—the presence of the Spirit in us, in our fellowship, and in our ministry. The Spirit will always break down or defy those church structures and policies that prevent this deeper union. So even if our policies are in error, that does not disqualify the entire denomination from being a part of the “one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church.”
Anchor: You are making an inaccurate assumption that the fellowship of believers is completely separate from the church as an institution. The institutional aspects of the church are interwoven with its fellowship, and they affect each other. Such a dichotomy reflects the cheap distinction often heard in society between “spiritual” and “religious.” The connectional nature of our tradition assumes that the local and the general are connected. The holistic vision of Wesley will not allow for any sharp distinction between “mission” and “administration.”
Leeway: Let me continue with my second point. The church is founded on the grace of Jesus Christ—which is another way of saying that the church is maintained by the presence of the Holy Spirit. The church does not exist, will not be preserved, and cannot be renewed by our acts of moral purity. There may be times when the church gets it wrong. Yet we assume that through the error, God’s grace is sustaining us and God’s Spirit is uniting us.
Anchor: That sounds like “cheap grace” that Bonhoeffer warned us about.20
Leeway: No, it is costly for those whom God uses as a means of grace. For example, think of the former Central Jurisdiction as a theological case study. Was the Methodist Church (1939 to 1968) the church according to the marks of the creed, specifically the mark of holiness? The Central Jurisdiction was the systemic embodiment of the sin of racism; segregation was encoded into the very DNA of the denomination’s constitution.21 This was not just the racism of an individual member or local congregation; the denomination was a racist institution. And yet, I doubt if any of us are willing to say that the Methodist Church was not a part of the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church.