WESLEY AND LUTHER ON CHRISTIAN PERFECTION

WESLEY AND LUTHER ON CHRISTIAN PERFECTION

PHILIP WATSON

One of the most marked differences between John Wesley and Martin Luther is that Wesley constantly insists that a Christian can and must become perfect before he dies, whereas Luther denies that any such thing is possible. For Wesley, the doctrine of Christian Perfection is of the essence of Methodism and the chief thing for which Methodism stands. For Luther, on the other hand, perfection is something that can never be attained in this world, but only in the next, since the Chris- tian, however good a Christian he is, always remains a sinner-a justified sinner, it is true, but very far from entirely sanctified.

Now both Methodists and Lutherans have often supposed that there is at this point an unbridgeable gulf between Wesley and Luther -and perhaps Wesley and Luther would have thought the same. But it is at least open to question whether Wesley is really asserting what Luther denies, when he teaches his doctrine of Perfection. It may be that the meaning which each of them attaches to the idea of perfection is so different that they are not in fact at such cross-purposes as at first sight appears. In order to see whether this is so, let us examine first Wesley’s then Luther’s understanding of the Christian life and its possibilities, and then compare them with one another.

From Wesley’s point of view, the Christian life can be said to begin with baptism. In his Treatise on Baptism, in which he vigorously defends infant baptism, his exposition is based, not unnaturally, on the teaching of his own Church, the Church of England. He argues here that in baptism the infant is delivered from the guilt of original sin (though not from original sin itself), is given entry to the New Covenant, made a member of Christ’s Church, receives the privileges of adoption, and is made a child of God by an infusion of grace. Infant baptism is thus, as Wesley represents it, a justifying and regenerating sacrament.

With regard to the baptism of those of riper years, however, Wesley takes a somewhat different view. He sharply distinguishes the “outward

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and visible sign” of the sacrament from the “inward and spiritual grace” which it signifies, and holds that the latter, which is naturally by far the more important, by no means necessarily accompanies the former. A man can very well be “born of water” without being “born of the Spirit,” so that the fact of having been baptized is no guarantee that one is regenerate. This is true, furthermore, even in the case of those baptized in infancy, for the grace which was then infused into them may have been lost. By yielding to the impulses of original sin and committing actual sin in childhood or youth, baptismal grace can be sinned away; and this, Wesley clearly believes, is what actually happens in the great majority of cases-his own included. In consequence, the Christian life has to begin all over again.

For practical purposes, therefore, we may say that for Wesley the Christian life begins with the New Birth which takes place in the following way. First, a man must yield to the influence of the prevenient grace of God, whereby he is prepared for the convincing grace, as Wesley calls it, which teaches him the truth about himself as a sinner and pro- duces in him the first repentance. This repentance finds expression in his conduct and habits of life, so that he ceases to do evil, learns to do well, uses the means of grace, and so forth. Wesley lays great stress on such practical fruits of repentance as evidence of its genuine- ness. They are in no way meritorious, but without them a man cannot be said to be ready for the next gift of grace since his repentance is insincere.

The next stage is that of justifying grace, which is received solely and alone by justifying faith, which itself is a gift of God. This has a twofold result : justification and regeneration or the new birth. Justifica- tion means pardon and acceptance with God, which effects a “relative change” or a change in our relation to God. The new birth involves a “real change,” a renewal of our nature which changes us from the image of the devil to the image of God, and which is brought about by the gift of the Holy Spirit. Justification and the new birth, Wesley holds, must be always clearly distinguished from one another, but they must never be separated. They belong together and ordinarily occur simultaneously. What is more, those to whom they have occurred ordinarily have a conscious assurance of this fact.

Wesley sets great store by his doctrine of assurance, but it is important to note that he does not make assurance a test of anyone’s standing with God. He says that the justified and regenerate can, not that they

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must, have an assurance of their justified and regenerate state. Assurance is an effect, not a condition, of being in a state of grace ; and it is an effect which in some cases may be delayed if not wholly withheld. But normally it is to be expected, and those who do not yet have it should seek it, pray for it. It is given by the Holy Spirit’s witnessing with our spirit that we are children of God, so that we have both a deep inward conviction in our hearts and also the perceptible fruit of the Spirit in our lives. Wesley also speaks of the witness of our own spirit, which is little more than the subjective side of all this. In no case, however, is our assurance based on anything of our own ; its source lies in God’s own love towards us, whereby we have been reconciled to him and have come to love him because he first loved us.

The justified and regenerate man, however, is not yet a full-grown Christian but only a babe in Christ. Wesley loves to use the distinction he finds in I John between children, young men, and fathers. The child must grow into a young man, and the young man into a father, before he is mature or perfect; and the process of this growth, which begins with the very first moment of the new birth, Wesley describes as sanctification, the work of sanctifying grace.

It is true that even a babe in Christ is holy, for he belongs to God. But he is far from perfectly holy or entirely sanctified. He has received the forgiveness of sins, so that the guilt of his original sin is blotted out. He has been born anew of the Holy Spirit, so that he loves God and his neighbour at least in such measure as to avoid committing outward sins. But he still has original sin - the seed of sin’s disease, the root of all specific sins-within him, and this all too often so affects his thoughts and feelings that he is guilty of inward sins, even though these find no expression in word or act. Therefore the Christian, both as a child and a young man in Christ, always feels the conflict between the flesh and the spirit, of which St. Paul speaks ; and although sin does not reign, is not dominant, in him, yet he knows that its power is kept in check only by grace, or by Christ who through the Spirit strives against it in him. In himself he is nothing else but unrighteousness and deserves nothing else but damnation, which he knows he escapes only by trusting in the merits of Christ, not his own. Thus sin remains, and with it the need for perpetual penitence, in the justified and regenerate believer, and Wesley’s Christian no less than Luther’s can be described up to this point as simul iustzis et peccator, both righteous (in Christ) and a sinner (in himself).

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According to Wesley, however, it is possible for the believer to reach a still higher level. He can and he should seek to attain to entire sanctification or Christian Perfection. Wesley himself does not, he tells us, call this “sinless” perfection ; for although he has no great objection to the use of the term “sinless,” he is much more concerned to emphasize the positive content of the idea of perfection. As he understands it, Christian perfection is perfection in love - the love of God and one’s neighbour. To be perfect is to have the mind that was in Christ, to walk as Christ walked, or to display the kind of love that St. Paul describes in I cor. 13. It is in such terms as these that Wesley most char- acteristically speaks of Christian Perfection or entire sanctification. At the same time, he is sure that anyone who has so been made perfect, will naturally be free from all sin both outward and inward ; for how could any evil thoughts or tempers remain in one who had the mind of Christ ? Even original sin itself is rooted out in the entirely sanctified - or, if we do not like the term “rooted out,” we may say “suspended,” and Wesley will not quarrel with us.

All this is, of course, a work of grace through faith ; that is, it is God’s doing, not our own. It is also something that can happen in a moment, instantaneously. It could happen, in fact, in the moment of the new birth, so that a man was entirely sanctified as soon as he was regenerate. But Wesley thinks this rarely if ever happens. Most people need a considerable space of time after their conversion in which to exercise themselves against sin, frequent the means of grace, and so forth, before they are ready to receive what Wesley sometimes calls “the second blessing” or the “second change.’’ Indeed the majority, he fears, do not come to it till they are on their death-bed - though they could do so long before then if they would but earnestly seek and pray for it, using the means of grace which God has appointed. After all, it is promised to us in the Word of God ; and that, not only where God explicitly promises to cleanse us from all iniquity, but also implicitly in many other places. The very fact that we are commanded in God’s law to be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect - to name but one example-implies the promise of perfection. For God does not com- mand what is impossible. What he commands may be impossible for us to do, but it is not impossible for him to do in us. Moreover it is necessary that it should be done ; we must become entirely sanctified before we die, since “without holiness shall no man see the Lord.” Without holiness - and perfect holiness at that - no one can be justified at the


Last Judgement and be admitted to heaven, where nothing that is unholy or unclean can enter in.

Now here, lest it should seem that Wesley is oversimplifying the issue and speaking, in spite of his protests, about impossibilities, we must pay attention to certain very important qualifications of his idea of perfection, which are all too often overlooked.

To begin with, when he speaks of sin, Wesley draws a distinction between what he describes as “sin properly so called” and “sin improperly so called.” The former he defines as “a voluntary transgression of a known law,” the latter as “an involuntary transgression of a law of God, known or unknown.” This distinction is of vital importance, because when Wesley claims that the entirely sanctified Christian is free from all sin, he is thinking only of “sin properly so called”. He knows very well that sin can have a deeper and wider meaning than this, but he ignores that meaning when he speaks of Christian perfection. The perfect Christian, therefore, is for him one who never in thought, word or deed, intentionally breaks any commandment of God that he is aware of. In this way Wesley is able to do justice to two plain and important facts : first, that the Word of God speaks of a perfection attainable by Christians, and insists that one who is born of God does not commit sin, and so forth; and secondly, that experience shows even the best of Christians to be by no means free from all kinds of failings and imperfections, many of which might from one point of view even be called sins - though Wesley himself will not call them so, since they fall under his definition of “sin improperly so called.” At the same time Wesley always takes pains to make it quite clear that in many respects the Christian is not and cannot be perfect in this life. Christian perfection does not mean infallibility in the use of reason ; nor does it mean freedom from ignorance or freedom from temptation ; still less freedom from all kinds of infirmities both of body and soul, which are not of a moral nature.

A second important distinction which Wesley makes is that between what he calls “the law of works” and the “law of faith.” The former signifies the absolute will of God, which requires absolute perfection in all respects, perfect obedience in every detail. This demand was made of Adam before the Fall, and before the Fall Adam was well able to fulfil it. But since the Fall, we are subject only to the law of faith (or of faith and love) ; that is to say, God does not require more of fallen men than that they should believe in Christ, having such a living


faith in him as “worketh by love.” The law of works is quite beyond our powers as fallen creatures, but the law of faith and love we can fulfil - though only by God’s grace ; and when we do fulfil it, or rather, when it is fulfilled in us, then we are “perfect.” If, however, we were to be judged by “the law of works” we should still be under condemnation, and it is only by God’s grace that we are not. For in the light of that law, every slightest declension from the standard of absolute perfection must be regarded as sin, whether it is voluntary or involuntary, conscious or unconscious.

Even the entirely sanctified Christian, therefore, must always remember that in himself he deserves only damnation, and that it is only through the merit of Christ, or the grace of God that he does not get what he deserves. He needs to pray daily, “Forgive us our trespasses,” for himself as well as for others ; for while he commits no deliberate sins, he makes manifold mistakes which, if strictly judged, would be offences not only against the law of works, but even against the law of love. Wesley’s perfect Christian may not be simul iustus et peccator, but he might well be called simulperfecttis et transgressor ! It need not therefore surprise us to find that Wesley speaks, not only of a progress or growth in the Christian life towards perfection, but also of a growth in perfection. The entirely sanctified or perfect Christian can always become better than he is, not only in this world, but even - Wesley says - “to all eternity !” What is more, he can also become worse than he is. For although the root of all sin, original sin itself, has been removed from him, and the conflict between the flesh and the spirit has come to an end, he is still liable to temptation and capable of yielding to it ; and if he does so, he falls back to the level of imperfection where, although he is not under condemnation (since he is still justified and regenerate), he is not yet “ripe for glory .”

In the light of what has now been said, it should be fairly clear what Wesley means and does not mean by Christian Perfection. We may perhaps sum it up as follows : the perfect Christian is one who, living by faith in the love of God revealed in Christ, has received through the Holy Spirit such a measure of love for God and his neighbour that this love has become the dominant motive in his life and the only motive by which he is consciously impelled.

If we now turn to Luther we find that for him as for Wesley the Christian life begins with baptism, to which, however, he attaches rather more importance than Wesley does. For Luther baptism is an


opus Dei, a work of God, by which we are incorporated as members into the Body of Christ and so made participant in all that belongs to Christ. In particular, baptism means participation in the death and resurrection of Christ, or the mortification of the old Adam and the vivification of the new man in Christ, which Luther says is the same as “full and complete justification.” This, however, is something that goes on throughout the whole of our lives, so that the Christian life can be described as a daily baptism. Baptism therefore is much more than simply a rite of initiation ; for the dying and rising again which the rite of baptism signifies are not completed at the moment we are baptised, but only when we literally and physically die and rise from the dead beyond the grave. The old Adam-our fallen, sinful nature- has to be mortified by daily repentance, and the new man - our nature re-created in Christ - has to arise daily by faith, so that we become conformed to the likeness of Christ. Our conformity with Christ, however, is never fully realised in this world, but only in the resurrection of the dead-just as Christ himself had to suffer and die before entering into glory.

The same idea is expressed in other words when Luther says that baptism regenerates us, or that out of baptism comes a new man. He does not mean by this that any psychological or metaphysical change takes place in us when we are baptised, and he would, I think, reject the thought of an infusion of grace. Baptismal regeneration is rather a sacramental anticipation of the eschatological regeneration, of which the New Testament speaks, when the Son of Man shall sit on the throne of his glory. Not that baptism is a bare sign, which only points away from itself and conveys nothing of the reality of what it signifies. On the contrary, Luther would be critical of Wesley’s rather sharp separation of the “outward and visible sign” of baptism from the “inward and spiritual grace” which it signifies. The baptism itself is a gracious act of God, an act in which the All-holy stoops down to the sinful children of men and takes them for his own. For this reason, Luther would almost certainly reject the idea that the grace of baptism can be “sinned away’’; for this would mean to him that God himself ceased to be gracious, i.e. ceased to forgive sins-which is not, of course, what Wesley means.

At the same time, Luther is well aware that many who have been baptised do not let their baptism set the pattern for the rest of their lives. He laments this fact, and lays the blame for it largely at the doors


of their pastors and teachers, who fail to instruct them in the meaning of their baptism and lead them in the way they should go : the way of faith. For in spite of the fact that baptism is a work of God - or perhaps rather just because of that fact - it is of no benefit to anyone who does not have faith. It is true that even infants when they are baptised can be said to have a real, though infant, faith; but Luther knows very well how often this faith is lost as they grow up, and he certainly never teaches that the simple fact of having been baptised guarantees that the person concerned will get to heaven. He may at times appear to say something like this, when he reminds his hearers or readers of their baptism, or says to himself “I have been baptised,” in order to assure them of God’s gracious will towards them. But then we must realise that all he is trying to do is to evoke or strengthen faith in those who are fearful and doubting. It is far from his view that the Pope, for example, who shows himself an enemy of the gospel, or the Pharisee, who trusts in his own righteousness, will be saved simply because they once underwent the rite of baptism.

Does not Luther, however, encourage the believer to rely too much and too easily on his baptism? Could not Wesley object that there are many who say : “I have been baptised, therefore I am a Christian and can be sure of my salvation,” and yet they are drunkards, blasphemers, adulterers, and so forth, who are clearly children of the devil now, whatever they once were made by their baptism? To this, Luther has his answer. He more than once insists that when people lead an evil life, what we must preach to them is not the gospel of God’s pardoning grace, but the divine law, which reveals sin and terrifies the conscience and drives men to plead for mercy-and to amend their lives. For although no man will be saved by his good works, it is certain that he will be damned if he does not leave off his bad works and repent. Repentance belongs together with faith no less for Luther than for Wesley, and we may well recall here how in his Ninety-Five Theses he declares that our Lord Jesus Christ wills that our whole life shall be repentance.

From one point of view it can be said that Luther’s whole concern is to lead men to true repentance and faith, which means the mortification of the old Adam in them and their rising to a new life in Christ ; and this dying and rising again is, as we have seen, included in Luther’s understanding of justification. Hence it is not surprising that he can say : iustijkatio est quaedam regeneratio in novitatem, or that faith makes


eyn guntz neuer mensch. As he sees it, when a man enters by faith into a new - and right - relationship to God through Christ, he becomes quite really a new man. For Christ himself comes to dwell in the heart of believers, bringing with him his life, his Spirit, and all that is his ; and there he is daily at work to purify us from sin, not only by removing its guilt, but by curbing its power. In a similar way, Luther can say that the Holy Spirit dwells in believers, who in consequence find themselves caught up in the conflict between the flesh and the Spirit ; “and the more godly a man is, the more he feels that battle.” For the Chris- tian is not one who is perfect, but one who fights, the new man in Christ rising up daily to subdue the old Adam. Nor is the victory in this conflict won in a moment, but the struggle goes on our whole life through. Nevertheless, our sanctification, once begun through the Holy Spirit, daily increases ; for the Spirit works in us without ceasing, by means of the Word of God and the forgiveness of sins, until at last we come to that life where there is no more forgiveness, since all things there are pure and holy.

But does all this make any perceptible difference in our lives? In particular, does it allow of any real progress, any discernible growth in Christian character? Luther certainly speaks at times of progress, but does he not also insist that “to progress is to begin ever anew?” That is true; and it may well look as though he is denying any real progress, since to be always beginning again seems hardly the best way to advance ! But what is the beginning of which he speaks ? It is nothing else but repentance and faith-the faith that is centred in God and his grace, his promises, his power and love, and not in anything of our own. Luther knows how easy it is for us to slip away from this centre and to rely for our salvation on the change that takes place in ourselves, so that we either pride ourselves on our Christian virtues or despair because of our lack of them. But true Christian virtues can grow only on the ground of repentance and faith, so that if we leave it we lose them. That is why we can make progress only as we begin ever anew. Repentance and faith form the permanent basis of the Christian life ; justification is the basis of sanctification.

At the same time, Luther is as clear as Wesley that love is an indis- pensable mark of the Christian life. Although faith alone justifies us, yet faith, he says, is never alone, but always accompanied by love and the works of love. Indeed, where there is not love, we can take it that there is not faith either, but mere hypocrisy. For where there is faith,


the Holy Spirit is received, who sheds abroad the love of God in the hearts of believers. Hence Luther can exhort us to examine ourselves to see whether we have the witness of the Spirit in our hearts, assuring us that we are children of God and teaching us to cry “Abba, Father.” He can also exhort us to look for the fruit of the Spirit in our lives, in the shape of “good works” which “testify before God, men, and even ourselves, that we have a true faith and are truly children of God and heirs of eternal life.” There can be no doubt that, as Luther sees it, the Christian is one who lives in love and grows in love.

Yet it is equally beyond doubt that Luther has no room for the idea that a Christian might become “perfect” in this life. Simul iustus et peccator remains for him the necessary characterisation even of the maturest, the holiest, of Christian believers. This is not difficult to understand, if we observe the following points of difference between him and Wesley. (1) Luther does not operate with Wesley’s distinction between “sin properly so called” and “sin improperly so called.” He knows the difference, of course, between “voluntary transgression of a known law” and “involuntary transgression of a law of God known or unknown”; but he calls both of these “sin” and would certainly not agree with Wesley that the latter is “improperly so called.” For sin is not to be measured by our standards, but by the absolute will of God. (2) Luther knows nothing of the distinction between the “law of works” and the “law of faith” as Wesley describes it. It would, I think, suggest to him that Adam before the Fall stood in a relation of legal obedience rather than a faith-relationship to God. This would mean that man’s “original” (i.e. right and proper) relation to God was governed by law rather than grace; and it would imply that obedience to the law was possible apart from faith and grace. But as Luther understands it, faith and obedience cannot be contrasted in this way ; for geunine obedience arises only out of genuine faith - as Wesley of course also very well knows. (3) Luther could not agree with Wesley when he speaks of the rooting out, or even the suspension, of original sin and the cessation of the conflict between the flesh and the Spirit in the entirely sanctified. Certainly Christians do not need to, and ought not to, commit actual sins, but they cannot be sinless in the sense of being free from original sin. Original sin is for Luther rather a condition in which men are and from which they need to be delivered, than something in them which can, so to speak, be extracted from them like a rotten tooth ; and their final deliverance comes only when they die out


of this world and rise to the perfect life of the world to come. Since, however, Wesley quite clearly teaches that even the entirely sanctified and perfect Christian retains manifold imperfections which, judged by the absolute standard, might well be called sins, and for which he stands in continual need of the merits and intercession of Christ, there is perhaps not too great a difference from Luther here.

In fact, if we examine carefully what Luther and Wesley are saying, we find that the 16th century German monk and the 18th century Eng- lish university don are far closer to one another than a superficial acquaint- ance with them suggests. Both teach that salvation is by the grace of God alone through faith alone ; that salvation includes not only remis- sion of the guilt of sin, but also the breaking of its power and real renewal of life ; and that salvation is not completely attained in this life, but only in the life of the world to come. And if Wesley has much to say of Christian Perfection, or perfect love as the sole conscious motivation of the entirely sanctified, while Luther flatly denies the possibility of perfection in this life, we cannot too often remind ourselves that the two men mean quite different things by perfection. Luther means absolute perfection : Wesley means a “relative” perfection - relative to the possibilities of a fallen world by the grace of God. In fact, we might be tempted to say that Luther means perfection “properly so called”, Wesley perfection “improperly so called”. We should do better, however, to remember that Wesley, who was steeped in the Ante-Nicene Fathers, thinks along the more dynamic lines of the Greek T E k i w O i S , while Luther has the more static concept of the Latinper- jectio in mind.

Yet Luther speaks no less than Wesley of love as the necessary fruit of faith and the all-determining motive of the new man in Christ ; and the love of which he speaks is perfect love, for it is God’s own love, shed abroad in our hearts through the Holy Spirit. This perfect love, unhappily, is always prevented from finding perfect expression by the flesh or the old man, from which we have yet to be fully delivered ; but even so, the Christian can and should live without wickedness, even though he cannot be sinless. Wesley believes, on the other hand, that the Christian can become sinless even in this life ; for sinlessness - in the sense we have explained - is involved in his conception of Christian Perfection. He also believes that Christian Perfection must be attained before, or at least in the moment of, death in order that we may be justified at the Last Judgement and gain admission to heaven. Luther


believes rather that sinlessness and perfection - in the absolute sense -are reached only through death itself. For death is God’s drastic remedy for sin, the means he uses to complete the mortification of the old Adam, destroy the old man and deliver the new man in Christ from all sin finally and for ever. Then in the resurrection of the just the believer finds himself perfectly transformed into the likeness of Christ and enters into the glory of the liberty of the children of God.

WESLEY AND LUTHER ON CHRISTIAN PERFECTION

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