TULIP and John Wesley

I have created a new "TULIP" handout to use when teaching Wesleyan theology. This is a simplified version of classic Calvinist teaching. Why not share it here with the world?

I've discovered over the years the best way to teach Wesley's "Scripture Way of Salvation" (God's sacred initiative in shaping our lives into fullness through prevenient, justifying, and sanctifying grace) is to start with TULIP. Then I contrast these ideas with the Arminian point of view (free will vs. predestination), and the sheet provides a way to offer Wesley's nuanced approach.

Historically, it makes sense because Wesley's teaching (which is a recovery of eastern Christian spirituality, expressed in more exacting Protestant language) came out of his struggle against Calvinism historically. He was brilliant in what he taught, in my humble opinion!

I say his approach was nuanced because his teachings aren't direct opposite of these teachings, but definitely contrast with them. He taught direct opposites when it comes to the middle three, but his response was nuanced when it came to the first and the last. He believed we are born tainted from our original luster because of original sin, but that our "essential nature" is that we are born in the image of God, not that we are a sinner. Christianity restores us to that original nature, rather than changing us from our original "bad" nature into something else.

Likewise, his response to the Calvinist "once saved always saved" mantra is more nuanced than it is often characterized to be. It should not lead directly to anxiety about whether we are saved or not (the Calvinist critique of Wesley). We don't need to be saved again and again because we fall, heavens no. He also taught ASSURANCE of our salvation, but maintained that God always grants us free will to turn toward God, or away from God. God never forces love. Of course, Wesley's language of "salvation" is rooted in New Testament Greek, and so does not refer simply to whether we have a ticket to heaven or not at the moment of death. It refers to whether we are on the journey of being made whole in Christ. This is part of the mischaracterization of what he means when he indicates we can "fall from grace."

Wesley’s theology in a Nutshell

On Vaccinations

GET YOUR VAX, PEOPLE!

We are at the ER tonight, where my father-in-law has been stuck in a gurney for hours because there are 90 beds and 140 patients.

- 90% of Covid patients in hospitals are unvaccinated.

- 95% of Covid patients who die here are unvaccinated.

- Soon we will pass 5 million people in the world who have died of this.

- 80 million people in the US are eligible for a free vaccination and refuse to get one.

- The reason we have variants appearing is because everyone is not getting vaccinated quickly.

- There are no microchips being put in your bloodstream, there is no conspiracy to take your rights away, Dr. Fauci is not a liar, and the vaccination is safe.

- If all of us can’t come together on this, it will keep going and going. More people die. This is a fact.

- This is not about personal choice. This is about what it takes to protect humanity.

- This is not about politics. It’s about compassion. Put politics aside.

- It doesn’t matter if you “don’t know what’s in it.” I don’t know what’s in a hot dog and I eat them.

- If we trust God, we should participate in the miracle that the science God created has now created.

- The vax is not just for you. It is for humanity. You’re not just taking your chances. You are endangering other people.

- It’s not about you.

Thanks for listening.

(Of course, there are people with legitimate medical conditions that do not need to take the vaccine. The rest of us should cover for you by getting ours. That’s another way we are all in this together.)

We're Grounded

I am reading Grounded by Diana Butler Bass. I feel led to post a few direct quotes from the introduction to the book. It gives me great hope.

"Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran pastor awaiting execution in a Nazi prison, understood that the three-tiered universe with its majestic God had been swept away by the war and argued that a new 'religionless' Christianity must emerge from history's ashes." (5)

"In the decades that followed, it became increasingly evident that you cannot revive a God for a world that no longer exists. Venerating a God of a vanished world is the very definition of fundamentalism, the sort of religion that is inflicting great pain and violence on many millions of people across the planet and is leading to the rejection of religion by millions of others." (5-6)

"Some stubbornly maintain that a distant God sits on his heavenly throne watching all these things, active as either a divine puppet master or a stern judge of human affairs, ready at a moment's notice to throw more thunderbolts or toss the whole human race into an eternal lake of fire. But this is a vision of God whose time may be up, for such a divinity looks either increasingly absurd or suspiciously like a monster." (8)

"In its crudest form, the role of religion ... is to act as a holy elevator between God above and those muddling around down below in the world. Despite my familiarity with conventional theology, I do have experience of another sort of language for God, for throughout my life something odd kept happening to me. God showed up ... For whatever reason, my soul has a mile-wide mystical streak." (12)

"The language of mysticism and spiritual experience cuts a wide swath through the world's religious traditions, and it presents an alternative theology, that of connection and intimacy." (13)

"The language of divine nearness is the very heart of vibrant faith." (14)

A former Catholic told her, "'But these other things - the Spirit all around, caring and praying for people, working for a better world - they ground me.' Her tale was similar to many stories in circulation about leaving religion behind in favor of spirituality. But it had a twist. She felt grounded by God." (17)

"In Christian theology, the word 'ground' conjures a very particular image. In 1916, a young German military chaplain named Paul Tillich was stationed on the front lines of World War I. The war undid all Tillich's youthful confidence in the world and in faith ... After the war, Tillich made it his work to find dependable theological ground. Eventually, he proclaimed that God is the 'Ground of all Being,' the 'centered presence of the divine'; the 'whole world' is God's 'periphery.' Human life may be finite, destined for dirt and death; but the ground and all that came from it and was connected to it, claimed Tillich, was drenched with the divine, the source of infinite holiness. This insight appears in many of the world's faith traditions. Most tribal religions are based upon the absolute connection of God (or gods) and the earth. Buddhists see 'the world as it is' as the stage of spiritual activity. For Hindus, Brahman is the source of all life, represented by the sacred word Om; the world itself is the expression of Brahman's dream. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam share a creation story in which the earth is the embodiment of God's breath and insist that God is present everywhere and in all things ... Indeed, the primary hope of the ancient Hebrews was for 'Immanuel,' or 'God with us,' the God who dwells with humankind in love and justice. Christians refer to God's embodiment as 'incarnation,' God made flesh in Jesus, who is called Immanuel, and believe that God is present through the Spirit sent into the world after Jesus's death and resurrection ... in an age of profound, perplexing, and even frightening change, millions of people are rediscovering from the deepest human wisdom a simple spiritual reality: we're grounded." (17-20)