Pain, Passion and Faith by Cruickshank Joanna;

Author:Cruickshank, Joanna;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
Published: 2009-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Conflicting Views

Charles Wesley’s conviction that suffering was a valuable and even necessary part of Christian discipleship was not historically unusual. Orthodox Christian theology had always taught that suffering was the result of human sinfulness, but God, in his love, would still use it for the good of those who served him.63 Theologians had explained the value of suffering in different ways. The medieval church taught that because of Christ’s suffering, as well as the suffering of the martyrs and the suffering of ordinary Christians who sacrificed themselves in daily obedience, the church was able to intercede with God for individual human beings. From the store of merit accumulated through this suffering, the church was able to grant indulgences to repentant believers, delivering them from the future suffering of purgatory.64

The Reformers, by contrast, denied any salvational worth to human actions, as well as the mediating role of the church.65 Human hope for salvation must instead be placed fully in the meritorious suffering of the “crucified God,” as Martin Luther described Christ. Reformation theology, both in its Lutheran and Calvinist formulations, emphasized the sovereignty of God in all things. Human suffering was part of God’s providence, and should be accepted as part of his good, if mysterious purposes. There was spiritual benefit in suffering, both Luther and Calvin suggested, because it taught virtues such as patience, and encouraged the believer to have faith in God alone.66

As a theological heir of the Reformers, Wesley was careful to emphasize that it was Christ’s sufferings and death alone that brought salvation. In his general emphasis on God’s sovereignty in human suffering and the resulting spiritual benefit of such suffering, Wesley also followed standard Reformation theology. The emphasis within the hymns on the imitative quality of Christian suffering was also not unusual. Biblical passages that taught the value of suffering provided a common basis for such theologies.67

As has been suggested, however, the Wesleys’ theology of perfection was innovative, and Charles’s insistence on the necessity of extreme suffering as the means to perfection is distinctive. This can be seen in the way the hymns considered here make use of Christ’s command to his disciples in Mark 8: 34, “Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me.” Wesley often followed this passage in describing Christian life and discipleship in terms of the cross. Significantly, however, where the biblical passage refers to each follower taking up “his” own cross, Wesley repeatedly referred to followers bearing Christ’s cross. So, in the examples above, the believer expects to “hang expiring on Thy cross,” welcomes “the Saviour’s hallow’d cross” and longs to share “the sufferings of Thy cross.” Whereas in the biblical passage “taking up his cross” could be understood as a matter of self-denial, in Wesley’s interpretation it became a matter of suffering as Christ suffered. As E. P. Thompson perceptively recognized, Wesley went beyond a conventional Christian emphasis on “bearing the cross” of particular hardships, to suggesting that the cross provided the pattern, or narrative, of the Christian life.

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