Pentecost and the Wesleyan
Doctrine of Full Sanctification
Laurence W. Wood, Ph. D.
Frank Paul Morris Professor of Theology
Asbury Theological Seminary
John Fletcher's doctrine of dispensations is not to
be confused with Darby and Schofield. It was the organizing theme in his
interpretation of Wesley’s theology. It entailed the view that the
various stages in salvation history prepared one for becoming a full
citizen in the kingdom of God.
John Wesley’s second sermon was preached at South Leigh, near Witney,
on the outskirts of Oxford, England in 1725. His sermon text was: “Seek
ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things
shall be added unto you.” In this sermon, he defined “the whole duty of
a Christian: ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with
all thy soul, and with all thy mind,’ with the whole bias of thy
understanding, thy will, and thy affections; and ‘Thou shalt love thy
neighbour’, that is, every man, ‘as thyself.’” Attaining this
righteousness is made possible by “the Holy Spirit of God.”
John Fletcher preached one of his first sermons in London at Wesley’s
West Street Chapel on the text, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at
hand.”
The idea of “the kingdom of God set up within the heart of the
believer” was to become a common phrase for Christian perfection as
these two pioneers sought to blaze a trail to a more carefully nuanced
understanding of salvation.
Drawing from John Wesley’s Standard Sermons, John Fletcher
showed that entrance into the kingdom of God was through the twofold
gate of “justification by faith in Christ” and “full sanctifying faith
in the Holy Spirit.”
Just as entrance into the earthly kingdom of Israel was through the
miraculous parting of two bodies of water--the Re[e]d Sea and the Jordan
River, so entrance into the kingdom of God set up in the hearts of
believers involves two miraculous events.
The first is justifying faith in the risen Lord which grants
forgiveness of sins and is symbolized in water baptism. This is the New
Testament counterpart to Israel’s exodus from Egyptian bondage.
The second event is the baptism with the Holy Spirit poured out upon
the believers by the ascended Lord through the symbol of laying on of
hands. This is the New Testament counterpart of Israel’s conquest of
Canaan. Fletcher believed the coming of the Holy Spirit empowered the
disciples to love God perfectly because their hearts were circumcised
(Acts 15: 8, 9).
This was the fulfillment of Moses’ prophecy that a New Israel would
be reconstituted who would remain in the kingdom forever because their
hearts would be circumcised, thus enabling them to love God with a
perfect love. Loving God with all their heart was the condition for
their possession of the kingdom in Canaan.
Under the new contract with Israel, Moses said that they would never
shamefully be driven from the land again because under the new terms God
would enable them to fulfill the requirement of loving him perfectly
(Deuteronomy 30:6).
Joel prophesied that God "will pour out my spirit on all flesh" (Joel
2:28 and that He "will restore the fortunes of Judah" (Joel 3:1). This
means that "my people shall never again be put to shame" (Joel 2:27)
because "I am the Lord you God, who dwell in Zion, my holy mountain. And
Jerusalem shall be holy" (Joel 3:17).
Peter announced that this prophecy of Joel was fulfilled on the day
of Pentecost (Acts 2:16).
This eschatological expectation that the New Israel would be made
holy through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is why Peter said that
physical circumcision is no longer a ritual with any soteriological
meaning, saying that this fulfilment took place on the day of Pentecost
when their "hearts were purified [=circumcised] by faith" through the
infilling of the Spirit (Acts 15;8-9).
In this respect, Wesley and Fletcher believed the coming of the
Spirit on the day of Pentecost had primarily an ethical intent rather
than having only a focus on miraculous powers and manifestations.
The Old Testament background of salvation history is the key to
Fletcher’s interpretation of Christian initiation. The appropriateness
of his interpretation on the basis of what is today called a
"reader-response" reading of the Book of Acts is confirmed in
contemporary biblical studies.
It has now been well argued in New Testament studies that Luke-Acts
complex is to be interpreted against the Old Testament background of the
restoration of Israel and the reconstitution of God's people through the
bestowal of the Spirit. This eschatological expectation is why the
disciples raised the question about the coming kingdom just prior to the
Pentecost event: "Lord, are you at this time going to restore the
kingdom to Israel?" (Acts 1:6).
The parallel between Israel's participation in the covenant through
the events of salvation history and the believer's participation in the
saving history of Jesus is assumed in Luke's Pentecost account, showing
that the fullness of salvation comes with the bestowal of the Holy
Spirit.
It will be helpful to review some of these parallels to see the
connection that Luke is assuming. This overview will also reveal the
relevance of Fletcher's basic insights of his doctrine of dispensations
from the perspective of contemporary biblical studies.
I will begin this comparison between the history of Israel and the
saving history of Jesus with an examination of Israel’s earliest cultic
confessions. A cultic confession was a simple recital of God’s mighty
historical acts in their behalf.
Typical of these confessions is Dt. 26:5f: "A wandering Aramean was
my father; and he went down into Egypt and sojourned there, few in
number; and there he became a nation, great, mighty, and populous. And
the Egyptians treated us harshly, and afflicted us, and laid upon us
hard bondage. Then we cried to the Lord the God of our fathers, and the
Lord heard our voice, and saw our affliction, our toil, and our
oppression; and the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and
an outstretched arm, with great terror, with signs and wonders; and he
brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with
milk and honey. And behold, now I bring the first of the fruit of the
ground, which thou, O Lord, has given me."
The plural pronoun "we" in this confession suggests the personal
participation of the individual worshiper in the two decisive saving
acts of Jahweh--the Exodus and the Conquest.
Alan Richardson has shown that "there can be no doubt that it was
upon the historical experiences of the deliverance from Egypt and the
establishment in Canaan that the fundamental certainty of all biblical
faith was based." He further shows: "But it is uniquely the genius of
the Bible that the historical is transmuted by the eschatological, so
that the action of God in the past becomes the type or foreshadowing of
his action in the future." Richardson concludes: "The salvation that was
once-for-all wrought for the whole people is appropriated by each family
or each individual as the family or the individual makes response in
worship and thanksgiving (Exod. 12:26-27; Deut. 6:20-25; 26:1-11; John
6:53-58; I Cor. 10:16-17; 11:23-26)." Richardson writes:
"The act of deliverance, so to speak, remains active and potent
throughout the continuing history of the people for whom it was wrought;
in the biblical view it is not a mere event of the past, but something
that is ever and again made present and real in the lives of those who
celebrate it in word and sacrament."
Edmond Jacob has also shown that there were two historical themes
which formed the basis of Israel’s credo--the Exodus and the Conquest.
In addition to these two historical themes were two other memories which
"were subordinate and whose links were of a sacred rather than an
historical nature"--the Sinai and Temple themes. Later the Temple, which
occupied the center of the Promised Land, was fused with the Conquest
theme. Jacob writes: "Thus the temple becomes very clearly the object of
the Exodus, and by giving Jerusalem to the Israelites, David only
continues the role of Moses, who promised a country to the people."
The Promised Land and the Temple in Jerusalem symbolized the same
reality--the Presence of God. This means that the Temple and the
Conquest of the Promised Land are theologically equivalent�they form one
and the same theme.
These two themes--the Exodus and the Conquest--became for all
subsequent time in the history of Israel the normative pattern of God’s
dealing with his people. For example, the liturgy of Israel extolling
the salvation of God (cf. Psalm 68; 77:11-20; 114; 136:10-22) focuses
upon these two decisive events. The credo of Deut. 26:5ff. is a reliving
and personalizing of these two saving events. During their exile and
captivity, the prophets envisaged Israel’s salvation through a new
Exodus and a new Conquest which would restore the Davidic kingdom in the
Promised Land.
Edmond Jacob shows that the Exodus and the Conquest were not merely
the formative events of Israel’s national beginnings, but they were the
events through which every Israelite experienced one’s own redemption.
What happened to the nation of Israel as a whole was to be appropriated
personally by every individual Israelite in all generations. Jacob
writes: "At the Passover feast, the departure from Egypt was enacted
through the ritual, so clearly that it may be said that at least once a
year the Exodus ceased to be a fact of the past and became a living
reality, and that never, even after five centuries, did the Israelites
consider themselves different from their ancestors who, under Moses’
guidance, had experienced the deliverance (cf. Amos 3:2) . . . . The
credo of Deuteronomy 26 mentions the entry into Canaan as a second
article; the deliverance of the Exodus was only made with a view to the
possession of the country."
While the Exodus-Conquest events were the formative events for the
beginning of the national life of Israel, it can also be seen that they
formed a normative pattern for the salvation of every Israelite in every
new generation.
The Passover feast, for example, was no mere memorial; it was a
personal appropriation of the Exodus event in the present. This
Exodus-Conquest pattern in achieving the Abrahamic promise is also
decisive for the history of Jesus. G. E. Wright says that these two
events "are as important for the New Testament as for the Old. In Christ
is the new exodus and the new inheritance." This link between the
history of Israel and the history of Jesus is seen in the earliest
Christian sermons of Peter (Acts 2), Stephen (Acts 7), and Paul (Acts
13). These sermons are largely a recital of God’s saving history begun
with Abraham and completed in Jesus.
The book of Acts reflects in the closest possible manner the
connection between the history of Jesus and the history of Israel. This
relationship is so closely linked that the apostles see nothing in their
kergyma which is not already implicit in the ancient credo. Their
worship, their ritual, their preaching assumed a direct relationship to
the history of Israel. The essence of that relationship is that the
promise to Abraham had its fulfillment in the history of Jesus
Fletcher believed that Pentecost marked the fulfilment of this
promise, signifying that the coming kingdom had already arrived.
Paul said the promise of God to Abraham had its fulfilment in the
coming of the Spirit (Gal. 3:14). Paul mentions two "sendings": "the
sending of Christ" and "the sending of the Spirit" (Gal 4:4-6 ). Easter
was incomplete without Pentecost, even as the exodus from Egypt was
incomplete without the entrance into Canaan. This is why the Church
could not be formed until the day of Pentecost. Fletcher interpreted
"baptism with water" (Easter) and "baptism with the Spirit" through the
laying on of hands (Pentecost) as the two liturgical moments of
Christian initiation.
Fletcher believed that participating in Jesus’ resurrected life (a
personalized Easter moment) and the outpouring of his Spirit (a
personalized Pentecost moment) are required before one is duly
considered a full citizen of the Kingdom of God.
To be sure, Fletcher did not divorce Easter and Pentecost, but
rather, he saw them as existing in a continuum of grace. Nor did he
understand these two moments of the Christian life as absolutized--as if
an one-time experience of grace were enough to carry a believer for the
rest of one’s life. This means that the Pentecostal experience of
perfect love for God is a continuation and confirmation of regenerating
and sanctifying grace initiated in the moment of one’s justifying
experience, and these two moments are to be repeated often enough until
the life of perfect love becomes a habit in one’s life.
This is the purpose of divine worship--to offer the believer an
ongoing opportunity to experience for oneself the meaning of Jesus’
death\resurrection (Easter) and the outpouring of his Holy Spirit
(Pentecost) until one is conformed to the full image of Christ.
This was also the purpose of Wesley’s closely knit class meetings and
bands, namely, to provide the Methodists with the spiritual and personal
support to maintain their life of holiness. The most significant means
of experiencing the full sanctifying grace of God in Wesley’s and
Fletcher’s meetings was Holy Communion.
Fletcher particularly noted that Wesley’s theology was only applying
the personal significance of water baptism (Easter) and confirmation
(Pentecost). The Church of England required these public rites of
initiation before one could be considered a Christian and thus eligible
to participate in Holy Communion. This means that there are two (not
just one) rites of initiation into the kingdom of God.
Fletcher's distinction between "baptism with water" and "baptism with
the Spirit" can be defended in the light of the distinction between
Easter and Pentecost.
These two events cannot be collapsed into a single moment; rather,
Easter and Pentecost are prefigured in the Exodus event and the Conquest
of Canaan as two distinct but inseparably connected events. The language
of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead is the language of deliverance from
Egyptian bondage. Easter is for the New Testament what the Exodus event
was for the Old Testament. Likewise, the language of Pentecost is the
language of the Conquest of Canaan which established the kingdom of
Israel. The coming of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost meant the
establishment of the kingdom of God set up in the hearts of believers
(=the Church).
The nomenclature of this new reality was borrowed from the language
of Canaan--the riches of divine grace and the fruit of the Spirit. The
goal of Exodus was the Conquest. The goal of Easter is Pentecost.
Gerhard von Rad has shown that the image of the Promised Land in the
Old Testament was not a picture of heaven, but a reality for here and
now. In the New Testament, Canaan is considered primarily a symbol of
the Christian life, not just the idea of eternal rest in heaven. There
are some remarkable dissimilarities between Canaan and heaven--giants
stalking the place, spiritual defeat, starvation, and even exile from
it. Surely the Christian life is a life of trial and tribulation, but
such trouble does not exist in heaven.
John Calvin also saw Canaan as a symbol of the Christian life, not
heaven. Calvin’s commentary on Hebrews 4:8, shows that the writer
thought of Canaan as land of rest to be enjoyed here and now. So did
Wesley and Fletcher.
The Promised Land was a kingdom to be realized in this world. This is
why Wesley and Fletcher often described Christian perfection as "the
Canaan of perfect love." Yehezkel Kaufman described the Old Testament
view of Canaan Land in terms which explain why it can be interpreted as
a symbol of full sanctification.
"Possession of the land is the earliest eschatological motif of
Israelite religion. It is the ultimate goal of the people, and its
attainment is promised by God. But it is more; the land is the sanctuary
of YHWH, his dwelling place on earth (Exod. 15:17). The divine promise
of a land thus became part of the larger idea of Israel as the elect of
God, as his 'possession' . . . . Israel’s eschatology . . . envisioned
the conquest of a land and its sanctification as the kingdom of God."
Fletcher contended that participation in that kingdom involved a
personalized Easter event (forgiveness of sins and the beginning of
sanctification through the Spirit) and a personalized Pentecost event
(the seal of the Spirit and a perfection of loving and worshiping God
with all one’s heart, mind, and soul).
Ancient Israelites participated in the two decisive saving events in
their history--the exodus event and the Conquest of Canaan--through a
recital of their creed in worship (Dt. 26.5ff ).
Likewise Christian baptism signifies one’s participation in Easter
and Pentecost. Christian initiation into the kingdom of God is a
response to the preached Word, while converting and sanctifying grace
are maintained through vital faith and worship and regular participation
in the Lord’s Supper.
Fletcher believed that Wesley’s emphasis upon holiness as the goal of
the Christian life corresponded with Jesus’ promise to his disciples
that if they would wait in the Israelite Capitol City of Jerusalem they
would experience the coming kingdom of God through the baptism with the
Holy Spirit. This would be the fulfillment, Fletcher insisted, of God’s
promise through Moses that God’s people would remain in his kingdom
forever because their hearts would be circumcised and their love
perfected (Deut 30:6). The coming of the Holy Spirit on the day of
Pentecost was the fulfilled promise to Abraham that through his seed all
the nations of the world would be blessed (Galatians 3:14).
This blessing was defined as God dwelling within the hearts and minds
of his people. To be sanctified through the Spirit is be made the
sanctuary of the Almighty. The kingdom is set up in the hearts of
believers who are made a habitation of God through the Spirit.
(Ephesians 2:22).
For a detailed discussion of the importance of the Pentecostal
possibilities of grace in early Methodism, see:
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