Pastor John Wright

Psychologist who look to "integrate" theology into psychology (rather than find how to order psychology intellectual as a means of understanding the human being in light of the Triune God) look to Wesley as justification through his understanding of the witness of the Spirit. This ultimately leads to a secularization -- the collapsing of God's revelation into the human being, rather than finding the human being in God. God ultimately becomes reduced to an inner, private experience of personal well-being, joy, happiness, as the political structures of American culture encourage. We know God, in such an understanding, only through the comprehension of our inner selves -- this is M. Scott Peck's position in the psychological self-help book, The Road Less Traveled. For those brighter or going through psychological struggles, this leads to a radical theological relativism in which Christ is unnecessay (as are the sacraments and the church), and ultimately to an atheism due to its nihilistic undercurrents.

Wesley's sermon "The Spirit of Bondage and of Adoption" speaks of the witness of the Spirit that comes by faith. He speaks of the release from guilt, the "healing light" that breaks in on us in Christ. In Christ, one "sees the light of the glorious love of God, in the face of Jesus Christ." He has a divine 'evidence of things not seen' by sense, even of 'the deep things of God'; more particularly of the love of God, of His pardoning love to him that believes in Jesus." What the therapeutic psychological interpretation of Wesley does is abstract this valid experience of participation in God through the Spirit away from Christ and saving faith in Christ.

Wesley thought that similar types of psychological experience came to the "natural man" -- yet without God, this experience is a parody of assurance in Christ. At the same time we can see that for Wesley the Spirit's work does not annul nature, but elevates it, lifts it into God, and brings it to its true fulfillment in Christ, a fulfillment not found in the natural by itself without God, but which, nonetheless, the natural yearns, and is opened to. For Wesley, human psychology is not denied, nor repressed -- but we need to understand that in God, happiness and holiness ultimately stand together in God, the God who has revealed God's self to us in Christ and the Spirit, in whom we participate in by faith in Jesus Christ.

The excerpt this is from the beginning of the sermon, describing what Wesley calls "the natural man'.

I. 1. . . . [the natural human] has no conception of that evangelical holiness without which no man shall see the Lord; nor of the happiness which they only find whose 'life is hid with Christ in God.'

2. And, for this very reason, because he is fast asleep, he is in some sense at rest. Because he is blind, he is also secure: he says, "Tush, there no harm will happen unto me.' The darkness which covers him on every side, keeps him in a kind of peace; so far as peace can consist with the works of the devil, and with an earthly, devilish mind. He sees not that he stands on the edge of the pit; therefore he fears it not. He cannot tremble at the danger he does not know. He has not understanding enough to fear. Why is it that he is in no dread of God? Because he is totally ignorant of Him: if not saying in his heart, 'There is no God'; or, that 'He sits on the circle of the hevens and humbles' not 'Himself to behold the things which are done on earth'; yet satisfying himself as well to all Epicurean intents and purposes by saying, 'God is merciful'' confounding and swallowing up all at once in that unwieldy idea of mercy all His holiness and essential hatred of sin; all His justice, wisdom, and truth. . . .

3. [The natural human] is secure because is utterly ignorant of himself. Hence he talks of 'repenting by-and-by'; he does not indeed exactly know when, but some time or other before he dies; taking it for granted that this is quite in his own power. . . .

4. But this ignorance never so strongly glares as in persons who are termed persons of learning. If a natural man be one of these, he can talk at large of his rational faculties, of the freedom of his will, and the absolute necessity of such freedom in order to constitue humans as moral agents. He reads and argues and proves to a demonstration that every one may do as he will; may dispose his own heart to evil or good, as it seems best in his own eyes. Thus the god of this world spreads a double veil of blindness over his heart, lest, by any means, 'the light of the glorious gospel of Christ should shine' upon it.

5. From the same ignorance of himself and God, there may sometimes arise, in the natural man, a kind of joy, in congratulating himself upon his own wisdom and goodness; and what the world calls joy he may often possess. He may have pleasure in various kinds; either in gratifying the desires of the flesh, or the desire of the eye, or the pride of life; particularly if he has large possessions; if he enjoy an affluent fortune; then he may 'clothe' himself 'in purple and fine linen and fare sumptuously every day.' And as long as he thus does well unto himself, persons will doubtless speak good of him. They will say, 'He is a happy man.' For, indeed, this is the sum of worldly happiness; to dress, and visit and talk and eat and drink, and rise up to play.

6. It is not surprising, if one in such circumstances as these, dosed with the opiates of flattery and sin, should imagine among his other waking dreams, that he walks in great liberty. How easily may he persuade himself that he is at liberty from all vulgar errors and from the prejudice of education; judging exactly right, and keeping clear of all extremes. 'I am free,' may he say, 'from all the enthusiasms of weak and narrow souls; from superstition, the disease of fools and cowards, always righteous over much; and from bigotry, continually incident to those who have not a free and generous way of thinking.' And too sure it is, that he is altogether from the 'wisdom which comes from above,' from holiness, from the religion of the heart, from the whole mind which was in Christ."