John Wesley, the Uniting Church, and the authority of Scripture

Abstract

This article aims at contributing to the Uniting Church’s theological discourse by appealing to its Wesleyan heritage in order to establish a workable approach to the authority of Scripture. It takes note of attempts by both liberals and conservatives to hijack John Wesley’s opinions to defend idiosyncratic views of biblical authority for political and ecclesial purposes of their own. Rather than relying on Wesley’s ‘rhetorical flourishes’ on scriptural authority, this article considers his overall approach to argue that Wesley affirmed rigorous biblical criticism within the bounds of a generous orthodoxy. Recognizing that in the light of reader-response criticism, the Protestant principle of sola scriptura has limited value, it is argued here that some kind of traditioned reading of Scripture (such as ‘canonical theism’) is necessary and desirable. It is suggested that the old battle lines drawn between liberals and conservatives over the authority of the Bible are rapidly becoming the stuff of historical enquiry rather than being situated at the coalface of conflict in the Uniting Church (this is also the case in other mainline Protestant denominations). Instead, the area of dispute will lie in determining whether or not the church’s discourse clearly sets forth the Christian gospel. In such a ‘radical middle’, biblical authority will be recognized within a framework that embraces scholarly criticism of the text while allowing difference of interpretive opinion within a deeply traditioned commitment to ‘God’s universal, prevenient, transforming love’.