The Crucible Of Life Has Provided Me With An Epistemological System

In this short essay, I will lay out my personal position with regard to spiritual discernment expressed in "Discerning Spiritual Discernment: Assessing Current Approaches for Understanding God's Will" by Dennis Horton. I will also consider other opinions in this appraisal.

In most other readings about Wesley’s theology, one can come across a lot of great content, but sometimes wrestle through all of the higher education jargon. Tuttle gets the point across with laymen’s terms in hopes to convey the heart of Wesley’s theology. He also does a great job of providing an index in the beginning of the book to help readers stay the course

1. Is the present day Christian faith in harmony with and growing out of that continuous faith of Christians found in the New Testament? 2. Is your faith available to all individuals? 3. Is private faith based on objective faith? 4. Are the symbols of one’s faith meaningful?

Wesley believed that sanctification was a process that could be received as an instantaneous experience after conversion, or later on in life. No matter when sanctification was achieved, the moment someone received sanctification was the “climax” of their Christian life. He believed that the “second blessing purified the believer from his inward sin and enabled him to secure perfect love of God and of his fellowmen.” Followers of Wesley had trouble balancing the “crisis and process views” of Wesley, and the crisis view began to take “precedence over the process view.” Soon, sanctification was no longer viewed as the goal of a Christian life, but the beginning of a Christian life.

Study: is a specific kind of experience in which through careful attention to reality the mind is enabled to move in a certain direction. When this is done with concentration, perception, and repetition, ingrained habits of thought are formed. The purpose of this instruction is to direct the mind repeatedly and regularly toward certain modes of thought about God and human relationships. It is a means of knowing God and learning His truths and priorities through the study of Scripture.

Prior to diving into the information that is to be received, it is first important to discuss the methods of knowing provided by Entwistle (2015). There are 4 for epistemic methods of knowing. The four methods are logic, empriricism, revelation, and hermeneutics (Entwistle, 2015). Logic, deals with the assumption that an individual can separate fact from belief by using rationality. Empiricism is a methos that is based off experience, alone. This give responsibility to the individual, and they are to “evaluate” and compare their claims of knowledge by their experiences. Revelation involves the awareness of the signs around humankind. God shows Himself, both, directly and indirectly. This is referred to as special and general revelation. Lastly, Hermeneutics sole purpose is to make sure that God word is never distorted and therefore misunderstood. There are rules that are constructed so that the message of God is, correctly, articulated and passed on to the congregation. In reviewing the methods of knowing, it is safe to say that all 4 are needed to fully integrate faith and science.

This week’s reading concentrated on the relational aspects of the second and third persons of the trinity and how they contribute to Wesley’s theology of justification, sanctification, and assurance. Wesley saw the Christ as holding the three offices of prophet, priest, and king which I hear within my studies on a regular basis. Also, Wesley sees Jesus as being Creator, Author, Supporter, and Preserver from his relational position within the trinity. Even though I have difficulty accepting the idea of Jesus atoning for humanity’s sins, Wesley apparently accepted it whole heartedly through his understanding of the rhetoric of the day such as the satisfaction theory and penal substitution. Regardless of how it was accomplished, it is clear that Wesley found it to be a sacrifice of love for humanity and that love carries forward into the third person of the trinity, the Holy Spirit.

When Wesley talked about development in holiness, and the fundamental goal of being entire sanctification, he was fixed that sanctification and justification is by faith. In his preaching, “The Scripture Way of Salvation”, Wesley expounded the faith by which Christians are perfected is because God is able, he promised in Scripture, he is willing, and he really does it 1) God has foretold this in Scripture. 2) What God promises, God is able to do. 3) God is capable and willing to manage it right away. 4) God actually answers this. Wesley concluded the sermon by exhorting his audience “expect it by faith, expect it as you are, and expect it now!”

In chapter seven, Hauerwas turns his attention to Barth’s witness in the Church Dogmatics. Here, Hauerwas argues, we can see an account of “God and God’s redemption of creation in a world constituted by practices that have made Christian speech unintelligible, particularly to those who continue to think of themselves as Christians” (174). The Dogmatics recovers a coherent natural theology through repetition and variation on its central christological theme. That is, theology, which begins as an act of faith, is capable of providing “factual proof” of the truth of its claims only by repeated reference to Jesus Christ (173-4). Furthermore, Barth models a pattern of truthful speech about God that binds together the conceptual and moral skills needed to adequately witness to God in the world. For Hauerwas,

When beginning to work to understand Wesley’s Scripture way of salvation in his sermons, it is perhaps best to start with his sermon titled The Scripture Way of Salvation, preached in 1765. In this sermon, Wesley

Interestingly, Michael Polanyi introduced the technique of tacit knowing to solve the problem for obtaining an accurate interpretation, so that ‘we can know more than we can tell’ . His implication of method is definitely clear for hermeneutical application. He emphasizes tat ‘Christian commitment is necessary to share the test-shaping community’s horizons and it is the indwelling of these appropriate presuppositions that allows understanding. Only in commitment to following Jesus will the interpreter find that genuine textual truths can be discovered. ‘The effort of knowing is thus guided by a sense of obligation towards the truth; by an effort to submit to reality’ .

Faith, a word that has a different meaning to every individual that walks this Earth, cannot be so easily defined. Faith, when talking about it in the religious sense, makes it even that much harder to understand. Everyone believes in something, and each of those beliefs have an enormous effect on how they live their lives. Gerald O’ Collins, a Jesuit Priest, states that within the Christian faith, lies two components: Fides Quae and Fides Qua. Fides Quae is the faith which is believed, or the content of that faith. Fides Qua is the individuals own personal commitment to God. Throughout this paper I will demonstrate faith using The Compendium, and A New World of Faith to show how a good understanding of faith can reveal the truth from

The concepts of faith and reason occupy separate realms of reality and believers in one or the other should not attempt to have domain in the other discipline. This is where the conflict can enter in. In the academic setting, theology has had increased interaction with philosophy and reason. As a separate academic field, philosophy ought to continue its search for the meaning of life and in the process consider spiritual realities, while theology continues to proclaim the Gospel to the world. While the two disciplines should

Wesley emphasized the importance of justification, and the confidence of salvation is grounded in the righteousness of Christ. He considers the progression of sanctification as one of making the person admirable of salvation. “I am first to inquire wherein that circumcision of the heart consists which will receive the praise of God.” This

The role of tradition in Methodist theological thinking is another important aspect of the "Quadrilateral". Ted Campbell writes, "Methodism, Wesley claimed, was in continuity with 'the religion of the Bible, the religion of the primitive Church, [and] the religion of the Church of England '" . John Wesley was trying to illustrate that the tradition and history of the Church is vital to the understanding of our theology. The apostolic church 's beginning is something that we should be