John Wesley and God

¶ … John Wesley's understanding of the via salutis, identifying each component. Does John Wesley successfully maintain his emphasis both on God's goodness and on humanity's responsibility throughout this entire process?

The term "via salutis" translates into the "path of salvation." In the view of John Wesley, the path of salvation consisted of two distinct components, that of justification and sanctification (Wesley, 1980, p.271). Justification was an act of God's forgiveness and the human being accepting God into his or her heart. Although this fundamentally changed the believer from his or her previously sinful state, it still required active responsibility on the part of the believer to accept God's forgiveness and goodness. Thus, in this first stage of the path of salvation, there was a simultaneous action on God's part in God's willingness to forgive but also a conscious change on the part of the believer to recognize and accept that goodness. Justification was not a passive action for either party.

Justification was also not a permanent state. No matter how completely the believer accepted God's forgiveness, the believer was still subject to sinful temptations and an urge to turn away from God. A believer must have a sustained faith in God first and foremost, and must also have confidence in God. "For a man cannot have a childlike confidence in God till he knows he is a child of God. Therefore, confidence, trust, reliance, adherence, or whatever else it be called, is not the first, as some have supposed, but the second, branch or act of faith" (Wesley, 1980, p.276). The believer must be willing to trust that God is good and that God will accept him or her. In the Bible, a good example of this absolute belief and trust can be found in the example of Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac, with the knowledge that God would not take his son from him.

Justification and sanctification was a perpetual struggle, given the fact that human beings would inevitably wish to fall away from this path and doubt God. This is also why repentance was necessary on the path to salvation, as every believer must take a spiritual inventory and admit to falling from the path of righteousness. But just as it was inevitable that believers would stray, they were also capable of returning to that path, again through acts of repentance. There was nothing more dangerous than spiritual complacency, the idea that, "all sin is destroyed, root and branch, the moment a man is justified" (Wesley, 1980, p.280).

Another component of salvation was good works, even though Wesley did not believe that works alone could justify a Christian and faith was the necessary first condition of salvation. Still, works were an act of manifesting that faith. "All works of mercy; whether they relate to the bodies or souls of men . . . such as the endeavouring to instruct the ignorant . . . contribute in any manner to the saving of souls from death" (Wesley, 1980, p.280). Charity was not synonymous with faith or salvation but those who were saved still had a responsibility to preach the gospel and give both physical and spiritual succor to those who were in need. Again, this marks a considerable deviation between Wesley and other Protestant thinkers of the era, who were insistent solely upon faith alone as justification and focused only on the internal relationship of the believer to God.