Intellectual Defenestration

Wesley and Doubt

First Things, currently my favorite regular dead-tree reading, has this interesting paragraph in a review of Stephen Tomkins' John Wesley: A Biography:

Wesley never seems to have attained the inner peace that was the goal of his entire adult life. In perhaps the most astonishing passage in this riveting book, Tomkins quotes John writing to his brother Charles in these stark words: "I do not love God. I never did. Therefore I never believed, in the Christian sense of the word. Therefore I am only an honest heathen." But unlike similar-sounding crises of faith in later times, this did not cause Wesley to despair of his mission: "And yet I dare not preach otherwise than I do, either concerning faith, or love, or justification, or perfection ... I want all the world to come to what I do not know."

Of course one can argue that this is a logical development of Wesley's moral perfectionism. More than anything, though, I think I find this strangely encouraging. It's nice to know even the big shots struggled.

November 29, 2004 06:45 PM