Our first paper is very recent one which we are using as to lead-off what

could be a provocative set of essays (if you know of any suitable papers, please use contact email). The following is a good snapshot of the research being done on the confluence of Eastern and Western Christianity. One needs to appreciate how John Wesley appropriated Eastern Fathers such as Maximus, Pseudo-Macarius, and Gregory of Nyssa in his theology of "perfection" and how he thereby diverted that stream yet again into Western religious though and civilization.

JOHN WESLEY, CONTEMPORARY ORTHOPATHY,

AND RADICAL ORTHODOXY:

A MODEST PROPOSAL

Theology Interest Group

Skip Horton-Parker, Regent University, Virginia Beach, VA

Presented at the 34^th Annual Meeting of the Society for Pentecostal Studies

Introduction

From the perspective of the classical spiritual disciplines, divine reality is grasped principally through graced "affections," which act as powerful epistemic rivers flowing toward God. But modern theology so conspired with the post-Kantian divorce between the heart and mind that these avenues of perception were largely neglected and abandoned. This was a choice that carried dangerous ramifications; for as Mark A McIntosh has warned, "when theology is divorced from spirituality it begins to speak of a "different god." He concludes that spirituality must "challenge" theology if it is to recover from its modern malaise.[1]

As if in answer to this need, orthopathy, rom "right" (ortho) "affections" (pathe), has arisen within Wesleyan and Pentecostal theology as an integrative concept that holds great promise for holistically reuniting spirituality and theology. In addition, orthopathy suggests creative ways of re-envisioning anthropology, epistemology, and ontology, no less important tasks for postmodern theology.

In this paper I shall present an overview of orthopathy, followed by an examination of two of its constituent motifs as formulated by Wesley: the spiritual senses and prevenient grace.  Since I am suggesting that orthopathy be treated as the organizational nexus of a new theological program, we shall then discuss the concept that may be said to undergird it ontologically: participation (methexis).  This section of the paper will be followed by a short excursus on the present status of Wesleyan-Pentecostal theology, and by my concluding observations. 

In the process of discussing participation we shall examine Radical Orthodoxy, a contemporary, postliberal movement grounded deeply in the Augustinian idea of participation. The "modest proposal" mentioned in the title of my paper, which is really its central thrust, is that orthopathy can serve as the basis for an analogous postconservative movement from within the Wesleyan/ Pentecostal/Renewal theological orbit. I believe that such a program would be constructive in at least two significant ways. It would help facilitate the articulation of a long overdue pneumatic theology fully in keeping with the distinct theological emphases of Wesleyanism and Pentecostalism. And, in the words of Ralph Del Colle, whose 2003 presidential address to the Society for Pentecostal Studies prompted my interest in orthopathy, it would help us in formulating a new "regulative grammar for theology as a whole,[2]  a task that must be a first-order priority in our postmodern milieu.

I.          Orthopathy in Outline

T.H. Runyon first coined the term "orthopathy" in an article in 1987.[3] He identified orthopathy as a concept originated by Wesley that stood as "a necessary but currently missing complement to orthodoxy and orthopraxy." Runyon described orthopathy in epistemological terms as an event that occurs "between the Divine Source and human participant." As he explicated it, there are four factors involved in this epistemological event: (1) the divine source of experience, which makes impressions on the spiritual senses of the human beings; (2) the telos of experience: the intention of the source, the purpose and goal for the human being; (3) the transformation brought about through experience; and (4) the feelings that accompany the experience.[4]

While there is, at present, no single work dedicated to the subject of orthopathy, Steven J. Land's important work, Pentecostal Spirituality: A Passion for the Kingdom, contains a relatively recent overview of the idea, along with illuminating commentary.[5]

Land begins, in my opinion, where any essential understanding of Wesley's vision must, with a reference to patristic spirituality.[6] He reminds us that orthopathy is a reflection of the common[7] understanding that theology and spirituality are inextricably connected. As expressed in Latin: lex orandi, lex credendi; "the law of prayer is the law of belief." Reflecting on this background, Land writes (italics added):

When theologia is restored to its ancient meaning, the dichotomization that so often occurs or is perceived between theology and spirituality can be overcome . . . . To state this claim in a more formal way: orthodoxy (right praise-confession), orthopathy (right affections) and orthopraxy (right praxis) are related in a way analogous to the interrelations of the Holy Trinity. God who is Spirit creates in humanity a spirituality which is at once cognitive, affective and behavioral, thus driving toward a unified epistemology, metaphysics and ethics.[8]

For a fuller understanding of the "ancient meaning" of theologia, let us turn to the Eastern Orthodox fathers to whom Wesley was so profoundly indebted. Evagrius of Pontus (4^th century) defined theologia as the realm of prayer (proseuche). Prayer is a state (katastasis) rather than an activity; one in which the nous regains its true state. In prayer, one communes with the mind of God, via the condescension of God. Theologia, as prayer, is seen as a direct gnosis of the triune God; and a direct participation in the divine, uncreated energies of the Holy Trinity.[9] Only one who knows God in this way should speak of God: "If you are a theologian, you pray in truth; if you pray in truth, you are a theologian."[10] Evagrius' thinking infused the Macarian homilies, which themselves influenced Wesley's theologizing across his entire career.[11]

Orthopathy, then, posits the existence of a veridical exchange between the divine Spirit and the human spirit. Because the weight of this claim rests upon (1) the epistemological validity of its mediating mechanism: rightly ordered "spiritual senses"; and (2) the reality of its ontological foundation?"participation," we shall next examine these ideas.

II.                The Spiritual Senses as Noetic Receptors

It is interesting to consider Wesley as a modernist in the Lockean sense that he rejected the possibility of innate ideas and was thus a thoroughgoing empiricist. He insisted that "nothing can be known that cannot be felt," and by "felt" he did not mean via emotion, enthusiasm, or gnostic "inner impressions," but as a mental perception.[12]  But his empiricism was no slave to rationalism, and his gleanings from Eastern Church Fathers such as Maximus, Pseudo-Macarius, and Gregory of Nyssa inured him not only against the rationalistic excesses of the Enlightenment, but against those of Catholic and Protestant scholasticism as well.

That being said; while Wesley believed that all knowledge comes from the senses, he also affirmed that there are two types of senses, natural and spiritual.[13] The latter are necessary, for example, to discern between good and evil.[14]

It is necessary that you have the hearing ear and the seeing eye . . . that you have a new class of senses opened in your soul, not depending on organs of flesh and blood, to be "the evidence of things not seen," as your bodily senses are of visible things, to be the avenues to the invisible world, to discern spiritual objects, and to furnish you with ideas of what the outward "eye hath not seen, neither the ear heard." And till you have these internal senses, till the eyes of your understanding are opened, you can have no apprehension of divine things, or idea of them at all . . . as you cannot reason concerning colours if you have no natural sight . . . so you cannot reason concerning spiritual things if you have no spiritual sight.[15] 

            In his letter to Conyers Middleton, Wesley makes it clear that he considers the data of the spiritual senses to be "the strongest evidence of the truth of Christianity."[16] He goes so far as to say that experience stands as the fulfillment of which scripture is the promise: "Christianity, considered as an inward principle, is the completion of all these promises."[17]  Such evidence has unparalleled immediacy "directly from God into the believing soul." It has irrefutable clarity: "One thing I know; I was blind but now I see." It is also as ubiquitous as God's own Spirit: "intimately present to all persons, at all times, and in all places." No other type of evidence possesses these qualities.[18]

            Of course, Wesley is treading here where the Eastern Fathers have trod. Origen was the first to speak of the spiritual senses, appealing, as Wesley later would, to their necessity in discerning between good and evil (Ps 38:4; Prov 2:5; Heb 5:14). Rahner describes their meaning for Origen as a refinement of enoptike ("in-sight") brought about by grace, whereby one can more clearly sense the will of God in every situation.[19]

But we should turn to Macarius to appraise the source closest to Wesley. Wesley's heart may well have "sung"[20] after reading this passage from the Homilies:

This is a thing which everyone ought to know, that there are eyes that are more inward than these eyes and hearing more inward than this hearing. As the eyes sensibly behold and recognize the face of a friend or beloved one, so the eyes of the worthy and faithful soul, being spiritually enlightened by the light of God, behold and recognize the true friend, the sweetest and greatly longed-for bridegroom, the Lord, while the soul is shone upon by the adorable Spirit; and thus beholding with the mind the desirable and only inexpressible beauty, it is smitten with a passionate love of God, and is directed into all virtues of the Spirit, and thus possesses an unbounded, unfailing love for the Lord it longs for.[21] 

                Macarius experiences (peira) the inpouring of grace, and, as a result, knows with full assurance (plerophoria). The spiritual sense (aisthesis nous) and the feeling of the mind (aisthesis noera) that accompany the influx of grace are the means by which we recollect God. Such recollection constitutes the very heart of prayer. The spiritual senses are the power through which "love quests after the invisible."[22] And they are the channels through which the Holy Spirit reconstitutes the image (eikon) of God in us.[23] All these themes: experience; assurance; the spiritual senses (as noetic receptors), prayer, love, the reconstitution of the image of God, became key points in the Wesleyan synthesis.

All this is reminiscent of the general classical assumption that (in the words of Menander): "to all mortals suneidesis is theos." For Wesley too, the intuition of the moral law of which Paul speaks (Rom 1:19-21; 2:14-15; 17:27-28 and elsewhere) is unequivocally a revelation of God Himself.[24] Wesley never doubts that God is available to us; only whether we are available to Him.[25] That is why the means of grace are means of grace. "It was Wesley's insight that, to faith, God is immediately present in the means of grace. To the person of faith, prayer becomes a conversation, scripture becomes the voice of God, and the Lord's Supper a meal with the risen Christ."[26]

The broad epistemology that Wesley constructed testifies eloquently both to the universality of revelation and to the raison d'être for such revelation: the relational character of the God of love at the center of the Christian matrix of meaning.

III.       Grace:  The Facilitator of Orthopathy

The doctrine of "prevenient grace," or, as Wesley called it "preventing grace," traces its origin to Augustine's concept of gratia praeveniens. In his effort to meet the challenges of paganism and Pelagianism, Augustine explored the implications of the "natural conscience," to which we referred in the preceding section. By assenting that God's grace is at work in all persons, Augustine was able to construe the virtue and wisdom of pagan culture as the fruit of the activity of the one true God. Grace was seen as being active in them, creating the will to do good ("preventing" them from sin) and drawing them to Godself.[27]

     Wesley followed Augustine's trajectory, but with certain revisions. Wesley envisioned a God who "waiteth not for the call of man," but who gives his presence graciously not just to the "elect," or just to those who hear the gospel.[28] Rather, he makes it possible for all to seek God in spite of the effects of original sin.[29] Thus:

. . . salvation begins with what is usually termed, (and very properly,) preventing grace; including the first wish to please God, the first dawn of light concerning his will; and the first slight transient conviction of having sinned against him.  All these imply some tendency towards life; some degree of salvation; the beginning of a deliverance from a blind, unfeeling heart, quite insensible of God and the things of God.[30]

A further, Wesleyan innovation--one that is central to our discussion--was his declaration that it wrong to think of the state of persons outside the faith as one of "mere nature, wholly devoid of the grace of God":

No man living is entirely destitute of what is vulgarly called ?natural conscience.' But this is not natural; it is more properly termed ?preventing grace'. . . . Every one has sooner or later good desires, although the generality of men stifle them before they can strike deep root or produce any considerable fruit. . . . So that no man sins because he has not grace, but because he does not use the grace which he hath.[31] 

      Here, as in his other conceptualization regarding of the means of grace, Wesley seeks to balance out oppositional forms of thinking. He seeks immanence without reductionism or pantheism, transcendence without Docetism or Deism; synergism without predestinationism or libertarianism; and a vision of a world in which "mere nature" is an impossibility because of the ever-present grace of God, which is the participatory foundation of all our salvific knowledge. As Knight sums it up: "Prevenient grace is the clue to the whole, for there Wesley clearly sees the supernatural mediated through the natural."[32] 

IV.       Participation: The Medium of Orthopathy

How is the supernatural mediated through the natural? According to Wesley's classical sources, that dynamic was accomplished through methexis, or "participation." Neo-Platonic methexis presupposed myriad levels of being necessarily emanating from the divine "One." Orthodoxy greatly modified this view, envisioning instead a theistic God from whom flow (in a graced and voluntarily fashion) the uncreated "energies" through which God creates and sustains all things. Thus, all of creation is bathed in the reality of the divine life. As Orthodox writer Olivier Clement put it: "holiness is the essence of the world [and] . . . it is important that our hearts are aware of it."[33]

Clement's affirmation that the heart is the organ through which this graced ontology is perceived is important in two senses. First, it links the discussion of participation directly with orthopathy and orthopathic concerns.[34] Second, it suggests that agape/eros[35] is not merely an expression of human emotivity, but a potential revelation of--and transformational participation in--divine reality. It is thus a matter of immeasurable ontological and epistemological weight, whether considered transitively or intransitively.

Wesley was deeply aware of this. His legacy to us is his synthesis of Western and Eastern theologies, in which his answer to the question of the tension between faith and works was: "faith filled with the energy of love" (energoumene di agapes; Gal 5:6).[36] Wesley believed that we are created in God's image and that the very nature of that image is love (1 John 4:8). As the result of the Fall, the affections are disordered and corrupted and the understanding is clouded. For the imago Dei to be restored, the affections/understanding must be reconstituted by love as love.

This part of the Wesleyan synthesis constitutes the basis for orthopathy. The subsequent parts of his synthesis join the Western emphasis upon justification with the Eastern concept of theosis (and thus even more explicitly with participation). In fact, Wesley expressed this synthesis as: "pardoned in order to participate." The soul is healed as we are reconformed to the image of God through the energy of love, mirroring the process through which God became like humanity through condescending love. Love is thus the participatory "engine" of both Incarnation and theosis.[37] In his analysis of Wesley's appropriation of the theology of Chrysostom, Steve McCormick concludes: "Wesley was to take that motif of divine-human participation in the via salutis and weave it throughout his ordo salutis."[38]

Having examined the coinherence of the principles of orthopathy and participation in Wesley (and in general, theologically) let us now consider the implications of participation, and by inference, any orthopathic theological program, for contemporary theology.

Augustinian Participation Redux: Radical Orthodoxy

James K.A. Smith claims that any attempt to liberate theology from the epistemological assumptions of secular modernity must entail the declaration of a "counter-ontology."[39] I quite agree. My premise is that participation/orthopathy (they function as a package) moves us significantly in this direction. The reigning secular "ontology of immanence" flattens the world into a nihilistic one-dimensional plane of meaningless contingency. Contrariwise, participation suggests an ontology (and subsequent epistemology) that legitimizes and invites us to explore "the ecstatic and dependent nature of created reality [including personhood] in its relationship to the transcendent."[40]

As an aid to understanding how these ideas can play out, we shall sample some of the voices of Radical Orthodoxy (RO), a movement comprised of a loosely knit group of predominantly Anglican and Catholic academics. It is essentially leaderless, and has no formal agenda. It is "orthodox" by virtue of its "commitment to credal Christianity and the exemplarity of its patristic matrix, and to the Augustianian vision of all knowledge as divine illumination."[41] It is "radical" in that it seeks to retrieve premodern "roots" (radix).[42] Thus, RO is not a system, method, or formula, but rather "a hermeneutic disposition and a style of metaphysical vision."[43]

In an age of radical secularization, RO proclaims itself post-secular. Rather than taking a defensive posture in postmodernity, its exponents stand the very language of postmodern deconstructionism on its head and boldly announce the "death of secularism." In reality, they say, there is no territory independent of God in life or in the world. Secularist dualism has not only ghettoized theological and metaphysical truth, but also caused the ruin of the very realities that modernity had wanted to celebrate: embodied life, self-expression, sexuality, aesthetic experience, political community. The Kantian (and Barthian) insistence on the autonomy of philosophy and theology, and reason and revelation, "ran the risk of allowing worldly knowledge an unquestioned validity in its own sphere."[44] But time has shown this to have been a disastrous assumption. According to RO we must identify both philosophical and theological forms of dualism for what they are: failed theologies and call for a resituating of the issues of life within a working theological framework. [45]  By insisting that there is no territory independent of God in life or in the world, RO restates Wesley's denial of the existence of "mere nature" in a most robust fashion.

Like Augustine, RO declares that "no finite thing may be known, not even to any degree, outside its ratio to the infinite."[46] The key to this knowing is "participation": "Whereas the liberal watchword was Reason, the watchword of neo-orthodoxy was Revelation. The watchword of Radical Orthodoxy is Participation . . . Participation is the idea that finite reality images and reflects the transcendent. Reason only works through that participation, faith only works through that participation."[47]

Echoing this perspective, Catherine Pickstock speaks of the important of participation in liturgy and worship; clearly articulating vital orthopathic themes in the process:

In fact the only way in which you can have non-foreclosed and yet not radically indeterminate selfhood, we hold, is in the mode of worship of the Divine. It's only really in the act of worship that one is fully oneself, but at the same time more than oneself, because you can offer yourself to God without becoming God, and so find true identity, which is participatory and transcendent self-identity. For with the self, as with all things, everything is because it is in fact more than itself.[48]

R. R. Reno gives us a glimpse of the apologetic power of "participation" in describing RO's "foundational assumption about what we might call ?the glue that holds the world together'":

. . . It is Augustine's vision of heavenly peace, made effective in the dynamic and binding power of divine purpose, that shapes Radical Orthodoxy's reflections, not Nietzsche's violence wrought by an omnipotent will-to-power. This difference allows Radical Orthodoxy to interpret postmodern thought without being drawn into its orbit, giving [it] the perspective from which to expose the nakedness of postmodern nihilism.[49]

V.        Orthopathy and the Need for a Theology of the Third Article

We have come to the point where we can begin to consider: What would Wesleyan/Pentecostal theology look like if it took orthopathy and Augustinian participation seriously? But because theological change can be a frightening affair, it is perhaps prudent to preface these questions by asking: Is Wesleyan/Pentecostal theology presently in need of such change?

Wesleyan theologian J. Lyle Dabney has done considerable soul searching regarding this issue. He concludes:

John Wesley failed . . . to fulfill the promise of his own theological trajectory because he did not do the one thing theologically needful. He did not develop a truly alternative conceptuality of his own and thus clearly transcend the forms and dilemma of the theology that he had inherited. Instead, he seems to have taken the "holy living" tradition from his Anglican background and appended it to the Reformation tradition of "justification by grace through faith" that he received through his encounter with the Pietists and the evangelical revival as if these were rightly understood as a set of discrete events occurring in a chronological order. The result is an ungainly ordo salutis in which the Holy Spirit plays an all-pervasive though not clearly defined role in the life of the individual on the way toward Christian perfection. As a consequence, while Wesley's theology is not like those of the first nor of the second article of the creed, neither does it achieve the form of a genuine theology of the third article.[50]

In a subsequent article, Dabney brings the question home and asks whether Pentecostalism is prepared to do the "one thing needful" and develop a truly alternative conceptuality wherewith to forge its own identity as "a genuine theology of the third article."[51]

           Other voices have also heralded the need for, and the possibility of, such a project. Howard Ervin has noted the need for a distinctive Pentecostal hermeneutic, and suggested that orthopathy could serve as its foundation.[52] Echoing the theme of participation, David Nichols has also commented that "a spiritual' ontology" based on an "analogy of love" as opposed to [an] analogy of faith or being" should serve as the basis for a systematic theology "worthy of the name Pentecostal."[53]

I would like to add my voice to these, and propose that orthopathy, rooted as it is in the reality and activity of the Spirit, offers a ready bridge to establishing a working "theology of the third article." Orthopathy may be considered an authentically indigenous product of Wesleyan?and potentially, Pentecostal?spirituality and reflection. It is thus congruent with the traditions it will serve. It is also ecumenical in that it expresses the vital richness of the Wesleyan synthesis of Anglican, Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox spirituality.^[54]  As our cursory investigation of RO has suggested, orthopathic theology is rich in its potential to address critical postmodern issues. Its understanding of the religious affections and the means of grace suggest a workable postfoundationalist epistemology, and its rootedness in the metaphysics of Augustinian participation gives it potentially broad explanatory power philosophically and apologetically.[55]

         Of course, such a program will not spring forth fully formed like Athena from Zeus' forehead. But Dabney is certainly correct in chiding Pentecostal (and, by implication, Wesleyan and "Renewal") theologians to begin moving away from the theological impasse he describes. For as he pointedly observes: "nothing is more debilitating to Pentecostal theology than the insidious suggestion that it's not about the theology."[56]

VI.       Concluding Observations

Since we began our study with a quote from Runyon, who "rediscovered" orthopathy, I shall let him have the penultimate word in closing (italics mine):

If we ask, in comparison with Luther and Calvin, what was determinative for Wesley's orientation, the uniqueness of his approach becomes more apparent. Whereas for Calvin the eternal counsels of God provide from the beginning the context within which our knowledge of ourselves and our destiny unfolds, and whereas for Luther the reconciliation of God and the sinner which takes place at the midpoint of history in the cross and is appropriated through justification by faith provides the center from which any system must be constructed, for Wesley it is renewal and re-creation in anticipation of, and participation in, the future that is determinative.[57]

Runyon recapitulates Dabney in two significant ways here. First, his call for an alternative Wesleyan theology is obvious. Second, Runyon suggests that such a theology must be pneumatically focused. It must be a "theology of the third article," for "renewal and recreation" are signal works of the Spirit.

We may also note that the term "participation" figures prominently in Runyon's passage. What does it mean to be renewed and re-created "in anticipation of, and "participation in the future?" I submit that it signifies transformation grounded in ontological participation in the eschatological presence of the future, as mediated by the Spirit. Here I must reemphasize an important point that qualifies our entire discussion of participation. Participation, as envisioned by the church fathers, is a Spirit-mediated reality; it is a gift of the Spirit, given in degrees of grace, as it were.[58] And yet it is also ontologically ubiquitous; there is no existence or knowledge apart from the reality and word of the creating and sustaining God (Acts 17:28).

This arena of "common grace," where creation and the Spirit "touch," is where participation can play an interesting role in the church's conversation with secular culture. For example, Pentecostal theologian Frank Macchia has criticized George Lindbeck's postmodern cultural-linguistic epistemology, which insists that religious experience (and experience in general) has its sole point of origin in symbol systems. Macchia objects that this is not just a one way street, but that experience also originates and alters the symbol systems that give shape to experience and cognition.

Pointing toward the arena in which participation is most powerfully apparent (orthopathy), Macchia argues that Pentecostals would strongly affirm that religious experience results directly from the creative action of God's Spirit. But generalizing in the direction of prevenient grace (as would Wesley), he also affirms that a similar epistemic openness applies to "the varieties of human experiences . . .  everywhere that may be viewed as at least implicitly of God."[59] Thus Macchia argues for "a holistic view" of human experience that "goes beyond the modernist focus . . . and opens one up to a fully ?charismatic' understanding of experience."[60]

By speaking this way, we are enlarging truth; we are telling "true truth Christianly." Macchia, without using the term "participation," is pressing in the direction of what Catherine Pickstock means by saying that "with the self, as with all things, everything is because it is in fact more than itself." No postmodern thinker would disagree with Macchia that any true anthropology, to be true, must be holistic. The critical thing that Macchia's orthopathic/participation-friendly remarks suggest, however, is that to be holistic, anthropology must be charismatic. The same is true regarding reality as a whole.[61] This is the language of participation and of theosis; of the Eastern Fathers; and of Wesley. It is deeply mystical, deeply pneumatic, and deeply Christian.

Wesley fought against the false mysticism of the quietists but he fully embraced and was informed by the magisterial mysticism of the Eastern Fathers. In his own words, it made his heart sing. The song he heard was a healing song. It helped him bind up East and West in his own day, and may have power to salve the religious rationalism; the dualistic fideism; and the postmodern nihilism of our own. May we be allowed to sing along?

I freely admit that the kind of robust "answering theology" set forth by RO gets my blood moving. The question is: will Wesleyans and Wesley's inheritors in the Pentecostal-Holiness-Renewal traditions decide to enter the lists as well? Our investigation of the rich implications of orthopathic theology, rooted as it is in the theology of methexis, indicates that if it does not, it will not be for want of something to say.

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