Friday, December 21, 2012

Not subjective

Lest you think, after yesterday's post, that Wesley reduced theology to subjectivity, here's a follow-up statement:
For Wesley, faith was always in God himself and not in our experience of God. This allowed our subjective experience of God to become objective knowledge of God and of our salvation.&mdashWesley as a Pastoral Theologian, page 18
<idle musing>
I wish more people would realize that faith is more than feelings. If we do indeed "wlak by faith, not by sight," then what the mystics called "the dark night of the soul" is a necessary experience for real faith to develop. Our faith needs to be in God, as God, not in our experience of God. To reduce God to our experience of him is to attempt to make him finite, to control him. That, my friends, is idolatry!
</idle musing>

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