Monday, June 06, 2016

To what end knowledge?

For Wesley, the knowledge and love of God is the end for which humanity is created, the experience of which is happiness. The renewal of the image is induction into the love of God, and as Dawson says, love is a relation. Jesus’ glory must, for those who will respond to the gospel, have a salvific effect, but note too that “his almighty Spirit” performs this effect. For Wesley, it is not simply a matter of negotiating the proximity of two identities, Jesus’ and ours. There is even a certain crudity about doing so, when instead it is more appropriate to speak of the Holy Spirit. It is the Spirit who relates us to Christ in love; the Spirit is the agent of transformation, who works through Scripture as a means of grace. Another way of putting this is that the Spirit reinterprets our identities, so that our reading of Scripture, our interpretation of Jesus’ identity, is responsive to grace.— Reading the Way to Heaven, page 136 (emphasis original)

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