Growing Access: Pietist and Wesleyan Themes

Sources: Roger Olson, The Story of Christian Theology, part eight.

Sacramentality
God is available to us through various means:

Jesus; scripture; sacraments; wonders, saints/relics/icons, liturgy/gifts, 'thin places', and church structures.

Augustine: Sacraments are outward signs (Calvin: instruments/seals) of inward grace.

Sacraments proclaim and extend God's saving grace in the present (cf. Deut 26:1-11).
Augustine numbered over 300 of these; most were later termed 'sacramentals' rather than sacraments as such.

Word versus sacrament?

The two were originally treated similarly.
Sacramental abuse was aggravated by missionary success and declining lay participation in the Middle Ages.
Reformation programs for full reform were resisted, conflictual, and polarizing.
Catholics came to privilege sacrament as a category, Protestants Word, without necessarily changing their underlying assumptions of mediated grace.

'Sacramental' Treatments of Scripture
A theology of scripture can emerge from a generalized account of God's power available through sacramentals that include, or center in, scripture.

Israel's scriptures "defiled the hands."
Bible passages can function as means of blessing (for instance, mezuzot and tefillin, and Christian counterparts).
Liturgical formulas can treat Bible 'performances' as mediating grace.
Are memory verses, wall hangings, family and ornamental Bibles, my wedding ring, etc. evangelical 'sacramentals'?

Mediating grace to readers and hearers thus becomes a framework in which to locate the meaning of scripture and scripture passages.

This framework seems especially influential in 'sanctificationist' traditions.

The Armianian-Wesleyan-Holiness Tradition of Engaging Scripture

Arminians (after James Arminius) revise elements of Reformed teaching on predestination, sin, and salvation.

The result is a new and influential Protestant synergism.

Pietists struggle with state-church lethargy and inadequacy of doctrine alone

by stressing personal repentance and conversion, existential relationship with God, sanctification, and active faith.
Johann Arndt stresses subjective appropriation of salvation; this supplements (and later can overshadow) Lutheran teaching on objective grace.
Philipp Spener and Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf pioneer small groups, individual Bible study and devotion, Sunrise and New Year's services, and Protestant foreign missions.
Zinzendorf and (Hussite) Moravians subordinate doctrinal orthodoxy to existential and emotional stance,
focusing on intimacy with Christ, especially in and through his sufferings.

Methodists attempt to revive Anglican Christianity and create the 'Methodist' movement and churches.

John and Charles Wesley bring emphasis on personal conversion, sanctification, and activity to Anglicanism.
These draw on Moravian, Pietist, Catholic, and Puritan influences.
The Wesleyan Quadrilateral updates an Anglican Trilateral to honor multiple related 'sources' or norms.
The doctrine of 'entire sanctification' fuels later holiness and Pentecostal movements.

Scripture here isn't just a text with contents, teachings, and themes,

but a divine force driven by God's saving actions through it.
So its contents, teachings, and themes are not interpreters' exclusive (or possibly even primary) concerns.
Its priorities determine the relevance of individual elements (so sanctification's priority raises the Wesleyan stress on moral and ethical material).