Do Humans Have a Spirit?

QUESTION: what does Wesley mean in his note on 1 Thes. 5:23, where he denies that spirit is a constituent part of man, and says that "adventitious, and the supernatural gift of God to be found in Christians only"?

ANSWER: He teaches that body and soul constitute man. He does not believe there are three distinct essentials in man, but two only, that the human spirit is not an entity, but the soul's capacity to be quickened into spiritual life by the life-giving Holy Spirit received by faith in Jesus Christ. Wesley means that spirituality cannot be predicated of the natural man before regeneration. He had no sympathy with the widely spreading modern error that immortality is not of nature, but is the gift of God for believers only. He believed in the eternal punishment of the finally impenitent rejector of Christ. Of modern contemporary theologians Holsten and Weiss deny the existence of a πνεῦμα (pneuma, spirit) in the natural man, thus confirming Wesley's doctrine.

— from Steele's Answers pp. 55, 56.

What Did Wesley Teach About Paradise?

QUESTION: Does Wesley say in one of his sermons that Paradise is a place where believers are purified before they are admitted to heaven?

ANSWER: We have not time to read again all of Wesley's sermons, more than a hundred, but we believe that no such doctrine can be found in them for the following reasons: (1) We have been reading Wesley's writings more than sixty years, and have never found it. (2) He was very insistent on entire sanctification in this life and could not consistently teach any doctrine which would weaken the motive to seek perfect purity here and now. (3) He could not have been so unwise as to define Paradise in exactly the same way as the Papists define Purgatory. (4) He would not in his sermons have given a different description of Paradise from that found in his Notes on the New Testament, "The place where the souls of the righteous remain from deaths till the resurrection" (Luke 23:43); "The seat of happy spirits in their separate state, between death and the resurrection" (1 Cor. 12:4); "A garden of pleasure" (Rev. 2:7). These are his descriptions of Paradise.

— from Steele's Answers pp. 54, 55.

Peter's Love for Jesus

QUESTION: In John 21:16-17 was Peter's grief enhanced because Jesus used a weaker verb when he asked him the third time, "Lovest thou me?"

ANSWER: The two New Testament verbs are ἀγαπάω (agapao) and φιλέω (phileo), the first the love of choice, the other the love of feeling. Peter in his answers insisted on using the latter, till finally Christ, who had twice used the former, uses the verb which Peter preferred. The whole question turns on Peter's conception of the two verbs with regard to their relative strength. For in one respect Peter's favorite verb is stronger because it is warmer and more emotional, and Jesus has himself used it in John 16:27, "Ye have loved me and believed that I came from the Father." Others think that Peter in his penitence shrank from using the word indicating decided love of the will, instead of the term expressive of inclination and emotion, and that he was grieved and humbled because he could not affirm the strong kind of love that Jesus was seeking. The reader is left to choose between these two theories. I think it was very much like Peter to use what appeared to him to be the stronger verb and to bring Jesus to use his term.

— from Steele's Answers pp. 53, 54.

A Most Marvelous Manifestation

I have experienced a most marvelous manifestation of the love of Christ to me. O the unsearchable riches of Christ! Do you know how unspeakably precious Jesus is when you trust him fully? My experience was never marked. I never could tell the day of my conversion. My evidence was chiefly an inference, rarely the direct testimony of the Spirit. Hence my utterances have been feeble and destitute of power. But all this is gone by. God has so certified this blessed Gospel to my soul, that I shall no more blow the trumpet with an uncertain sound.

Oneness With Christ

The advocates of an advanced Christian experience insist, with great unanimity, that there is a well defined line separating it from the former Christian life. We are often called on to state the specific difference — to draw the line between these two religious states; hence the attempts to discriminate between the new birth and entire sanctification are some of them conclusive, and others unsatisfactory. We are not whetting our theological razor to assist at this hairsplitting; we need less theorizing and more exemplification — less dogma and more experience.

Agape

QUESTION: Does agape always mean divine love in the New Testament?

ANSWER: It denotes Christian love to God and men, a love unknown to writers outside the New Testament, a love which chooses its object with decision of will, so that it becomes self-denying or compassionate. It is the distinctive peculiarity of the Christian life.

— from Steele's Answers p. 53.

A "Babbler"?

QUESTION: A bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church insists that all the translators and lexicographers are mistaken when they represent that Paul was a "babbler" by the Athenians whom he met in the market place. He says they complimented Paul by calling him a spermologos, "a great conversationalist," full of seed-thoughts, and wise sayings, which he scattered broadcast in the agora to the delighted astonishment of the natives. Is this bishop correct?

ANSWER: The best scholars quote Homer, Plutarch, and Demosthenes in proof that σπερμολόγος (spermologos), seed-gatherer, is a term of contempt applied to loungers about the market-place picking up a subsistence by whatever may chance to fall from the loads of merchandise; hence a man beggarly and abject, living by flattery and buffoonery, an empty talker, an idle babbler.

— from Steele's Answers pp. 52, 53.

Can Anyone in the Flesh Please God?

QUESTION: Paul says in Rom. 8:9, "They that are in the flesh cannot please God." Since all who live on the earth are in the flesh, is it not impossible for any living man to please God?

ANSWER: The word flesh has both a good and a bad meaning. In this text flesh means the domination of evil inclinations. No man who is thus dominated can please God. But when the evil propensities are controlled by the regenerating Holy Spirit, God is pleased. Every man in the world may please God by repentance and faith in Jesus Christ. The flesh may not only be controlled but be crucified.

— from Steele's Answers p. 52.

The Natural Man

QUESTION: In 1 Cor. 4:12 Paul speaks of the natural man. What are his characteristics? Our preachers says he is regenerate.

"But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God:for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned." (1 Corinthians 2:14 KJV.)

ANSWER: He is not spiritual but wholly animal. He has a sensuous nature with its subjection to appetite and passion. In Jude 19 he is "sensual," "earthly" and "devilish." If a man is known by the company he keeps, the natural man must be a bad fellow in great need of regeneration and entire sanctification. Except in 1 Cor. 15:44 "natural" Greek "physical" is in the New Testament always used in a bad sense. The preacher is a blind guide. We fear that both he and his hearers will fall into a ditch hard to get out of.

— from Steele's Answers pp. 51, 52.

The Dancing Choir

QUESTION: What is the duty of a Methodist Episcopal pastor towards a choir who dance, play cards, attend theaters, and some drink beer?

ANSWER: The book of Discipline places the choir under the control of the pastor, who may if he wishes have a committee of which he is chairman, or he may have the sole direction. Let him discreetly use his power to weed out improper persons.

— from Steele's Answers p. 51.