The Wesleyan Validation of Paul and the Resurrection
February 15th, 2010
I’m starting more to smile now when I suddenly lose an interesting and promising thought, where before I might frown and want to curse something. That has become now a habit. I made a rule to stop cursing and stop fearing. I remember two instances.
1. I had left the condo and gone down stairs in a bit of a hurry only to remember I had left something. I reflexively said, “damn”, and then I caught myself and I said “I take that back and instead I thank God that I have to go back. Perhaps I need the exercise.”
2. I was driving toward a green light with fear that it would turn red. My heart beat had increased. I remembered my vow to give up “damn” and fear. I made myself stop at the green light and, since there was no one behind me, I sat until it turned red and then red again, and then I went on.
This is not to say that these things do not well up within me still, but that is the inertia of sin which is in our reflexive make ups, and which we can overcome and change, and which we do not fear.
[ Reflection. Is this an act of freedom? A decision and choice made spontaneously and independent of all the eons of a natural evolution of matter? I took a principle to stop cursing and fearing, and then with that principle in mind I acted and entered into the stream of natural history with an independent blow and set the future onto a certain track.
[This is the notion of having two causalities with regard to one and the same event. We could explain my behavior perfectly if there were total access to the mind, and there we would have found a certain proclivity, some inclination, which makes me weep at the thought of a loving world, a world fit for children to be raised in. As a consequence of all that it was natural and predictable that I would act as I did. And so no room for freedom in the scientific equations. And at the same time I was conscious of acting according to that principle. While the acceptance of the principle might be explained by the equations, the acting on that principle is nevertheless a free action. There is the consciousness of acting, even against inclination, in accordance with a principle.
[Somewhat as: while it was natural that I should accept the principle as my guide, the actions undertaken in accordance with those principles are free choices for which I can rightly and rationally feel responsible (respect).
[It would be more accurate to say that I was conscious of a free choice in accepting the principle to do good above all else, and at the same time science can explain how that consciousness arose. The consciousness of freedom in the determination of the will (to do good) at the same time that this could have been predicted by science. That’s Kant’ solution to the Third Antinomy.]
And so we see here the Wesleyan witness: while I am far from perfection, I am not as far as once I was; and I am on the way. This is their “resurrection”, evidence of a direction of the soul and open to every man to inspect on his own. “If I want to know if the sun is shining I simply open my eyes and look. And likewise I can see into my own heart, into the things that cause me joy, and see what I had hoped to find. Progress in the right direction.”
My Daddy used to say, “If you are going in the wrong direction, you are already making progress by stopping and just turning around.”
Here you can also better understand Romans 14:4 where absolutely all judgment of others is removed. Finally I will kneel before Jesus and he will be able to make his servant stand. Paul will not be there, nor anyone else, just Jesus and myself. And I hope to be allowed to pay homage by kissing his feet or at least his robe.
And so, I guess, each Christian determines his own conscience, and knows that it will also be crystal clear to Jesus in that encounter where he points to the right or the left side of his throne.
All of this suggests to me the transformation of Paul, who still struggled with his “thorn”, but who was not put down and who never doubted.
In a way then the witness of the Wesleyan (cited above) is evidence of Paul’s transformation and with his also the resurrection. The goal is a heart which is attuned to universal love. Kant said that the ideal of the moral religion was a love of the moral law (and which was to be promoted by the churches).
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