Faithfulness to our Nazarene Heritage and a Wesleyan
Theological Perspective
A little over a century ago, a Methodist preacher named Phineas Bresee began a new church with the express purpose of renewing the commitment to the Methodism of John Wesley (1703-1791). This commitment included a strong emphasis on Christian perfection, or “holiness of heart and life,” and a corresponding emphasis upon ministry to the urban poor of Los Angeles. This renewal movement-turned-denomination soon moved beyond Southern California and has established many churches, hospitals and schools around the globe.
One of those schools became Point Loma Nazarene University. The Church of the Nazarene and PLNU share a common heritage and, presumably, a common future. Point Loma is committed to celebrating and maintaining its close denominational ties, even as it offers itself as a Christian university for students with a vast variety of religious backgrounds. In committing itself to a broader constituency, PLNU is attempting to fulfill the denomination’s mission as stated in the Church’s Manual: “to cooperate effectively with other branches of the Church of Jesus Christ in advancing God’s Kingdom.”
The University understands the importance of remembering the unique accents in Wesley’s practice and thinking. These include an optimism about God’s loving nearness as prevenient grace; a sure confidence that, in and through Jesus, God is revealed to us as self-giving, other-receiving love; and a lively expectation that, as we practice Christian discipleship in community, we may experience this divine love for ourselves and subsequently share it in practical ways with others.
John Wesley was convinced that God’s love is extended to all people. He frequently cited Psalm 145:9—“The Lord is good to all, and his compassion is over all that he has made”—to support his conviction that God’s love touches all living things. For Wesley, every creature—including every human being—exists within God’s love and tender compassion. Because God seeks to save and heal all that He has made, His grace is pre-venient (“coming before”) and ever working to redeem and restore a creation debilitated by the power of sin. It is crucial to Christians of the Wesleyan tradition to affirm and celebrate God's amazing universal grace, offered to all. Indeed, a practical outworking of this conviction is that the Wesleyan tradition, including the Church of the Nazarene, has historically and consistently affirmed the the practice of ordaining both women and men to the Christian ministry. Further, this conviction regarding the universality of God's love and grace encourages Point Loma Nazarene University to be a learning community deeply committed to gender equality and the leadership of women, as well as of men, in the settings of both the classroom and the administrative offices.
Wesley saw the simple words from the first letter of John (4:8, 16)—God is Love—as his touchstone and criterion for all Christian thought and practice. Wesley took this to mean that God’s essential nature, God’s own being, is “love through and through.” Wesley was convinced that the person and ministry of Jesus Christ informs us of the nature of this divine love: “We know love by this, that Jesus Christ laid down his life for us…”
(I John 3:16). In other words, according to the Wesleyan theology, Jesus’ self-giving love is the basis upon which we make any claim about God’s identity or work.
The final words of I John 3:16, “…and we ought to lay down our lives for one another,” illustrate the third emphasis in a Wesleyan theological perspective. For Wesley, the whole point of God’s loving us is that we might receive His love, allow it to transform us and then share it with one another. Because this divine love is a real love that is ever-present and near, it is a love whose touch is felt deeply. Even so, Wesley taught that the touch of God’s love within us occurs not in isolation but within and through the prayers, practices, and human connections of the Christian community. Wesley’s remark, “There is no holiness except social holiness,” rings true.
All of this implies that, as we are faithful to our Wesleyan theological heritage, we enter the classroom confident that the Spirit of God is already there—already loving, already drawing near, already instructing each and every student. We are confident, also, in the prevenient grace of God already “out there” in the world, such that no human being is deprived of the sustaining, enlivening, evocative presence of God. A further implication of this confidence in prevenient grace is that ours is a graced world and that there is plenty for us to learn from people, culture, languages and ways of life radically different from the Christian community.
PLNU’s commitment to be faithful to its Nazarene heritage also means a commitment to holy living. Such holiness, however, is not to be defined narrowly or legalistically. Wesley returned again and again to the dual command of Jesus—love for God and love for neighbors—as the best and central way to understand and to live the Christian life of holiness. A century later, Bresee revived Wesley’s profound concern that his Methodists never forget that the poor are always among our neighbors. His choice of the “Church of the Nazarene” was motivated precisely by the term’s implications of Jesus’ humility, servanthood, and identification with poor and marginalized people. Similarly, as PLNU remains faithful to its Nazarene heritage, it strives to be a community of faithful learning, always mindful that learning is for the sake of servanthood.
Phineas Bresee, who founded the university in 1902, anticipated that students would be educated and formed in Christian community, in order to become servants of God through Jesus Christ throughout the world. It is critical to remember, however, that for Bresee this did not imply an insulated or sectarian understanding of God or God’s world. In the words of historian and Pasadena/PLNU graduate Carl Bangs:
“Truth, for Bresee, was not small, static or manageable. It was large and alive, and unless a Christian senses this, it will not be imparted to others. Listen to Bresee: ‘Everywhere there are unexplored depths. It is only as we gaze into these depths, and come with the sense of their infinite glory fresh upon us, that we can teach them efficiently to others.’ In this, Bresee was being true to his Wesleyan theology, which knowing that truth is to be found ultimately at the juncture of a living relationship between God and human life, does not content itself with boxing truth in neatly packaged orthodoxies. Fundamentalism has never understood this about the Wesleyans.”
As we affirm in our mission statement, “Being of Wesleyan heritage, we aspire to be a learning community where grace is foundational, truth is pursued, and holiness is a way of life.” This heritage, we believe, provides a wonderfully vital context for us as we seek to teach, shape, and send.