Acts 26:17-18, Romans 16:20, Revelation 20:9-10 Isaiah 59:1-2, Romans 8:6-8, Hebrews 12: 14-18

Temptation: Understanding the Nature of Sin, the Unity of Man

1. Men are not tempted by evil, per se, but by a good which can be obtained only at the cost of doing wrong. The whole power of sin, at least in its beginnings, consists in the sway of the fundamental falsehood that any good is really attainable by wrongdoing. Since temptation consists in this attack upon the moral sense, man is constitutionally guarded against deceit, and is morally culpable in allowing himself to be deceived.[1]

2 Thessalonians 2:9-12

2. Good and evil are not equal powers. "There lies in this no Manichaean dualism,.... but only the deepest experience of the work of redemption as the definite destruction of the power from which all sin in the world of men proceeds"[2] Revelation 4:11

3. We have freewill and are unified persons… To some minds the reality of created wills is dualistic and therefore untenable. But a true doctrine of unity makes room for other wills than God's-namely of those beings upon whom God has bestowed freedom. Herein stands the doctrine of sin and Satan. The doctrine of Satan no more militates against the unity of God than the idea, so necessary to morality and religion alike, of other created wills set in opposition to God's.[3]

Ontological trichotomy, a recent revival of Gnostic thought in some Christian circles, undermines a concept of the unity of per­sonality so basically assumed in Hebrew thought. It raises no barriers to-in fact it actually suggests and encourages-a virtual depersonalizing of the self. If man is only the sum of so many en­tities, he is simply an aggregate of selves, a split personality, a double mind; not a responsible, valid, centralized self. Any plur­alistic concept of personality destroys the foundation of biblical holiness which is characterized by love, and which is a wholly per­sonal quality capable of being experienced, truly, only by a unified person.
    It has always been the most profound conviction of Wesleyanism that the Bible speaks to the moral relationships of men and not about sub-rational, nonpersonal areas of the self. Sin is basically self-separation from God, not in measurable distance but in moral unlikeness and spiritual alienation. Holiness is moral to the core -love to God and man-qualities of the self in relation to the per­son of God and of men.

A Theology of Love: The Dynamic of Wesleyanism, Mildred Bangs Wynkoop. Pp. 50-51.

Some Wesleyan selections on the origin and nature of sin…

Love is the gospel message. Christian love, revealed by God in Christ, is the correction of man's limited, selfish, selective, perverted love. It stands against any human concept of love projected into a theory of God's nature and His way with man.

It is precisely this unlimited, impartial, indestructible love that needed to be "revealed" because the best in human love has been limited. The very nature of sin is love's perversion which makes the self the object of its own dedication. Could the dogma of particular election as understood by some theological traditions be the projection of faulty human love into the very nature of God? The gospel was not born in human philosophy but in God's heart revealed in Christ. This Wesley declared.

A Theology of Love: The Dynamic of Wesleyanism, Mildred Bangs Wynkoop. P.18.

Humanity's sinful state of being is its lost relation to God. This way of conceptualizing original sin makes it possible, when cou­pled with prevenient grace, to maintain the completeness of the Fall while at the same time maintaining that humanness was not lost…The Protestant Reformers attempted to explain the human situ­ation by arguing that a "relic" of the imago remained after the Fall. But as Brunner correctly criticizes this, it says both too much and too little. Too much, because it indicates that there remains in our nature an undamaged spot; and too little, because it forgets that even in our sin we bear witness to our original relationship to God.

 Grace, Faith and Holiness, H. Ray Dunning. P.297

4.  Reason, Faith, Experience, Tradition… Revelation 2:1-7

Holiness and love are two different words for two different things. In the realm of formal definition each is distinct. They can­not be interchangeably used in any one context. But this is in the realm of words as words. In the realm of existential meaning some­thing of their relatedness begins to come through. But it would be inaccurate to say they are "related." To say holiness and love are not identical but related would imply that they were associated in experience but not vitally and essentially connected in life. It would say that each has an autonomy apart from the other. Some­what in the sense that a house and a home, a person and a lawyer, an institution and a school can be equated, holiness and love can also be…When holiness and love are put together, the analogy of the two sides of a coin would be closer to the truth. Neither side can be both sides at the same time. Sides are not to be equated, but the obverse side is as essential to its existence as the face. Love is the essential inner character of holiness, and holiness does not exist apart from love. That is how close they are, and in a certain sense they can be said to be the same thing. At least Wesley consistently defined holiness, as well as perfection, as love.

A Theology of Love: The Dynamic of Wesleyanism, Mildred Bangs Wynkoop. P.24.

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