Understanding Christian Perfection and its Struggle with Antinomianism

Every so often, a professor at Asbury Theological Seminary will notice a current student with exceptional promise. The Asbury Journal wants to help highlight the work of rising academics by publishing works from such students. This paper is an example of such a work, brought to the attention of the editor by Dr. Larry Wood. Much of the confusion regarding John Wesley’s phrase, Christian perfection, comes from the western tendency to define “perfection” as a state of infallibility (from the Latin perfectio) rather than a process of spiritual maturing based upon the Greek word for perfection, teleios (Matthew 5:48). Misunderstandings are further perpetuated when the moral law of God is conflated with the ceremonial and civil laws of the Old Testament. This error has led to a revival of antinomianism, justification without sanctification, which was the very issue that John Wesley and John Fletcher strove against in their own day