Article III — Of the Resurrection of Christ

The Text

Article III is short, physical, and — by its number alone — a piece of editorial testimony. It confesses that Christ “did truly rise again from the dead, and took again his body,” ascended, and reigns “until he return to judge all men at the last day.” The doctrine is the unspectacular catholic faith. The interesting thing about this article is not only what it says but where it stands: it is the Thirty-Nine Articles’ fourth article, moved up to third because Wesley deleted the one that used to come between Article II’s burial and the Resurrection — the descent into hell. To read Article III is to read, in its very numbering, one of Wesley’s most characteristic cuts.

Translation Notes

“took again his body, with all things appertaining to the perfection of man’s nature.” The Thirty-Nine read “with flesh, bones, and all things appertaining to the perfection of Man’s nature.” Wesley trimmed “flesh, bones.” It is a small edit with a real effect: the original was deliberately, almost aggressively physical — written against any spiritualizing of Easter — and Wesley’s smoothing slightly lowers that volume. The bodily reality is still affirmed (“took again his body”), but the blunt “flesh, bones” of the source is gone. It is the kind of stylistic softening that recurs across his abridgment.

“there sitteth until he return to judge all men.” The session (“sitteth at the right hand”) and the return to judgment are folded into the resurrection article rather than given the separate clauses the creeds use. The article compresses ascension, session, and parousia into a single arc whose hinge is the empty tomb.

The deleted Article III. The most important “translation note” here is again an absence. The Thirty-Nine’s Article III read: “As Christ died for us, and was buried, so also is it to be believed, that he went down into Hell.” Wesley cut it. Not rewrote, not relocated — cut. The descent has no article in the Methodist standard.

Historical Context

The Thirty-Nine Articles narrated redemption as a sequence — crucified, dead, buried; went down into hell; rose again — exactly the order of the Apostles’ Creed, which O’Donovan notes the Articles were tracking. The descent (Article III of 1571) was the contested hinge of that sequence even in the sixteenth century: its meaning (triumphal proclamation? the soul’s real experience of death? something else?) was disputed, and the article stated only the bare that, leaving the how open.

Wesley’s American church inherited none of this, because Wesley removed the article on his way to abridging the Thirty-Nine for the 1784 Sunday Service. This is the same editorial decision, in another place, as his striking the Athanasian Creed from that very book and his handling of the descent clause in the Apostles’ Creed ([[apostles-creed/he-descended-into-hell]]): where the catholic inheritance was both contested and, in Wesley’s judgment, not necessary to vital religion, he let it fall. The result is that American Methodism’s constitutional confession moves directly from “dead, and buried” (Article II) to “did truly rise again” (Article III), with the descent simply not there. As elsewhere in this document, the cut is itself a confession.

Lines of Interpretation

Two questions: the bodily character of the resurrection (the article’s main assertion), and the meaning of the missing descent.

Patristic

Tradition: the bodily resurrection; Christus Victor; the harrowing of hell

The Fathers held a robustly bodily resurrection and read the descent as Christ’s victorious entry into the realm of the dead (the harrowing of hell). Patristically, Wesley’s article keeps the first and discards the patristic descent tradition.

Strengths

• Affirms exactly the bodily reality the Fathers insisted on against every spiritualizing
• Names what the deletion costs: a rich patristic theme (Christ’s victory over death in death) loses its article

Weaknesses

• The harrowing was always more homiletical than dogmatically fixed; its loss is real but not catastrophic
• Patristic confidence about the how of the risen body outruns what the article (or the New Testament) specifies

Anglican

Tradition: the Thirty-Nine in their own setting

The Anglican reading keeps the descent (Article III of 1571) as a believed fact with an open meaning, and reads the Resurrection article as deliberately anti-spiritualizing. From here, Wesley’s cut looks like a loss of catholic completeness in exchange for simplicity.

Strengths

• Honest that Wesley removed something the parent church kept and still keeps
• Preserves the redemptive sequence the article belonged to

Weaknesses

• The descent article’s own reticence shows even Anglicanism found it hard to say much; its retention is not obviously richer
• Can treat the deletion as mere truncation rather than a theological judgment

Reformed

Tradition: Calvin on the descent as the cross’s anguish; resurrection as justification’s seal

Calvin relocated the descent’s meaning into Christ’s experience of the wrath of God on the cross, not a post-mortem journey. The Reformed tradition then makes the resurrection the seal of justification (Romans 4:25). On this reading Wesley’s church loses little by cutting the descent article, since its truth is preached under the cross and the resurrection carries the soteriological weight.

Strengths

• Explains how a church can drop the descent article without dropping anything essential — its truth migrates to the cross
• Gives the resurrection its full soteriological function (the seal of our acquittal)

Weaknesses

• The migration is a theological choice, not a neutral simplification
• Loses the Christus Victor register the bare resurrection clause does not by itself supply

Modern / Ecumenical

Tradition: the historicity debates; bodily resurrection and its deniers

Modern theology made Article III’s plain “did truly rise again from the dead… took again his body” newly contested — against every program that reduces Easter to the disciples’ faith or a “noetic” event. The article’s stubborn physicality is its modern point.

Strengths

• The article’s blunt realism is exactly the bulwark modern reductionism requires
• Lets a terse 1571 clause speak directly to a live contemporary dispute

Weaknesses

• The article does not adjudicate the nature of the risen body; pressing it too hard claims more than it says
• The deleted descent removes a resource (Christ among the dead) some modern theologies of Holy Saturday prize

Wesleyan Voice

Wesley kept the Resurrection and cut the descent, and both decisions are characteristically his. He kept the Resurrection because his gospel needs it structurally: the atonement of Article II is sealed by Easter, and the believer’s assurance and hope of their own resurrection (cf. [[apostles-creed/the-resurrection-of-the-body]]) rest on Christ’s. Wesley’s Easter preaching and, even more, Charles Wesley’s Easter hymnody treat the resurrection not as an appended miracle but as the public vindication of the whole work of Christ: the sacrifice was accepted, death is defeated, the Judge who will return is the Savior who rose.

He cut the descent for the reason he cut the Athanasian Creed from the same Sunday Service and trimmed the descent clause in the Apostles’ Creed: it was contested, its meaning unfixed, and in his judgment not among the truths that “nearly concern us… as having a close connexion with vital religion” (his criterion in On the Trinity). This is not Wesley denying anything; he nowhere argues against the descent. It is Wesley exercising exactly the editorial judgment the whole abridgment embodies — keep what is necessary to salvation and the catholic faith, let the contested and non-essential fall. The pattern is consistent across this corpus: the Athanasian struck, the descent clause minimized, the descent article deleted. The Wesleyan datum is the consistency: a single discriminating instinct about what a saving faith must hold, applied with the same hand to a creed and to an article.

The result is a deliberately Easter-forward confession. Where the Thirty-Nine moved burial → descent → resurrection, Methodism’s constitutional text moves burial → resurrection, with nothing in the grave’s silence but the turn to “did truly rise again.” Whether that is gain (clarity, Easter unobstructed) or loss (a catholic theme without an article) is exactly the question the Lines of Interpretation leave open — but the instinct behind it is the same one that runs through every Wesleyan edit in this collection.

Hymnody

Article III is Easter, and Easter is the summit of the Wesleyan hymnal. Charles Wesley’s “Christ the Lord is risen today, Alleluia!” is the article in its purest sung form — “Love’s redeeming work is done… Lo! the Sun’s eclipse is o’er” — the resurrection as the vindication of the atonement of Article II, exactly the Wesleyan reading. “Rejoice, the Lord is King… Jesus the Judge shall come” carries the article’s tail (he “sitteth until he return to judge”) and turns the coming Judge into the church’s hope, not its dread. And “Hail the day that sees him rise” sings the ascension clause. Tellingly, there is no Wesleyan hymn on the descent into hell — the songbook is silent exactly where Wesley’s article is silent, the same honest correspondence between what the tradition cut and what it does not sing that recurs at the Athanasian and the slaveholding clause.

Pastoral and Liturgical Use

The first pastoral use is the article’s stubborn physicality. Preach “did truly rise again from the dead, and took again his body” as it stands, against the perennial congregational drift toward Easter as metaphor or the immortality of the soul. The Christian hope is not that Jesus’ cause survived or his spirit endures; it is that he rose, bodily, and therefore that the resurrection of the body ([[apostles-creed/the-resurrection-of-the-body]]) is real for us. The article is terse; the preaching must supply the realism the 1571 “flesh, bones” stated and Wesley trimmed.

The second use is honest teaching of the deletion. When a thoughtful member notices the Methodist Articles say nothing of the descent while the creed they recite says “he descended into hell,” do not paper over it. Explain it as what it is: Wesley’s consistent editorial judgment, the same hand that struck the Athanasian. Whether one wishes he had kept it is a fair question; pretending the silence is accidental is not. This is, again, the corpus’s standing discipline — the cuts are read, not hidden.

The third use is the Judge who is the Savior. The article ends “until he return to judge all men at the last day.” Preached pastorally, through Charles Wesley’s hymnody, the One returning to judge is the One who rose, who is the One who died “to reconcile his Father to us” (Article II). The resurrection is what lets the church await the judgment not as terror but as the return of the One it already trusts — the same move the Athanasian commentary’s close made, here written into the constitution.

Further Reading

• 1 Corinthians 15 — the bodily resurrection and its consequences
• Romans 4:25; 8:34 — resurrection as the seal of justification and the session
• Acts 1:9–11 — ascension and return
• Thirty-Nine Articles, Articles III (descent, deleted) and IV (resurrection, kept) — the parent text and the cut
• John Wesley, On the Trinity — his criterion for what is “of deep importance” vs. what may fall away
• Charles Wesley, “Christ the Lord is risen today”; “Rejoice, the Lord is King”
• The deleted theme in the creed: [[apostles-creed/he-descended-into-hell]]
• Our resurrection on the strength of his: [[apostles-creed/the-resurrection-of-the-body]]
• The work this seals: [[articles-of-religion/article-2-of-the-word-or-son-of-god]]