Collins - The Theology of John Wesley: Holy Love and the Shape of Grace

It was the late Albert Outler, dean of Methodist historians, who first posed the seminal question of the Wesleyan tradition back in 1961 when he called for a reappraisal of the status of John Wesley as a theologian.

During the 1970s Outler continued to portray Wesley as a folk theologian who, unlike Luther and the Halle Pietists, had no academic base, and who, unlike Calvin and Knox, had no political base. By the following decade, Outler was still describing Wesley as a folk theologian, but by this time, this leading scholar had gained a new appreciation for the relevance of Wesley's way of doing theology for the contemporary church with its emphasis on both mission and praxis.

Remarkably enough, Wesley himself does not seem to have used our preferred and well-worked term theology but referred instead to "various

In other instances Wesley used the terms "experimental divinity" and "practical divinity" almost interchangeably, suggesting something of the large role that experience played in his theology. So understood, faith, the fruit of grace, becomes the seeing eye and the hearing ear that receives and embraces the divine mystery and presence. Again, it is the totality of the Christian life, in all its various dimensions, both public and private, heart and mind, personal and social, that attests to the truth of Scripture.

Such an approach to theology, then, gave Wesley, much like the patristic writers, a decidedly scriptural orientation. That is, the truth of Scripture must be actualized, operationalized in increasing Christlikeness in both personal life and in the broader community. Frederick McDonald of an earlier era contended that Wesley was "essentially a Biblical theologian."

Beyond this, current scholarship suggests that Wesley's practical divinity is clearly a viable way of doing theology in its orientation to the mission of the church, in its attentiveness to the realization of scriptural truth, and in its service to the poor. And so when Outler made the claim many years ago that Wesley was "the most important Anglican theologian in his century," we must not mistake this claim for the assertion that Wesley was a systematic theologian or that he had attempted to synthesize all human knowledge and to demonstrate its unity in Christ in a thoroughgoing way. On the contrary, Wesley's practical divinity, fleshed out in a very Anglican way in sermons, liturgy, prayers, creeds, occasional pieces, journals, and letters, had a decidedly soteriological, rather than epistemological, orientation. This much more focused interest, which actually precludes the grand speculative organizing principle, is evident in Wesley's preface to his Sermons on Several Occasions, in which he observes:

I have accordingly set down in the following sermons what I find in the Bible concerning the way to heaven, with a view to distinguish this way of God from all those which are the inventions of men. I have endeavored to describe the true, the scriptural, experimental religion, so as to omit nothing which is a real part thereof, and to add nothing thereto which is not.

So then, as a practical rather than a speculative theologian, Wesley spoke of time and eternity and of things present and things to come and offered the glad tidings of salvation, even to the very least of all.

Though the theology of John Wesley is not characterized by a grand systematic principle in the way that Paul Tillich employed his method of correlation More to the point, Wesley's soteriological axial theme is displayed in the context of his order of salvation where it finds both its outworking and its ongoing coherence. However, before the formal element of the axial theme of Wesley's practical theology can be considered in any detail, it is important to indicate something of the style of Wesley's many theological reflections, a style that is actually suggestive of his preferred axis.

In many ways an Anglican theologian, Wesley evidenced a moderating sensibility, a tendency to avoid one-sided readings in his many theological reflections. That is, attempting to find what Outler has called "a third alternative" to Pelagian optimism and Augustinian pessimism,

Such a style of theological reflection, sophisticated and well nuanced in many respects, has resulted in the designation that Wesley was a "conjunctive" theologian. Thus, the most able and consistent interpretations of Wesley's theology have realized that it is ever a matter of "both/and" and not "either/or." Indeed, the intricate theological synthesis that Wesley painstakingly crafted held together the grand project of much of his theological career, namely, the task of articulating "faith alone" and "holy living." Outler observes:

It is easy for us to miss the originality of this Wesleyan view of faith alone and holy living held together. Here was a great evangelist preaching up sola fide and, at the very same time, teaching his converts to go on to perfection and to expect it in this life! His critics were quick to notice this strange move and to seize upon it as proof of Wesley's inconsistency. Actually, it was yet another of Wesley's characteristic "third alternatives"maybe his most original one.

Other conjunctions in Wesley's theology, emblematic of his third way, include law and gospel, grace and works, grace as both favor and empowerment, justification and sanctification, instantaneousness and process, the universality of grace (prevenient) and its limited (saving) actualization, divine initiative and human response, as well as initial and final justification. Wesley may not have been a systematic theologian in the modern sense of the term; nevertheless, his theological style suggests something of his sophistication in the area of practical divinity.