Wesley, John

John Wesley’s Approach to Spiritual Formation

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This post was written by Ben Espinoza on the Seedbed.com website Perhaps my greatest research interest as of late is studying how various theologians and church leaders throughout history sought to form and educate believers…

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Wesley as a Happy Puritan

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Wesley as a Happy Puritan written by Dr. Fred Sanders Although not a member of SEA, Dr. Fred Sanders draws some interesting parallels between Wesley and Jonathan Edwards and John Owen as well as J.I.…

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Wesley on Acts 13:48

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At first, I wasn’t a big fan of Wesley’s interpretation of Acts 13:48, but lately I have come to admire it’s simplicity. Wesley doesn’t get into technical debates about passive vs. middle voice, disputes about translating tasso as ordain vs. dispose or discussions about reflexive meanings with and without the reflexive pronoun. He is just straight and to the point. Here’s the passage and Wesley’s comments:

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John Wesley, A Dialogue Between a Predestinarian and His Friend

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A Dialogue Between a Predestinarian and His Friend
Out of thine own mouth!

The Works of the Rev. John Wesley, A.M., Volume 10, 1872, pp. 259-266

TO ALL PREDESTINARIANS

1. I AM informed, some of you have said, that the following quotations are false; that these words were not spoken by these authors; others, that they were not spoken in this sense; and others, that neither you yourself, nor any true Predestinarian, ever did, or ever would, speak so.

2. My friends, the authors here quoted are well known, in whom you may read the words with your own eyes. And you who have read them know in your own conscience, they were spoken in this sense, and no other; nay, that this sense of them is professedly defended throughout the whole treatises whence they are taken.

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John Wesley Charges that Calvinism Makes God Out to Be Worse than the Devil

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To follow up on Roger Olson’s essay recently posted here, perhaps it would be appropriate to post an excerpt from John Wesley’s famous sermon, “Free Grace”, in which he made a very similar charge about Calvinism as Olson, but more passionately and more forcefully. Whereas Olson states that Calvinism’s consistent divine determinism makes it difficult for him to tell the difference between God and the devil in the system, Wesley says that the system makes God worse than the devil and so is blasphemous (and he explains why). Now Wesley accepted Calvinists as brothers in Christ, so he surely did not mean that Calvinists are blasphemers or that they worship a false god or anything of the sort. I take him to mean that the logical implications of Calvinism are blasphemous, which Calvinists themselves might not really see, and which Wesley labored to help them see to bring them to the more bibilical position of Arminianism.

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Wesley Defends Arminius

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Searching through the web, I recently (in fact, 5 minutes before writing this entry) found this delightful piece written by John Wesley as to the definition and dignity of the name “Arminian”. Not at first…

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The Nature of Wesleyan Theology

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The Nature of Wesleyan Theology

From the Wesleyan Theological Journal
J. Kenneth Grider

Theology, when it is entered into by us Wesleyans, takes on a certain nature, in relation to other theologies: Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Lutheran, Anglican, Calvinist. It is of the very nature of Wesleyan theology that it has (1) an experiential interest, (2) an existential element, (3) a large-scoped biblical character, (4) a dynamic quality, (5) a catholicity, and 6) a homing instinct for the moral.

Its Experiential Interest

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Molina, Arminius, Plaifere, Goad, and Wesley On Human Free-will, Divine Omniscience, and Middle Knowledge

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Molina, Arminus, Plaifere, Goad, and Wesley On Human Free-will, Divine Omniscience, and Middle Knowledge

From the Wesleyan Theological Journal
Barry E. Bryant

Upon first glance the title of this paper contains a strange mix of individuals, one or two of whom are perhaps more obscure than the others. What each has in common with the others is a vested interest in the issue of free-will. What they also have in common is the realization that arising from the doctrine of free-will is the paradox of omniscience.

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John Wesley On the Origins of Evil

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John Wesley On the Origins of Evil

From the Wesleyan Theological Journal
Barry E. Bryant

One of the more important questions ever confronted by Christian theologians has been how to reconcile the idea that God is loving, good, and just with the presence of evil in the world. The Greek Epicurus summarized the issue well when he asked, “What is the cause of evil?” In answering this question he concluded:

God. . . either wished to take away evils, and is unable; or He is able, and is unwilling; or He is neither willing nor able, or He is both willing and able, which alone is suitable to God, from what source then are evils? or why does He not remove them?2

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JOHN WESLEY AND JONATHAN EDWARDS ON RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

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JOHN WESLEY AND JONATHAN EDWARDS ON RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE:
A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

From the Wesleyan Theological Journal
Robert Doyle Smith

Introduction

The tone of the eighteenth-century debate between Arminians and Calvinists finds apt description in John Wesley’s observation that to say, “This man is an Arminian,” was, to some, much the same thing as saying, “This man is a mad dog.”1

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