Wesley, John

William Brennan, “John Wesley’s Experimental Religion and Evangelism in a Postmodern Age”

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John Wesley’s Experimental Religion and Evangelism in a Postmodern Age

written by William Brennan (PhD cand)

EVANGELISM AND THE POSTMODERN CONDITION

That postmodernity is a hazy concept, ill-defined and worse-employed, is by now a sad truism, only worsened by its many variants and broad influence over multiple areas of contemporary life and thought. It must be acknowledged, though, with however much reserve, that there is such a thing as postmodernity which is not only pervasive within the philosophy, ethics, and aesthetics of our day, but which also has deep roots at the popular, cultural level. And though the Church need never capitulate to predominant cultural models, she must ever ask: how will we preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ to this generation? When this question is asked with reference to this present generation, the phenomena of cultural postmodernity—however it is to be more precisely defined—cannot be ignored.

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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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