Wesleyan Theology Research Articles

Bid Our Jarring Conflicts Cease: A Wesleyan Theology and Praxis of Church Unity

Bid Our Jarring Conflicts Cease: A Wesleyan Theology and Praxis of Church Unity

Coleridge and Contemplation ed. by Peter Cheyne

Religion & Literature 146 Wordsworth’s, all part of a single edifice, all of it founded on the Wesleyan revival in one way or another. Brantley’s greatest stretch is in a brief section that originally appeared as an article in Studies in Romanticism, “Keats’s Method” (1983). Here Brantley examines “how far Keats’s allegiance to induction combines with his Methodist-like, and hence equally experiential, allegiance to the ‘holiness of the Heart’s affections’” (267). Some of the claims for Keats as a thinker inspired by Wesleyan theology go farther than most critics would allow, such as a section where lines from Endymion are read as “evangelical in tone” (270). But Brantley is careful not to make a claim for Keats as a believer, or a poet engaged in any extended engagement with Christian doctrine or ideas. Rather, he sees him as a man of his time responding to the influence of Wesley in the intellectual air and points to places in his poetry where this becomes manifest. Transatlantic Trio is divided into four series of essays that provide context and that cover British and American authors. The most attention is given to Emily Dickinson, her skepticism, and her “quarrel with God.” Four series of reviews put Brantley into dialogue with other scholars who have published on the same questions. What emerges is a rich, convincing argument , simultaneously accretive and dialectical in method. Brantley shows the dialectics between writers of the Romantic period, between those writers and Locke and Wesley, and finally between himself and his contemporaries. It is a virtuoso performance, as much an act of curating as writing. The new writing in the prologue and epilogue ties the text together and makes clear that Transatlantic Trio is not a series of disconnected essays, but a sustained argument, and one that is at least as relevant for studies of Romanticism now as it was when Brantley began working on it four decades ago. Christopher Flynn St Edward’s University Coleridge and Contemplation Edited by Peter Cheyne Oxford University Press, 2017. xxii + 332 pp. $90 hardcover. The editor of this excellent contribution to Romantic studies, Peter Cheyne, characterizes Samuel Taylor Coleridge as “something of an omnimath , a Renaissance man of the Romantic era” (7). Indeed, many of the BOOK REVIEWS 147 authors in this robust collection of insightful essays contend that Coleridge scholarship has a place, or many places, outside of the English department. What emerges from these pages also strengthens the case for the literary value of Coleridge’s religious and philosophical writings, which are only infrequently assessed prior to his poetry in literary studies, thereby underscoring the necessity of multidisciplinary treatments of his thought. As the title makes clear, this book’s organizing claim is that contemplation is an essential term in Coleridge’s theory of mind. Not only does contemplation crown Coleridge’s order of the mental powers found in his marginalia, it also challenges the assumption that “Imagination” is the kernel and starting point for scholarly discussions of Coleridge. The eighteen chapters of Coleridge and Contemplation are organized into four principal sections. Part I (“Poetics and Aesthetics”) sets the precedent for the rest of the essays in book: contemplation for Coleridge transcends mere passive receptivity or meditation, nor can it be severed from the active life. Part II treats the importance of contemplation to Coleridge’s worldviews on science, ethics, and politics. Part III is devoted to Coleridge’s metaphysical investigations and multilayered theories of contemplation and metaphysical knowledge. Rounding out the collection, the essays on Coleridge’s philosophy of religion in Part IV drives home the claim, made by Mary Warnock in the book’s preface and reiterated at several junctures throughout the volume, that through contemplation rooted in “Will,” “Reason,” and faith—the “threefold I” of Coleridge’s theory of personal identity discussed in Suzanne Webster’s chapter—Coleridge strives to move beyond the limitations of dualistic contradictions in the philosophy of his peers (vii; 304). Operating from this assumption embraces a holistic approach to Coleridge’s life and thought by uniting the phases of Coleridge’s early intellectual life—gifted but directionless Cambridge profligate, Pantisocratic radical, tortured poetic genius—with his influential...

Transatlantic Trio: Empiricism, Evangelicalism, Romanticism, Essays and Reviews 1974–2017 by Richard E. Brantley

Reviewed by: Transatlantic Trio: Empiricism, Evangelicalism, Romanticism, Essays and Reviews 1974–2017 by Richard E. Brantley Renée Bergland (bio) Richard E. Brantley. Transatlantic Trio: Empiricism, Evangelicalism, Romanticism, Essays and Reviews 1974–2017. Culicidae Press, 2017. For all her vaunted solitude, despite her ruthless omissions, Emily Dickinson's poems are surprisingly crowded. Within her stanzas, a wide range of words and ideas meet up; circulate; share a buzz or a song; attempt to seduce each other; oppose each other with fierce politeness; mock; laugh; wonder; converse. The notion of Dickinson as social butterfly on the page, if not in real life, comes in part from Richard Brantley's 2013 Emily Dickinson's Rich Conversation, which offered a compelling reading of Dickinson's intellectual world as packed with theologians, philosophers, scientists, and poets. Now comes Transatlantic Trio: Empiricism, Evangelicalism, Romanticism—which might have been titled Richard Brantley's Rich Conversation. This collection of Brantley's essays, written from 1974 – 2017, is remarkable not only for its wide-ranging erudition, but also for its warmth and wit. Although it is a weighty tome (about 750 pages), it has a light touch. Brantley is a genial companion—intellectually amiable, infinitely curious and profoundly insightful. An epigraph for the preface quotes Czeslaw Milosz: "Early we receive a call, yet it remains incomprehensible, / and only late do we discover how obedient we were." Nested within another quotation (from Christian Wiman, My Bright Abyss), these lines are emblematic of the book, both because of the tricky double quotation (Brantley never says no to an exponential allusion), and because they foretell the surprisingly straightforward through lines that pull these essays and reviews into harmony. Over four or five decades, Brantley has listened for the antiphonies—the musical call and response—among theologians, philosophers, scientists, and poets. As he explains, over his career he has made a "concerted effort… to compose a complex harmony of ideas-over-time." The ideas that run through his work are those of John Locke and John Wesley. In every essay or review, in one way or [End Page 94] another, Brantley finds an optimistic assent to both empiricism and evangelicalism in Anglo-American Romanticism. The first section of the book, "Essays, First Series: Backgrounds of British and American Romanticism," includes essays on John Wesley, John Locke, and Jonathan Edwards; the fifth essay in this series is more of a brief summation, explaining that "Anglo-American Romanticism generated language at once empirical and evangelical." With that established, the second series focuses on British authors: Charles Wesley, Samuel Johnson, William Wordsworth, John Keats, and Alfred, Lord Tennyson. These essays trace out the "methodistical habits" of the poets, their romantic to late-romantic permutations of the empirical sense-experience of inner, spiritual life. The third series includes seven essays on Emily Dickinson. For Dickinson scholars, these essays may prove the most revelatory: Brantley starts by arguing that Dickinson's works are not only harbingers of twentieth-century modernism and postmodernism, but also (in a time travelling, reverse-causality twist), harbingers of late eighteenth-century romanticism. Declaring that single Dickinson poems contain both Late Romantic and pre-Modern tones, in harmonic counterpoint, Brantley says he values both, but that he is "drawn to the Late Romantic level of her layered language not only because I like it, but because it is neglected." It is a winning formulation of Brantley's optimistically inclusive both / and methodology. Essays on Empiricism, Wordsworth, Wesleyan theology, and late Romanticism follow. The last of the Dickinson essays is the heart of the book. Toward the end of it, Brantley writes "In sum, Dickinson's friends and loved ones, her literary precursors and coevals, her literary beneficiaries, and her aesthetic self-projections define the possibility of personal access to otherness through others." This is the intellectually collaborative, social Dickinson that Brantley has described so well elsewhere, but here his description is focused on the strands of empiricism, evangelicalism, and Romanticism that run together through the collection. To conclude, Brantley glosses "The Soul selects her own Society –" (Fr409), remarking, "Just as society pertains to John Locke's social contract and to John Wesley's Societies alike, so too does this key word denote Dickinson...

Book Review: Missions: Centrifugal or Centripetal? Gordon L. Snider, The Use of the Old Testament in a Wesleyan Theology of Mission

Book Review: Missions: Centrifugal or Centripetal? Gordon L. Snider, <i>The Use of the Old Testament in a Wesleyan Theology of Mission</i>

Making the invisible Christ visible: problems and opportunities for Wesleyan Christology

Abstract Wesley's Christology has been critiqued as inadequate and potentially unorthodox in a variety of ways, some of them contradictory. The most telling critical analysis has been by John Deschner (1960, 1985, 1988) using Reformed christological categories in his research supervised by Karl Barth. While affirming the Methodist emphases on ‘the whole Christ’ and ‘the present Christ’ in soteriological perspective, he also asks pressing questions about how Wesleyan theology can resolve apparent tensions between Christ and the law, and how it can better express the wholeness of Christ, moving beyond individual soteriology towards a more comprehensive vision of ecclesial wholeness and the wholeness of the human community. Wesleyan theologians have in turn responded to these questions in a range of ways, with varying success. What are the parameters and prospects for Wesleyan Christology in the light of this debate, and how does this relate to the contemporary missiological context?

Embracing the Past—Forging the Future: A New Generation of Wesleyan Theology

Book Review| January 01 2017 Embracing the Past—Forging the Future: A New Generation of Wesleyan Theology Embracing the Past—Forging the Future: A New Generation of Wesleyan Theology, edited by Schwartz, Wm. Andrew and Bechtold, John M.. Eugene: Pickwick Publications, 2015. 176pp. $22.00. Jared Maddox, Ph.D. Jared Maddox, Ph.D. Perkins School of Theology Dallas, Texas Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Methodist History (2017) 55 (1-2): 133–135. https://doi.org/10.5325/methodisthist.55.1-2.0133 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Jared Maddox; Embracing the Past—Forging the Future: A New Generation of Wesleyan Theology. Methodist History 1 January 2017; 55 (1-2): 133–135. doi: https://doi.org/10.5325/methodisthist.55.1-2.0133 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectivePenn State University PressMethodist History Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright © 2016 by The Pennsylvania State University. All rights reserved.2016The Pennsylvania State University Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

The Life of God in the Soul: The Integration of Love, Holiness and Happiness in the Thought of John Wesley

In this detailed and engaging examination of John Wesley's pastoral correspondence, sermons, hymns, and other work, David McEwan offers a lively defence of Christian holiness as an entirely relational as opposed to individual endeavour. And if relational, the anatomy of Wesleyan holiness that McEwan presents is based in claiming one's own participation in the love of God for creation and all of humanity, and then engaging in intentional formation by emulating this love for God, neighbour, and self. By his account Wesleyan holiness is deeply personal, yet never private: to love others and to love God is to conform the deepest desires of the heart to God's intention, and thus to be formed in a pattern of life Wesley recognized and each Christian may feel as ‘happiness’. Happiness, by this account, is the patterning of motive and action around an ethic of scriptural holiness lived out as faithful service in day-to-day work, health, discipleship, and relationships. As he corrects accounts of Christian holiness (and their correlative accounts of formation) that might over-emphasize the individual or private, McEwan notes that according to his understanding of Wesleyan theology, the question is ‘not really whether all this is wrong, but whether it is adequate’ (2).Based in Brisbane, Australia, the author is both the pastor of a Nazarene congregation and the Director of Research and Senior Lecturer in Theology, Pastoral Theology, and Practice at the Nazarene Theological College. Much of this work was developed on extended fellowships at the Manchester (United Kingdom) Wesley Research Centre, and it is international in its scholarly attention. In a well-organized, easily accessible progression of chapters McEwan gives an account of God's relationship with creation and humanity, and then considers both ‘challenges’ and ‘helps’ to the formation of the ‘life of God in the soul’. The first chapters offer a systematic treatment of Wesley's thought, and may be compared with other recent explicitly theological accounts of Wesleyan holiness. But this book becomes interesting to a much broader pastoral readership as it makes a methodological transition to applied theology, albeit entirely historical in focus. McEwan tells stories of pastoral conflict and contact to demonstrate the Wesleyan interplay of holiness and happiness across questions like suffering and its role in Christian formation, depression or ‘heaviness of spirit’, and the relation of bodily to spiritual health. At each stage, ample evidence from Wesley's letters and sermons is brought together to give a practical theology of spiritual formation for holy, happy, living. Sustained attention to his pastoral correspondences with particular individuals moves beyond simple thematic treatments of his pastoral approach to give a more holistic, complicated picture of Wesley the pastor. The project may have begun in work for the PhD, but this book develops Wesley's understanding of happiness and counsel toward obtaining it well beyond that base.As a work of theology and history, the book might have been stronger to integrate the systematic sections and the applied, and to distinguish sources from different eras of Wesley's life. McEwan might also have given consideration to present-day pastoral dilemmas in the conclusion: how might the link between holiness and happiness play out in an era of social media and virtual relationship, versus actual? Does the implication that love of the other be given without agenda preclude intentional evangelism? And how might the understanding of a fully relational, Wesleyan holiness aid the work of repentance from the historical sins of white-skin or male privilege, or the systemic inequities of global economics? These are some of the questions that this work provokes, and pastors (including McEwan) perhaps more usually work out each Sunday from the pulpit. This book will be an interesting and earthy read, amply resourcing Sunday-by-Sunday pastoral preachers and theologians alike.

Embracing the Past—Forging the Future: A New Generation of Wesleyan Theology

This slim volume containing nine essays by junior and senior Wesleyan scholars teaching in the United States (or, in one case, the Philippines) stems from the contributors' shared conviction that the Wesleyan theological tradition has the potential to provide a distinctive contribution to the practice of Christian theology in the twenty-first century. It is their bold claim that the renewal of classical Wesleyan theology with its characteristic theological method offers a fresh approach to articulating core Christian truths in the context of a postmodern, post-colonial, and post-Christian intellectual landscape.Of course, the contributors are aware that the (modernist) theology of John Wesley and his nineteenth-century interpreters in the Wesleyan theological tradition will not provide ready answers to present-day questions. Significant changes in the intellectual (especially epistemological), historical, and socio-cultural landscape over the past 250 years inevitably affect contemporary theological methods, sources, and norms. In fact, these Wesleyan scholars acknowledge ‘that Wesleyan theology has yet to fully adapt to this changing landscape, and that the future of Wesleyan theology requires the bringing together of old and new voices’ (xi). Among the ‘old’ voices deserving to be heard is that of Albert Outler, pioneer of modern Wesleyan studies in the twentieth century, who coined the (often misunderstood) term ‘Wesleyan quadrilateral’ to describe John Wesley's theological method of interpreting scripture in the light of tradition, reason, and Christian experience. Among the ‘new’ voices are those of contemporary biblical and patristic scholars, as well as the growing number engaged in Wesleyan and Methodist studies.In blending old and new voices, the renewal of any theological tradition involves continuity and change, though its resulting shape will look different depending on where the emphasis is placed. Bechtold's introductory essay on ‘Wesleyan Theology beyond the Wesleys: A “Post-modern” Proposal’ places the emphasis firmly on radical change to take account of today's pluralistic context.Just as Wesleyan theology should not be confused with John Wesley's theology (any more than Calvinism should be confused with John Calvin's theology), Ben Boeckel's essay illustrates how ‘The Hermeneutics of Wesley and “Wesleyan Hermeneutics”’ are also different entities because the epistemological and theological suppositions of Christian discourse in the twenty-first century are very different to those that gave rise to the eighteenth-century ideal of Enlightenment rationalism. According to Boeckel, embracing a postmodern Wesleyan theological method does not mean having to accept the inevitability of relativism in a pluralistic context, though it does entail recognition of the communal embodiedness of theological truth.An unanswered question arises from these essays. Given that radical change may lead to discontinuity, in what sense is it possible to speak of the renewal of Wesleyan theology? In particular, what does it mean to continue labelling a theological tradition ‘Wesleyan’ when its ‘renewal’ involves a radical reinterpretation of its classical methods, sources, and norms? For Bechtold, this is its virtue: ‘The beauty of “post-modern” Wesleyanism is that it does not really exist in any meaningful way. It is an idea, a goal, perhaps a practice’ (26).Potential readers should be aware that this volume is a study in theological methodology rather than an introduction to aspects of the Wesleyan theological tradition. As such, it requires some familiarity with the issues under consideration. Though disparate, the essays make for engaging reading, even if the reader does not wholly accept their argument or conclusions. The intended readership comprises ‘Wesleyan-Holiness theologians, students of Wesleyan, Holiness, Methodist, Pietist, and Pentecostal theology, as well as pastors and interested lay persons from across Evangelical Christianity’ (xi). Each essay contains footnote references and concludes with a useful bibliography for further reading.The project to publish a critical edition of the complete works of John Wesley continues apace, making available to a new generation of students the primary sources for a fresh evaluation of his theology and its subsequent development into a Wesleyan theological tradition. This collection of essays reinforces a growing awareness that John Wesley was not merely a ‘folk theologian’ or theological educator for early Methodism but a theologian of considerable stature and enduring importance. That his approach was unsystematic makes his theology less interesting to academic scholars; however, by adopting a soteriological perspective, Wesley was an immensely practical theologian for the Christian community at a particularly energetic and creative juncture in the changing religious and intellectual landscape in the West. If the continuing renaissance of interest in Wesley and Methodist studies extends to the renewal of Wesleyan theology, this volume of essays will have served a useful introductory purpose.

The Way of the Wesleys: A Short Introduction by John R. Tyson

Reviewed by: The Way of the Wesleys: A Short Introduction by John R. Tyson Geordan Hammond The Way of the Wesleys: A Short Introduction. By John R. Tyson. (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing. 2014. Pp. ix, 202. $18.00 paperback. ISBN 978-0-8028-6954-8.) In The Way of the Wesleys, John Tyson has drawn on decades of research, writing, and teaching on the Wesleys to provide a concise and readable introduction to their theology. His focus is on providing a concise explication of the Wesleys’ theology. In fourteen chapters, Tyson covers the topics of the Bible, sin, the new birth, holiness, grace, the Holy Spirit, Christ, Christian perfection, atonement, Trinity, the means of grace, the Lord’s Supper, life in the world, and ecumenism. The nature of a short introduction necessitates a selection of subjects. However, some explanation of the author’s choice of chapter topics and structuring of the book would have been of interest to this reviewer. Why is baptism omitted? Why does the chapter on sin appear before the chapter on grace? One of the central virtues of this book is its inclusion of Charles Wesley. Although the wider range of writings by John Wesley lead to him being allotted more space than Charles, the writings of the younger Wesley feature extensively in the book, especially his hymns, which shed much light on the topics discussed in the book and remain an underutilized and underappreciated source for Wesleyan theology. Tyson stresses the commonalities between the brothers while not neglecting to point out their differences. As an introduction to the Wesleys and their writings and thought, The Way of the Wesleys might be read alongside other recent and related publications such as Paul Wesley Chilcote’s John & Charles Wesley: Selections from Their Writings and Hymns—Annotated & Explained (Woodstock, VT, 2011) and Jonathan Dean’s A Heart Strangely Warmed: John and Charles Wesley and their Writings (Norwich, UK, 2014). In comparison, Tyson supplies less biographical material but more explanation in his own words of the Wesleys’ theology than the more anthological works [End Page 627] of Chilcote and Dean. At the same time Tyson quotes extensively from the writings of the Wesleys that gives the reader a good sense of their views, in their own words, on each topic. Tyson has provided an accessible introduction to the wide-ranging and dynamic lived theology of the Wesleys. The Way of the Wesleys can serve as a solid starting point for anyone wanting an overview of their theology. It could be used in introductory courses on the theology of the Wesleys, but, unfortunately, the omission of footnotes diminishes its usefulness as an academic text, although the inclusion of suggested readings and a bibliography somewhat compensate for this absence. Geordan Hammond Aberystwyth University; Manchester Wesley Research Centre; Nazarene Theological College Copyright © 2016 The Catholic University of America Press

Reading the Way to Heaven: A Wesleyan Theological Hermeneutic of Scripture

Reading the Way to Heaven: A Wesleyan Theological Hermeneutic of Scripture

A Wesleyan-Holiness Perspective on The Church : Towards a Common Vision

Although Church: Towards a Common Vision (TCTCV) presents an excellent theological statement about the church, it fails to inspire ecumenical cooperation in sacramental life and in service because of unrealistic assessments about the theory and practice of churches. I write as a Wesleyan-Holiness theologian who has been involved with ecumenical and interfaith work with commissions (now known as convening tables) of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA (NCCC) for more than a dozen years. I have dialogued, presented, and published articles and a book on the subject matter. Most of my service has been on behalf of the Wesleyan Theological Society, which has supported commissions of the NCCC for four decades. addition, I also represent perspectives from the Society of Friends, which united with the Wesleyan-Holiness tradition in founding Azusa Pacific University in southern California. At the University, I teach in the Seminary, and I am heavily invested in promoting both the theory (beliefs, values) and practice (ministries) of churches. reading TCTCV, I was once again amazed by the excellent work in ecclesiastical scholarship, articulating Gods Mission and the of the Church, existing as the of the Triune God, and how churches are Growing in Communion, In and for the World, to quote the chapter titles. (1) World Council of Churches provides outstanding statements of belief and value about the nature of the church. However, theoretical excellence in describing the church does not always translate into persuasive and effective ministerial and mission-oriented practice that supports the ecclesiastical theory. fact, throughout my years of service on behalf of the commissions on and Order and on Interfaith Relations, I have been concerned about how little the good theoretical work we did translated into practicable applications on behalf of the day-to-day lives of Christians and churches. As commissions, we found it challenging to produce outcomes that implemented our beliefs and values, no matter how good they were, in the pews, worship practices, ministries, and mission work. Let me examine a sample statement from the Conclusion of TCTCV in order to illustrate my concerns. Its first sentence begins by saying: The of the body of Christ consists in the gift of koinonia or communion that God graciously bestows upon human beings. (2) This statement reflects stirring work on the Greek word which talks about the communion, fellowship, and sharing that occurs in churches. Indeed, the biblical concept of koinonia has powerfully shaped Christians and churches in the past, and it continues to be fruitful in articulating ecclesiastical relations in the future. second sentence of the Conclusion affirms a about the excellence of koinonia for ecumenical and interfaith work. (3) Indeed, I agree that the biblical concept increasingly finds favor among Christians and churches as a way to conceptualize the Christian Unity advocated by the and Order Convening Table: Faith and Order affirms the oneness of the Church of Jesus Christ and keeps before the churches the Gospel call to visible in one and one Eucharistic communion, expressed in worship and in common life in Christ, in order that the world may believe. (4) entirety of the aforementioned sentence in the Conclusion says: There is a growing consensus that koinonia, as communion with the Holy Trinity, is manifested in three interrelated ways: in faith, in sacramental life, and in service (in all its forms, including ministry and mission). (5) Although I agree that there is growing consensus about the concept of koinonia, I do not agree that it is manifested in the three interrelated ways suggested above. First, there may, indeed, be a unity in faith (that is, doctrine) discoverable in such ecumenical publications as TCTCV. …

The Design of Nineteenth-Century Wesleyan Space Re-reading F. J. Jobson's Chapel and School Architecture

Abstract F. J. Jobson's Chapel and School Architecture as Appropriate to the Buildings of Nonconformists (1850) has conventionally been used to demonstrate the architectural patterns of nineteenth-century Wesleyan chapels. However, this emphasis has overlooked elements of its recommendations and motivations. This article proposes an alternative approach. Positioning Jobson's text within theories of space, it challenges the conventional importance given to his physical recommendations by discussing how the function and users of Wesleyan spaces also influenced his designs. Examining Jobson's designs for Sunday schools and vestries in addition to chapels, this article considers the relationship between Wesleyan theology and Jobson's proposed designs.

Wesleyan Theology and Social Science: The Dance of Divinity and Discovery – Edited by M. Kathryn Armistead, Brad D. Strawn, and Ronald W. Wright

Wesleyan Theology and Social Science: The Dance of Divinity and Discovery – Edited by M. Kathryn Armistead, Brad D. Strawn, and Ronald W. Wright

“Inimigos do Mundo” e “'Amigos' da Humanidade”: Reconciliação, Inimizade e Amizade na Teologia Wesleyana como Elementos para Uma Teologia Pública

This article deals with the claim that relations of public life should be built from the concept of friendship, rather than the concepts of love or cordiality. To this end it explores the theological understanding of reconciliation and friendship in Wesleyan theology in English, American and Brazilian key texts. Finally, is investigated its application for the description of the relationship between church and society to inspire a more distinguished Wesleyan public theology.

'That Peculiar Voice': Jane Eyre and Mary Bosanquet Fletcher, an Early Wesleyan Female Preacher

References to the plain appearance of Charlotte Brontë's heroine in her first published novel, Jane Eyre, link the character to Wesleyanism, a movement which extended the priesthood of all believers to women and granted them access to the pulpit during the late eighteenth century. The Brontë sisters came under the influence of this movement in their childhood, through the Wesleyan theology of their father's Haworth parsonage. As the autobiographical writings of one Wesleyan preaching figure, Mary Bosanquet Fletcher, make clear, this tradition that shaped Charlotte Brontë and her views about gender linked women's choice of plain dress to John Wesley's expectation that all Wesleyans publicly voice their spiritual experience. This essay explores the relationship between the life and theological concerns of Mary Bosanquet Fletcher, an acquaintance of Charlotte Brontë's father, in order to expose an important clue to the source of Jane's 'peculiar voice', which, as Rochester claims, 'renews hope' and 'sounds so truthful' (JE, p. 432).

RESPONSE TO CHARLES J. SCALISE, “DELINEATING DIFFERENCE: EXPLORING SOME CONNECTIONS BETWEEN TWENTIETH CENTURY CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY AND TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY LIVED EXPERIENCE”

Thank you for a comprehensive presentation of pluralistic character of North theology. In your verbal presentation, you speak about your experience of having taken Professor Robert Johnson's theology class at Yale Divinity School in the 1970s, which has significantly shaped your understanding of the North American theologies. (See http://www.yale.edu/opa/arc-ybc/v30.n23/storyl4.html for more information about the late Professor Johnson.) I also took the same course from Professor Johnson when I attended Yale Divinity School (from 1980 to 1983). You remember much more content from Professor Johnson's class than I do. My not remembering as much reflects, in part, the difficult time I had at Yale Divinity School, which essentially privileged the European American experiences over my own Korean American experiences. Studying Eurocentric theologies, I often felt that my identity did not matter, if valued at all. This was a critical time for me when I learned a glimpse of how a politics of theological representation is carried out in theological institutions. Professor Johnson, a Presbyterian pastor himself, had a clear bias for the Presbyterian theologians. He often spoke in a non-generous spirit how Wesleyan theology (my own tradition) fell short of a dogmatic or systematic standard of theology.

Normative Thoughts, Normative Feelings, Normative Actions: A Protestant, Relational Psychoanalytic Reply to E. Christian Brugger and the Faculty of IPS

The present article is a response to E. Christian Brugger's 2008 article, Anthropological Foundations of Clinical Psychology, published in the Journal of Psychology &amp; Theology (Volume 36, Number 1). In the article, Brugger argued that all psychological theories contain implicit anthropologies complete with values and ethics. Brugger called on theoreticians to overtly explicate their philosophical and theological model. He then presented such a system from his own Catholic tradition and invited authors from other Christian traditions to constructively interact. The authors of this article dialogue with Brugger's model using Reformed and Wesleyan theology and Relational Psychoanalysis.

Wesleyan Theological Methodology as a Theory of Integration

The central claim of this article is that debates over the integration of psychological theories and findings, on the one hand, and Christian doctrine, on the other, largely boil down to differences in theological methodology, and that the theological methodology often associated with John Wesley offers a compelling model of such integration. Section I lays out how it is that while there are logical and normative matters involved in discussions of theoretical integration, methodological issues are at the heart of such discussions, and hence, how it is that one's theological methodology determines one's theory of integration. Given this thesis, Section II outlines the general contours of Wesleyan theological methodology. This methodology involves four mutually interacting though hierarchically arranged sources of knowledge: Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience. The final section elucidates the manner in which this understanding of theological method can be taken as a viable and vital model of the theoretical integration of psychology and theology.

A Motivação Originária da Teologia Wesleyana: O Caminho da Salvação

The author describes Wesleyan theology as “theology of the way” that communicates the theology grace in a less conceptual form and not from upside down. Instead of this, he afirms it as more open and dynamic. By this the author defines as starting point of Wesleyan theology the human condition as personal, social and based on experience.

From ‘The State of my Soul’ to ‘Exalted Piety’: Women’s Voices in the Arminian/Methodist Magazine, 1778–1821

John Wesley’s version of evangelical Christianity was distinguished by its insistence on the universal availability of salvation (‘Free Grace’), an insistence which rapidly led to the definition of Wesleyan theology as ‘Arminian’ in contradistinction to the Calvinist evangelicalism of Whitfield, Toplady, and others. Controversy was violent in the 1740s, and flared up again in the 1770s. It was against this background that John Wesley founded the Arminian Magazine in 1778. It was to function in defence of Arminianism, and to consist of ‘tracts on the universal love of God, wrote in this and the last century’, together with ‘Original Pieces’. This might seem an unlikely place for women to speak, or even to be spoken about, but Arminianism was not defended solely by means of tracts. By the year of Wesley’s death (1791), besides significant amounts of poetry and short anecdotes (the latter characterized by Wesley in 1781 as ‘bits and scraps’, with which he would scorn to fill up the Magazine), there are also fifteen letters written by women, and eleven accounts of women’s lives (slightly outnumbering both letters from and accounts of men). Later years show an even greater preponderance of women’s ‘Lives’. Leaving on one side the value of this source to the historian, this paper seeks only to analyse women’s opportunities to speak publicly in their own voice in the Arminian (later Methodist) Magazine under John Wesley’s editorship and later.