How should we "read" John Wesley?

John Wesley (1703-1791)

My new column in the United Methodist Reporter looks at the question of how we should "read" John Wesley in the present day. You can find the column at this link.

In the past, Wesley has been understood in a number of different ways. For a long time in American Methodism, Wesley was often treated as a founding saint, but his actual theology wasn't given much attention. Many contemporary Methodists today see it as only natural that Methodism should be "Wesleyan" in some sense, but that idea has only really gained traction in the past 50 years or so.

My own least favorite way Wesley is sometimes used is for purposes of "proof texting." This happens when someone will quote a Wesley saying they've heard and then use it in the way that short snippets of Bible passages are sometimes quoted -- out of context and as a verbal trump card in an argument. But just as a biblical passage is usually distorted when it is taken out of context, the same thing happens when a theologian is cited by some short quote lifted out of a larger work. In the case of Wesley quotes, it's remarkable how many of them don't actually go back to Wesley himself!

I think a better way to think about both Wesley the person and Wesley's theological writing is as a theological mentor. To be a "Wesleyan," is to be a Christian who sees the teaching and example of John Wesley as informative for how to live the Christian life in the present. It doesn't require that we claim Wesley to be infallible; he certainly wasn't! What it does mean is that we take his actual thought and example in ministry seriously for what they have to offer us. And we do that simply because we see Wesley as a particularly gifted practical theologian who had a keen insight into those things that matter most for the Christian faith.

This idea is not my own. As I mention in my column, it was 20th-century scholar Albert C. Outler who proposed that John Wesley should be seen as a "theological mentor" by contemporary Methodists. That idea has been taken up by Randy L. Maddox, a theologian at Duke Divinity School in a way that, I think, both carries Outler's idea forward and develops it significantly.

Wesley said a great deal in regard to core Christian doctrines that remains directly relevant to Christians of this (or any other) era: The pervasive problem of sin; the necessity of God's grace for a redeemed and restored life; the character of the triune God (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit); the actual way grace works in the process of salvation; the necessity of an active response to the grace given to us (lived out through our discipleship and within the Christian community); the reality of new birth and progressive sanctification; the central importance of the means of grace in the Christian life; and the ecumenical and evangelical calling to spread the good news of Jesus Christ. The list is long! And it is filled with central themes in Wesley's theology that transcend his own historical era and can inform our understanding of the Christian faith today.

But even beyond the bare fact of his written theology, Wesley's own life in ministry and leadership of the Methodist movement provide a pattern for Christians to emulate. As much as anyone I know in the history of the church, he represents an example of someone whose message and whose life were in harmony with one another. He had faults (both in his written theology and in his life), and we should not overlook those. He also strove to practice his faith with total conviction and energy, though, in a way that few have matched before or since. There's something to be said for that.

To understand Wesley as a theological mentor in this way, latter-day Wesleyans can come to a greater understand of the importance of the Christian tradition itself. We don't make this Christianity stuff up anew in each generation. We receive it, as a gift, and we can life as faithful disciples of Jesus only because our forebears have themselves faithfully handed on the good news so that we, too, might receive the gospel of salvation. So we need mentors - always - and John Wesley is as good a one as we're likely to find.