Following Wesley
By Theodore Runyon, The New Creation: John Wesley's Theology Today. (Abingdon, 270 pp.)
Edited by Randy L. Maddox, Rethinking Wesley's Theology for Contemporary Methodism. (Abingdon, 256 pp.)
Can the thought and practice of an 18th-century Anglican divine help Methodists today? Doesn't John Wesley's location in his own time and culture make the expression "Wesley's theology today" an oxymoron? Is the "back to Wesley" movement which has burgeoned in North America more than a sign of devotion to a respected founder? Theodore Runyon and Randy Maddox help answer these and other important questions. Their books are important not only for Methodists but for any theologians seeking to draw on the resources of historical theology.
The "Wesley for today" project goes back at least as far as Colin Williams's John Wesley's Theology Today: A Study of the Wesleyan Tradition in the Light of Current Theological Dialogue (1960). Williams set the standard for the retrieval of Wesley and put Wesley in dialogue with contemporary theologians and issues. Recently, this project has been advanced by John Cobb's Grace and Responsibility: A Wesleyan Theology for Today (1995). Cobb followed Williams's model of retrieval and reflection, but his book is more theologically rich, philosophically sophisticated and methodologically astute than anything that had gone before. Cobb expands the range of current concerns to include ecology, religious pluralism, sexuality, and the role of law in society, demonstrating how Wesley can be brought into relation to issues beyond the horizon of his own thought.
The subtitle of Runyon's book is misleading, since most of the volume offers a detailed, insightful exposition of Wesley without much explicit dialogue with the contemporary context. Indeed, only the final chapter provides any sustained engagement with current issues--though it does make up about one-fifth of the book. Runyon himself says in his preface that "readers primarily interested in the implications of Wesley's thought for current issues such as the problems of human rights, poverty, women's rights, and the environment, as well as developments in the life of the church such as ecumenism and the challenge of today's religious pluralism," should begin with that section. His approach suggests that we must first encounter Wesley in his own theological and historical-cultural context.
This method yields some potentially significant insights for current dialogue: the significance of ecumenical influences on Wesley's thought, a fresh look at the importance of experience for faith and theology, and the idea of "orthopathy" as a corrective to the competing polarities of orthodoxy and orthopraxy. An unfortunate consequence of Runyon's method, however, is that many of the valuable insights and contributions he makes to Wesley studies in the earlier part of the book do not directly bear upon his latter dialogical efforts. Indeed, the final chapter could stand alone, since new material on Wesley is brought in at every point.
Runyon sets out to retrieve the idea of "new creation" as a controlling category or root metaphor of Wesley's thought. He rightly identifies the renewal of the divine image in humankind as central for Wesley, but he also claims for the idea of "new creation" a wider context of cosmic renewal. This context broadens the concept of sanctification so as to engage questions of evangelical, social, political and ecological renewal. That this broader aspect is only weakly present in Wesley's own works may account for the fact that it remains a weak and underdeveloped theme throughout Runyon's book and is noticeably absent from the last chapter. Where Runyon succeeds in bringing together the theme of new creation with illuminating insights into Wesley's context and message, he offers a much-needed new direction for contemporary theological reflection.
Randy Maddox's volume, which is dedicated to Runyon, is a collection of essays by Wesleyan theologians from five continents. The essays provide a representative sampling of "the Wesley for today" project. For me, however, the primary significance of the book lies in the way it addresses the basic methodological question, "In what sense can Wesley be claimed as a source of theology for today?" Maddox's own essay goes a long way toward providing an answer by examining how Wesleyan theologians have understood their relationship to the founder.
Maddox traces the recovery of Wesley as a theologian, from his neglect and marginalization during the 19th century to the proliferation of interest in Wesley studies today, and identifies the two broad approaches to Wesley which have predominated in the 20th century. First came a pre-'60s liberal reappropriation of Wesley as a theological hero by those who (according to Maddox) inappropriately claimed "Wesleyan warrant for their particular revisionist theological agenda(s)." Second came Williams's work, which took Wesley as theological mentor (an approach first recommended by Albert Outler). Those following this method, which Maddox implies is more honest than the earlier approach, find "tentative suggestions and affinities" in Wesley's theology.
One wonders why this important analysis is placed at the end of the book, since it presents the question that should have been leveled at the foregoing essays: "Do the contributors consider themselves to have Wesley as their theological mentor?" This question is difficult to answer, partly because Maddox's own essay does not tease out what it means to have Wesley as a mentor, but mostly because the volume's other essays are not always explicit about their chosen method.
The diverse material in this book presents a complex and highly nuanced set of approaches to Wesley. One can identify different emphases, though they exist in some measure in each essay. Any or all of these approaches may be part of a student-mentor relationship.
