John Wesley

A Forgotten Christmas Hymn, by Charles Wesley

/ James Pedlar / 2 Comments

I found this wonderful hymn a couple of years ago, when looking through A Collection of Hymns for the Nativity of our Lord, compiled by John Wesley in 1744.  There are some interesting gems in there, but the following hymn, by brother Charles (#11 in the collection) really stood out.

My favourite phrase is “In our deepest darkness rise” – and I love the title given to Christ in verse three: “Thou mild Pacific Prince.”  I wrote a tune for this last year, and I hope to be able to record it some time down the road.

LIGHT OF THOSE WHOSE DREARY DWELLING

Charles Wesley

Light of those whose dreary dwelling,
Borders on the shades of death,
Come, and by Thy love’s revealing,
Dissipate the clouds beneath :
š›š›The new heaven and earth’s Creator,
In our deepest darkness rise,
Scattering all the night of nature,
Pouring eyesight on our eyes.
~
Still we wait for Thy appearing,
Life and joy Thy beams impart,
Chasing all our fears, and cheering,
Every poor benighted heart:
Come and manifest the favour,
God hath for our ransom’d race;
Come, Thou universal Saviour,
Come, and bring the gospel grace.
~
Save us in Thy great compassion,
O Thou mild pacific Prince,
Give the knowledge of salvation,
Give the pardon of our sins ;
By Thine all-restoring merit,
Every burden’d soul release,
Every weary, wandering spirit,
Guide into Thy perfect peace.

Holiness is not a state

/ James Pedlar / 13 Comments

Many of the problems with Wesleyan/Holiness understandings of sanctification come from the drive to define a “low water mark” of holiness, by which I mean, a line in the sand – a threshold which we can identify as the indication that someone has experienced holiness or been made holy.  This whole idea is built upon the presupposition that “holiness” is a state, a status, or a place where one can somehow arrive.   Some of the “second blessing” holiness teachers (such as Samuel Logan Brengle) explicitly define holiness as a “state,” and then go about the process of trying to identify the ways that one can arrive at this state, by God’s help.

If we look back further, John Wesley’s famous “redefinition” of “sin properly so-called” as “a voluntary transgression of a known law of God” was part of his attempt to define the “low water mark” of Christian perfection.  Wesley would never say that anyone could reach a point in their Christian life where they did not constantly need the atoning blood of Christ.  While, in certain contexts, he used the above “redefinition”, he also believed in total depravity, which means that he believed that, as one journeys deeper into holiness of heart and life, one continues to find that sin “cleaves to all our words, and actions.” (The Repentance of Believers, §I.11)  Indeed, Wesley says of the children of God,

They are daily sensible of sin remaining in their heart, — pride, self-will, unbelief; and of sin cleaving to all they speak and do, even their best actions and holiest duties. [On Sin in Believers, §III.7, emphasis mine]

This is classic protestant teaching on total depravity, though I think later Wesleyans have, at least on a popular level, not always followed Wesley in maintaining this point.  The point is that even our “holiest” actions as Christians remain tainted by sin, possibly in ways we are not conscious of and don’t even understand.  However, Wesley felt that one could reach  a point of not voluntarily sinning, by becoming so overwhelmed by the perfect love of God that the intentions of one’s heart is made pure.   This was his “low water mark” of Christian perfection, though he never claimed it for himself.

It seems to me that this “low water mark” issue could be avoided if we simply made clear that holines is not a state.  There is no line in the sand of the Christian life which marks off “the holy” from the rest of us.  Holiness is a relative characteristic which all believers possess, to a greater or lesser degree.  From the moment of conversion we are being transformed, made responsive to the grace of God in our lives, and conformed to Christ’s likeness.   That is why Paul can address the Corinthians as “those sanctified in Christ Jesus, and called to be holy.”

From a Wesleyan perspective, we can still maintain that it is not right for us to put a priori limits on the sanctifying grace of God.  That is, we cannot, in advance, say that any aspect of our lives will surely remain corrupted by sin.  What we can say, however, is that, as a relative characteristic, our transformation will always remain relative. Only God is absolutely holy.

Perhaps part of the problem is that later Wesleyans conflated Wesley’s category of “Christian perfection” with “holiness.”  While Wesley seems to fall into this “low water mark” trap I’m speaking of in relation to his discussions of Christian perfection, he nevertheless recognizes the fact that “holiness” is a relative characteristic shared by all believers.

Every babe in Christ is holy, and yet not altogether so. He is saved from sin; yet not entirely: It remains, though it does not reign. [On Sin in Believers, §IV.3]

Therefore, the answer to the question, “are you holy?” will always be “Yes” and “No.”  There ought always to be ways in which our lives reflect the holiness of God; and yet there will always be ways in which they do not.

Salvation, Ethics, and Human Freedom

/ James Pedlar / 5 Comments

The main source of discomfort with talk of “morality” in protestant theological circles is the issue of faith vs. works.  We are nervous that any talk of morals will lead to moralism, to a reliance on our moral behaviour as the ground of our standing before God.  Of course, the doctrine of justification excludes such a conception of human ethical behaviour.  Salvation is the gift of God, fully and completely, and even the faith by which we acknowledge our salvation must be said to be God’s gift, and not a human work.

So where does this leave the human agent.  Is there nothing for us to do?   I want to argue that the Christian life is an active life of free obedience.  But the key thing to remember is that this activity on the part of the Christian is not the ground of our salvation; rather our salvation, as the gracious gift of God, is the ground for our free obedience.  God’s action always precedes our action, but God’s action does not exclude our action, but rather opens up the space in which we can act as responsible agents, and directs us toward the responsible action which is proper to our existence as human creatures.

We are free to actively obey God precisely because that obedience does not merit our salvation; if it did, we would not be free to actively obey, we would be damned. I’m going to attempt to unpack that statement by way of a positive view of Salvation.  Just as we cannot talk of “freedom” without speaking the goal of human life, so also we cannot talk about “salvation” without speaking of salvation’s goal.  That is, salvation cannot be conceived in purely negative terms, as “salvation from” sin, death and the devil.  It is true that our salvation is a salvation from, but we must also consider salvation in positive terms, as salvation for communion with God and with our fellow human creatrues.

We can be more specific than this, however, because “communion with God and with our fellow human beings” could be seen as somewhat vague.  The direction of our salvation is anything but vague; it is concrete, specific, and particular; it is Jesus Christ himself.   He is “our wisdom, our righteousness, sanctification, and redemption,” and we are being conformed into his image.  Christ himself is the concrete direction toward which our salvation is oriented.  God has determined that he should have a free, responsible human covenant partner, and in his humanity, Jesus Christ is that true covenant partner. It is in his free obedience that we are enabled and called to respond to God with a free and active obedience of our own.

That is why salvation and ethics are inseparable: human action is not the ground of our salvation, but it is the goal of our salvation.  Salvation has a christologically determined direction; therefore it is ethical. We appropriate this free, active obedience in accordance with the mystery of salvation: it is a gift realized fully in Christ, and yet being realized in history as we are conformed to his likeness.   Thus, if we can speak of “growth in grace” in the sanctification process, we can also speak of “growth in free active obedience,” as we are conformed to Christ, and the Spirit continues to lead us into an ever-greater radical responsiveness corresponding to God’s radically free grace in Christ.

Karl Barth has described God’s freedom and ours in the following terms: “God’s freedom is his very own,” and “Man’s freedom is his as the gift of God.”  The human creature does not possess and inherent, directionless “freedom.” The Christian life is a life of freedom, not because we have an inherent “free will” or capacity for free moral decisions: rather, we are freed to respond freely to God’s grace because God, in his freedom, has chosen that it should be so, and acted to make it so in Jesus Christ. In our own power, we are not free; rather, we are exposed to the tyranny of our own will, with all of its disordered desires.  But God has determined that he would have a free covenant partner, and has acted in electing Jesus Christ as that free human partner.  Our being “in Christ,” our union with him, is the basis of our freedom, a freedom which is an echo and correspondence of his freedom.  This means that we only know what human freedom is by looking to Jesus Christ, as God’s truly free covenant partner.  Our understanding of freedom must be constantly measured against the the freedom of Jesus Christ as the truly free human creature.

This means that a “negative” account of freedom is obviously misguided.  The negative view of freedom posits that freedom is simply freedom from all external constraints and obligations.  To be free is to be an autonomous, unencumbered, self-directed agent, acting in accordance with our own desires.  In this context, any kind of structured moral obligation appears as an impingement on our freedom, and a burden which needs to be thrown off.  Such freedom, however, is illusory because it lacks a goal; it lacks positive content, and direction.  In other words, it is not freedom at all, but a form of slavery to our own misguided desires and impulses.

But this is true not only of supposed accounts of “free will;” it must also be emphasized that the Christian freedom we are discussing here as a freedom which is an effect of God’s grace is not a directionless negative freedom.  That is, human freedom in Christ is not simply a  freedom from negative influences, a freeing of our will which would then lead to a kind of regenerated “free will.”  Christian freedom is not a kind of “second chance” at free will, where God does his part in Christ and now leaves us to do our part with a newfound freedom.

The gift of freedom is directive: its end is conformity to Jesus Christ.  It is a freedom for this goal, a freedom for true humanity, in communion with God and with his creation.  We are therefore being made free human creatures as we are conformed to his image.  Our freedom does not precede God’s work in us and for us in Christ; it is not the ground but the goal of our salvation.

I would argue that this is an authentically Wesleyan position, although Wesleyans are often seen as aligning themselves with accounts of “free will.”   Certainly there are some Wesleyans who have argued in favour of a libertarian concept of free will, but I don’t think that is consistent with Wesley’s own views on the subject.   I’ll have to post separately on this question, to do it justice, but I believe it would be better to describe Wesley’s argument in terms of the freed will of the regenerate, rather than claiming “free will” for all humanity.

Wrestling Jacob

/ James Pedlar / 2 Comments

This is one of Charles Wesley’s greatest hymns, though it has not proved popular for congregational singing.  This may have something to do with its length, and the fact that it would be difficult to eliminate verses without disrupting the structure of the hymn.

Originally published in 1742 inHymns and Sacred Poems, this version is from A Collection of Hymns for the Use of the People Called Methodist (1780), no. 136 [online here as nos. 140-141].

In the notes of the Bicentennial Edition of Wesley’s Works (vol. VII, p. 250), John’s obituary tribute to his brother is quoted as having said:

“His least praise was his talent for poetry; although Dr. Watts did not scruple to say that that single poem, “Wrestling Jacob,” was worth all the verses he himself has written.”

High praise, coming from the second greatest English hymn writer of all time.

The hymn is a fascinating meditation on Genesis 32:22-32, with the angel interpreted as a figure of Christ.  My favourite line is the first line of the last verse: “Lame as I am, I take the prey”  – a powerful summary of the gospel.

WRESTLING JACOB

Charles Wesley (1742)

1

Come; O thou Traveller unknown,

Whom still I hold, but cannot see!

My company before is gone,

And I am left alone with thee;

With thee all night I mean to stay,

And wrestle till the break of day.

2

I need not tell thee who I am,

My misery or sin declare;

Thyself hast called me by my name,

Look on thy hands, and read it there.

But who, I ask thee, who art thou?

Tell me thy name, and tell me now.

3

In vain thou strugglest to get free,

I never will unloose my hold;

Art thou the Man that died for me?

The secret of thy love unfold:

Wrestling, I will not let thee go

Till I thy name, thy nature know.

4

Wilt thou not yet to me reveal

Thy new, unutterable name?

Tell me, I still beseech thee, tell;

To know it now resolved I am:

Wrestling, I will not let thee go

Till I thy name, thy nature know.

5

What though my shrinking flesh complain

And murmur to contend so long?

I rise superior to my pain:

When I am weak, then I am strong;

And when my all of strength shall fail

I shall with the God-man prevail.

6

Yield to me now—for I am weak,

But confident in self-despair!

Speak to my heart, in blessings speak,

Be conquered by my instant prayer:

Speak, or thou never hence shalt move,

And tell me if thy name is LOVE.

7

Tis Love! ‘Tis Love! Thou diedst for me;

I hear thy whisper in my heart.

The morning breaks, the shadows flee,

Pure Universal Love thou art:

To me, to all, thy bowels move—

Thy nature, and thy name, is LOVE.

8

My prayer hath power with God; the grace

Unspeakable I now receive;

Through faith I see thee face to face;

I see thee face to face, and live!

In vain I have not wept and strove—

Thy nature, and they name, is LOVE.

9

I know thee, Saviour, who thou art—

Jesus, the feeble sinner’s friend;

Nor wilt thou with the night depart,

But stay, and love me to the end:

Thy mercies never shall remove,

Thy nature, and thy name, is LOVE.

10

Sun of Righteousness on me

Hath rose with healing in his wings;

Withered my nature’s strength; from thee

My soul its life and succour brings;

My help is all laid up above:

Thy nature, and thy name, is LOVE.

11

Contented now upon my thigh

I halt, till life’s short journey end;

All helplessness, all weakness, I

On thee alone for strength depend;

Nor have I power from thee to move:

Thy nature, and thy name, is LOVE.

12

Lame as I am, I take the prey,

Hell, earth, and sin with ease o’ercome;

I leap for joy, pursue my way,

And as a bounding hart fly home,

Through all eternity to prove,

Thy nature, and thy name, is LOVE.

Describing the Goodness of God

/ James Pedlar / Leave a comment

If you had to choose a hymn or worship song to describe the goodness of God, what would go at the top of your list?

I would initially think of something to do with creation, maybe dealing with how God provides good things for his creatures.   Maybe “Great is thy faithfulness.”   Possibly a setting of Psalm 23.  Or something about God’s love.

Last year I ordered a copy of A Collection of Hymns for the Use of the People Called Methodists, from the Bicentennial Edition of Wesley’s Works.   It is an amazing piece of literature, and everyone who is interested in Wesleyan history and theology should spring for one.  The Wesleys put out numerous hymn collections throughout their lifetime, but this is the one that really stuck and became the standard of Wesleyan hymnody.

Near the start of the hymnal, there is a section of introductory hymns categorized as “Describing the Goodness of God”.  The first hymn in this section, no. 22, written by Samuel Wesley (father of Charles and John), reads as follows:

Behold the Savior of mankind
Nailed to the shameful tree!
How vast the love that Him inclined
To bleed and die for thee!

Hark, how He groans, while nature shakes,
And earth’s strong pillars bend;
The temple’s veil in sunder breaks,
The solid marbles rend.

“’Tis done!” The precious ransom’s paid,
“Receive My soul,” He cries!
See where He bows His sacred head!
He bows His head, and dies!

But soon He’ll break death’s envious chain,
And in full glory shine:
O Lamb of God! was ever pain,
Was ever love, like Thine?

It seems strange at first, because our inclination is to think that “describing the goodness of God” should mean dwelling on his eternal attributes, his care of creation, or his care of us amidst the trials of life.   But Wesley launches right into a description of the cross.

Hymn 23 begins with an even more concrete description of Calvary:

Extended on a cursed tree,
Besmeared with dust, and sweat, and blood,
See there, the King of glory see!
Sinks and expires the Son of God

In hymn 24 we find the opening lines, “Ye that pass by, behold the Man / The Man of griefs, condemned for you!” and in verse two: “See how his back the scourges tear / While to the bloody pillar bound!”

I was moved when I read through this section and realized what Wesley had done.  All seventeen hymns in this section are focused on the cross and the atonement.  There’s not one that speaks in general terms of God’s goodness.  Wesley’s christocentrism is on full display in his ordering of these hymns.

How do we describe God’s goodness?  Rather than beginning with an abstract conception of a good God, and then theorizing about what that might mean, we begin at the cross, the climax and centre of God’s self-revelation.  We begin, strangely, with Jesus at his most human – suffering, bleeding, and dying for us and for our salvation – even though this is the point in the gospel narrative that most clearly underlines the inadequacies of our preconceived understandings of God and his goodness.

It is sad that many churches today shy away from a focus on the cross, even on Good Friday!   People seem concerned that it the crucifixion story is too gruesome, or too depressing.   One time I remember someone saying to me that we needed to end the Good Friday service on an “upbeat” note – as if we somehow need to “spin” the Good Friday story into a “positive” thing.   The cross doesn’t need spin doctors.  It doesn’t need to be turned into something “positive,” and it doesn’t need to somehow be reconciled with a preconceived notion of “goodness.”  The cross is God’s demonstration of his goodness.  To describe the cross is to describe the goodness of God.  The story just needs to be told.

Let’s not rush past the contemplation of the cross this Good Friday.

I give the last word to Charles. This is hymn 27 in the Collection.

O Love divine, what hast thou done!
The immortal God hath died for me!
The Father’s co-eternal Son
Bore all my sins upon the tree.
Th’immortal God for me hath died:
My Lord, my Love, is crucified!

Is crucified for me and you,
To bring us rebels back to God.
Believe, believe the record true,
Ye all are bought with Jesus’ blood.
Pardon for all flows from His side:
My Lord, my Love, is crucified!

Behold and love, ye that pass by,
The bleeding Prince of life and peace!
Come, sinners, see your Savior die,
And say, “Was ever grief like His?”
Come, feel with me His blood applied:
My Lord, my Love, is crucified!

Then let us sit beneath His cross,
And gladly catch the healing stream:
All things for Him account but loss,
And give up all our hearts to Him:
Of nothing think or speak beside,
My Lord, my Love, is crucified!

Charismatic Movements in the Church

/ James Pedlar / 4 Comments

I’m introducing a new series of blog posts on the topic of “charismatic movements” in the Church.  When I speak of ” charismatic” movements,  I don’t necessarily mean pentecostal movements, but those movements of renewal and reform which rise up spontaneously in the Church, and centre around particularly gifted individuals, who operate outside existing authority structures.  Such movements have existed throughout the history of the Church, and have always had a rocky relationship with the established Church authorities.

I developed this rough timeline as a teaching tool for a course I was TAing earlier this year.  We could debate whether some of these movements are “charismatic,” but I would argue that they were all charismatic in origin, meaning that they sprung up around individuals who were perceived to be specially gifted (the basic meaning of “charism” being “gift”).   The timeline gets really selective when it comes to the modern era, because at that point I had to be selective.  I’m not claiming the timeline is exhaustive at that point, but I hope it is representative.  My main purpose in creating the timeline this way was to contrast “catholic” movements (meaning those who were eventually accepted by Church authorities as legitimate) with “non-catholic.”

I should add also that I’m not addressing the issue of “heresy” here, as some of the movements in question were definitely preaching a message which was outside the boundaries of historic Christian orthodoxy. I think most people would agree that the Bogomils and Cathars were heretical, but assessing the orthodoxy of other individual movements on the list would require more of a discussion than I want to get into.

One of the questions I’m studying for my dissertation concerns how we account for these movements theologically.  How do we know if a charismatic movement is truly of God?  What do these movements represent? A return to the primitive purity of the Church?  A form of fanaticism?  A revitalizing force?

I’ve developed a typology of positions on the question of the place of charismatic movements in the Church, and this typology will form the basis for my series of posts, each of which will discuss one or two representative theologians:

  • Charismatic opposed to institutional. Here the work of Rudolph Söhm and early 20th century scholars such as Adolf von Harnack is important.  The theory of these writers is that the church was originally charismatic, but this was stifled by emerging catholicism (institutionalism in his mind) in the 2nd century.  The emergence of stable authority structures was therefore a failure on the part of early Christianity.
  • Charismatic more fundamental than institutional. I’d summarize Leonardo Boff’s work in Church, Charism, and Power along these lines.  Charism is more fundamental than institution, because it gives rise to the institution and keeps it alive. Therefore the charismatic gifts of the Spirit should be the structuring principle of the church.
  • Charismatic in tension with institutional. Karl Rahner tries to hold the two structures in tension by arguing that there are both institutional and non-institutional charismata. A Legitimate opposition of forces in the life of the Church is inevitable and should be accepted.  Hans Urs Von Balthasar’s “christological constellation” also fits under this category.
  • Charismatic complementary to institutional. More recent ecumenical work has attempted to overcome the duality of charismatic movements and institutional structures by stressing the complementarity of the two.  Joseph Ratzinger also wrote along these lines in his discussion of lay movements in the Church, even going so far as to reject the dichotomy of charism/institution as inappropriate for ecclesiology.
  • Charismatic enlivens institutional. Others stress the role of charismatic movements as enlivening forces for the institutional church.  So Howard Snyder argues that both institutional structures and charismatic movements can be seen as normal and valid in the Church’s history.  I’ll also discuss Catholic theologies of “the religious life” (religious orders, etc.) under this category.
  • Institutional over charismatic. It’s hard to find anyone who actually argues for this theologically, but it is common on a practical level, so I’ll still attempt a post on this perspective.
  • Charismatic gifts as justification for separation. Oscar Cullmann’s book Unity Through Diversity makes the argument that different the “confessions” in the Church have their own unique charisms, which need to be preserved.  Therefore he argues that continued structural separation of the churches is justified, so that these diverse gifts can be preserved.  Many denominationalist theologies proceed on similar assumptions.

While the work I’ll be discussing is scholarly, the issue of finding a place for charismatic movements in the Church has immense practical implications, and I’ll attempt to draw these out.  This has been a perennial issue for the Church, and it remains an important problem today.  Think of the controversy surrounding “emergent” and whether it is a legitimate movement of reform or a heretical offshoot of genuine Christianity.  How are these “new expressions” of church related to the established Churches?

It is also an important question for people of evangelical heritage, because move evangelical denominations began as charismatic reform movements (not as denominations or “churches”).  Does that have implications for our understanding of the Church and the place of “denominations” as they now exist?  I think it does, and I’m hopeful that reflection on the history of charismatic movements, as well as theological reflection on the nature of the Church and where they fit, can provide some direction for our life together as we seek to give faithful witness in the post-Christendom context.

Last meal for a condemned man: I’m giving up meat for Lent

/ James Pedlar / 1 Comment

Yes, Samantha and I have decided to give up meat for Lent.   I don’t know what came over me, but for some reason I suggested it, and once it was in our heads we figured we had to go for it.  We’ve tried a few things in the past, but nothing this significant.   Once we gave up pizza, but we usually only eat pizza once a week, so it wasn’t a big deal.   Another time we gave up fast food, which seemed inconceivable  at the time, though by the end of Lent we realized that we were better off without it!

I’m not really sure what going without meat will be like.  If you don’t know, Samantha is a professional cook, and we normally eat pretty well.   We like good food, and we definitely like meat.   All the pictures on this post are of meals that we have made for ourselves at home.   I’m a barbeque guy, and I normally keep my grill going all winter long.  But the grill is going to have a break until April.    No need for steak knives, burger buns, or barbeque sauce.

From my perspective, the value of participating in some sort of fast for lent is that it keeps you mindful of Christ’s sufferings on the cross.  Not that I think my pathetic attempt at self-imposed suffering in any way participates in Christ’s sufferings; there’s no correspondence between my voluntary self denial and Christ’s suffering.   I also wouldn’t want to identify my self-punishment as connected in any way with the punishment for my sins.   Some Christians have viewed fasting and other spiritual disciplines this way, and that is part of the reason why many people are wary of fasting.  The debt for our sins has been sufficiently paid by Christ, and our self-discipline has nothing to add to his work on the cross.  But my simple lenten discipline acts as a reminder of Christ in the midst of my usual daily routine.  Every time I go to eat supper I’ll be reminded that I’m not eating meat, and I’ll be reminded that I’m doing this as a form of spiritual discipline, in preparation for the celebration of Christ’s death and resurrection.  That kind of constant reminder can’t be anything but helpful. 

The key is that we don’t think of our fasting as a kind of “achievement,”  or become confident in the rigour of our self-discipline.  If fasting reminds me of the cross (as I think it should), then it reminds me of my sin, and pushes me to place my hope in Christ’s victory, not my own religiosity, feeble as it is.

Let us beware…of fancying we merit anything of God by our fasting. We cannot be too often warned of this; inasmuch as a desire to “establish our own righteousness,” to procure salvation of debt and not of grace, is so deeply rooted in all our hearts. Fasting is only a way which God hath ordained, wherein we wait for his unmerited mercy; and wherein, without any desert of ours, he hath promised freely to give us his blessing.

-John Wesley, Sermon 27, “Sermon on the Mount, VII,” §IV.2 (on Matthew 6:16-18)

I guess I am in danger of falling under the condemnation of Christ for announcing my fast so publicly!    Maybe posting on my blog about fasting is the contemporary equivalent of the pious, disfigured faces that Jesus rebuked in the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5:16-18).   Hopefully what I have written guards against that interpretation of my motives!

Second Canadian Wesley Studies Symposium

/ James Pedlar / Leave a comment

Howard Snyder, chair of Wesley Studies at Tyndale Seminary, has been trying to encourage networking among Wesleyan theologians and pastors in Canada.  A few of us got together last spring for an informal Wesley Studies symposium, and we’re trying to make it an annual event.   So if you’re interested in Wesley and you can be at Tyndale on March 23, please let me know, because we’d love to have you there.

Second Annual Wesley Studies Symposium

Tyndale Seminary, Tuesday, March 23, 2010

9:00 a.m. – 7:30 p.m

Schedule / Agenda

8:45 a.m. Coffee – Information

9:00 a.m. Welcome – Introductions – Announcements – H. Snyder

9:15-10:15 Amy Caswell: “The Story of Christian Perfection: the Perfection Narrative of George Clark and Other Friends of John Wesley”

10:15-10:30 Break

10:30-11:20 Chad Short: “John Wesley and N. T. Wright in Dialogue”

11:20-12:15 Bob Munshaw: “‘Be Thorough, But Be in Haste’: Impetus and Self-Understanding of Mission in the Early Free Methodist Church”

12:15-1:00 Lunch (Courtesy of Tyndale Seminary)

1:00-1:50 Howard Olver: “A Theology for Reaching the City”

1:50-2:30 Updates on Wesley Research (Current & Proposed)

2:30-2:45 Break

2:45-3:30 James Watson: “Social Science Methodology for Multiethnic Church Planting”

3:30-4:15 Matt McEwen: “Wesley and the Environment: A Sacramental View” (provisional title)

4:15-5:00 Resources, Programs, New Publications, Etc. – Discussion

5:00-6:00 Free Time

6:00-7:30 Dinner, Denominational Presentations