WESLEY AS A PASTORAL THEOLOGIAN
Theological methodology in John Wesley’s doctrine of Christian perfection
By David B. McEwan. Paternoster. 230 pages. £24.99
ISBN 978 1 842 276 211
I suspect that most readers of this paper will rightly revere John Wesley as an evangelist whom God used in the Great Awakening and as a man passionately dedicated to extending the kingdom of Christ.
However, when it comes to some aspects of his theology, we are a little more wary. If we are Calvinists, Wesley was on the wrong side of the controversy from George Whitefield, but perhaps more problematic was his doctrine of Christian perfection. In this book, the Nazarene scholar David McEwan has done the wider church a great service by putting Wesley as a theologian in historical and theological context, and expounding his doctrine of Christian perfection. In understanding Wesley’s view, it is fundamentally important to appreciate his role as a pastoral theologian for the emerging Methodist movement. Central to his theology was the believer’s experience of love in his or her relationship to God or what Wesley called ‘the true, the scriptural, experimental religion’ of the heart.
