Introducing Wesleyan Tradition: Theology and Praxis скачать в хорошем качестве

Introducing Wesleyan Tradition: Theology and Praxis

“Not Almost, But Altogether”: Theology in the Service of Holy Love John Wesley did not set out to found a movement, still less to construct a theological system. He set out, more modestly and more dangerously, to help people love God and neighbour with their whole lives. Everything that follows in this book—every doctrine examined, every practice described, every controversy traced—takes its bearings from that singular pastoral aim. For Wesley, theology was never an abstract exercise, insulated from the mess of ordinary lives. It was a practical discipline, tested in the field: in societies gathered before dawn, in class meetings where sin was named without spectacle, in preaching that risked offence because it refused despair. Doctrine mattered because lives were at stake. And holiness mattered because grace, if it is truly grace, must do more than excuse us; it must change us. This book is written for those preparing for ministry, not as curators of a tradition but as stewards of a living one. Wesleyan theology is best learned not as a catalogue of propositions but as a grammar for faithful practice—a way of speaking about God that forms habits of attention, judgment, and love. Its coherence lies not in systematic elegance but in pastoral intelligibility: it makes sense of human experience under the pressure of grace. At the heart of this tradition stands the Introducing Wesleyan Tradition : Theology & Praxis conviction that salvation is not merely a change in status but a healing of the will. Justification and sanctification are not rival goods but inseparable movements of the same divine mercy. The God who forgives also frees; the grace that pardons also empowers. Christian perfection—so often caricatured, so frequently misunderstood—names not a spiritual elite but the horizon toward which all Christian life is drawn: perfect love, love without a rival, love that orders the whole self toward God and neighbour. For ministers, this claim is not optional. It presses upon preaching, pastoral care, sacramental practice, and the shaping of Christian community. It resists both moral resignation and spiritual triumphalism. It refuses the false comfort of reduced expectations and the false confidence of self-made holiness. Instead, it locates ministry within a patient, hopeful realism: people can change, not by force of will, but by the steady work of grace, mediated through ordinary means. Wesley’s own theology emerged under pressure—revival pressure, pastoral pressure, the pressure of disappointment and excess alike. He learned by doing, corrected himself publicly, and allowed practice to refine conviction. This book follows that same trajectory. It traces the theological logic of Wesleyan doctrine while keeping one eye firmly on its ministerial consequences: how theology shapes the way we preach repentance, speak of assurance, accompany failure, and dare to hope for holiness in real communities. Candidates for ministry today inhabit a world markedly different from Wesley’s eighteenth century, yet recognisably similar in its anxieties. We minister among people exhausted by performance, suspicious of authority, and unsure whether deep change is possible. In such a context, Wesleyan theology offers neither nostalgia nor novelty, but a demanding hope: that God’s grace is already at work ahead of us, that the Spirit can be trusted with human lives, and that love—not efficiency, relevance, or control—remains the true measure of faithfulness. This prologue is not an invitation to mastery but to formation. The question Wesley presses upon every generation of ministers is not simply What do you believe? but What kind of people are you becoming as you believe it? Theology, for Wesley, was never complete until it took flesh in practices of prayer, accountability, mercy, and courage. What follows, then, is offered in the same spirit: not almost theology, but theology aimed at transformation; not the management of religious life, but its renewal; not the defence of a system, but participation in a grace that still dares to make people whole.