For the first time, students of Wesley have access to Albert C. Outler's widely acclaimed "introduction" to Volume 1 of The Works of John Wesley in a single inexpensive paperback.

No student of John Wesley will need to be reminded of Albert Outler's stature, or the significance of his contribution to twentieth-century Wesleyan studies.

Contents A Career in Retrospect The Preacher and His Preaching The Sermon Corpus Theological Method and the Problems of development Wesley and His Sources On Reading Wesley's Sermons

This volume is intended to set in historical context the official United Methodist theological statements in the Disciplines of 1972 and 1988, and to foster reflection on and discussion of the 1988 statement.

Yoke of Obedience

Despite wide acceptance of the "Wesleyan quadrilateral", significant disagreements have arisen in both academic and church circles about the degree to which Scripture stood in a place of theological primacy for Wesley, or should do so for modern Methodists, and about the proper and appropriate methods of interpreting Scripture. In this important work, Scott J. Jones offers a full-scale investigation of John Wesley's conception and use of Scripture. The results of this careful and thorough investigation are sometimes surprising. Jones argues that for Wesley, religious authority is constituted not by a "quadrilateral", but by a fivefold but unitary locus comprising Scripture, reason, Christian antiquity, the Church of England, and experience. He shows that in actual practice Wesley's reliance on the entire Christian tradition - in particular of the early church and of the Church of England - is far heavier than his stated conception of Scripture would seem to allow, and that Wesley stresses the interdependence of the five dimensions of religious authority for Christian faith and practice.

This is the first in an eagerly awaited series of four volumes of John Wesley's sermons. It contains a detailed introduction as well as sermons 1-33 of Sermons on Several Occasions.

Of all the genres in Wesley's prodigious output, his sermons most clearly focus and expound his understanding of Christian existence. Outler's introduction in the first volume concentrates two decades of painstaking research and thought on Wesley. From this he ably sets the stage for a fuller understanding and appreciation of a major Christian heritage, a heritage which can at last be seen as a whole against the background of its sources.

The four volumes contain 151 sermons, including a number recovered from Wesley's manuscripts. These constitute the core of Wesley's doctrinal teachings upon which his own evangelical movement was founded. Following Wesley's own ordering, Dr. Outler begins with the familiar Sermons on Several Occasions, which present Wesley's basic teachings on salvation and form the bulk of the first two volumes in the series. Outler masterfully demonstrates the significance of all the subsequent sermons since they exhibit Wesley's entire approach to the Christian life. Each volume is rich with footnotes that include the identification of quotations, elucidation of references, the tracing of key themes, and vital background information on each sermon. Representing the culmination of twenty years of exhaustive research, it is the purpose of these conclusive volumes to keep alive the growing interest in Wesleyan studies for the entire Christian church.

This provocative volume illuminates a dimension of John Wesley's theology that has received insufficient attention: his deep and abiding commitment to the poor. By focusing on the radical nature of Wesley's "evangelical economics," Theodore W. Jennings, Jr., provides an important corrective to the view that Wesley was concerned with the salvation of souls only, and not also with the social conditions of human beings.

In seven chapters, Willimon examines United Methodism and the ways it has made and continues to make a difference in his life. In an inspiring and enlightening way, he writes of his pride in being part of a church that has grown from one man's experience to a worldwide movement covering the globe with its message. A learning guide for groups and individuals is included.

Chapter titles: Because Religion Is of the Heart Because the Bible Is Our Book Because Religion Is Practical Because Christians Are to Witness Because Christians Are to Grow Because Religion Is Not a Private Affair

With its plain, easy-to-understand language, this Pocket Guide will help you understand the major aspects of John Wesley's theology.

You will discover what Wesley believed about...The image of God and original sin Stewardship Justification by faith The witness of the Spirit Social holiness

...and more. This 96 page booklet also offers study questions that will help you or your group discuss the importance of Wesley's ideas for Christians today.

In a single, convenient volume, readers can now look up John Wesley's own statements of his theological beliefs. Reprinted from the 1954 work, A Compend of Wesley's Theology, the book includes Wesley's most significant statements on the essential questions of Christian doctrine, culled from over thirty of his works.

Asserting that the "return to Wesley" that is represented in the Quadrilateral is "intellectually wrongheaded," William J. Abraham argues that the Quadrilateral is not, and should not be, United Methodist doctrine. Abraham's lively treatise makes a provocative appeal for a reasoned exploration of the significance of the UMC's doctrinal identity. He reveals how churches have faced incompatible doctrinal proposals within their midst and examines the specific issues facing the United Methodist church as a whole.

This first effort at constructive Wesleyan theology to appear in United Methodist circles since the formation of the denomination in 1868 draws on the historical and literary work that has characterized Wesley studies in recent years. However, it moves beyond them to propose a way of reconstructing essential elements of Wesley's thought in service of the life and mission of United Methodists today.

Methodist Morals offers keen insight into the public church, interpreting the United Methodist Social Principles as a dynamic discourse about morality and human rights in light of faith. Revised every four years by the General Conference of the United Methodist Church, the Social Principles exposes the moral deliberations of this distinctly American and increasingly "worldwide" church as it struggles to achieve community across multiple languages and cultures. Perhaps no other document provides as rich a depiction of Protestants participating in the moral argument of public life. This is the first full-length study of Methodist social teachings in over fifty years. Examining official Methodist teachings from institutional, historical, and cross-cultural perspectives, Darryl Stephens provides a rich analysis of this case study of Protestant social witness, drawing on his expertise in church polity, Methodist history, and Christian social ethics. A wide range of comparisons- with documents of the United Nations, with moral debate in Germany and Zimbabwe, and with historical Methodist statements of social witness-shows the Social Principles to be a unique form of social witness. The issues of war,abortion, human sexuality, and marriage illustrate the messiness of democratic deliberation in an ecclesial context and the evolution of a people ever concerned with the sin of "worldliness" even as they become more attuned to transforming social structures. Stephens also contrasts this conception of the public church with the ecclesiologies of prominent Methodist ethicists Stanley Hauerwas and Paul Ramsey. Intended for students of Methodism, ecumenical church leaders, and scholars of Christian social ethics and contemporary US mainline religion, this work reveals the challenges to and possibilities for achieving moral community in an increasingly global and diverse world.

The proliferation of work on the theological hermeneutics of Scripture in recent years has challenged and reimagined the divisions between systematic theology and biblical studies on the one hand and academy and church on the other. Also notable, however, has been the absence of a full-length treatment of theological interpretation from a Wesleyan perspective. This monograph develops a Wesleyan theological hermeneutic of Scripture, approached as a craft learned from a tradition-constituted appropriation of John Wesley's hermeneutics. This hermeneutic requires a descriptive analysis of the context, grammar, and ruled reading of the literal sense in Wesley's interpretive practices, as well as critical interaction with the analysis in light of contemporary issues. As a result of this interaction, continuity and discontinuity between Wesley's and Wesleyan interpretation emerges and is accounted for. The Wesleyan theological hermeneutic developed here defines the church as Spirit-formed context within the larger divine economy of salvation, in contrast with Wesley's emphasis on individual soteriology and underdeveloped ecclesiology. Within this community context, Wesleyan theological interpretation is a means of grace whereby the Holy Spirit reinterprets the identity of readers into children of God. Theological interpretation invites readers on a Wesleyan account to participate in the textually mediated identity of Jesus Christ through the gracious work of the Holy Spirit. Wesleyan identity is therefore a figurally created identity based on the literal sense of Scripture. Wesley's analogy of faith, which rules his reading of Scripture, thus gives way to a more explicitly trinitarian rule of faith.

After John Wesley's death in 1791, schisms from Wesleyan Methodism occurred regularly. These events were not unexpected and the authorities often accepted them with little obvious regret, even if they did not actually encourage them. The first major split occurred in 1797 when the Methodist New Connexion was formed, and in the following twenty years further significant schisms led to the establishment of the Primitive Methodists and the Bible Christians. Other offshoots arose that lasted for shorter periods. One of these was the Tent Methodists, a group that has been largely ignored by historians probably because it did not become a major national or regional body. Its significance has not, however, been sufficiently recognized. One tent, then two, capable of accommodating congregations of over 500, were used extensively by preachers in the Bristol Wesleyan circuit and further afield from 1814, in addition to their preaching plan commitments. They received varying degrees of support and hostility from the circuit hierarchy, and in late 1819 attempts were made to bring the work under the authority of the circuit superintendent. The local preachers involved refused to relinquish control of the tents, and a bitter dispute began which led to the effective expulsion of three leading local preachers. They, and others, formed the Tent Methodist sect that, for several years, made considerable progress in several parts of England and one small area of South Wales. Decline set in at the beginning of 1826, and by 1832 the tents had been disposed of, and all the chapels acquired by the sect had been sold. Soon afterwards the leaders had either rejoined the Wesleyans, had become ministers in the Congregational or Baptist denominations, or emigrated to North America.

Throughout this book, Scott J. Jones insists that for United Methodists the ultimate goal of doctrine is holiness. Importantly, he clarifies the nature and the specific claims of "official" United Methodist doctrine in a way that moves beyond the current tendency to assume the only alternatives are a rigid dogmatism or an unfettered theological pluralism. In classic Wesleyan form, Jones' driving concern is with recovering the vital role of forming believers in the "mind of Christ, " so that they might live more faithfully in their many settings in our world.