Finding the Real John Wesley

In 1935, George Croft Cell’s book, The Rediscovery of John Wesley (Henry Holt), helped rescue the founder of Methodism from both single-issue conservatives and doctrinally indifferent liberals. It moreover marked movement into a new stage in North American Wesley studies. Twenty-five years later, the trickle of scholarly books and articles about Wesley turned into a flood that is only now somewhat abating. But this abatement has its compensation, as it were, in the growing number of more popular works about Wesley.

Today, the bicentennial of American Methodism has added to the already growing curiosity about Wesley. As revived popular interest and mature scholarly interest have begun to feed each other, Wesley, Methodism’s cult hero, appears in better, truer light as an innovative, constructive, still useful contributor to the life and thought of the church universal.

One place the pastor or thoughtful layperson can go to find out about this quintessential, eighteenth-century Anglican priest is to the man himself. Wesley created more literature for his followers than almost any other leader in Christian history. And not a little of it is autobiographical. He proposed to use publication to kindle and stoke fires of spiritual awakening and to nurture believers. Even in his lifetime, he saw to the printing and dissemination of his own works (letters, abstracts from his daily memoranda, sermons, tracts, and books) and the works of others.

A critical edition of these works is, at long last, on its way. Simply titled The Works of John Wesley, the massive project was originally to have been done by Oxford University Press, but economic factors interfered. Abingdon has now taken up where Oxford left off, although 4 volumes of the proposed 34 have been published by Oxford.

The first volume of this magnum opus came off the press in 1975 with Gerald R. Cragg’s The Appeals to Men of Reason and Religion and Certain Related Open Letters. This work was followed in 1980 and 1982 by two (of seven proposed) volumes of Letters, edited by Frank Baker, giving us an exhaustive collection of correspondence to and from John Wesley dating from 1721 to 1755. Franz Hildebrandt and Oliver Beckerlegge added still another volume (the last of the Oxford editions) with the publication of A Collection of Hymns for the Use of the People Called Methodists. Coming soon from Abingdon will be the first of four volumes of Sermons edited by Albert Outler.

These volumes have illuminating introductions and reference notes, which help the reader understand Wesley’s context as well as the problems of technical editing. The Wesley they help us see is both more human, more subtle, and more useful, if you will, than he had been previously portrayed. From being merely the founder of Methodism given to superhuman projects and motivated by a simplistic theology, he has become a thoughtful teacher of the entire church.

Until the Oxford-Abingdon edition is completed, older editions can still usefully serve in any study of Wesley. The best of these is Thomas Jackson’s The Works of the Rev. John Wesley, M.A. (14 volumes; London: Mason, 1829–31). Jackson worked with Wesley’s own corrected manuscripts and editions. Reprinted nearly 40 times, this edition is still available from Baker Book House in a 1958 photo-offset format done by Zondervan and Nazarene Publishing House.

By the end of the last century, discoveries of lost or unknown Wesley materials and critical analyses of the extant works had made Jackson’s edition somewhat problematic. So, in 1906–16, Nehemiah Curnock published The Journal of the Rev. John Wesley, A.M. (8 volumes; Epworth); Edward H. Sugden edited Wesley’s Standard Sermons (2 volumes; Epworth, 1921); and John Telford issued The Letters of the Rev. John Wesley, A.M. (8 volumes; Epworth, 1931). These so-called standard editions are still profitable reading, though the same sorts of advancement in knowledge that called them forth now call for their replacement.

Of course, reading entire collections is no easy chore. There are, however, healthy remedies and substitutes: anthologies. The best of an outstanding trio is Albert Outler’s John Wesley (Oxford, 1964). Outler’s introductions charm and inform. And his choices show the breadth and coherence of Wesley’s theology. Philip Watson’s The Message of the Wesleys, a Reader of Instruction and Devotion (Macmillan, 1964; reprint Francis Asbury Press of Zondervan, 1984) tunes itself to the Wesleys’ own intention in publishing through competent editing and abridgment, and through a well-directed introduction.

A third anthology is more workaday. Robert W. Burtner and Robert F. Chiles’s A Compend of Wesley’s Theology (Abingdon, 1954) presents the dicta of Wesley on the major topics of systematic theology. Here, the subtlety, continuity, and depth of Wesley’s theological thought suffer; that is, while the major points of Christian doctrine—such as salvation, sanctification, eschatology—are discussed individually, there is no attempt to correlate these understandings into a unified theology. Still, the breadth and sharpness of Wesley’s thinking on these specific points are admirably demonstrated.

Somewhat surprisingly, while good secondary sources illuminate Wesley, we lack a definitive biography. Nineteenth-century biographers labored to present Wesley as the founder and patron of Methodism, often from faulty or insufficient sources. Twentieth-century biographers often specialize—“Wesley and …” or “Wesley as …” and they, too, face the inadequacy of extant-source editions.

Nevertheless, there are some biographies useful to the pastor and thoughtful layperson. Weaknesses understood, two early biographies still serve well, and, thanks to reprintings, are accessible. They are: Henry Moore’s The Life of Rev. John Wesley, A.M. (2 volumes; London: Kershaw, 1824–25) and Luke Tyerman’s The Life and Times of the Rev. John Wesley, M.A. (3 volumes; London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1870–71).

Among this century’s most adequate biographies is John Simon’s five-volume set, beginning with John Wesley and the Religious Societies (Epworth, 1921) and ending with John Wesley, the Last Phase (Epworth, 1934). This work is massive, but still parochial, giving us a Wesley narrower than he in fact was. On the other hand, C. E. Vulliamy’s John Wesley (London: Bles, 1931) is the first biography to give us a wider-than-Methodist Wesley.

Actually, the best biographies of Wesley are really theological in intent. Martin Schmidt, John Wesley: A Theological Biography (2 volumes in 3 parts; NY: Abingdon, 1962, 1972, 1973), is especially helpful in his first volume, which shows the effect of Moravian thought on Wesley’s theology. Schmidt’s later volumes depict Wesley’s break with this line of thinking (due primarily to the Moravian belief that grace does everything and that good works are not necessary in living Christianity), with the end result being a portrait of an almost tragic (theologically disillusioned?) Wesley. Robert Tuttle’s John Wesley: His Life and Theology (Zondervan, 1978) intends to show the social and religious context in which Wesley worked, to let Wesley speak for himself, and to allow Tuttle’s own theological analysis. The format demands a bit of the reader but yields solid dividends.

The leap from theological biography to theological studies is short—but from the few volumes to the many. Best of all, in spite of its narrow-sounding title, is Frank Baker’s John Wesley and the Church of England (Abingdon, 1970). Here is biography and careful theology, a believing and theologically acute Wesley. Cell’s work, already mentioned, shows Wesley’s kinship to Reformed theology. William R. Cannon’s The Theology of Wesley (Abingdon, 1946), emphasizes Wesley’s doctrine of justification but is attentive to the broader ranges of his theology as well. And Colin Williams’s John Wesley’s Theology Today (Abingdon, 1960) may overdo the ecumenical possibilities in Wesley’s thought, but it is a careful study that strikes sparks of personal reflection.

Two far more specialized works claim special recognition even in so cursory a survey. Evangelism, “spreading scriptural holiness,” was Wesley’s self-conscious mission. A. Skevington Wood’s The Burning Heart, John Wesley: Evangelist (Bethany House, 1967; reprint, 1978) gives us an excellent, even exciting, source-based study of this side of Wesley. And Harald Lindström’s Wesley and Sanctification (Epworth, 1950; reprint, Francis Asbury Press of Zondervan) helps us understand in full theological dimension what Wesley meant by “holiness.”

There are, of course, still other, more specialized volumes for the dedicated scholar. But for most of us, we must, until the Abingdon editions are completed, content ourselves largely with a parochial Wesley, narrow in focus (Methodism only), and simple in theology. Outler’s, Baker’s, and Williams’s efforts, however, are content models for future editions as they begin to move us beyond the Methodist “cult hero” to a John Wesley worthy of the consideration of the whole church.

Reviewed by Paul Merritt Bassett, a former Rockefeller Doctoral Fellow and past president of the Wesleyan Theological Society, and professor of the history of Christianity and director of the M.Div. program at the Nazarene Theological Seminary in Kansas City, Missouri.

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