Wesleyan Theology and Social Science

It is evident that we have pressed the 'delete' button too soon and too often, thereby cutting ourselves off from rich and pertinent sources that pertain to contemporary life. This wondrous collection of essays pushes back behind 'delete' to probe the ways in which John Wesley, a formidable and generative thinker, engaged with and practiced psychology. His affectional pastoral sensibility provides an important articulation for contemporary psychology, most especially Object Relations...
More Description

It is evident that we have pressed the 'delete' button too soon and too often, thereby cutting ourselves off from rich and pertinent sources that pertain to contemporary life. This wondrous collection of essays pushes back behind 'delete' to probe the ways in which John Wesley, a formidable and generative thinker, engaged with and practiced psychology. His affectional pastoral sensibility provides an important articulation for contemporary psychology, most especially Object Relations perspectives, as it probes the moral dimension of relationships. The book offers careful impressive research that will a) lead to a fresh engagement with Wesley as a learned critical thinker, and b) draw contemporary secular psychology back to its roots in the quest for joy, empathy, and finally health. The book boldly and effectively moves between disciplines to the great benefit of both. - Walter Brueggemann, Columbia Theological Seminary, Decatur, Georgia. The engaging essays of this book are an invitation to think seriously about the relation between Wesleyan theology and the social sciences in general as well as John Wesley's understanding of co-operant grace and contemporary psychology in particular. The fruits of such integrative and thoughtful reflections should be considerable in the days ahead. - Kenneth J. Collins, Professor of Historical Theology and Wesley Studies Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, Kentucky. While some theology-science 'dialogue' is more of a monologue, with either scientists or theologians merely listening, this book is truly dialogical. Much of its success comes from the shared theological perspective of the authors, giving them the ability to ask quite specific questions of science (and of their own theology). I hope it will serve as a model for groups from other sub-traditions within Christianity. - Nancey Murphy, Professor of Christian Philosophy, Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California; and author (with George F. R. Ellis) of On the Moral Nature of the Universe: Cosmology, Theology, and Ethics, Fortress Press. This book makes a grand leap forward in the inspiring interaction between science and Wesleyan theology. Front and center is theological anthropology and some of the best recent research in psychology. The contributors include the finest minds in this burgeoning and fruitful field. Future Wesleyan science-and-theology research will be indebted to this fine collection of scholarly essays. - Thomas Jay Oord, Professor of Theology and Philosophy at Northwest Nazarene University, Nampa, Idaho; and editor of Divine Grace and Emerging Creation: Wesleyan Forays in Science and Theology of Creation. As a Christian in the Wesleyan-Arminian tradition, I celebrate this contribution in general and its substantive contents inparticular. Do not let the book's brevity suggest that it is slim in substance. The editors have successfully pressed the chapter authors to discuss theology historically and in a variety of contempoary scholarly and applied extrapolations to psychology. [...] A particular point of appreciation is that each author demonstrated understanding of this giant of eighteenth-century theology and sought to bring their understanding to twenty-first century psychology in a manner that connected timeless theological principles to highly different cultural and specific issues. - Don MacDonald, Faith-Science News, 63:2 (June 2011).