A deep meditation on Wesley’s accomplishments likely to inspire lively debate within the Methodist tradition.
A groundbreaking new study of John Wesley’s theology.
Having over 30 years’ experience as a minister in the Methodist tradition as well as a slew of advanced degrees in divinity, psychology, and education, debut author Ellison is well-positioned to provide a fresh perspective on the ideological development of John Wesley, the 18th-century theologian and one of the founders of Methodism. Rather than focus narrowly on the doctrinal components of Wesley’s views, Ellison tackles his understanding of experimental religion and the way in which he slowly formulated his positions over time. Wesley, who was heavily influenced by Enlightenment philosophy, especially its empiricist strain, wanted to devise an approach to religion and faith closely hewn to lived human experience—a “theological set of ideas which can help individual persons to meaningfully interpret their experiences.” “Wesley’s methods were pragmatic, more like the scientists of the 19th century than his 18 century contemporaries,” Ellison writes. “Wesley was the one to identify the early Methodists as the spiritual descendants of that group of ancient physicians who were first described by the name.” This entailed developing a kind of psychology of faith that in many ways anticipated the historically significant writing of William James. However, this psychological rendering as Wesley saw it doesn’t simplistically reduce the experience of faith to a psychological phenomenon shorn of fundamentally spiritual elements. According to Ellison, the core of Wesley’s Universalism is a doctrine of atonement that argued for the “belief in the universal redemption of humankind and all of creation.” In the author’s reading, Wesley turns out to be a nimble philosopher whose thought underwent a revision in his more mature years, shifting his worldview closer to Arminianism than to Calvinism. While this book is likely too scholarly to appeal to a broad audience, the arguments are always presented in lucid, accessible prose. It’s hard to imagine an examination of Wesley’s thought that does greater justice to his subtlety as a thinker or better captures his extraordinary prescience.
A deep meditation on Wesley’s accomplishments likely to inspire lively debate within the Methodist tradition.Pub Date: Dec. 6, 2014
ISBN: 978-1499270563
Page Count: 172
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A vividly detailed account of how Western society interpreted and was influenced by the biblical story of the expulsion from the Garden of Eden, by a French cultural critic and historian (Sin and Fear, not reviewed). Early Christianity tended to see Paradise in largely allegorical terms and characterize it as a place of ``rest'' where the just awaited the final judgment and their entrance into Heaven itself. As this idea waned, the Garden of Eden became conflated with Greco-Roman descriptions of a past Golden Age or a mythical earthly paradise of perpetual bliss that many thought still existed in some inaccessible region. (Adam's sin was deemed especially heinous in comparison with the blessings with which he had been surrounded.) The dream of discovering this place of delights inspired such fantasies as Sir John Mandeville's Travels and the legends of Prester John, which in turn led to the explorations of Columbus in the New World and, in Europe, to a renewed interest in gardens and the study of botany. With the advent of the Age of Reason and the discovery of fossils proving that the earth was much older than bibilical history stated, the literal interpretation of the Paradise story gradually fell out of favor, and a more symbolic view of the Garden of Eden again became necessary. Delumeau's text is a work of enormous scholarship, richly illustrated with 25 medieval maps and many quotations from primary sources throughout the centuries, and it is published here in a fine English translation. The author concludes by suggesting that the only acceptable Christian theology of Paradise today is that of second- century writers, who do not assign ``an excessive guilt to the stammering human race that first came on the scene.'' Scholarship happily combines with intuition in this stimulating analysis of a powerful idea.
Pub Date: June 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-8264-0795-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Continuum
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1995
Storyteller and entertainer Stivender offers more affectionate glimpses of his Irish-Catholic upbringing in Philadelphia in the late 1950s and early '60s. The 12 chapters of this sequel to Raised Catholic (Can You Tell?) (1993) make up a series of vignettes, often hilarious, in which the author brings the world of his boyhood to life. Stivender takes us from his confirmation at age eight into his high school years and ends with his preparations for college. His escapades, parents, friends, priests, nuns, and school form a kaleidoscope of images that powerfully evoke an age when the Mass was in Latin and schools confiscated water pistols. Stivender has a gift for describing objects and incidents from a boy's perspective, whether it be the day his father brings home their first hi-fi and LPs, or when he writes to Charles Atlas for tips on how to take out the class bully. He also makes us reexperience the virtual reality of play, for example, when we read how he and his friends were making scooters from roller skates and orange crates and how, racing downhill, his model came apart, leaving him to face traffic on an early form of skateboard. Religion runs through all these pages, mostly in the background, but occasionally the details of Catholic practice appear as objects of wonder that are also taken for granted, as when he describes serving morning Mass inside the local convent. Stivender portrays his priests at school as men of faith who, in different ways, taught their charge to think clearly, even when he was punished for his contrariness by being made to argue for the nonexistence of God in a public debate. Thoughtful as well as nostalgic, Stivender will make readers glad he is still Catholic.
Pub Date: June 15, 1995
ISBN: 0-87483-403-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: August House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1995
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