John Wesley: Optimist of Grace

by Henry H. Knight III

John Wesley was an Anglican priest and major leader in the eighteenth-century Evangelical awakening whose theology and practice continues to influence the church today. This book tells how his own search for a heart renewed in love ultimately led him to a fresh vision of the way of salvation, one that is centered on sanctification, empowered by the Holy Spirit, and available to all. Transcending the theological dichotomies of his day, Wesley developed a distinctive Protestant tradition that continues to shape Methodist and Holiness Christians, and has had a significant impact on Pentecostalism. It was Wesley's optimism of grace that gave his Methodists and generations to come a vibrant hope that hearts and lives, churches, and the world at large can all be changed by the power of God's amazing love.

"Hal Knight's John Optimist of Grace is an exceptional introduction to John Wesley's theology and the key practices that came from this theology. Knight shows the fundamentally hopeful nature of Wesley's understanding of grace and Wesley's insistence that God's grace is willing and able to save us to the 'uttermost' in this life. This book makes an important contribution to Wesleyan Studies and deserves a wide reading."
--Kevin Watson, Candler School of Theology, Emory University

"Is it possible to write a 'brief' book about the diverse, multi-faceted, and complex dimensions of John Wesley's theology and practice? Knight has done exactly that with skill and integrity. Without cutting historical or theological corners, he introduces readers to the whole Wesley and, via him, a holistic vision of Christianity as holiness of heart and life. A very worthwhile and helpful read."
--Douglas S. Hardy, Professor of Spiritual Formation, Nazarene Theological Seminary

"In John Optimist of Grace, Hal Knight provides an engaging and highly accessible introduction to the development of Wesley's theology, occurring over his lifetime as an Anglican but in conversation with Calvinists and Pietists from the Continent. The real contribution of this volume is that is presents Wesley's commitment to holiness of heart and life as a theology for the renewal of Christianity, worked out in missional contexts and holy conference, in response to the transforming Spirit of God.  Knight is not only a capable Wesley scholar, but, more importantly, a Wesleyan scholar, writing with his own optimism about the loving grace of God, ever renewing the Church."
--Kimberly Ervin Alexander, Regent University School of Divinity

Henry H. Knight III is Donald and Pearl Wright Professor of Wesleyan Studies and E. Stanley Jones Professor of Evangelism at Saint Paul School of Theology, Overland Park, Kansas. He is author of several books, including Anticipating Heaven Optimism of Grace from Wesley to the Pentecostals (2014) and Is There a Future for God's Love? (2012), and editor of From Aldersgate to Azusa Street (2010).

Genres: Church History, Biography, History

120 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 18, 2018

Reviews

[Alex Joyner · Rating 5 out of 5]

John Wesley has been claimed by so many different heirs and used to so many and varied ends that it is refreshing to have someone like Hal Knight come along and point us back to the source. John Wesley: Optimist of Grace, his new entry in the Cascade Companions series designed for nonspecialist readers, comes along just as the United Methodist Church is wrestling with what it means to be faithful to Wesleyan tradition in the 21st century. Knight, who is a professor of Wesleyan Studies at St. Paul School of Theology in Kansas City, is not going to take sides in that conversation, but he is going to point out why Wesley still matters.

Read my full review on Heartlands: https://alexjoyner.com/2018/06/24/a-q....

Full disclosure: Cascade Books provided me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

[Sam · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent book on Wesley!

Quotes:

John’s parents were Puritans: who argued the Church should not have any practice for which there was no clear scriptural warrant. Thus they opposed clerical robes, stain glass windows, the giving of rings in marriage, and the celebration of Christmas.

When Susanna spent time every week with each of her children, it was this mix of Anglican and Puritan spirituality

Wesley later wrote, “convinced me more than ever, of the impossibility of being half a Christian; and I determined, through his grace, (the absolute necessity of which I was deeply sensible of) to be all-devoted to God, to give him all my soul, my body, and my substance.”

It was less than a year after Samuel and Susanna’s reconciliation that John Wesley was born.
Pietism emphasized holiness of heart and life, bringing persons together into small groups, and evangelistic and compassionate outreach to others.

Böhler had taught Wesley that this faith in Christ would produce two fruits: “Dominion over sin, and constant peace from a sense of forgiveness.”36 He had brought others to testify “of their own personal experience, that a true faith in Christ is inseparable from a sense of pardon for all past, and freedom from all present, sins.

Christianity consists of holiness of heart and life.

Although Wesley requested that those who respond in opposition to this sermon do so “in charity, in love, and in the spirit of meekness,”57 it must be said that Wesley’s own language was emphatic: the doctrine of predestination tends “to overthrow the whole Christian revelation;”58 it is, he said more than once, blasphemy, and represents “the most high God . . . as more cruel, false, and unjust than the devil.

Wesley’s objection to predestination was centered on three interrelated issues: what is the character of God, how does grace work, and what is the goal of salvation?

Love is God’s reigning attribute, the attribute that sheds an amiable glory on all His other perfections.” This was the bedrock upon which Wesley’s theology rested. Moreover, he was convinced that our conception of God matters: how we live is definitively shaped by who we worship.
Wesley’s vision of divine salvation, that its purpose was to restore persons to the image of God in which they were created, and to do so in the present age. Wesley emphasized grace as fundamentally transforming action by God.

He organized his societies to further their members’ growth in salvation and faithfulness in mission.
Wesley image of God: natural image, understanding, liberty, and various affections or tempers. These affections or tempers85 are the dispositions of the heart; they are the motivations and desires that direct the will. Political image: human capacity to govern their world, mirroring God who is the governor of both heaven and earth. With this comes the responsibility to govern with the same love and justice as does God. Moral image: “a creature capable of God, capable of knowing, loving, and obeying his Creator.”87 To be in the image of God is to have the capacity for such a relationship with God.The fall of humanity into sin disrupted that relationship. Failing to continue to trust in God, humanity turned away from God and placed its trust in that which is other than God. As a result, this condition of a broken relationship with God leads to a consequent idolatry focused on ourselves and the world.

Faith enables us to know has past, future, and present dimensions. The death of Jesus Christ on a cross is a past event, but through faith it becomes more than an account of a first century event—we experience its reality and it affects our hearts and lives. Likewise the return of Jesus and the establishing of his kingdom is yet to come, but through faith we experience in the present this future reality.

Wesley described the new birth as “that great change which God works in the soul when he brings it into life: when he raises it from the death of sin to the life of righteousness. It is the change wrought in the whole soul by the almighty Spirit of God when it is ‘created anew in Christ Jesus’, when it is ‘renewed after the image of God’
“all unholy tempers are uneasy tempers. Not only malice, hatred, envy, jealously, revenge, create a present hell in the breast, but even the softer passions, if not kept within due bounds, give a thousand times more pain than pleasure.” As long as these sources of sin “reign in any soul happiness has no place there. But they must reign till the bent of our nature is changed, that is, till we are born again.”
repentance is at heart a form of self-knowledge, the repentance of believers is “a conviction wrought by the Holy Ghost” of the sin remaining in the heart, and cleaving to our words and actions.
To be restored to the image of God, then, is not merely the recovery of what was lost. It is to love as God has loved us, in response to and in imitation of the fullness of God’s love for us in the cross of Jesus Christ. Thus Christian perfection is ultimately eschatological: it is the life of the Kingdom of heaven already present in the hearts and lives of believers
we can only have a new life in Christ if we are dependent on and responding to Christ.
Growing in perfection means, we are increasingly learning how to love.
instituted and prudential means of grace. The instituted include (1) “Prayer: private, family, public; consisting of deprecation, petition, intercession, thanksgiving”; (2) searching the Scripture by reading (daily, accompanied by prayer and practicing what is learned); (3) the Lord’s Supper; (4) fasting; and (5) Christian conference (rightly ordered conversation that ministers grace to hearers).154 These Wesley believed to be instituted by Christ in the New Testament, and thus of universal import for the church in all ages.The prudential means include rules “for avoiding evil” and “doing good”; Methodist society, class and band meetings; and “visiting the sick” (indeed, all acts of compassion to others.)
Wesley called general means of grace: watching (“against the world, the devil, ourselves”); self-denial; taking up one’s cross daily; and exercising the presence of God (endeavoring “to set God always before you.”)
Taking up our cross: when we willingly embrace the will of God, though contrary to our own.
On dissipation: There are “a thousand things which daily occur that are apt to dissipate our thoughts, and distract us from attending to” the voice of God “continually speaking to our hearts
the love feast consisted of a meal of plain cakes and water within the context of fellowship, prayer, and especially testimony. It was the testimonies that made the love feast so popular, for there persons gave witness to what God was doing in their lives since they last met together.
it powerfully conveys to us God’s love for us in Christ.Christ is present in the Lord’s Supper through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Wesley concluded, “So wickedly devilishly false is that common objection, ‘They are poor only because they are idle
Wesley believed all healing was from God, and it could occur both through medicine and through prayer. Wesley believed the same God who is the architect of that new creation was at work even now, restoring health to bodies as well as souls, as an anticipation of that which is to come.
Wesley followed this in 1776 with Some Observations on Liberty, where he argued that despite their claims otherwise, Americans continue to possess the same religious and civil liberties as persons in England. What they are really seeking, Wesley said, is not liberty but “independency”; they have a right to the first not the second.270 The American claim that they have become “enslaved” is manifestly false, as a comparison to the condition of actual slaves readily reveals.
Salvation is about our renewal in love, being restored in the image of God. Christian salvation is solely about our post-mortem destiny, insisting instead it is about receiving a new life in the present, one that lasts through all eternity.
Wesley’s optimism of grace was a strong belief in the transforming work of the Spirit.

[Robert D. Cornwall · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wesleyanism, which includes Methodism, remains one of the largest and most influential movements within Global Christianity. Born out of the 18th century evangelical revival movements, that took hold within the Church of England, as well as other traditions crossing Europe and North America, this particular effort emerged from the ministry of John Wesley and his brother Charles. To understand the movements as they exist today, one needs to understand John Wesley's vision of Wesley. This book by Henry Knight III offers us a brief, concise, but informative introduction to Wesley's life, ministry, and vision.

My own interest in Wesley is rooted in my studies of high church Anglicanism, including the Nonjuror movement, during the late 17th through mid-18th century. Wesley began his ministry during this period, and was the son of parents with high church inclinations (his mother had Jacobite sympathies). His early education and ministry was influenced by the primitivism of these high church Anglicans, including the Nonjuring bishop Thomas Deacon. Those early influences remained with him, driving his interest in primitive Christianity. But in time he encountered Moravian Christians, who were pietists. They too would influence his spiritual development, especially in the years after his mission to Georgia (it was on the voyage to America that he encountered this Pietist group), and it was among him that he experienced a warming of the heart. Because of my own interests, I was pleased to see Knight explore, even if only briefly, the Nonjuror influences on his spiritual and intellectual development, including his commitment to frequent communion. I will note that he draws upon Geordan Hammond's excellent book John Wesley in America: Restoring Primitive Christianity.

Wesley is counted along with Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield as key figures in the evangelical revivals in the Anglo-American world. Unlike Edwards and Whitefield, Wesley was Arminian, giving a distinctive theological vision to his evangelicalism that continues to resonate to this day. Unlike his Calvinist colleagues, he envisioned a universal atonement, making salvation avallable to all. Unlike the Moravians, who had influenced his spiritual development, he remained committed to valuing the sacraments as means of grace, especially the Lord's Supper.

Knight, who is a professor of Wesleyan studies and evangelism at Saint Paul School of Theology, wants the reader to understand that Wesley was a serious theologian, as well as evangelist, and that standing at the heart of this theology is "this 'optimism of grace,' in connection with the goal of perfection in love" (p. xv). He invites the reader to understand Wesley, but not only as a historical figure. Rather, he invites us to consider Wesley as progenitor of a message that has resonance for today.

Raised as the son of a clergyman, Wesley's life was from the beginning immersed in religion. He was immersed in the Anglicanism of his father and mother. One of the early influences on his life was Thomas a' Kempis's The Imitation of Christ, which pushed him toward a life of pursuit of holiness. In time he would engage with important Anglican works by Jeremy Taylor and William Law. He would be introduced to the Nonjurors, with their commitment to primitive Christianity and the frequent reception of the Eucharist. He would follow his calling first to America as a missionary and then as a curate for his father at Epworth, before settling in at Oxford as a tutor.

Knight quickly introduces us to those early influences, both Anglican and Moravian, and then into a ministry that was originally engaged in partnership with George Whitefield, but which led in time to breakage over Calvinism. With that break, we are introduced to Wesley's understanding of the way of salvation that was rooted in universal grace. This became central to his vision -- the belief that Christ's atoning sacrifice negated the original guilt passed on from Adam and Eve, thus we are responsible for our sins, and are able to respond to the call of God. With his commitment to holiness, he emphasized the restoration of the image of God. This is where his teaching on Christian perfection comes in. Knight notes that Wesley's vision has been often misunderstood. While he hoped that people would move toward a sinless state, what he had in mind here was perfection in love. In other-words, Wesley was committed to pursuing spiritual transformation. That is, there is to be growth in perfection.

This process of growth included engaging with the means of grace, and for Wesley that included Church discipline, community, and sharing in the Lord's Supper on a regular basis. Interestingly, he put less emphasis on baptism, seeing it as a sacrament of initiation and not a means of growth, unlike the Eucharist, which one would participate in regularly.

True to his vision of growth in love, Wesley believed that good works should flow from salvation. Thus, we encounter someone completely committed to what we might call social ministry. He believed that Christians should aid the poor. He was an ardent abolitionist. He was also committed to ministries of healing -- both natural and supernatural. He even wrote a book on remedies for illnesses. Knight notes that in his book "Primitive Physick," Wesley sought to "put basic healthcare back into the hands of ordinary people" (p. 101). I found this chapter to be an inspiring word for today.

As the century wore on Methodism grew in numbers and influence, and controversy would emerge around several issues. First, there was the question of what perfection meant. There was also the issue of the relationship of his movement to that of Whitefield and Calvinist evangelicals. Then there was the danger of separation from the Church of England. Wesley was committed to remaining in the Church of England, even though there was significant resistance to his movement from leaders, like Edmund Gibson. But what put Wesley on a collision course with the Church of England was the birth of the American nation. While he was horrified by schism, he also believed that the movement of renewal required his utmost commitment. Though Charles was opposed, he took steps that would lead to the eventual break of Methodism from the parent Church of England. Believing that frequent communion was necessary, and without sufficient clergy in the former colonies, Wesley took the step of ordaining ministers to celebrate the sacraments, first in America, and then as time passed for Methodist groups in the north of England.

Wesley is an important figure in the history of Christianize. For that reason alone, his story needs to be known and understood. But, with 75 million Christians affiliated across the globe with Wesleyan churches, his legacy continues. Even if one doesn't embrace all of his vision, there is much to learn from him. I would say that his focus on perfection in love is one that we would be wise to embrace. I also believe that his Arminian-influenced vision of universal grace (not salvation mind you, but universal access to salvation) is an important offering. Finally, his social vision is one that is ripe for reclamation in an age when social justice is often pursued separately from faith, or when grace becomes cheap.

This is not a lengthy book. It reads quickly, and yet it is informative. It won't answer all questions, but it is an excellent introduction. I highly recommend it.

[Randy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a bit of a stretch to rate this book a 3 for me. Frankly, I wouldn't have finished it without being in a group discussing it. With historians, philosophers, ponderers, analysts, etc. in our discussion group we made it through this difficult to read book. Good for those wanting to understand the intricacies of Wesley, Calvinism, Moravians, Shakers, and how it relates to the developing mind and approach of Wesley. In the 1700's, no Twitter, no Facebook, no email, and yet Wesley had many opportunities to interface with and learn from so many in his field developing a lasting tradition. Wesley was a truly remarkable person.

[Gordon Bland · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book is written quite well--it is informative both of the history of Methodism and Wesley's development of theology. While I do not agree fully with his views, as I am Reformed Baptist, I could appreciate the heart he had for the salvation of others. Without a doubt, the primary focus of his preaching was how to love others more like Christ, which I can agree with. We may differ on some points of how to go about doing this, or how to interpret Scripture, but I did glean some helpful information. I recommend this book, even if you are not a Methodist. His theology caused quite the impact in the Christian church, so it's worth reading, even if only for the historical perspective.

[Hope · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

This is a very nice summary of Wesley's life, ministry and theology.