The Wesleyan Synthesis Reconsidered

This article purpose find what is “the Wesleyan synthesis,” and will also briefly revisit the much-discussed Wesleyan Quadrilateral. Wesley effectively combined in thought and practice these five elements, namely: (1) Divine sovereignty and human freedom, (2) Doctrine and experience, (3) Experience and structure, (4) Charismatic and institutional elements, and (5) Present and future salvation. This article argue that this synthesis is powerful, but also that it is biblical. In fact, the reason this synthesis is powerful is that it faithfully embodies revealed truth of Scripture. The results of the Wesleyan synthesis are draw three general conclusions. First, Wesley's theology was broader and more profound than has often been realized. Second, Wesley's theology can help us develop a biblical understanding of culture and culture change. Third, Wesley's theology is thus an open invitation to continue to develop a theology of church, mission, and culture that is profoundly biblical and sharply relevant to the present age.


INTRODUCTION
True renewal in the church always weds new insights, ideas and methods with the best elements from history. This was signaled by Jesus when he said, "Every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who In this article i will focus on what i call "the Wesleyan synthesis," and will also briefly revisit the much-discussed Wesleyan Quadrilateral. I wrote about the Wesleyan synthesis in my book The Radical Wesley (1980), a book which was reissued in updated form in 2014. 2 Today I will take a new look at the five elements of this synthesis, explaining them further, and showing their continuing relevance. I also then relate them to the Quadrilateral. I hope the relevance will be especially significant in the Korean context.

THE WESLEYAN SYNTHESIS
In a very dynamic way, John Wesley brought together several key truths and dynamics of the Christian faith. Wesley effectively combined in thought and practice these five elements, namely: (1) Divine sovereignty and human freedom, (2) Doctrine and experience, (3) Experience and structure, (4) Charismatic and institutional elements, and (5) Present and future salvation. I argue not only that this synthesis is powerful, but also that it is biblical. In fact, the reason this synthesis is powerful is that it faithfully embodies revealed truth of Scripture, as I will attempt to show. Some commentators have said Wesley was not a very original person; that he got all his ideas from others. At one level, that is true. Certainly he was alert to learn from others. He picked up ideas and insights from those who went before, as well as from his contemporaries. But this was precisely his genius. He made connections where others did not. He learned from other people's successes and failures. He was an avid student not only of the Bible and theology, but also of history, languages, culture, and the emerging sciences of his day. 3 Wesley's genius and originality lay precisely in borrowing, adapting, and combining diverse elements into a synthesis more dynamic than the sum of its parts.
For example: the Bible says salvation is all of grace, not of works. It also says we are to work out our own salvation. Faith without works is dead. Wesley's way out of this paradox was through Galatians 5:6, "faith working through love." This became a favorite passage and theme. It is practically a refrain in Wesley: Faith working through love.
True faith had shed God's love abroad in Wesley's own heart, and that became the fountainhead of "all inward and outward holiness"-another key conjunctive Wesley refrain.
Wesley's genius, under God, lay in developing and nurturing a synthesis in doctrine and practice that kept biblical paradoxes paired and powerful. He held together faith and works, doctrine and experience, the personal and the social, the concerns of time and eternity. His dynamic synthesis speaks profoundly to the church today. I invite you then to examine the key elements of the Wesleyan synthesis, noting how these tie in to the life and experience of today's church.

Divine Sovereignty and Human Freedom
Basic to all else in Wesley was his tenacious hold on both the total sovereignty of God and the freedom of human beings. God gives humans the freedom to accept or reject God's call, and then to cooperate with the Holy Spirit in the work of salvation. This is true for each particular person, and its true in believers collectively as the church. It is true also in terms of how the whole world responds to God's gracious initiative. God gives people and societies freedom to accept or reject his grace, within the limits he has set.
Wesley's starting point was not the so-called "decrees of God." Nor was it the logical question of how to resolve a theological paradox. Wesley Like Gregory of Nyssa and other early teachers of the Eastern Church, Wesley saw the will as essential to the image of God. God has given women and men a will either to serve him or to rebel against him. Now, because of sin, the will is under bondage.
People choose to do evil rather than good. Salvation therefore means restoring the image of God and freeing the will to do God's will.
By grace alone, men and women can will to serve God. The highest perfection in Christian experience is to serve God with the whole mind, heart, and will. In a passage typical of many others, Wesley says that true Christianity is "the love of God and our neighbour; the image of God stamped on the heart; the life of God in the soul of man; the mind that was in Christ, enabling us to walk as Christ also walked." 4 The key to Wesley's skill in stressing both God's sovereignty and human freedom was his doctrine of grace, particularly his accent on "prevenient grace." On their own, human beings cannot take the smallest step toward God. But God has not left us alone.
An unconditional benefit of Christ's atonement is that God maintains the human race in a savable position. God's grace is "prevenient"; that is, it "goes before" (Latin, praevenire, to come before, anticipate) us, giving us the capacity, if we will, to turn to God. We could call this "preceding grace." Yet even this turning toward God is aided by God's grace shed abroad universally in the world by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
John Calvin spoke of common or general grace. He used the concept of common grace to explain how even totally depraved persons can do commendable (if not morally good) works. Unlike predestination, this is an unconditional blessing of God in the world. But due to Calvin's doctrine of unconditional election, common grace plays no part, finally, in God's plan of redemption.
In sharp contrast, Wesley saw prevenient grace as the first step in God's redeeming work. Even though people could reject God's grace-and most would-yet the offer was real and constant. Wesley saw God's grace as "preventing [or coming before], accompanying, and following" every person, as he said in his sermon "The Good Steward." 5 Thus God is sovereign and man and woman are free. In Colin Williams' words, with the doctrine of prevenient grace Wesley "broke the chain of logical necessity by which the Calvinist doctrine of predestination seems to flow from the doctrine of original sin." 6 Because of his emphasis on human freedom and the universality of the atonement, Wesley has often been considered an Arminian. But this is so only in a qualified sense. Methodists "come to the very edge of Calvinism," Wesley said: "(1) In ascribing all good to the free grace of God; (2) in denying all natural free will and all power antecedent to grace; and, (3) in excluding all merit from man, even for what he has or does by the grace of God." 7 As George Croft Cell noted, Wesley (in his sermon "Salvation by Faith") "goes as far as Paul, Augustine, Luther or Calvin ever did or could go in pressing to the limit the exclusive causality of God in man's experience of salvation as well as in any and all provisions of redemption." 8 Taking Wesley's whole system into account, it is therefore something of a distortion to speak of "Wesleyan-Arminianism." We could as truly speak of "Wesleyan-Calvinism," remembering that Arminius himself was in most points a Calvinist. There is however a very fundamental difference between John Calvin and John Wesley at the point of God's character and his decrees. I will say more about this in the second lecture.
Wesley was as fully conscious as the earlier Reformers were of God's grace and sovereignty. But he had a deep optimism of grace that formed the foundation for his emphasis on the universal atonement, the witness of the Spirit, and Christian perfection.
He saw God's grace so fully abounding that one could not set limits on what God's Spirit might accomplish through the church in the present order.
People who don't fully understand Wesley at this point have sometimes called him "Semi-Pelagian" or even "Pelagian." That is, they accuse Wesley of teaching some form of works-righteousness, that justification comes through our own efforts or actions.
Wesley strongly denied this. His emphasis on the prior operation of God's grace, illustrated in the quotations above, fully clears him of such charges. 9  Arminianism is evangelical synergism as opposed to heretical, humanistic synergism." 10 "Evangelical synergism" is an apt term, and it fits Wesley perfectly. Synergism, because there is a real working-together, a real co-operation. But evangelical, because it is enabled essentially by God's grace, the Good News.
Wesley's dynamic view is important not just for each particular person. It also preserves an essential and hopeful role for the church. It is optimistic as to the moral transformation of human beings (the restoration of the image of God) made possible by grace. And it sees the church as the instrumental means for promoting redemption in personal experience and in society. Wesley's view takes the church very seriously as an agent of grace in the world. Wesley's theology therefore speaks to the contemporary need to build a more radical and biblical ecclesiology and especially a more biblically faithful community of believers.
In affirming both divine sovereignty and human freedom, Wesley does not endorse paradox or contradiction or illogic. Rather, he affirms superior divine wisdom.
The ultimate answer to the seeming paradox of sovereignty and freedom is the marvelous loving, sovereign wisdom of God. 11

Doctrine and Experience
Because of his double accent on both divine sovereignty and human freedom, Wesley focused on Christian experience. He looked for moral transformation in believers' lives, demonstrated by their behavior. Thus Wesley stressed both doctrine and experience-once again, "faith working through love." If faith didn't produce moral change, including good works, it wasn't true faith. Thus also Wesley's concern with sanctification: The New Birth began and enabled the process of sanctification. So every believer was morally obligated to "press on to perfection." Justification and sanctification went together. Wesley said of the Methodists: That, as they do not think or speak of justification so as to supersede sanctification, so neither do they think or speak of sanctification so as to supersede justification... that sinners may turn to God by their own free will, which God then assists. Whether Pelagius himself actually taught "Pelagianism" remains a question. 10  Therefore they maintain with equal zeal and diligence the doctrine of free, full, present justification on the one hand, and of entire sanctification both of heart and life, on the other-being as tenacious of inward holiness as any mystic, and of outward [holiness] as any Pharisee. 12 This is from Wesley's sermon, "On God's Vineyard." Here Wesley explicitly takes Luther to task for underemphasizing sanctification.
Wesley's oft-repeated stress on both inward and outward holiness is evidence of this balance of doctrine and experience. An inner experience of God in the soul that does not result in one's "doing all the good you can" is inherently suspect. Wesley's concern for sanctification simply shows he really believed that doctrine and experience go

Experience and Structure
This leads to an aspect of the Wesleyan synthesis that has great potential impact for the church today. Wesley saw the vital link between experience and structure. Perhaps no one in church history (unless Ignatius Loyola) was more keenly aware of the connection between Christian experience and necessary nurturing structures to help maintain and nurture the experience. No one was so successful in matching church 12 Sermon 107, "On God's Vineyard," Works 3:507. 13 It is important to note that Wesley's concern was not primarily for subjective inner spiritual experience per se, but for the inward working of God's Spirit in the heart evidenced by truly Christ-like behavior in the world-"Justice, mercy, and truth," as Wesley often phrased it.

118
The Wesleyan Synthesis Reconsidered forms to church life! Certainly Wesley was more successful at this point than Luther in Saxony, or Calvin in Geneva, or even Zinzendorf in Herrnhut-Zinzendorf, who helped launch the remarkable worldwide Moravian missionary movement.
Wesley's system of societies, classes, and bands was the central structural genius that facilitated the discipline, growth, and enduring impact of Methodism. To these were added many other structures, such as schools, dispensaries, and loan funds for those in need. The Methodist system grew out of Wesley's keen awareness of the social nature of Christian experience. Wesley understood the balance of person and community. He understood that for spiritual growth, a Christian disciple needs Christian community, and the Christian community depends for its vitality on the continuing growth of its members.
As early as 1729 a "serious man" told Wesley, "Sir, you wish to serve God and go to heaven? Remember that you cannot serve him alone. You must therefore find companions or make them; the Bible knows nothing of solitary religion." 14 Wesley followed this advice for the next sixty years, always avoiding "solitary religion." This concern for vital community was at the heart of his reservations about mysticism-that is, a private, interior spirituality that fails to express itself in community and in redemptive action in the world.
Wesley used the terms "social holiness" and "social Christianity." In doing so, he was pointing to New Testament koinonia. Christian fellowship meant, not merely corporate worship, but watching over one another in love. It meant advising, exhorting, admonishing and praying with the brothers and sisters, as the New Testament instructs us. 15  The key point here is that experience and structure must go together, and that structures must nurture and help extend vital Christian experience rather than replacing it. Structures are to serve the church's vitality and mission. The church is not 17 Thomas Oden for example noted the similarities of modern "encounter groups" to the Methodist class meeting and other eighteenth-century antecedents, arguing that these were "the basic prototypes" of the modern movement, existing "on a vast scale in a highly refined form as a vigorous and popular lay movement." Oden, Intensive Group Experience, The New Pietism (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1972), 56-88; especially 59. 18  to serve the structure. This is another way of stating what Jesus said about wine and wineskins.
The implication for today's church is obvious: the church must recover some functional equivalent of the class meeting with its intimacy, mutual care and support, and discipline. Such a rigorous structure as the early Methodism class meeting naturally goes against the grain in a lax, individualistic, live-and-let-live society. But this is precisely why it is needed. Talk of discipline, discipleship, and responsible Christian living and witness seldom gets beyond mere talk until folks make a serious covenant commitment to each other to be in community together. We need structures that help Christians actually embody in their daily lives what they profess to believe. Such small covenant communities show that believers are willing to ratify their commitment to Christ by commitment to his body. Only in this way do we begin to understand in practice the truth that "we are members of one another" (Eph. 4:25).
The discipline and rigor of the class meeting were no less scandalous in Wesley's day than they are today. Wesley saw however that such covenant structures were essential if Christians were to make a successful stand against the world, the flesh, and the devil and to be gospel leaven in society. Some people may say, "But people today won't make such costly commitments." Yet people do commit themselves to health clubs, sports teams, special classes, and other groups that capture their interest. They make time for them. At heart, the issue is not time or willingness to commit to something. The problem is priorities. What really is most important in our lives?
In any age when Christian values are in near-total eclipse, only a close-knit countercultural expression of the church will have the spiritual and social power to speak a gospel word to the dominant spirit of the age. History shows that an infrastructure of "little church" groups of some sort is indispensable to sustained countercultural witness. In church history such groups have often been called eclesiolae, Thus from a Roman Catholic perspective, the survival of the papacy in spite of periods of corruption or weakness attests to the church's validity. Similarly, from a Protestant perspective, the endurance of preaching or the "ministerial office" is seen as a source of God's renewing work even when many people are unfaithful.
From this perspective, nothing is ever fundamentally wrong with the church. The question of church renewal therefore is exclusively (or nearly so) a question of the spiritual renewal of particular persons or the general body of believers. As someone told the Pietist reformer Philip Jakob Spener, "It is not the Church but the ungodly in the Church that must be reformed." 20 The problem is simply that people fail to believe or act as the church tells them to. Renewal, however it comes, means restoring people to the level of belief or action defined by the church as normal. Any genuine renewal is seen as beginning with the ecclesiastical leaders and affecting the whole church more or less evenly. But the charismatic view too has its problems. Renewal leaders often have no sense of history, or force history into their own framework. They too easily identify God's purposes exclusively with their side in the renewal debate. They are typically naïve concerning institutional and sociological realities and blind to institutionalizing tendencies in their own movement. Also, in their concern with present experience they may fall prey to bizarre apocalyptic, dispensational, or millennial views which are unbiblical and unrealistic and may lead to extreme hopes, claims, or actions. They also may fall prey to authoritarian, status-seeking leaders who glorify themselves more than they build genuine community and mutuality.
It is partly for these reason that some renewal folk burn out and seek liturgical worship for its sense of history, stability, mystery, and deep tradition. In fact, both the institutional and charismatic views have their strengths. Both have something to offer the church. Wesley clearly understood this. Whatever the church's state of decline, usually it still carries the Scriptures, the sacraments, and a deposit of Christian doctrinal truth. We might call this historical Christian DNA.
If we examine church history carefully, we see some real continuity-and therefore some degree of validity-in the institutional church. Otherwise any renewal movement would be a totally new, unique, and unprecedented phenomenon, a church generated uniquely by the Spirit's action unrelated to history. Such a view would be unbiblical as well as sociologically and historically naïve.
On the other hand, the charismatic view cannot simply be dismissed. Institutions decline and need periodic renewal. When the institution is the church, renewal certainly must spring from a new or renewed experience of God's grace, whatever other features it may have. Furthermore, the charismatic stress on community and on charismatic The stump-and-branch metaphor suggests an interdependence or symbiosis between the institutional church and the renewal movement. The image implies that, for whatever reason, the stock has lost an earlier vigor, but that it still has life, and therefore hope. And it recognizes that the new branch has not sprung into being simply on its own but to some degree has its source in the old stock. It will always be argued (from both sides) that Wesley's institutional-charismatic synthesis is fundamentally inconsistent and impossible. I argue rather that it is part of the larger Wesleyan synthesis. I believe Wesley's fundamental perspective is essentially sound and insightful when viewed biblically, historically, and sociologically, and thus it is very relevant today.
Wesley's genius was in balancing the charismatic and institutional dimensions of the church, yet keeping the charismatic primary. The Wesleyan synthesis does not flee from history into pure existentialism or pragmatism. It keeps the present creatively tied to the past. Methodism sought to be neither above history nor shackled by tradition.
This was the basis for Wesley's seeing Methodism as ecclesiola in ecclesia -charismatic community (not entirely unstructured) within the institutional church (not entirely lacking grace). Wesley was an evangelist who preached "the wrath to come." Because salvation is for the present, Wesley reached the poor and worked for social reform. This too is evidence of the Wesleyan synthesis. And it helps set the task set before the church today. This is the Wesleyan Synthesis. John Wesley was a "both/and" leader who creatively joined together these five sets of concerns that are often viewed as being in tension: 1) divine sovereignty and human freedom, 2) doctrine and experience, 3) experience and structure, 4) charismatic and institutional perspectives, and 5) present and future salvation.

WESLEYAN QUADRILATERAL REVISITED: The Wisdom of God in Creation
The comprehensiveness of Wesley's theology has often been affirmed through describing a "Wesleyan Quadrilateral" consisting of Scripture, reason, tradition, and experience. The quadrilateral has become a popular way of describing Wesley's theology or his theological method.
The Wesleyan Quadrilateral has been much used, abused, and criticized.
Although it is useful, it is also inadequate. Its major flaw is that it fails to appreciate Wesley's appeal to the created order, his emphasis on "the wisdom of God in creation. The Quadrilateral does preserve key insights. It reminds us that Wesley was heir not only to the Protestant Reformation but also to Anglicanism, which sought to preserve the best of Roman Catholicism. Partly for this reason, Wesley generally refused rigid either/or categories.
The Reformation watchword of Sola scriptura is right in affirming Scripture as the essential, authoritative revealed basis of salvation. But of course in practice we do more than read Scripture in our search for truth. We read it through our rational, experiential, and cultural lenses. We are in fact shaped by tradition and experience, and we use reason to sort out truth and mediate competing claims.
Wesley, however, made use of another key source -the created order. He spoke of "the wisdom of God in creation." Thus we really find in Wesley something more like a pentalateral, not a quadrilateral. That is, not only Scripture, reason, tradition, and experience, but also creation. We discern truth primarily through Scripture by the Spirit, but we are assisted by these other good gifts of God: Reason, the created order, experience, and tradition. 23 Wesley was explicit about the key role of the created universe. He wrote in his sermon, "God's Approbation of His Works," "How small a part of this great work of God [in creation are we] able to understand! But it is our duty to contemplate what he has wrought, and to understand as much of it as we are able." 24 For Wesley, such "contemplation" is a theological, not just a devotional, exercise.
Wesley's reliance on the created order as a source of insight and authority runs through all his thought. A particularly pointed statement comes early in his

Compendium of Natural Philosophy, Being a Survey of the Wisdom of God in the Creation:
In short, the world around us is the mighty volume wherein God hath declared himself... Life subsisting in millions of different forms, shows the vast diffusion of this animating power, and death the infinite disproportion between him and every living thing. Even the actions of animals are an eloquent and a pathetic 128 The Wesleyan Synthesis Reconsidered language. Those that want the help of man have a thousand engaging ways, ... Thus it is, that every part of nature directs us to nature's God. 25 Wesley explains in his Preface to A Compendium of Natural Philosophy, "I wished to see this short, full, plain account of the visible creation, directed to its right end; not barely to entertain an idle barren curiosity, but to display the invisible things of God; his power, wisdom and goodness." Wesley hoped this work, "in great measure, translated from the Latin work of John Francis Buddaeus," might "be the means, on the one hand, of humbling the pride of man, by showing that he is surrounded on every side with things which he can no more account for than for immensity or eternity; and it may serve on the other to display the amazing power, wisdom, and goodness of the great Creator; to warm our hearts, and to fill our mouths with wonder, love, and praise!" 26 Wesley's primary point here is that the created order reveals God's wisdom, glory, and beauty, leading us to praise him and live responsibly before him in the world. 27 But this implies, as well, revelation -creation is the God-given "book of nature." It is in the light of this book of nature that we interpret the Scriptures, and vice versa.
Wesley was part of a long Christian tradition that saw God revealing himself in two great books: the Holy Bible and the Book of Nature. Both came from the hand of God as complementary dimensions of his revelation. Therefore we should pay attention to and learn both from Scripture and from the created order. Both are in fact essential to our understanding of God's purposes for us and for the world. Wesley emphasized that it is the Christian's duty to study and properly interpret both the Bible and the Book of Nature. 28 Unfortunately, this Wesleyan emphasis on the Book of Nature was largely lost in later Wesleyan theology. If we would be Wesleyan -and more importantly, if we would be biblical Christians and disciples -we need to recover this important Wesleyan and historic Christian accent.
One key way to do this is to recognize that the so-called Wesleyan Quadrilateral  44-48, 62-63, 195-97, and 263-64. geometric image, would be as follows: the four corners would be Creation, Tradition, Reason, and Experience, with the Bible in the center.
If we discern Wesley's theological methodology inductively from his own writings and use of sources, this is what we find, rather than the traditional model. Luís Wesley de Souza has cogently argued this in his essay, "'The Wisdom of God in Creation': Mission and the Wesleyan Pentalateral." 29 In this revised model, Creation is added to Scripture, Reason, Tradition, and Experience as a fifth component. 30 De Souza recognizes the limitations of such quadrilateral/pentalateral language.
Although he uses the term "Pentalateral," the model he proposes actually puts Scripture at the center with reason, creation, experience, and tradition arrayed around it, as I suggested above. 31 This moves in the direction of a more adequate conception-one that keeps Scripture central, as it was for Wesley, and sees creation, tradition, reason, and experience as key sources that dynamically orbit around this center (to pick up on some helpful insights from Melvin Dieter). 32 We should note here Wesley's key emphasis on the image of God at this point.
The image of God in men and women was part of his understanding of creation. Man and woman are created in the divine image. For Wesley, this is much more than an affirmation about human worth or dignity (as it is often taken today). It has key redemptive implications. Since human beings bear God's image, even though marred by sin, they can be redeemed, healed, restored. Created in the divine image, men and women are "capable of God." 33 That is, human beings have an inherent capacity for deep communion and companionship with God if the effects of sin can be overcome. This reality and dynamic is grounded in the biblical doctrine of creation.
According to Wesley, the whole created order in fact, in a more remote sense, bears God's stamp and image. 34 This is more particularly true of animate nature, where the wisdom of God was especially displayed. Wesley believed on philosophical and theological grounds that more could be learned about God from the animal creation than from stars and planets. Theologically, we learn more from biology than from astronomy, though Christians should study both. 35 We can see here that Wesley's worldview is more Hebraic and biblical than Greek or Platonic. Partly for this reason, it is more ecological, "both/and," than is most Reformed theology. In his mature theology especially, Wesley did not make a sharp break between the physical and the spiritual realms. It was no theological embarrassment to him to see the interpenetration of matter and spirit. He emphasized the working of God's Spirit in both, interactively.
Wesley's interest in healing, in electricity, and in so-called paranormal phenomena such as ghosts and unusual dreams should be seen in this context. This integrative view provides, in part, the theological basis for recognizing that salvation has to do not only with human experience but also with the restoration of the whole created order, which is another key Wesley theme.
I do not claim that Wesley fully overcame the spirit/matter dualism of classical Christian theology. He didn't. But he points us in the right direction with his oftrepeated stress on "all inward and outward holiness"; in his key theme of "justice, mercy, and truth"; and in his sensitivity to the created order, concern for physical healing and well-being, and compassion for animals. Even his interest in gardens and gardening shows the comprehensiveness of Wesley's vision.
Wesley points us in the right direction especially in his vision for the restoration of the created order. Wesley called this "The Great Deliverance," based on Romans 8:19-34 As Theodore Runyon notes, "The renewal of the creation and the creatures through the renewal in humanity of the image of God is what Wesley identifies as the very heart of Christianity." Theodore Runyon, The New Creation: John Wesley's Theology Today (Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon, 1998), 8 (emphasis in the original). 35 In the background here in Wesley's thought is the "great chain of being" idea. More fundamentally however his view is based on the biblical account of creation and of the importance of the image of God. See the helpful discussion in J. W. Haas, Jr., "John Wesley's Vision of Science in the Service of Christ," Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 47 (1995), 234-43.

132
The Wesleyan Synthesis Reconsidered but which is especially important in our day. It is a truth that needs emphasis by the Church of Jesus Christ throughout the world-not as a separate theme, but as an integral part of the whole gospel.

CONCLUSION: RELEVANCE TODAY
This article has provided an overview of Wesley as theologian. We have looked at Wesleyan and biblical Christians can develop a deepened, more timely view of culture today, following the directions in which Wesley incipiently pointed. This of course means moving well beyond Wesley-in culture as in science-due to continuing new discoveries and due to the fact that the church today is global, embedded in many different cultures. From our varying cultures, and drawing on the riches of each culture, we can develop a theology of church, culture, and mission that has deep relevance and profound commitment to Jesus Christ and the biblical gospel of the kingdom. This includes the great need for Christians to understand the deep ecology of the created order, of human culture, and of biblical theology itself.
Third, Wesley's theology is thus an open invitation to continue to develop a theology of church, mission, and culture that is profoundly biblical and sharply relevant to the present age. We can affirm with Wesley and the Great Tradition of Christian truth that God has revealed himself through two great books-the Holy Bible and the Book of Nature. Both testify in their own ways to Jesus Christ, the one who is "before all things" and in whom "all things hold together" (Col 1:17). "All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people" (John 1:3-4).
This then is an invitation to a broadened application for John Wesley's theology as one key voice among many. Wesley's contribution is an orienting voice, a voice that points us in the right direction. Nowhere is this more true than in Wesley's conception of God and the whole Scripture: The full scope of salvation, and the wisdom of God in creation.
This certainly does not mean abandoning Wesley's call to holiness! Rather it means a new emphasis upon devout, holy living for each one of us, and as the character of Christian community and Christian scholarship. Wesley repeatedly points us back to the priority of "all inward and outward holiness." Most essentially, this means loving God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and our neighbors throughout the world as ourselves -as well as our shared earthly home, the good creation around us. So today we are called to live the gospel; to faithfully be the body of Christ in the world.