1:177-85.
Notes to Pages 140-58 2.
See also the introductory article "Wesley and the Theologies of Liberation" by Theodore Runyon in his-Sanctification and Liberation, esp. pp. 32ff.
But this change does not derive from Aldersgate, as some (for example, Hynson, To Reform the Nation, pp. 33-38) maintain, but rather it comes about as a result of a long process in the readjustment of Wesley's views, beginning some years before Aldersgate and continuing for about a decade following.
3; . One of the strengths of Semmel's discussion of Methodism is the way in which it connects the social impact of Wesley's views with the Arminian theology of Wesley.
. Although Wesley is in many ways the patron of an evangelical approach to theology, he was also quite critical of the so-called "Gospel preachers" of his own day for preaching a gospel without radical transformation. See, for example, Letter to Miss Bishop, Oct.
18, 1778, XIII:36; Letter on Preaching Christ, Dec. 20, 1751, X1:486-92; and Thoughts Concerning Gospel
Ministers, X:455-57.
. See Wesley's correlation of "roots" and "fruit" in "Upon Our Lord's Sermon on the Mount, Discourse IV," V:305ff.
. This is the characteristic misinterpretation of E. P. Thompson; see his The Making of the English Working Class (New York: Random House, 1963.)
. So, for example, the early sermons "Scriptural Christianity," V:37-52; or "The Witness of Our Own Spirit," V:134-43.
. See "On Sin in Believers," V:144-55.
10. See his letter to his father of Dec. 10, 1734, cited in Journal, Mar. 28, 1739,
1:177-85.
To be sure, the early Wesley did emphasize personal transformation. It is one of the characteristics of Wesley's later sermons (those not in the "Standard Sermons") that there is much greater emphasis on the transformation of society. See, for example, the sermons on "The Foundation of City Road Chapel," "The General Spread of the Gospel," and "The Signs of the Times."
The development of an evangelical economics for our own time or an economics of the gospel is the subject of an important new work by M.
Douglas Meeks, God the Economist: The Doctrine of God and Political Economy (Minneapolis: Augsburg/Fortress, 1989).
1s 2; 8. Why Did Wesley Fail?
. Such a discussion would involve an approach either through the question of the general adequacy of Wesley's own method of biblical interpretation, a much discussed issue, or would involve a direct approach to the Bible, and in particular the NT, in order to inquire into the economic views either explicit or implicit in the texts. This last is, I think, the more fruitful approach, since Wesley wished to be held accountable to the Bible as the norm of his teaching.
. While it is the case that Wesley tended to think in terms of persons rather than in terms of social structures, this was true for his age in general. A reconsideration of evangelical economics for our time will have to take fresh insights concerning the character of human existence into account, just as Wesley was prepared to take into account the insights of the sciences of his own day in the development of his anthropological and cosmological categories.