United Methodist Church

How do we stay Wesleyan if we don't heed the Notes and Sermons of John Wesley in some way

You need to not preach your personal theology but preach the theology of the church

United Methodists are not supposed to contradict the church's doctrinal standards, but can "go beyond and expand

Wesley believed that the doctrine of the Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit was a "fundamental belief" of Christian faith

Believing in the "complete divinity" of Christ was also "essential" to Christianity

Wesley thought there was "nothing of greater consequence" than the doctrine of atonement. Without belief in the atonement, religion becomes merely deism, Wesley feared

Wesley did not insist on "any particular understanding" of the atonement, but emphasized that "salvation was based on the whole life of Christ."

Wesley was committed to the traditional Protestant doctrine of Scripture alone as the final authority for the church

Wesley leaned on Eastern Orthodox traditions by stressing that we are "liable for own sins, not the sins of our parents."

Wesley affirmed and thought essential was justification by faith alone, Wesley's emphasis was slightly different because he insisted that faith cannot mean only assent but must engage the heart and affections.

Wesley's seventh essential doctrine was regeneration through the "new birth," Campbell said. Methodism's founder warned against leaning on the "slender read of baptism," when salvation required being born again. Belief in the possibility of entire sanctification beyond regeneration was a distinguishing mark of Methodism, though Campbell said Wesley did not make that an essential Christian doctrine.

United Methodism, "We are a church with clear doctrine. It shapes our practice in ways we don't know."

Bishop Jones said Campbell's description of Wesley's theological "distinctions" was "wrong" because Wesley believed there should be nothing distinct about Methodism. Wesley asserted he was preaching "just the religion of the Bible."

"Every time he [Wesley] lays out Methodist beliefs he's saying it's basic Christianity," Jones said. Wesley was determined to preach "primitive Christianity" and to rescue the faith from "more corrupt forms." Jones asserted Wesley wo...

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...a voice in doctrine," he insisted.

The John Wesley Institute event was attended by about 50 persons, most of them United Methodist clergy.

According to Ted A. Campbell, "Prevenient grace is the appropriate heading under which Methodists have described all the ways in which God works with human beings before they believe in Christ." This is grace that comes before "faith in Christ."

Ted A. Campbell says, "The Methodist Articles of Religion, following the teachings of the Reformation, rejected the medieval Catholic idea of purgatory as a place where the souls of those who have died in Christ could be aided or helped by the prayers of the living. John Wesley himself believed in an intermediate state between death and the final judgment, where those who rejected Christ would be aware of their coming doom (not yet pronounced), and believers would share in the "bosom of Abraham" or "paradise," even continuing to grow in holiness there. This belief, however, is not formally affirmed in Methodist doctrinal standards, which reject the idea of purgatory but beyond that maintain silence on what lies between death and the last judgment."