Bonus Historical Context for Scriptural Christianity

Note:  when possible, I read JW's sermons out of an edited anthology that also provides context around the sermons.  Part of my response includes portions of that commentary.  The source is: Albert C. Outler, John Wesley’s Sermons: An Anthology (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1991).  Page references are provided. 

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Albert Outler and Richard Heitzenrater point out in the introductory note of this sermon in John Wesley’s Sermons: An Anthology, that this sermon was preached while Wesley was teaching at Oxford in 1744 (97).  While Wesley never intended to publish this sermon, he notes in his own introduction to the sermon that it is only because the response to his words was so untoward he felt it necessary to provide the full context such that people could discern for themselves what was true (97). 

I raise this note because I think the context of this sermon matters greatly in the hearing of it.  He is in an academic setting at a time when the community was apparently celebrating the exile of nonconformists and Methodist revivals were increasing in popularity.  It’s an incredibly bold move to preach this at the time, but I’m wondering what Wesley’s end game actually was.  Outler identifies Wesley’s reaction as that of a clean conscience; that Wesley believed he said what was necessary in the moment and if the academic community rebuked him, so be it (97).  But speaking this truth in this manner doesn’t seem to jive with Wesley’s overarching claim that he isn’t trying to start a new church, he’s trying to improve what existed at the time.  It strikes me as incredibly incendiary given the context, which is why his motives interest me.  

I also find it interesting that Wesley, in his description of scriptural Christianity specifically references the fruits of the spirit and essentially said there isn’t scriptural Christianity at work if the Oxford community doesn’t exhibit the fruits of the spirit. Originally, the tone seemed so combative in the fourth section that it was counteracting the characteristics about which he was preaching, but in a second read, I think it was a solid rhetorical move to say these are the things we’re called according to scripture to be; let me show you how to do that.  Again, I’m not clear on what his end game is, but I do find the context around this sermon to be somewhat helpful in understanding parts of why Wesley approached this in the way he did.