Book Review

Wesley and Men Who Followed

Iain H. Murray, Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 2003, 272 pp.

This presentation of the life of John Wesley and assessment of the Wesleyan legacy is the latest from the prolific pen of Murray, whose previous biographical subjects have included D. Martin Lloyd Jones, Jonathan Edwards, Arthur W. Pink, and John Murray. The Arminian Wesley may seem an odd subject for the Reformed Murray, whose focus is usually on the Calvinistic and Puritan luminaries. Murray’s examination of Wesley is, however, admiring, if not uncritical. His highest praise is reserved for the pioneer preachers of Methodism post-Wesley, and his harshest criticism for the doctrinal compromises of modern Methodism.

The book falls into four parts. Part One (pp. 3-104) offers a sketch of Wesley’s life and thought. Part Two (pp. 105-214) examines three early Methodist preachers who followed in Wesley’s footsteps: William Bramwell, Gideon Ouseley, and Thomas Collins. Part Three (pp. 217-246) offers a critical analysis of Wesley’s controversial teachings on Justification and Christian Perfection. Part Four (pp. 247-63) examines the Wesleyan legacy.

In Part One Murray offers an insightful, though not exhaustive, overview of Wesley’s life. Among the observations of note is Murray’s contention that Wesley’s famed Aldersgate experience was less a moment of “conversion” than a moment of “assurance”:

What about the Aldersgate experience itself? Was it, as he said at the time, the day he became a Christian or was it rather an assurance resulting from a clearer sight given him of Christ and his work? Once what happened to him on May 24, 1738 is re-examined in the light of that question, the once popular assumption that Wesley was ‘converted’ at Aldersgate Street begins to fall apart. A great change there was, as I have already said, but that would not have been the first or the last time that a believer suddenly gaining strong assurance, becomes almost a different person (51).

As one might expect from Murray, perhaps the most engaging segment is the chapter devoted to Wesley’s breach with Calvinists (like Whitfield) and Calvinism (Chapter 4 “The Conflict with Calvinism,” pp. 56-79). In general, Murray argues that Wesley largely misunderstood true Calvinism by confusing it with hyper-Calvinism and its attendent dangers of lack of missionary zeal and anti-nomianism. Murray further charges Wesley with two theological “errors”: “First, it led him to weaken the finality of justification.... Second, in his fear that Calvinism was allied to Anti-nomianism, Wesley committed himself to the beliefs of his earlier years on Christian perfection....” (66). Though Murray charges Wesley with confusion and inconsistency in his theology, he concludes “that it is not in his theology that his real legacy lies. Christian leaders are raised up for different purposes. The eighteenth century evangelicals were men of action, and, in that role, John Wesley did and said much that was to the lasting benefit of many thousands” (79). Murray, therefore, both expresses deep admiration for Wesley’s passion, drive, and organizatonal ability, and criticism of perceived theological weaknesses.

If Murray is admiring of Wesley’s evangelistic zeal, he is even more laudatory in his comments on the early Methodist preachers who are profiled in Part Two. A chapter is committed to Bramwell, Ouseley, and Collins, respectively, featuring a brief overview of the life and ministry of each. Murray is to be commended for shining light on these men — and others in early Methodism — whose influence have fallen into obscurity. Murray stresses the passionate, self-sacrificing, faithful ministry of these Methodist pioneers. He also traces how Methodism spread by the preaching of the simple gospel and the discipling of new believers.

In Part Three, Murray returns to devote more detailed attention to both issues he earlier identified as Wesley’s theological weaknesses: justification and perfectionism. On justification, Murray reviews Wesley’s sometimes conflicting statements on the doctrine of imputation. The general charge is that Wesley, in his zeal to combat anti-nomianism, did not see justification as an absolute act but one of degrees. On Wesley’s teaching of the possible achievement of Christian perfection in this life, Murray contends that his “mistake was to identify such assuring experiences with sanctification, and the cessation of all sinning, as if the believer had entered into a new state” (240). An accompanying weakness is the elevation of experience, alongside scripture, as authoritative. He concludes, “In the end it is, of course, the text of the New Testament which must determine our understanding of this subject. In that connection, it is noteworthy that in all 500 or so publications credited to the Wesley brothers, not one item is a commentary on any part of Scripture” (245).

In Part Four, Murray offers an assessment of the Wesleyan legacy. He notes the initial expansion and growth of Methodism as a world-wide movement, but also its modern decline. He charges modern Methodism with having lost “the inner principle of the older Methodism—whether ‘piety’, ‘holiness’, or ‘fellowship with God’—the problem in the twentieth century was that it was this that had so largely gone” (254). Older Methodism was characterized by “faith in the Word of God, faith in the redeeming love of God, faith in the divine Saviour and in the power of the Holy Spirit of God” (254). Murray traces “the collapse” of Methodism as a vibrant evangelical force to the undermining of the authority of scripture: “If faith cannot rest on the Word of God it has nothing to rest on, and it was the Word of God which, in the name of ‘scholarship’, was now taken away” (257). Murray bluntly states, “The truth was that men were now leading Methodism who would not have been received as probationers a hundred years earlier” (258). He concludes, however, that “Apostacy is not the end of the story”, since “the great lesson of Wesley and the Evangelical Revival is that sin and unbelief are not in control of history” (262).

Jeffrey T. Riddle
Pastor, Jefferson Park Baptist Church

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Book Review

Wesley and Men Who Followed

Iain H. Murray, Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 2003, 272 pp.

Jeffrey T. Riddle Pastor, Jefferson Park Baptist Church

Jeffrey T. Riddle
Pastor, Jefferson Park Baptist Church