True Christianity: The Doctrine of Dispensations in the Thought of John William Fletcher (1729-1785)
Ebook
Overview
John William Fletcher (1729-1785) was a seminal theologian during the early methodist movement and the Church of England in the eighteenth century. Best known for the Checks to Antinomianism, he worked out a theology of history to defend the church against the encroachment of antinomianism as a polemic against hyper-Calvinism, whose system of divine fiat and finished salvation, Fletcher believed, did not take seriously enough either the activity of God in salvation history or an individual believer’s personal progress in salvation. Fletcher made the doctrine of accommodation a unifying principle of his theological system and further developed the doctrine of divine accommodation into a theology of ministry. As God accommodated divine revelation to the frailties of human beings, ministers of the gospel must accommodate the gospel to their hearers in order to gain a hearing for the gospel without losing the goal of true Christianity. This book contains insights for pastors, missionaries, and Christian thinkers on true Christianity from Fletcher, who devoted himself, according to Wesley, to being "an altogether Christian."
”Frazier provides the most detailed presentation yet of John
Fletcher’s model of the dispensations of God’s saving work, arguing
they are an instance of Fletcher’s foundational emphasis on God’s
‘accommodation’ of divine revelation to the fallen human condition.
An important work for understanding Fletcher, John Wesley, and
beyond!"
--Randy L. Maddox, Professor of Wesleyan and Methodist Studies,
Duke Divinity School
“Russell Frazier has written an outstanding piece of work on
economic Trinitarianism through the irenic theology of John
Fletcher. Fletcher, an often neglected and misinterpreted Methodist
theologian of the eighteenth century, wrote from a pastoral,
panoramic, dialogical perspective, and Russell Frazier has captured
Fletcher’s thought in this perceptive interpretation designed for a
unique theology of reconciliation."
--David Rainey, Senior Lecturer in Theology and Senior Research
Fellow, Nazarene Theological College
"Russell Frazier has made a significant contribution in this volume
on the thought of John Fletcher. . . . He has rightly shown that
Fletcher’s theology should not simply be interpreted in the light
of later interpreters, who often did not provide a proper balance
to Fletcher’s ideas. Wesleyan scholarship will in due course of
time come to appreciate this research so finely done by
Frazier."
--Laurence W. Wood, Professor of Systematic Theology and Wesley
Studies, Asbury Theological Seminary
"This sophisticated theological treatment of the thought of John
Wesley’s chosen successor John Fletcher (1729-1785), heavily based
on deep research in the vast Fletcher archive in the Methodist
Archives & Research Centre at the John Rylands Library,
represents an invaluable contribution to existing scholarship.
Frazier’s in-depth study provides an admirable example of what
David Bebbington has recently called the recent ‘Evangelical
Discovery of History’ (though some might call it a ’rediscovery’).
Frazier rescues Fletcher from the confines of the traditional
Arminian-Calvinist binary by showing how his doctrine of
accommodation provided a unifying corrective to both those
theological systems. He demonstrates how Fletcher’s union of grace
and nature provided the foundation for a sophisticated theology of
history and was thus an important contribution to both Evangelical
and wider religious historiography. More controversially, Frazier
rescues Fletcher from what he regards as the narrow categorisations
provided by the Wesleyan-Holiness paradigm and tradition which has
come to dominate recent interpretations of Fletcher’s thought. This
is historical theology at its best."
-Peter Nockles, John Rylands Library, University of Manchester.
- Title: True Christianity: The Doctrine of Dispensations in the Thought of John William Fletcher (1729-1785)
- Author: J. Russell Frazier
- Publisher: Pickwick Publications
- Print Publication Date: 2014
- Logos Release Date: 2020
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9781630873394, 9780227902608, 9781498265706, 9781620326633, 163087339X, 0227902602, 1498265707, 1620326639
- Resource ID: LLS:9781630873394
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-29T19:05:29Z
J. Russell Frazier (PhD, University of Manchester) has served as a pastor for over twenty years and was a missionary with the Church of the Nazarene for over seven years. He serves as an adjunct professor for Central Christian College and Ohio Christian University.