When we focus on divine perfect love and make it genuinely available in today's world, we tap into the energy which, according to the Fathers, renews creation. It was this energy which found undeniable expression in new lives in the Wesleyan movement. Indeed, the greatest strength of the Wesleyan doctrine of perfection may lie in its ability to mobilise believers to seek a more perfect future that surpasses the present. It turns the Christian life into a project consistently open to new possibilities. As we have seen, it is not blind to negative forces. However, it does not take them as the inevitable and unavoidable consequences of original sin, but precisely as that which can be overcome. It was this goal-orientation which Wesley did not want to give up to the critics of entire sanctification. If the conditions of life are fixed and sin is permanent, the future is robbed of the kind of hope Wesley is convinced is found in the New Testament. (From: The New Creation , page 227)
This book was recommended to me by a lay Methodist theologian a few years ago. It is in his view one of the best books about John Wesley . I don't disagree with him. Runyon is a member of the United Methodist Church in the United States and takes a radical view of Wesley's life. I have written at some length on Wesley's doctrine of sanctification , as explained in this book. (The link will take you to the first in the sequence.)
Wesley was future orientated and contrasted his approach to that of the Calvinists who were past orientated. They believe in predestination. God created everything perfect and predetermined who will be saved and lost. Wesley's view was that God is still at work in creation and therefore, there are new things to come and so no-one is predestined to anything. This opens up the future to the unexpected and creative change.
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