This timely and helpful volume addresses a tension in the Wesleyan theological tradition. From its founders and their Anglican formation, it has inherited a strong sacramental understanding of baptism and an appreciation of the place of infant baptism in the life of the church. As a movement of evangelical revival, however, it has placed a strong emphasis on personal conversion and the inner experience of faith, together with a firm suspicion of any suggestion that religious rituals are, in themselves, spiritually efficacious. The fifteen essays gathered together here, all but one of them written by North American pastors and educators, aim to tease out this tension and to look at its implication for a number of issues in the contemporary church.
The essays are arranged under three headings. The first, ‘Baptism and the Triune God’, deals directly with the tension outlined above, providing an analysis of Wesley’s teaching in relation...
