True Christianity
The Doctrine of Dispensations in the Thought of John William Fletcher (1729-1785)
- Theology
- Publisher: Pickwick Publications (Wipf and Stock)
- Published: 2014
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Publisher's Description
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."
Endorsements (4)
“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!”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
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