NEWS OF THE
WESLEYAN THEOLOGICAL SOCIETY

SOCIETY EXPLORES SCIENCE & THEOLOGY AT DUKE UNIVERSITY:
JOINT MEETING WITH SPS FEATURES JÜRGEN MOLTMANN

Durham, NC. -- Wesleyan TheologicalSociety (WTS) scholars joined scholarsfrom the Society for Pentecostal Studies at Duke University for the largest meeting in the society’s history.  The March 13-15event was titled, “Sighs, Signs, and Significance: Wesleyan and Pentecostal Explorations of Science and Creation,” and more than 600 scholars participated.

Guest theologian, Jürgen Moltmann, took the conference theme as the structure for his keynote address.  Moltmann said that interpreting creation involves understanding the natural world and the revealed Scripture as ultimately in harmony.  This does not mean that various creation stories in the Bible should be regarded as good contemporary science.  But Genesis does tell us the fundamental truth that God is Creator.

Moltmann also said that nature can be interpreted as offering signs of its Creator.  “By virtue of the presence of the creative, life-giving Spirit, the presence of God will be perceived in all things,” said Moltmann.  There are traces of God in the history of nature and civilization, and these traces “are the correspondences between created beings and their Creator.”

WTS conference chair, Thomas Jay Oord, called the meeting groundbreaking.  “This was the first time so many theologians, biblical scholars, philosophers, and historians in the Wesleyan-Holiness tradition have met together to think deeply on issues of science and theology,” said Oord.  “The result was that scholars affirmed that God is Creator, but they explored a myriad of theories and hypotheses related to how God creates.  This conference is an important step toward a deeper understanding of creation and our Creator.”           

Society President, Diane Leclerc, gave the conference concluding keynote address.  Leclerc drew from theology, neurobiology, and her own experiences to reflect on the imago dei in light of mildly and severely disabled people.

Leclerc said that holiness is about God’s kenotic love for us even in our weakness.  “Under the conditions of human existence,” said Leclerc, “our pain and our suffering show us all as needy.”  She told her audience that God looks with eyes of kenotic love, and we ought to look at each other with eyes of kenotic love.  “As we pour ourselves out,” Leclerc said, “we are made holy together—not out a position of power, but precisely because of our position as weak.”           

A record number of WTS papers were presented at the conference.  Randy Maddox represented the society in a plenary address, and WTS members Barry Callen, Michael Lodahl, Steve McCormick served as plenary session respondents.  Meesaeng Lee Choi and Brent Peterson led devotions and the societies in celebrating the Eucharist.

The society handed out several annual awards.  The Life-Time Achievement award was given Rob L. Staples.  Staples was a charter member of the society and also served as a past president.  He taught theology at Southern Nazarene University (formerly Bethany Nazarene College) and finished his professional career as professor at Nazarene Theological Seminary, Kansas City, Missouri.  Staples’s influence upon the Wesleyan-Holiness movement has been profound, including his landmark book on the sacraments, Outward Sign and Inward Grace: The Place of Sacraments in Wesleyan Spirituality.

When presenting the award to Staples, Steve McCormick recounted the debate over the baptism with the Holy Spirit that dominated the society two decades earlier.  “Staples responded to that debate with the faithful care and rare Noah-like wisdom of protecting the ark of the Wesleyan tradition in both the Academy and the Church.”  But not all agreed with him, and Staples suffered personal attack in what he would call his “fiery ordeal.”  McCormick said that “because of Staples’s faithful service and wise counsel, countless students and ministers would be ‘saved’ from slipping into destructive cynicism and leaving the Wesleyan tradition that he faithfully served.”   Staples’s faithful scholarship blazed trails within the holiness movement for young scholars of the Church to work faithfully at their own task of fulfilling and sometimes correcting the tradition. 

The prestigious Smith-Wynkoop book award was given Charles Jones.  Jones’s four-volume set of books represents the most ambitious bibliography of the holiness movement to date.  The volumes span nearly 2,900 pages, with volumes 1 and 2 dating from 2005 (The Wesleyan Holiness Movement: A Comprehensive Guide), the 3rd volume appearing in 2006 (The Keswick Movement: A Comprehensive Guide), and volume 4 appearing in 2008 as The Holiness-Pentecostal Movement: A Comprehensive Guide.

Robert “Bob” Luhn, pastor of the Church of the Nazarene in Othello, Washington, was awarded the Pastor-Preacher-Scholar prize.  Luhn has pastored the Othello church for nearly thirty years.  He has been a trail blazer in pushing his local church, district, and denomination to think creatively about ministry and theology.

The society’s Dissertation Award was presented Joanna Cruickshank.  The WTS Dissertation Award will be presented to Joanna Cruickshank.  Her University of Melbourne dissertation is titled, “Charles Wesley and the Construction of Suffering in Eighteenth-Century England.”  She provides one of the most significant studies of the theology of Charles Wesley to date.  Her focal theme is how the hymns of Wesley served as a means of making sense and spiritual use of the suffering that the early Methodists endured.

WTS officers were elected at the Duke meeting.  Thomas Jay Oord moves to the society President position, and Thomas Noble becomes First Vice-President.  Rob Wall was elected Second Vice-President.  The society reaffirmed Barry Callen as editor of the Wesleyan Theological Journal.

The next WTS meeting will be March 5-7, 2009 at Anderson University, Anderson, Indiana. Noble has chosen Christology for the meeting’s focus.  Paper proposals are due September 1, 2008 and should be sent to WTS session chairs.  Information on the meeting and the call for papers will soon become available on the society website: http://wesley.nnu.edu/wts 

The Duke WTS-SPS meeting was preceded by a number of affiliated Wesleyan society meetings.  The Society for the Study of Psychology and Wesleyan Theology and its conference chair, Kathy Armistead, invited Don Browning to be its keynote speaker.  Browning discussed issues of theology and family structures.  The Wesleyan Philosophical Society and its conference chair, Robert Thompson, explored contemporary issues in philosophy and science.  The Hispanic Wesleyan group, Sociedad Wesleyana, also met at Duke University.

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