John Wesley (preacher)

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John Wesley (1703-1791) Appletons' Wesley John signature.svg

John Wesley (born June 17 . Jul / 28. June  1703 greg. In Epworth , North Lincolnshire , † 2. March 1791 in London ) was an English revivalist , who also worked in North America, and one of the founders of the Methodist movement.

Life

Prominent Puritan Pastor Samuel Annesley was John Wesley's maternal grandfather

John Wesley was born on June 17, 1703 in Epworth, Lincolnshire, the fifteenth of nineteen children. His father, Samuel Wesley , who was often pedantic and belligerent, high-ecclesiastical and conservative , came from an Anglican pastor dynasty. His father and grandfather were evicted from their parishes because of Puritan inclinations. His mother, Susanna Wesley b. Annesley, was the daughter of the prominent Puritan pastor Samuel Annesley and an unusually educated, pious woman for her time. At the age of thirteen she dealt intensively with the ecclesiastical and dogmatic controversies of her time, made her own decision to join the Anglican Church, and got her father to confirm her.

At the age of five, John was rescued from his parents' house on fire at the last moment, an experience that remained vividly in his old age.

At the age of 11 (1714) he came to Godalming at the Charterhouse School , and at 17 to Oxford at Christ Church College. Reading Thomas von Kempen's “ Imitation of Christ ” and Taylor's “Holy Life and Death” made a strong impression on him . In 1725 he was ordained deacon by Bishop Potter and was vicar in Epworth. In 1726 , his brother Charles and two fellow students founded the “Holy Club” in Oxford , where they came together for Bible study and deepened spiritual life. After John joined them, he very quickly became the leader and organizer of the group. They studied the New Testament three hours a day, fasted twice a week, visited prisoners, the sick and the poor, and donated all the money that they did not need for a living. The group, derisively called " Methodists " for their methodical community life , grew, and in 1735 George Whitefield joined them.

1728 John received the ordination of Anglican priests and worked as a lecturer at Lincoln College of Oxford University .

In 1735 he and his brother went to Georgia as a missionary for two years . On the crossing to America he joined a group of the Moravian Brethren around Nikolaus Ludwig Graf von Zinzendorf and was impressed when these men, women and children quietly sang their psalms during a terrible sea storm while the English on the ship panicked got. A song of the Brethren that was translated into English by Wesley is I have now found the reason that holds my anchor forever by Johann Andreas Rothe , a close colleague of Zinzendorf.

The Wesley brothers were tough on themselves and others in their pastoral ministry in Frederica and Savannah, which made them extremely unpopular. Back in England, it was not until Charles and a few weeks later also John had a conversion experience that brought them from an unsatisfied ecclesiastical and dogmatic Christianity to full certainty of salvation . John was able to give the exact time to the quarter of an hour when he experienced a personal conversion on May 24, 1738, under the impression of Martin Luther's preface to the Epistle to the Romans in the Moravian Church in London, which had a strong influence on his later theology. Both assumed that the Holy Spirit had taken possession of their souls.

In the same year, 1738, he traveled to Frankfurt am Main, Marienborn and Herrnhut. After visiting Herrnhut, he developed an intense evangelistic activity, beginning as an open-air preacher in Kingswood and Bristol , where he preached to the miners in front of their coal mines. From his meticulously kept diaries it can be seen that he rode tirelessly from town to town, from village to village, giving four to five sermons a day. This remained so until his death - he is said to have delivered a total of 40,000 sermons, often in front of thousands of listeners. The content was: repentance , forgiveness of sins, assurance of salvation, rebirth with emphasis on Christ's act of salvation.

Susanna Wesley , mother of John Wesley

In addition to being a preacher and theologian , John Wesley was also a gifted organizer: he organized the people who wanted to change their lives after his sermons into small groups (classes) that kept each other through Bible study, individual counseling, and mutual accountability , he appointed lay ministers and organized annual conferences to share methodism in theory and practice.

From the beginning he also had a pronounced inclination for social and diaconal work. He fought for reforms in the prison system and for the abolition of slavery . He set up public libraries and raised money to build exemplary schools. He set up loan offices for self-help. He also took care of public health by setting up a polyclinic and pharmacies for the poor , writing books on folk medicine and - inspired by Benjamin Franklin's "electric treatment machine" - electrotherapy using "electric shock machines" to cure various diseases, especially treatment nervous disorders, introduced (see John Wesley: The Desideratum, or Electricity made Plain and Useful , London 1760). He considered electricity to be the "soul of the universe", a kind of fire that gets the blood in the human body going - interesting insofar as the direct influence of the Holy Spirit on the human soul was a central aspect of his teaching.

Like many of his contemporaries, he also firmly believed in ghosts , placed them on the same level as angels and saw in the belief in spirits a proof that the human soul is immortal. In his diaries he reports ghostly apparitions and miracles that he and his followers have experienced. His unshakable belief in such phenomena stems from experiences in his father's house, where the poltergeist Old Jeffery allegedly was up to mischief. When he was twenty, he wrote a letter to his mother about a house that was haunted by ghosts. Another ghost is said to have appeared in the open field to a Mrs. Barnesley at the time her mother died. In view of the purely materialistic worldview, which had spread in large circles into the Church of England , Wesley saw such phenomena as an important argument against deism and atheism . In this context he could even write that a denial of witchcraft was tantamount to a denial of biblical truths: "giving up witchcraft is, in effect, giving up the Bible"

Wesley was a firm believer in divine guidance. In his younger years, following the biblical example, he let lot decide what to do on many of the important decisions that had to be made, leaving the decision to God's will. Also, at the beginning of his sermons he often happened to open the Bible somewhere because he was convinced that God was pointing him to the place to be preached about that day. Wesley followed the Moravian practice of drawing a Bible verse for each day, which was the religious guideline for that day.

In his later, more mature years, however, Wesley explicitly distanced himself from enthusiastic views and referred in particular to the Bible: “Do not rely on visions or dreams, on sudden inspirations or strong emotions of any kind! Remember: It is not through such things that you should know 'God's will' on certain occasions, but through application of the clear biblical rule with the help of experience and reason and with the constant assistance of the Spirit of God! "

He financed his social works from the proceeds of his writings, while living very frugally himself.

He died in London on March 2, 1791.

Religious Life and Theology

Religious thinking about goals is practical with John Wesley. The main emphasis is not on opinions and teachings, but on attitude and way of life. John Wesley left behind no systematic theology and even less committed his followers to a special doctrine, but he did set clear accents that are still essential for the Methodist churches today.

  • John Wesley strongly advocated the concept of the general grace of God as opposed to the Calvinist doctrine of double predestination - it was also this point that theologically separated John Wesley and George Whitefield , although they had the greatest human respect throughout their lives. According to John Wesley, God's grace applies to all people without distinction, unconditionally, without any preliminary work. But man is expected to accept this grace which God grants him in Jesus Christ, although man does not deserve this grace.
  • According to John Wesley, that general grace of God in Jesus Christ is a grace that precedes human hearing and faith . Man's yes to this grace is only possible through it.
  • Wesley was ecumenical - he wanted the gathering and inner unity of all Christians.
  • For him, being a Christian was neither a mere affair of the heart nor a mere formal matter, but form, service, responsibility and organization.
  • Wesley was one of the first to suggest that mission is the duty of Christians in the modern world.
  • He combined intelligible preaching and theological clarity. A highly educated man himself, he also demanded a convincing education from his lay preachers.
  • He combined the joy of salvation and the seriousness of sanctification in a unique way with missionary and diaconal activity.

Memorial days

  • Protestant: March 2nd in the Evangelical Name Calendar of the EKD and the Calendar of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA).
  • Anglican: May 24th

Publications (selection)

literature

  • Roy Hattersley: The Life of John Wesley. A brand from the burning . Doubleday, New York NY u. a. 2003 ISBN 0-385-50334-2 .
  • Richard P. Heitzenrater: John Wesley and early Methodism. Göttingen 2006, ISBN 3-7675-7076-9 .
  • Daniel R. Jennings: The Supernatural Occurrences of John Wesley . SEAN Multimedia, Oklahoma City, OK, 2005.
  • Friedrich Adolph Krummacher (ed.), Based on the English of Robert Southey : John Wesley's life, the emergence and spread of Methodism , 2 volumes, New cheap edition Hamburg 1841 (edition 1828 online at Google Books [1] [2] )
  • Harald Lindström: Wesley and the sanctification, with a foreword by Carl Ernst Sommer , translated by Wilh. B. Strobel, Contributions to the history of the UMC 13, published by the Study Community for the History of the UMC, 2nd edition, Stuttgart 1982.
  • Manfred Marquard: Practice and Principles of John Wesley's Social Ethics . Reutlinger Theologische Studien, Edition Ruprecht, Göttingen 2008, 3rd edition, ISBN 3-7675-7095-5 .
  • Sung-Duk Lee: The German Pietism and John Wesley . Church history monographs 8. Brunnen-Verl., Gießen u. a. 2003, ISBN 3-7655-9468-7 .
  • Albert Outler : The Theological Thought of John Wesley . Commented for our time. Christian publishing house, Stuttgart 1991, ISBN 3-7675-7084-X .
  • Stephen Tomkins: John Wesley. A biography . German by Christian Rendel. Edition Anker, Stuttgart 2003 ISBN 3-7675-7067-X .
  • Karl Heinz Voigt:  WESLEY, John. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 13, Bautz, Herzberg 1998, ISBN 3-88309-072-7 , Sp. 914-976.  ( Article / beginning of article in Internet archive )
  • William Reginald Ward: Art. Wesley, John . In: Theologische Realenzyklopädie 35 (2003), pp. 657-662.
  • John Wesley's Diary . Inlet by Hugh Price Hughes. Commentary by Augustine Birrell. Add. by Percy Livingstone Parker. Hänssler, Holzgerlingen 2000 ISBN 3-7751-3597-9 .

See also

literature

Web links

Commons : John Wesley  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files
Wikiquote: John Wesley  - Quotes

German

English

Notes, individual references

  1. ^ After the calendar reform in England in 1752 , Wesley celebrated his birthday on June 28th. See Wilhelm Fotsch, From Johann Wesley's Life . In: Heroes of Faith, portrayed from the standpoint of full salvation in Christ . Cincinnati / Bremen 1893, 2-200, p. 3.
  2. ^ Garth lean: John Wesley - Model of a revolution without violence. Brunnen-Verlag, Gießen, 1969, p. 14 f.
  3. ↑ Diary, May 25, 1768
  4. ↑ From his teaching sermon The essence of enthusiasm from 1750.
  5. ↑ Harald Lindström: Wesley and the sanctification , with a foreword by Carl Ernst Sommer , translated by Wilh. B. Strobel. In: Contributions to the history of the UMC, 13th ed. Vd Study Community for the History of the UMC. 2nd Edition. Stuttgart 1982, p. 9.
  6. ^ John Wesley in the Ecumenical Lexicon of Saints
personal data
SURNAME Wesley, John
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English revival preacher and one of the founders of Methodism
DATE OF BIRTH June 28, 1703
PLACE OF BIRTH Epworth , North Lincolnshire
DATE OF DEATH March 2, 1791
Place of death London