Doctrinal Standards in the Wesleyan Tradition: Revised Edition

Thomas C. Oden, the retired Henry Anson Buttz Professor of Theology and Ethics, is an ancient ecumenical evangelical with a passion for orthodoxy. For over thirty years he taught at Drew University and came under the influence of his "irascible, endearing Jewish mentor" Will Herberg. Herberg bluntly told Oden that he would remain "densely uneducated" unless he "read deeply in patristic writers." This focus on patristics (the early church fathers) helped professor Oden to realize that modernity is over. As he probed the early church writers for several decades, he incorporated and rechanneled his activism and idealism for the modernist social gospel into a recovery of the classic religious tradition. Scripture found new life in him, which means he repented an enthrallment with progressive social causes in favor of a stable two-thousand year memory, which he defines as orthodoxy.

"In a masterful study Tom Oden has laid out a compelling argument as to why John Wesley's Sermons and Notes were rightly affirmed as doctrinal standards by the United Methodist General Conference in 1968. Indeed, this gifted theologian not only rightly appreciates the Wesleyan tradition and its distinctives, but he also helps to support those elements of the heritage that are so necessary for real, vital, scriptural Christianity today." -Kenneth J. Collins, Professor of Wesley Studies and Historical Theology, Asbury Theological Seminary

Thomas C. Oden is the Henry Anson Buttz Professor of Theology and Ethics at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey.