Incarnation, Salvation, Healing: Wesleyan Perspectives on Human Flourishing

The 2018 ACWR Conference

Keynote speaker: Professor Randy L  Maddox
William Kellon Quick Professor of Wesleyan and Methodist Studies Duke Divinity School, Duke University
7 - 9 September 2018
Venue: Sydney College of Divinity. Unit 6B, 5 Talavera Road, Macquarie Park, NSW 2113

In Evangelical Protestant circles, human flourishing is often framed in terms of the benefits of Christ’s death on the cross. Randy Maddox and other Wesleyan scholars draw our attention to John Wesley’s understanding of the impact of Christ’s incarnation not only on humanity, but on the whole of creation. Human flourishing is not limited to personal salvation, but includes social and cosmic renewal. This holistic vision challenges the sacred/secular, body/soul, individual/corporate binaries that have for so long framed the Church’s message and mission.

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Presenters and Papers

  • David McEwan - Health of soul and health of body, Relating inward and outward health to human flourishing
  • David Wilson - Human flourishing: Perspectives from Maslow, Rogers, Seligman and Wesley
  • Dean Smith - Healing our Ambivalence: Transcending the Dualisms at the Heart of the Evangelical Mind
  • Emma Moore - How Relationality Facilitates Human Flourishing: A Neurobiological and Christological Conversation
  • Glen O'Brien - John Wesley on the state of the nation and its people
  • Ian Maddock - Same Words, Different Language: Wesley, Whitefield and the Forging of Methodist Identity in 1739
  • John Capper - Divine joy and human gladness in life in Christ
  • Kate Bradford - Care of Souls in the Classic Tradition: Revisiting Thomas Oden
  • Kay Fulcher - How do we ensure the Church's message and mission is not influenced and even altered by Western cultural norms?
  • Kevin Brown - Omri in context: An Israelite king between history and theology
  • Kirsty Beilharz - Human flourishing until death: Living well until the very end
  • Matthew Seaman - Exploring Salvationist Understandings of Holiness in the Anthropocene
  • Peter Bolt - "Let the anger cease" George Te Ara as a Case Study of the encounter between Human Trauma and Gospel Healing
  • Randy Maddox (three keynote addresses) - John and Charles Wesley’s Appropriation of and Growing Challenge to the “Vulgar” Reduction of “Salvation”
    The Wondrous Love of God: A Christology for Wholistic Salvation
    John Wesley’s Mature Emphases on Salvation for the Whole Creation
  • Rob Fringer - Reverberations of lsaiah's Servant in Galatians: Aspects of Believers' Incarnation, Salvation, and Corporate Healing in Paul's Language of Call/Calling
  • Rod Eadie - Theology of the body, expressions and performance : Examining psychosomatic congruity through martial art
  • Victoria Lorrimar - Human Biotechnological Enhancement and Christian Perfection
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keynote speaker

Prof. Randy L Maddox currently serves as the William Kellon Quick Professor of Wesleyan and Methodist Studies at the Duke University, North Carolina. He is considered one of the leading authorities on both the theology of John Wesley (1703-1791) and the theological developments of later Methodism.
Randy also serves as the Associate General Editor of the Wesley Works Project, a major scholarly project
responsible for producing the first comprehensive and critical edition of the works of John Wesley. He is the author of Responsible Grace: John Wesley’s Practical Theology, a contributor to Wesley and the Quadrilateral, and editor of Aldersgate Reconsidered, Rethinking Wesley’s Theology for Contemporary Methodism, The Cambridge Companion to John Wesley, and Volume 12 of The Bicentennial Edition of the Works of John Wesley.

The conference commenced on Friday, 7 September at 7.00pm with a keynote address, John and Charles Wesley’s Appropriation of and Growing Challenge to the “Vulgar” Reduction of “Salvation” by Professor Randy Maddox.