Grace, Faith, and Holiness: A Wesleyan Systematic Theology

Rating:
Summary: Challenging and enlightening..a must for Wesleyans
Review: Dunning's book seeks to share the depth of Wesleyan faith in a fresh, new rendering. The book is complete enough for seminary study in Systematic Theology but is not beyond the grasp of interested and devoted lay theologians of all backgrounds. This discourse will cause you think, scratch your head and dig in deeper.

Rating:
Summary: Life-changing
Review: Dunning's Grace, Faith and Holiness is the best serious systematic theology from the Wesleyan tradition that I've ever read. The book absolutely re-orients your whole perspective about God, His work in, with and through his creation, and the church. I've shared this book with other pastors - from Lutheran to Methodist to Pentecostal - and they've each reported that Dunning stretched them into thinking through their own theologies in new ways. This is really a great work.

Rating:
Summary: Extremely Important Text
Review: This is an extremely important text--particularly as the ONLY Wesleyan Systematic Theology at the time it was written. I give this book two stars instead of five because of the following:

In the forward is written that Dunning was approved and commissioned to write a definitive systematic theology for the Church of the Nazarene that "is aware of, and dialogues with, contemporary thought theologically, philosophically, psychologically, and culturally." These are lofty goals which simply cannot be satisfied in a single book. Furthermore, Dunning fails to engage Wesleyan-Holiness theology in a philosophical, psychological and cultural fashion. Instead, Dunning uses tests from Luther and Augustine, for example, to lay groundwork for EARLY twentieth-century theology.

Very rarely does Dunning engage with political or ethical deliberations that the Holiness movement addresses. I posit Dunning avoided engaging with liberal theologies and ethical challenges in order to create a "timeless masterpiece." The book is austere, for sure. But where are the Behavioral and Neuroscientific Psychologies that characterize the 1980's, the decade in which this book is published? Where is dialogue with Western culture? With Eastern culture? Instead, the result is a Nazarene theology which consults other texts of Nazarene theology as dialogue partners. This is not systematic or constructive theological work but rather reflects a desire for an insular institution among some Nazarenes, namely the author. This book is a good starting point but fails to meet its objectives. The consequences to the institution for which this theology is written are far-reaching.