The remarkable debt of all Christian people to the Puritan movement is one that it would be difficult to overestimate. For many, the word "Puritan" is the symbol of narrowness and ultra-godliness; however, less-prejudiced research makes it evident that England, and the world, owes much to the integrity, devotion, and spiritual power of men and women who stood for the things of God in a political atmosphere perhaps even more confused and difficult than our own. The similarity of outlook that exists between John Wesley and the Quakers is something that has often been remarked; and there will be great interest, both for the historian (religious and political) and for the ordinary reader, in following the guidance of Gordon S. Wakefield, one of Methodism's younger scholars, as he adduces the evidence which he brings together from many different fields.
“This term ‘Christian Spirituality’ has become very fashionable, but requires definition. It derives from one of the classifications habitual to the Church of Rome, and formulated by M. l’Abbé Pourrat in his La Spiritualité Chrétienne. He distinguishes between ‘Dogmatic,’ ‘Moral,’ and ‘Spiritual’ Theology, and the greatest of these is Spiritual Theology, which is based upon the others, but is ‘above them’ in so far as it is a branch of the science which deals, not with abstract statements of faith and objective laws of conduct but with the life in Christ itself, the reality of that union with Him, which all traditions in some form would assert as the meaning of our salvation.” —From the Preface
“Biography must not degenerate into hagiography and the faults must not be concealed. But they must not be writ large. The reader should be enabled to enter into the subject’s mind and world, to see situations from his point of view, and yet to retain his own moral judgment and condemn what is wrong for himself and without the author’s perpetual strictures. “When once I told a continental scholar that I was writing a life of Dr Flew, he licked his lips at the thought of all the files, crammed with ecumenical memoranda and lecture notes, which were waiting for me to devour. But Dr Flew did not belong to the age of large secretarial staffs and mechanical aids, nor did he have a card-index mentality. He left few documents (or literary remains), but there are many letters to his mother and some to his friends. He was a brilliant letter-writer as well as a very faithful one, and these, nearly all in his own hand and many somewhat yellow with the years, have been a chief quarry. Otherwise it has been a matter of sleuth-like deduction, a piecing together of facts from people’s reminiscences, contemporary books and records, and one’s own memories.” —From the Preface
The remarkable debt of all Christian people to the Puritan movement is one that it would be difficult to overestimate. For many, the word "Puritan" is the symbol of narrowness and ultra-godliness; however, less-prejudiced research makes it evident that England, and the world, owes much to the integrity, devotion, and spiritual power of men and women who stood for the things of God in a political atmosphere perhaps even more confused and difficult than our own. The similarity of outlook that exists between John Wesley and the Quakers is something that has often been remarked; and there will be great interest, both for the historian (religious and political) and for the ordinary reader, in following the guidance of Gordon S. Wakefield, one of Methodism's younger scholars, as he adduces the evidence which he brings together from many different fields.
“Biography must not degenerate into hagiography and the faults must not be concealed. But they must not be writ large. The reader should be enabled to enter into the subject’s mind and world, to see situations from his point of view, and yet to retain his own moral judgment and condemn what is wrong for himself and without the author’s perpetual strictures. “When once I told a continental scholar that I was writing a life of Dr Flew, he licked his lips at the thought of all the files, crammed with ecumenical memoranda and lecture notes, which were waiting for me to devour. But Dr Flew did not belong to the age of large secretarial staffs and mechanical aids, nor did he have a card-index mentality. He left few documents (or literary remains), but there are many letters to his mother and some to his friends. He was a brilliant letter-writer as well as a very faithful one, and these, nearly all in his own hand and many somewhat yellow with the years, have been a chief quarry. Otherwise it has been a matter of sleuth-like deduction, a piecing together of facts from people’s reminiscences, contemporary books and records, and one’s own memories.” —From the Preface
“This term ‘Christian Spirituality’ has become very fashionable, but requires definition. It derives from one of the classifications habitual to the Church of Rome, and formulated by M. l’Abbé Pourrat in his La Spiritualité Chrétienne. He distinguishes between ‘Dogmatic,’ ‘Moral,’ and ‘Spiritual’ Theology, and the greatest of these is Spiritual Theology, which is based upon the others, but is ‘above them’ in so far as it is a branch of the science which deals, not with abstract statements of faith and objective laws of conduct but with the life in Christ itself, the reality of that union with Him, which all traditions in some form would assert as the meaning of our salvation.” —From the Preface
Groundwork of Christian Spirituality is Gordon Wakefield's final work, completed shortly before he died. Like his notable Dictionary of Christian Spirituality (SCM Press, 1983), it covers a wide range of Christian traditions: Orthodox Roman Catholic, Anglican, Reformed, Free Church. He writes with his usual keen insight and broad ecumenical sympathy, and in a style which is readily accessible to the general reader. This study, like all his previous writings, is underpinned by careful scholarship. Yet he is never a mere theorist, but always concerned to relate his study to the life of faith and the challenge of contemporary discipleship. Those who have appreciated his earlier studies in Puritan, Wesleyan and Catholic spirituality will relish this final offering of a writer who, rooted in Methodist piety, was also a choice example of John Wesley's 'Catholic Spirit'.
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