ABSTRACT

John Wesley is popularly remembered as the quintessential evangelist and founder of Methodism. While Wesley could never be mistaken for a systematic theologian, he had not just been a fellow at Lincoln College. Wesley accounted for the presence of evil through an aesthetic quality in creation by which he demonstrated how evil was not the necessary result of the finitude of creation. Wesley's aesthetic theme began with the affirmation of God's moral attributes of justice, truth, and goodness, while maintaining that God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-wise. Instead of science solving the mysteries of creation, for Wesley it only deepened the mysteries by providing answers that led to even more questions. Wesley was aware of the Clarke-Leibniz exchange and was in his earlier years enamoured with Leibniz's thought, although the older Wesley became less impressed by it. Wesley saw practical theological consequences in what some wrongly considered insignificant and trivial theological speculation.