Making the invisible Christ visible: problems and opportunities for Wesleyan Christology

Wesley's Christology has been critiqued as inadequate and potentially unorthodox in a variety of ways, some of them contradictory. The most telling critical analysis has been by John Deschner (1960, 1985, 1988) using Reformed christological categories in his research supervised by Karl Barth. While affirming the Methodist emphases on ‘the whole Christ’ and ‘the present Christ’ in soteriological perspective, he also asks pressing questions about how Wesleyan theology can resolve apparent tensions between Christ and the law, and how it can better express the wholeness of Christ, moving beyond individual soteriology towards a more comprehensive vision of ecclesial wholeness and the wholeness of the human community. Wesleyan theologians have in turn responded to these questions in a range of ways, with varying success. What are the parameters and prospects for Wesleyan Christology in the light of this debate, and how does this relate to the contemporary missiological context?