Stewardship and Response

ABSTRACT This article reframes John Wesley's economics as a species of his moral theology of stewardship and response. After beginning with Wesley's unwavering economics of stewardship as predicated upon the dynamics of the divine economy, it briefly considers the nature and activity of grace in Wesley's theology. The discussion then turns to Wesley's affective-responsive moral psychology of habituation in Christian practices and virtues. Indeed, this combination—an economics of stewardship, an affective-responsive moral psychology, and the Christological content of perfection—fundamentally characterizes the entirety of Wesley's moral theology, not just his economics. The moral-theological heart of Wesley's economics is therefore a hermeneutical cycle of stewardship and response that accounts for our cooperation with God's grace throughout the entirety of creation, including our ecological stewardship.