This volume celebrates the Wesleyan scholarship of Victor Shepherd, the first professor to occupy the Chair of Wesley Studies at Tyndale University College & Seminary in Toronto, Canada. The essays collected here explore not only the life and theology of John and Charles Wesley, but also many themes relating to the contemporary Wesleyan tradition, especially within the Canadian context Attention is given to the intellectual, social and religious context of John Wesley's theology, as well as to the ecumenical significance of a theologian who is seen to relate readily to many different families within the universal church. A pastor for four decades, Shepherd's thought always reflects Wesley's insistence on "practical divinity" or theology not oriented to speculation but rather to the concrete concerns of the people of God in their engagement with the treachery of their own hearts and the turbulence in the wider world.

Victor A. Shepherd is Professor of Theology and Professor of Philosophy at Tyndale University College & Seminary, Toronto, and Professor Ordinarius for the Graduate Theological Foundation, University of Oxford. He is also an adjunct professor at the Toronto School of Theology, University of Toronto, where he supervises doctoral students in Reformation studies, Puritan thought, the theology of the eighteenth-century Awakening, and contemporary theology. He is currently a member of the Evangelical-Roman Catholic Dialogue (an undertaking of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada and the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops). His other books include Interpreting Martin Luther: An Introduction to His Life and Thought (Regent College Publishing) and The Nature and Function of Faith in the Theology of John Calvin (Mercer University Press).