The sheer diversity of the denominational components comprising the larger Wesleyan movement makes it difficult to come to terms with the theological legacy of John Wesley. On one end of the modernist dialectic one finds fundamentalism while on the other end one discovers liberalism. However, liberalism tends to prove to be a more active presence within the denominational title of Methodism. An exacerbated understanding of the experiential component of the Quadrilateral initiates a unique sense of atomism. To some Methodist theologians, this sense of atomism appeared to be Methodism's strength. However, more and more Methodist theologians are beginning to question whether atomism proves to be what has drawn Methodism into the morass plaguing much of mainline Protestantism. Perhaps this concern is true nowhere more than in the area of moral understanding. In his book John Wesley's Moral Theology: The Quest for God and Goodness, D. Stephen Long seeks to plumb the genealogical depths of atomism in an effort to recover a moral vision for Methodism and the larger Wesleyan movement. This moral vision disconnects Methodism from liberalism in favour of an identity embodied in many ways by the larger Radical Orthodoxy movement.

In order to secure the space needed to offer this interpretive focus, Long's book proves to be just as much an effort of clarification as one of proscription. The six chapters that comprise this effort subsequently move one along a continuum reflective of these very commitments. This conversation begins by raising the question of the theological validity of the current state of Methodist ethics and ends with a discussion concerning the moral inheritance Wesley received from theologians such as Thomas Aquinas. In order to identify this inheritance, Long critically undermines the interpretive influences of individuals such as Kant, Locke, Hobbes and Hume in favour of individuals such as Malebranche, Cudworth and Norris. By identifying Wesley with this latter set of philosophers versus the former, Long reveals the theological sentiments he shares in common with the Radical Orthodoxy movement. As a result, moral theology subsequently for Wesley goes from being an individual capacity for ethical decision making to being a communal participation in a holy and happy life.

Three key themes emerge as Long moves his audience towards the possibility of seeing Wesley as one who viewed moral theology as a communal participation in a holy and happy life. First, Long argues throughout his book that language is the means that casts our theological imagination. The book opens with this argument as Long raises our sense of awareness of what is lost by using a term such as ethics versus a phrase such as moral theology. Ethics is the by-product of the modernist shift from metaphysics to epistemology. Ethics subsequently becomes a form of calculus by which one seeks to make the right decision. According to Long, ‘It [ethics] sought self-evident axioms in experience as the new scientific basis for ethics’ (p. 13). With the shift to the individual as the source of that which is considered good, theology, particularly in its doctrinal form, proved unnecessary. As a matter of private preference, ethics no longer needed the communal context previously afforded to it by theology. Without this linguistic perspective in mind, the shift from the phrase ‘moral theology’ to ‘ethics’ appears innocuous. With this linguistic perspective in mind, one understands the significance of such a shift in relation to Wesley and to his efforts.

Second, by clarifying how language is the means that casts our theological imagination, Long opens the possibility that theologians have misappropriated Wesley as one advocating for ethics versus moral theology. At some level, the language one chooses determines the interpretive range brought to Wesley's work. On one level, attention to this theme includes attention to Methodist theologians who misappropriated Wesley's work. For example, ‘Bordon Parker Brown, a Methodist philosopher, offered the Wesleyan tradition its first scientific ethics and produced a tradition preoccupied with “ethics” through the publication of his Principles of Ethics’ (p. 23). Long clarifies the understanding that ‘[Ronald] Stone reads Wesley as an empiricist and a pragmatist’ (p. 233). On another level, Long undermines these misappropriations of Wesley's work by arguing that ‘We can say with certainty that Wesley was no materialist, nor was he a logical positivist’ (p. 117). The errors in the work of individuals such as Brown and Stone come through the associations they make between Wesley's work and the works of Kant, Locke, Hobbes and Hume. By contrast, Long argues that Wesley ‘clearly adopted key themes found in Malebranche, Norris and Cudworth, especially their doctrine of illumination and a metaphysics of participation’ (p. 118).

Finally, linking Wesley with a doctrine of illumination and a metaphysics of participation allows Long to draw connections between Wesley's moral theology and Thomas Aquinas's moral theology. Long claims that his ‘argument in this book is not that John Wesley was an explicit Thomist, it is that Wesley's work makes more sense when placed in the context of the conversation Thomism represents’ (p. 62). Once placed within this context, a host of connections between the work of John Wesley and Thomas Aquinas come to light. For example, Long notes that they ‘shared a particular propensity in starting with Scripture in moral theology, particularly with 2 Peter 1:4–5 and the Sermon on the Mount’ (p. 197). As a result, ‘Our ultimate happiness is only found in our participation in God as disclosed in 2 Peter 1:4. To participate in the divine nature is the end for which all humanity aims’ (p. 197). Long's efforts subsequently disconnect Wesley's work from the interpretive commitments of Protestant liberalism in favour of the interpretive commitments of Thomas Aquinas as reinterpreted by supporters of the Radical Orthodoxy movement.

Long's careful pairing of Wesley's writings against other contemporaries of his day provides the reader with adequate information necessary to locate Wesley's moral theology among other competing ethical and moral viewpoints. However in the midst of Long's book, it appears periodically that potential confusion arises with regard to the issue of language. Long, an active participant in the Radical Orthodoxy movement, freely uses terms that may only be explicable to those already familiar with such efforts. When comparing Wesley and Thomas Aquinas, Long writes, ‘Only when we understand this dogmatic theological context, can we understand Aquinas's doctrine of deification as indebted to both illumination and metaphysics of participation’ (p. 193). For adherents to the Radical Orthodoxy movement, the word participation carries with it a particular theological understanding. However, unless one was to read an introduction to Radical Orthodoxy such as James K. A. Smith's Introducing Radical Orthodoxy: Mapping a Post-secular Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2004), Long's continual use of a term such as participation may prove confusing to segments of his audience.

In a different manner, language issues persist in chapter 6 when Long argues for the dismantling of the public realm as being seen chiefly as ‘a modernist politics where the state, market, or a combination thereof is conceived as the greatest catholic social reality’ (p. 212). Long argues for the church to be seen as truly public and catholic. However, at times this section linguistically carries with it an awkward tone. Through his attempt to redefine the word ‘public’, Long finds himself bound to the same language of a public/private dualism he is fighting against. On one level, this awkward construct reveals the depth of the challenge Long is facing. On another level, these linguistic constructs still reflect the very aspirations of modernity itself.

Overall, Long's work defends a well-formulated theme regarding the nature of Wesley's moral theology and is bolstered by a wide range of evidence gleaned from primary sources. In terms of this form of moral theology, Long writes that ‘It [Wesley's moral theology] is neither empiricist nor intuitionist. It is theological, based on a doctrine of illumination – something we do not have by nature, but receive as a gift’ (p. 123). Such a departure is radical in nature and a worthy reflection of the theological inheritance of the Radical Orthodoxy movement. Long may at times seem unable to transcend the linguistic constructs that reflect the very impulse he seeks to critique. However, perhaps this inability serves more importantly as an indication of how significant Long's effort proves to be, not only for Methodism but perhaps for any theological tradition struggling with the debilitating inheritance of atomism as embodied by Protestant liberalism.