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Today’s Episode: Whitefield’s Response to Free Grace
In order to understand the stakes involved in the tumultuous argument between John Wesley and George Whitefield over predestintaion, we need to break with chronology and jump ahead a year in order to look at Whitefield’s response to John Wesley’s sermon on Free Grace.
The first few years of the Methodist movement are clouded with the predestinarian controversies. In order to fully flesh them out, we need to present the best arguments each of the significant figures make in their turn. Therefore, we will break with chronology and jump ahead a year in order to look at Whitefield’s response to John Wesley’s sermon on Free Grace.
It took a while for Whitefield to figure out his reply, in part, because he had to figure out exactly what he wanted to say. This seems a mild point to make, but it is essential for understanding this controversy. In 1739, Wesley and Whitefield weren’t steeped in the Calvinist and Arminian discourse that had bedeviled the Netherlands in the early 17th century. Their concern is a not a continuation of scholastic theological debates, but a question of biblical interpretation prima facie. How are we to read the bible? How are we to live as Christians? How are lives best changed? The traditions just invoked offered resources and Whitefield drew upon some of those resources as he developed his response to Wesley.
One such resource was the writing of Ralph Erskine, who in 1738, published his Collection of Sermons on Several Occasions. Whitefield read Erskine on his voyage of 1739 to the New World after leaving Wesley in Bristol. He also wrote to Erskine and began a regular correspondence in which Erskine was able to put George in the right direction of Reformed thinkers. John Wesley also had a healthy correspondence with Erskine at this time, as well, though their topic concerned revival in general, as opposed to election and predestination.
Even in the summer of 1740, more than a year after Free Grace was preaching, Whitefield wrote to John, saying:
I cannot bear the thoughts of opposing you: but how can I avoid it, if you go about (as your brother Charles once said) to drive John Calvin out of Bristol. Alas, I never read any thing that Calvin wrote; my doctrines I had from CHRIST and his apostles; I was taught them of GOD; and as GOD was pleased to send me out first, and to enlighten me first, so I think he still continues to do it.1
Whitefield has been championed by reformed thinkers in the 20th century, but it would anachronistic to simply slot him into the historical trajectory of reformed thought at the point of the split with John and Charles. George Whitefield doesn’t mention predestination in his journal until late 1740 when he is in North America.
And so instead of fixating on theological traditions, we will look at Whitefield’s to understand the heart of the matter.
George Whitfield wrote his public letter to John Wesley from Georgia in December of 1740. The rest of this episode will be a detailed analysis of this letter.
Whitefield writes:
This letter, no doubt, will lose me many friends: and for this cause perhaps God has laid this difficult task upon me — even to see whether I am willing to forsake all for him, or not. From such considerations as these, I think it my duty to bear a humble testimony, and to earnestly plead for the truths which I am convinced are clearly revealed in the Word of God.
And then he offers the reason for his writing:
For some time before, and especially since my last departure from England, both in public and private, by preaching and printing, you have been propagating the doctrine of universal redemption.
After a few comments on the correspondence between Wesley and Whitefield, George begins his response to the published version of Wesley’s sermon with a dispute over Romans 8 and the meaning of ‘all.’ Whitefield writes:
Indeed, honoured Sir, it is plain beyond all contradiction that St. Paul, through the whole of Romans 8, is speaking of the privileges of those alone who are really in Christ. And let any unprejudiced person read what goes before and what follows your text, and he must confess the word “all” only signifies those that are in Christ.
He then offers a critique of Wesley’s use of logic, a cutting remark given that John tutored on logic at Oxford for many years, and probably helped Whitefield as a student. He also uses the rhetorical devices of claiming not to do a thing while doing it.
I will not mention how illogically you have proceeded. If you had written clearly, you would first, honoured Sir, have proved your proposition: “God’s grace is free to all. ” And then by way of inference, you would have argued against what you call the horrible decree. But you knew (because Arminianism, as of late, has so abounded among us) that people were generally prejudiced against the doctrine of reprobation; and therefore you thought that if you kept up their dislike of that, you could overthrow the doctrine of election entirely. For without a doubt, the doctrine of election and reprobation must stand or fall together.
Finally, to finish his introduction, Whitefield calls Wesley’s use of grace equivocal and his use of free false. He then defines his own view of reprobation:
That God intends to give saving grace through Jesus Christ only to a certain number; and that the rest of mankind, after the fall of Adam, being justly left by God to continue in sin, will at last suffer that eternal death which is its proper wages.
This he asserts as an argument from authority by claiming it as the established doctrine of scripture and the 17th article of the Church of England (one of the articles John did not include in his articles of religion).
After making his argument from authority, George starts to refute Wesley’s five major points against predestination which he argued in his sermon Free Grace.
First, you say that if this is so (i.e., if there is an election) then all preaching is in vain…O dear Sir, what kind of reasoning — or rather sophistry —this is! Has not God, who has appointed salvation for a certain number, also appointed the preaching of the Word as a means to bring them to it? Does anyone hold election in any other sense?
I have heard this argument from Reformed folks a few decades ago and it still doesn’t hold water. Whether God appoints preaching as the means or not, it is still a vain activity because preaching doesn’t change anyone. My son making his bed because I told him to is not the same activity as if he made his bed without a reminder. If I trumpeted to friends how clean my son is because of making his bed, but never mentioned that he only did so at my behest, it would be a vain comment, just like trumpeting preaching as the means God chose for election, when election happens regardless of the means.
Whitefield goes on:
Second, you say that the doctrine of election and reprobation tends to directly destroy holiness, which is the end of all the ordinances of God.
Whitefield makes a longer response to this point that I will break into parts. First he says,
I thought that one who carries perfection to such an exalted pitch as dear Mr. Wesley does, would know that a true lover of the Lord Jesus Christ would strive to be holy for the sake of being holy, and work for Christ out of love and gratitude, without any regard for the rewards of heaven or fear of hell.
It is a chippy comment that Whitefield does put much weight on. But it is a major argument: why should anyone love a God who damns them?
The epistemology of election is one of Wesley’s major sticking points, which is why assurance of salvation at Aldersgate caused such a transformation in his life. No longer was he filled with anxiety of his own soul, but the Reformed doctrine of election would return it right back. Whitefield is not anxious of this point on knowledge so he can’t fully respond to Wesley’s argument.
Whitefield then lays out his doctrine of election:
This is just as it is with the Doctrine of Election. I know that it is unalterably fixed (one may say) that I must be damned or saved; but since I do not know which for certain, why should I not strive, even though at present I am in a state of nature, since I do not know if this striving may not be the means God has intended to bless me, in order to bring me into a state of grace?
For Wesley, antinomianism, or lawlessness, that is, doing whatever one pleases, would be the reason not to strive, yet that is not an issue for Whitefield. Instead, he brings up a number of anecdotal examples of holiness from predestinarians and uses that as proof.
Whitefield then goes to the third point:
Third, says your sermon, “This doctrine tends to destroy the comforts of religion, the happiness of Christianity, etc.”
He again argues from experience before saying:
This is one reason among many others why I admire the doctrine of election, and why I am convinced that it should have a place in gospel ministrations, and should be insisted on with faithfulness and care. It has a natural tendency to rouse the soul out of its carnal security. And therefore many carnal men cry out against it. Whereas universal redemption, sadly, is a notion adapted to keep the soul in its lethargic, sleepy condition; and therefore so many natural men admire and applaud it.
We see here that the goal for both Wesley and Whitefield is inspiring conversion. Whitefield sees carnal security in universal redemption. Wesley sees carnal security in predestination. Carnal security here meaning a safety in the status quo of one’s sinful life. Each wants to break those bonds and they see the different doctrines as ways to do so.
Whitefield then covers a few more paragraphs of the sermon before writing,
But without the belief of the doctrine of election, and the immutability of the free love of God, I cannot see how it is possible that anyone should have a comfortable assurance of eternal salvation. What could it signify to a man whose conscience is thoroughly awakened, and who is warned in good earnest to seek deliverance from the wrath to come, even though he should be assured that all his past sins are forgiven, and that he is now a child of God — if notwithstanding this, he may afterward become a child of the devil, and be thrown into hell at last?
Whitefield cannot imagine assurance apart from double predestination. Wesley can’t imagine it with it.
Whitefield eventually moves on (this third section was the longest of the letter):
Fourth, I will now proceed to another topic. Says the dear Mr. Wesley, “How uncomfortable a thought this is, that thousands and millions of men, without any preceding offence or fault of theirs, were unchangeably doomed to everlasting burnings?”
Whitefield doesn’t respond to this point of Wesley’s. Instead, he makes an argument about original sin with which Wesley would agree, completely ducking the issue. There is a connection between Stalin’s great quote (one death is a tragedy, a million a statistic) and Whitefield’s argument here. Whitefield wants to talk about the children of Adam as a class. Wesley wants to talk about individuals and whether they are reprobate for no seeming reason.
Finally, Whitefield addresses the last point:
But, Fifth, you say, “This doctrine has a direct manifest tendency to overthrow the whole Christian revelation. For, you say, “supposing there is an eternal, unchangeable decree, one part of mankind must be saved, as though the Christian revelation were not in existence.” …But, dear Sir, how does that follow? It is only by the Christian revelation that we are acquainted with God’s design of saving his church by the death of his Son. Indeed, it is settled in the everlasting covenant that this salvation shall be applied to the elect through the knowledge and faith of him.
Whitefield goes on, but his argument is the same as his response to the first point about the vanity of preaching. It is by divine fiat that election is revealed in this way, so there. Whitefield also ignores the evangelistic point that if the church is a source of revelation and the church hasn’t been to certain places in the world, where is the justice in the damnation of those people?
Whitefield’s conclusion is extensive (as you might imagine, at this point). He writes:
I purposely omit making any further particular remarks on the several last pages of your sermon. Indeed if your name, dear Sir, had not been prefixed to the sermon, I could not have been so uncharitable as to think you were the author of such sophistry. You beg the question, in saying that God has declared (notwithstanding that you admit, I suppose, some will be damned) that he will save all — i.e., every individual person. You take it for granted (for you have no solid proof) that God is unjust if he passes by any; and then you decry the “horrible decree…”
before finally writing,
There, I am persuaded, I shall see dear Mr. Wesley convinced of election and everlasting love. And it often fills me with pleasure to think how I shall behold you casting your crown down at the feet of the Lamb and, as it were, filled with a holy blushing for opposing the divine sovereignty in the manner you have done.
But I hope the Lord will show you this before you go from here. O how I long for that day! If the Lord should be pleased to make use of this letter for that purpose, it would abundantly rejoice the heart of, dear and honoured Sir, Yours affectionate, though unworthy brother and servant in Christ, GEORGE WHITEFIELD.
Okay, that was a lot. This is a longer episode than most but this issue is more pertinent than most to the future of the movement. With this understanding of Whitefield’s position, in our next episode, we will return to Bristol in May of 1739 to see what takes place during the summer of 1739 in that great revival, next time on the History of Methodism.