George Whitefield’s Theology of Sin and Salvation

Conviction of Sin

Theological anthropology and soteriology have been tightly interwoven in Whitefield’s proclamation of the gospel. Echoing Wesley’s pithy encapsulation of this theological relationship (“Know your illness! Know your treatment!”¹), Whitefield was adamant that the doctrine of unique sin was “the very basis of the Christian faith.”² Motivating stark assertions like this was a perception that the “glad tidings of the gospel” are excellent news solely to those that have first embraced the dangerous information of their completely determined plight and dire want of God’s gracious salvific intervention. In a single sermon, he provided his viewers a peek behind the scenes of his theological priorities, contending that accountable preaching of the gospel entails avoiding the provide of “therapeutic earlier than we see sinners wounded.” He continued, “Safe sinners should hear the thunderings of Mount Sinai, earlier than we carry them to mount Zion.”³ Elsewhere, in his sermon “The Gospel, a Dying Saint’s Triumph,” Whitefield declared, “You can not preach the gospel with out preaching the regulation; for you shall discover by and by, we’re to evangelise one thing that the individuals should be saved by: it’s inconceivable to inform them how they’re to be saved, until we inform them what they’re to be saved from.”⁴

Whitefield held that no facet of human nature stays unpolluted by the results of the fallen nature each particular person inherits from our first mother and father. That’s, whereas Whitefield’s theology of unique sin emphasised the imputation of the second Adam’s righteousness by religion because the antidote to the imputation of the primary Adam’s sin to his posterity, it additionally careworn that Adam’s fall resulted within the depravity of his sinful nature being imparted to your complete human race. As an illustration, he declared, “All of us stand in want of being justified, on account of the sin of our natures: for we’re all chargeable with unique sin, or the primary sin of our mother and father.” Responding to the accusation that his theology renders God unjust, in addition to the energetic explanation for sin, he appealed to Paul’s argument in Romans 5, “the place we’re instructed that ‘in Adam all died’; that’s, Adam’s sin was imputed to all . . . [and] this level appears to be excellently summed up within the article of our church, the place she declares, ‘Authentic sin . . . is the fault and corruption of each man.’ ”⁵

On one other event, Whitefield referred to the account of the autumn in Genesis 3 because the origin of common and inherent human depravity: “Our first mother and father contracted it [a prevailing enmity against God] after they fell from God by consuming the forbidden fruit, and the bitter and malignant contagion of it hath descended to, and fairly overspread, their entire posterity.”⁶ Along with Scripture and custom, Whitefield additionally appealed to empirical expertise in help of the doctrine of unique sin. As an illustration, he contended: “If we glance inwardly, we are going to see sufficient of lusts, and man’s mood opposite to the mood of God. There’s delight, malice, and revenge, in all our hearts; and this mood can’t come from God; it comes from our first dad or mum, Adam, who, after he fell from God, fell out of God into the satan.”⁷

So vital was a proper understanding—and experiential conviction—of sin to Whitefield that he was ready to say, “When you have by no means felt the load of unique sin, don’t name yourselves Christians.”⁸ As an illustration, in his sermon “The Lord Our Righteousness,” he was not content material merely to rehearse the “mournful account” of Adam and Eve’s covenantbreaking transgression, one which rendered them—and by implication, their descendants—“in want of a greater righteousness than their very own.” Nor was it enough merely to say the theological mechanics of imputation and Jesus’s energetic and passive obedience, whereby “Christ not solely died, however lived; not solely suffered, however obeyed for; or as an alternative of, poor sinners.” Certainly, he warned, “Entertaining this doctrine in your heads, with out receiving the Lord Jesus Christ savingly by a vigorous religion into your hearts, will however improve your damnation.”⁹

As an alternative, as he drew his sermon towards its rhetorical climax, Whitefield felt compelled to impress upon his listeners that until they availed themselves of what he had earlier described as “divine philanthropy,” the existential actuality of a looming eternity experiencing the horrors of a simply divine judgment awaited them. Signaling his homiletical flip towards eliciting a private conviction of sin amongst his listeners, he introduced, “However it’s time for me to return slightly nearer to your consciences.” In what would turn into a well-recognized function of Whitefield’s sermons, he exhorted: “O Christless sinners, I’m distressed for you . . . for whither would you flee, if loss of life ought to discover you bare? . . . O consider loss of life! O consider judgment! But a short time, and time shall be no extra; after which what is going to turn into of you, if the Lord be not your righteousness?” Vividly imagining the day of judgment when “Christ himself shall pronounce the irrevocable [damnatory] sentence” on these but to expertise the brand new delivery, Whitefield empathized together with his viewers, imploring them to “shut with Christ”: “You needn’t worry the greatness or variety of your sins. For are you sinners? So am I. . . . And but the Lord (for ever adored be his wealthy, free and sovereign grace) the Lord is my righteousness.”¹⁰

Unconditional Election

If Whitefield thought-about a proper understanding of the doctrine of sin to be integral to a proper proclamation of the gospel, then he additionally thought-about the doctrine of unconditional election to be an inextricable corollary of his solidifying Calvinist doctrine of salvation. In a letter to the Arminian John Wesley written in February 1741 he declared, “However I need to preach the gospel of Christ, and that I can’t now do, with out talking of Election.”¹¹ Given humanity’s fallen state and inherent lack of capability or want to provoke salvation, by 1739 Whitefield had turn into satisfied of the doctrinal necessity of unconditional election as an expression not of divine arbitrariness however of God’s eternal love. Emphasizing God’s free grace in election— by which he meant God’s freedom to dispense or withhold grace—he wrote to a fellow believer: “Oh how doth the free, the distinguishing grace of God excite the love of these, who’re made partakers of it! What was there in you and me . . . that ought to transfer God to chuse us earlier than others? Was there any health foreseen in us, besides a health for damnation? I imagine not.” Reflecting a totally Calvinistic interpretation of the so-called chain of salvation in Romans 8:29–30, Whitefield continued: “No, God selected us from eternity, he referred to as us in time, and I’m persuaded will maintain us from falling lastly, until time shall be no extra. Think about the Gospel on this view, and it seems a constant scheme.”¹²

Nowhere does Whitefield’s dedication to a Calvinistic conception of predestination come into sharper reduction than in his very public doctrinal dispute with John Wesley between 1739 and 1742, one which ultimately resulted within the fracturing of the Methodist motion alongside Arminian and Calvinist theological fault traces. In Whitefield’s estimation, to disclaim unconditional election (as was Wesley’s settled theological stance) was to disclaim the doctrine of unique sin. This in flip, he argued, threatened the cherished Reformation precept of sola gratia: salvation by grace alone. In his printed response to Wesley’s “Free Grace” sermon, Whitefield leveled a shocking cost towards his one-time mentor: “You plainly make salvation rely not on God’s free-grace, however on man’s free-will.”¹³ Wesley recorded in his journal, “[Whitefield] instructed me he and I preached two totally different gospels, and subsequently he not solely wouldn’t be a part of with me, or give me the fitting hand of fellowship, however was resolved publicly to evangelise towards me and my brother wheresoever he preached in any respect.”¹⁴

Responding to Wesley’s characterization of Calvinist theology—that “by advantage of an everlasting, unchangeable, irresistible decree of God, one a part of mankind are infallibly saved, and the remaining infallibly damned; it being inconceivable that any of the previous ought to be damned, or that any of the latter ought to be saved”—Whitefield forged unconditional election as a crucial doctrinal implication of holding to an orthodox conception of unique sin. He wrote, “However who ever asserted, that hundreds and thousands and thousands of males, with none previous offence or fault of theirs, have been unchangeably doomed to eternal burnings?” Whitefield’s ensuing argument displays his familiarity with Reformed confessional statements just like the Westminster Confession of Religion and the Canons of Dort. Each of those statements describe God’s choice to actively elect some to salvation and move by the reprobate utilizing asymmetrical language, whereby the nonelect are in the end judged for his or her sin fairly than their nonelection. On this manner, God is exonerated from the cost of being the writer of unbelief.

Whitefield continued, “Certainly Mr. Wesley will personal God’s justice, in imputing Adam’s sin to his posterity; and in addition, that after Adam fell, and his posterity in him, God would possibly justly have handed all of them by, with out sending his personal Son to be a saviour for anyone.” In sum, he perceived any denial of unconditional election as proof of unwarranted optimism in a single’s theological anthropology: “Except you heartily conform to each these factors, you don’t imagine unique sin aright.”¹⁵ Whitefield the theologian may need been a zealous defender of unconditional election, however it’s questionable how properly he understood the nuances of Wesley’s anthropology. Certainly, if Wesley’s critique of Calvinism would look like extra appropriately leveled towards hyper-Calvinism’s diminishment of real human duty, then Whitefield’s critique of Arminianism would appear to be extra appropriately leveled towards semi-Pelagianism, a stance from which Wesley explicitly distanced himself. In any case, in a single sense, he believed in unique sin a lot as Whitefield did. As an illustration, in his 1759 sermon “Authentic Sin,” Wesley contended:

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Is man by nature crammed with all method of evil? Is he void of all good? Is he wholly fallen? Is his soul completely corrupted? Or, to return again to the textual content [Gen. 6:5], is “each creativeness of the ideas of his coronary heart evil regularly”? Enable this, and you might be to date a Christian. Deny it, and you might be however a heathen nonetheless.¹⁶

That being stated, Wesley all the time certified his doctrine of sin with a theology of divinely and universally bestowed prevenient grace—a grace that might allow each particular person to reply positively, although nonmeritoriously, to the free provide of the gospel. For instance, in his 1752 treatise “Predestination Calmly Thought of,” Wesley clarified, “Pure free will, within the current state of mankind, I don’t perceive: I solely assert, that there’s a measure of free will supernaturally restored to each man, along with that supernatural gentle, which ‘enlightens each man that cometh into the world.’ ”¹⁷ If Whitefield was conscious of this nuance in Wesley’s theology—one which affirmed a graciously freed will fairly than a will partially free from the results of the autumn, he did not acknowledge it. In different phrases, no matter real theological disagreements existed between Wesley and Whitefield when it got here to the doctrine of election, these doctrinal variations have been compounded and exacerbated by terminological misunderstandings— willful or in any other case.

Opposite to Wesley’s fears that Calvinist theology inevitably disincentivizes evangelism and “tends to destroy the consolation of faith, the happiness of Christianity,” the doctrine of unconditional election was a constant supply of encouragement for Whitefield, each in his preaching ministry and in his expertise of divine assurance of salvation. For instance, in response to Wesley’s cost that Calvinism renders “all preaching useless” (it being “useless to them which can be elected,” since “they, whether or not with preaching or with out, will infallibly be saved,” and “ineffective to them that aren’t elected,” since “they can not presumably be saved”), Whitefield distinguished between major and secondary causes within the actualization of God’s foreordained functions. On this occasion, God makes use of preaching as a proximate trigger to perform the last word finish of drawing his elect to himself. Whitefield wrote, “Hath not God, who hath appointed salvation for a sure quantity, appointed additionally the preaching of the phrase, as a method to carry them to it?” On this manner, he was liberated to “preach promiscuously to all,” assured that God’s phrase won’t fail to perform the aim for which he has despatched it forth.¹⁸

And much from undermining his sense of assurance, the doctrine of unconditional election introduced Whitefield great non secular comfort. In his expertise, the 2 doctrines have been inextricably linked. He wrote to at least one correspondent, “Oh the excellency of the doctrine of election, and of the ultimate perseverance of the saints, to those that are sealed by the Spirit of promise.”¹⁹ Aware of the frailty and fickleness of his religion, Whitefield found immeasurable solace in God’s dedication to complete the great work he has begun in his elect. He wrote to Wesley,

As for my very own half, this doctrine is my every day help: I ought to completely sink beneath a dread of my impending trials, was I not firmly persuaded that God has chosen me in Christ from earlier than the inspiration of the world, and that now being effectually referred to as, he’ll undergo none to pluck me out of his almighty hand.²⁰

This text is customized from Whitefield on the Christian Life: New Delivery to Take pleasure in God by Tom Schwanda and Ian Maddock.

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