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Free Grace 1
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Free Grace 2
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Free Grace 3
John Wesley and George Whitefield had been best buds in the Holy Club and in ministry, beginning the Methodist Awakening in Britain together. But then they had a very public brawl over their theologically different Arminian and Calvinist starting points. Wesley’s sermon, Free Grace, was a convincing a moving manifesto denouncing the Calvinist doctrine of predestination as blasphemous, for it made the God of love to be a God of hate. He argued that any doctrine of unconditional election (humanity has no choice–we are either saved or damned) and limited atonement (Jesus only died for the ones he would save) denies all of the scripture which claim God loves all, that God wishes for none to perish, that God is no respecter of persons. All that is a great argument, but it took it further and says that Calvinism leads to people living unholy lives, that Calvinists live lives of fear without assurance of faith–but Arminians never doubt their assurance. There’s quite a few points in his argument that are incredibly weak–and George Whitefield calls him on it.
George Whitefield did not immediately respond to John Wesley when he published “Free Grace.” It wasn’t until Wesley published the sermon in America (where George was having successful revivals) that he finally gave his rebuttal. George was leading The First Great Awakening in America, and his sermons were entirely Methodist but from a Calvinist perspective, and he felt like Wesley’s theological indictment would do damage to all these newly revived Christians. In a public letter delivered on Christmas Eve, George point-for-point tore down Wesley’s argument with common Calvinism. It’s a fantastic response, especially to many of Wesley’s weakest points, and I would have loved to hear him preach it with his Eliza Doolittle accent. If you don’t remember from previous comics, a “Monergist” is someone who believes that God alone acts in salvation (that humans have no will to respond).
These comics were part of a larger series I did years ago detailing the friendship and fall out between Whitefield and the Wesleys. It’s the first split and parting of ways in Methodism over theological differences. It’s interesting how little we’ve changed in the ways we publicly thrash the people who think differently than us, and how quick we are to part ways with dear friends in order to preserve our own way of talking about Jesus. When love is passionate, this protective instinct rises up in us, and with hostility we rise up to defend the ones we love. When we bring the guns of self-defense and lay them on the altar table for self-preservation, it leads to escalation. When we take communion with all our loaded weapons pointed at the person next to us, and all their loaded weapons pointed back at us, we imagine the only way to feel safe again is to just part ways. It’s too scary to lay down our weapons. We think that must mean that we don’t really love the people we’re trying to protect. We’re not really being faithful to Jesus if we don’t crusade and destroy the people that think differently about him. And like the men in the comic, our theological wars leave a wake of destruction.
The good news is, Whitefield and Wesley eventually learned to respect each other. Despite their incredibly different theological frameworks, they could see in each other the clear fruit of the Holy Spirit. My challenge to you this week is to look across the aisle at the person you’ve written off, lay down your guns, and ask them where they’ve seen Jesus alive and at work in the world today. Jesus himself has shown us what it looks like to have the Religious Right sit around the same table as the Zealot, the Government Official, the Soldier, the Prostitute, the “sinner.” It requires all of us to be so enamored with who Jesus is, so ready to sit at his feet and listen to him (even if we interpret what he’s said radically differently), that we’d rather look for the Christ at work in each other before we assume that we alone have met Christ for who he really is.
When not drawing the Wesley Bros cartoon, the Rev. Charlie Baber, a United Methodist deacon, serves as minister of discipleship for youth and families at Highland United Methodist Church in Raleigh, N.C. His cartoon appears on United Methodist Insight by special arrangement.