The Presidential theme for the Annual Meeting, “Freedom,” is at the heart of Arminian theology, with its emphasis on human free will and divine non-coercion with regard to salvation. The papers in this session explore Arminianism from a variety of theological, historical, and cultural perspectives, addressing tensions from the earliest days of Wesleyan and Methodist thought and practice to the present day.
‘Another Gospel’ or ‘A remaining tension’? Methodist Arminianism in Great Britain from the Free Grace Controversy to the Anglican-Methodist Covenant, 1740-2004
From its origins in the eighteenth-century Evangelical Revival, Methodism in the tradition of the Wesleys has defined itself as confidently and robustly Arminian. This has been a marker of Methodist identity, and it has influenced evangelistic and pastoral practice. After a century of vigorous debate with the proponents of Reformed theology, Calvinist/Arminian polemics diminished from the latter part of the nineteenth century, while from the mid-twentieth century Methodism’s evangelical Arminianism was gradually re-cast into an emphasis on breadth, tolerance, and inclusivity. This paper will track the trajectory of Arminianism in British Methodism from the Wesleys to the present-day, looking particularly at post-Wesley developments, including the reframing or replacement of Arminianism over the past century and the presence or absence of this doctrinal emphasis in ecumenical dialogues.
The classic divide between Arminians and Calvinists pre-date the late 18th and 19th Century slavery debates, and when Arminians and Calvinists engaged the subject of slavery they had their own distinctive perspectives on which to draw. This paper will examine how slavery was seen by Arminians and Calvinists, arguing that central aspects of Calvinism were easily exploited to support slavery, while central tenets of Arminianism were compatible with abolition. In particular, Calvinist understandings of divine sovereignty and predestination were used to endorse and even bless slavery, while Arminian understandings of grace and free will undergirded freedom.
One of the doctrines Methodism adopted from Arminianism, and further developed, is prevenient grace – the grace that comes before, that invites, encourages, and even urges humans to accept the divine invitation, the grace where freedom, the ability to choose, ability to respond, is given. This paper will explore the connections, similarities and differences between the Arminian version of prevenient grace and prevenient grace in contemporary Methodist theology.
Prevenient grace is a theological rationale for human freedom – why freedom is there, and what freedom is for. What human freedom is for might have changed over the centuries. A contemporary version of prevenient grace can include God’s presence in a multireligious world, in a globalized world and in a world marked by conflict. By prevenient grace, humans are enabled to freedom, to responsibility, to do good. Is that still a doctrine to believe in?
The prodigious scholarship of Richard Muller has moderated but not dissipated longstanding critiques of Jacobus Arminius’s Christology, soteriology, personal integrity, and identification as a Reformed theologian. Muller also has noted insightfully the integration of doctrines in post-Reformation dogmatics, such that altering one doctrine would affect others. This paper engages with Muller’s scholarship by first assessing Muller’s four criticisms of Arminius and mounting counterarguments, then building on Muller’s insight on doctrinal integration to identify the common themes that integrate Muller’s and Arminius’s contrasting understandings of Christology, soteriology, ethics and epistemology, and the Reformed tradition. This exercise in theological pattern recognition and comparison yields two models of the integration of doctrine, ethics, and ecclesial identity for contemporary theologians to consider in relation to today’s religious landscape, not least the recent history and current state of Methodism.