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THE THEME OF “GRACE ALONE” (SOLA GRATIA)
In the three chapters of this final section I suggest that John Wesley has made a major
contribution not merely by the effect of his preaching and teaching on the lived experience of the
Christian faith by millions of people, but also by developing a clear and balanced articulation of the
key aspects of Christian theology which are especially relevant at the present time. I do so by
focusing on three main themes, to each of which I devote a chapter: (1) “sola gratia” (grace alone),
(2) sanctification, and (3) assurance. It is the particular combination of these three aspects which
ensures, firstly, that Wesley had a true understanding of what it means to be a follower of Jesus,
secondly, that his message has proved to be so attractive to millions of people over nearly three
centuries, and thirdly that his theology is one which remains very relevant in the present-day Church.
I begin in the present chapter by focusing attention on the theme of grace alone.
The central insight of the Reformation was, and is, that humans are saved by grace alone, through
faith. As an Anglican, faithful to the doctrines of his Church (including the Thirty-Nine Articles of
the Anglican Church) Wesley would never, even prior to 1738, have denied that a person is saved by
grace through faith. But there is no indication that he experienced or preached it with total conviction
as the bedrock of the Christian faith. The core of his conversion-experience, however, was his
acceptance of this truth, not just as something to be believed as part of a creed, but as something to
be experienced and emphasized as the anchor-point of his faith. After 1738, all of his life and work
were devoted to preaching and teaching this central point. Even in the course of his quite
acrimonious disputes with some of the Calvinists of his time, when he was at times accused of
abandoning or watering down this core belief and adopting a “papist” position, he never wavered on
this point.
In fact Wesley insisted on the gratuity of God’s initiative at two distinct levels. First of all,
creation is a pure gift of God. This means that human nature in all its aspects, and every human
action, are all possible only because of the free initiative of God. Every human action must be
underpinned by God’s prior and on-going creative power (cf. chapter 3 above).
Secondly—and far more immediately relevant for fallen humankind—all humans are utterly
dependent on the grace of Christ’s atonement. Without the merits of Christ we would be lost in sin.
At every stage of the spiritual journey we are utterly dependent on the prior initiative of God. God’s
prevenient grace is what makes it possible for humans to begin to turn to God. God’s awakening
grace makes it possible for the sinner to become aware of being enslaved to sin. God’s justifying and
regenerating grace is what brings about the conversion by which the person begins a new life as a
child of God: the person is justified by the merits of Christ and the love of God is shed abroad in the
person’s heart. After conversion, the good actions performed by the Christian are made possible only
by the grace of God. A further special grace is required to enable the Christian to become “entirely
sanctified”.
The Word “Merit”
To say, as Wesley always did, that human salvation is by grace alone is to say that nobody can
merit it by any human action (by “works”). However, Wesley also insisted that humans are bound to
respond to God’s initiative at each stage of the spiritual journey. Christians are called and enabled to
perform good actions; and even prior to conversion the sinner must cooperate with God’s prevenient
grace, in so far as that is possible in the fallen state. Wesley did not hesitate to say that people are
rewarded by God when they perform good works. This raises the major issue of whether a person can
be said to merit God’s favor.
Much of the bitter controversy between Protestants and Catholics at the time of the Reformation
and in later centuries centered on this word “merit”. So Wesley was exceptionally courageous—
perhaps even rash—in venturing to explore this concept. He was quite unwilling to accept that the
human response to God’s gracious initiatives is of no significance. He insisted that God’s grace will
be withdrawn if the person does not cooperate. As I noted in chapter 10 above, he said in 1754 that
fulfilling Christ’s command is a condition for being his friend. Eventually, in the controversial
Minutes of 1770 he went so far as to say that we are pleasing or displeasing to God according to our
works. He did not back off from this statement but he clarified it a little later by saying that it applied
to retaining justification rather than to attaining it. He also said that good works are a condition for
final salvation.
As I pointed out in chapter 10, Wesley said that the Christian is rewarded according to his works.
He defended himself against the accusation that he had adopted a “papist” view by distinguishing
between what is “rewardable” and what is “merited”. But late in life he suggested that if the word
“merit” were used in a rather loose sense it could be equivalent to “rewardable”; and he noted that
the word was frequently used in the Bible in this loose sense. The key point is that in all the years
after 1738 Wesley steadfastly refused to accept that any human action can merit a reward from God,
taking the word “merit” in its strict, proper, and normal sense.
Agreement about a Misunderstanding
It is quite ironic—but also very encouraging—to find that this whole issue about the acceptance
or rejection of the word “merit” as a crucial source of division between Protestants and Roman
Catholics has now come to be seen to have been due to a misunderstanding about the exact meaning
of the word. On July 18, 2006 delegates to the World Methodist Conference voted unanimously to
adopt the joint declaration on justification, which was approved in 1999 by the Vatican and the
Lutheran World Federation. This 1999 declaration said, "By grace alone, in faith in Christ's saving
work and not because of any merit on our part, we are accepted by God and receive the Holy Spirit,
who renews our hearts while equipping us and calling us to good works." In adopting this joint
declaration the Methodists’ resolution said that the agreement “corresponds to Methodist doctrine”
and “expresses a far-reaching consensus in regard to the theological controversy which was a major
cause of the split in Western churches in the 16th century.” 1
The agreement of the three Churches was a very significant ecumenical breakthrough. It meant
that the highest authority in the Roman Catholic Church had accepted the validity of the fundamental
principle of the Reformation, the principle on which Wesley as well as Luther had always stood firm.
At first sight it looks as though the Roman Catholic authorities had at long last abandoned their
defense of the concept of merit. On closer inspection, however, it emerges that official Catholic
teaching, as articulated by its most respected theologians, had not in fact maintained that humans can
merit justification. In defending the use of the word “merit” they were using the word in what
Wesley called “a loose sense”. They did not intend to deny that salvation is by grace alone. They
only wanted to insist that humans are bound to cooperate with God’s grace—a point which they
feared could be neglected by the use of the formulas “salvation by grace alone” and “by faith alone”.
What this indicates is that the dispute between the Churches on this central issue of the
Reformation had no solid theological basis. It was due to a misunderstanding about the exact
meaning of the word “merit”, exacerbated by distrust on both sides and by political tensions which
had no religious or theological dimension. One could scarcely doubt that Wesley would have been
greatly encouraged by this overcoming of a centuries-old dispute. He might even have felt that his
own exploration of the meaning of the word “merit” and his distinction between its strict use and its
use in a more loose sense, may have contributed to some extent to the ecumenical breakthrough.
1
This statement stands in sharp contrast to the words of an address by the prominent Methodist theologian W. R.
Cannon to the Eighth Ecumenical Methodist Conference in Oxford in 1951: “Justification by faith is the cardinal
principle of Protestant Christianity ... the single cause both of the original and continuing separation of the Protestant
Churches from Rome, the absolute and, I fear, irrevocable distinction between the heritage of the Reformation and
that of Catholicism.”
This agreement at the doctrinal level is of course really important. But it is well to remember that
Wesley’s main emphasis was not on just formal acceptance of doctrines but rather on taking this
doctrine of sola gratia very seriously in his own life and in his preaching and teaching. For this
reason, his stance poses quite a challenge to the way the Christian faith is preached and lived in some
of our mainstream Churches at the present time. There one finds at times a tendency to reduce
Christianity to a respectable moralism which is not at all what Wesley would want.
The Significance of Suddenness
In Wesley’s view the suddenness of the conversion breakthrough was the most striking proof that
justification and regeneration come from grace alone. It is clear that he first came to believe in the
importance of such an instantaneous conversion as a result of his contact with the Moravians, and
especially through the influence of Peter Böhler. Even when he distanced himself from the
Moravians he continued to link sola gratia with suddenness. There were three reasons for this. The
first reason was based on his experience: he found that very many people were in fact experiencing
sudden conversions as a result of his preaching and that of his colleagues and followers. Secondly, he
put forward what one might call rational arguments: a person is either forgiven or not forgiven by
God, with no room for a halfway situation; and just as the birth of a child takes place at once or over
a very short time, so also the new birth must come in a similar manner (cf. Chapter 8 above). Thirdly,
there was a theological basis for his view: he believed that in a sudden conversion there is no need
and no room for human involvement, apart from the crucial role played by faith in responding to
God’s call—and, for Wesley, this faith is itself a grace.
In Wesley’s time there was little or no awareness of what the science of psychology has revealed
about how a process can be taking place at an unconscious level and can then suddenly burst into
consciousness. The understanding of unconscious processes which has emerged over the past century
has important theological implications. It suggests that in an apparently sudden conversion there may
after all be more human involvement—more human response to the grace of God—than Wesley had
realized. This undoubtedly weakens the argument that suddenness is a “proof” that the conversion is
due to God alone. It does not, however, undermine the fundamental religious truth that it is only by
the grace of God that one can be converted. Ultimately this is a truth accepted in faith, and
authenticated by the inner spiritual experience of millions of Christians, rather than “proved” by
external evidence. As I have noted in the concluding paragraphs to chapter 8 above, Wesley came in
his later life to a point where he was less rigid in insisting on the link between suddenness and sola
gratia.
What about the more rational argument of Wesley that one is either justified or not justified,
regenerated or not regenerated, with no room for a halfway situation? In this matter there is much to
be said for following the approach adopted by Wesley on occasions when he was confronted by
spiritual events or processes which did not seem to fit into the standard pattern worked out by himself
or his colleagues. In these situations he was inclined to point out that God could do things that were
beyond human understanding. Most Christians today would probably agree with Wesley that the
ways in which God works in the individual’s soul are ultimately a mystery; so there is a limit to the
extent to which we can understand them, or fit them into any pattern or system worked out by us.
Consequently, Wesley’s use of the analogy of the birth of child to describe the nature of regeneration
may not be valid in all respects.
This leaves us with the undoubted fact that thousands of people did experience a sudden
conversion following on the preaching of Wesley and his colleagues. How does one account for the
difference between that and the effect of the preaching of ministers in the mainstream Churches
today? This calls for a twofold response:
—On the one hand, one must acknowledge that Wesley’s preaching took place at a time of great
poverty and social disruption, a time when the mainstream Churches were failing to make effective
contact with millions of very poor people. His open-air preaching was largely addressed to these
people. It brought them a message of hope. Many of the poor who heard him came to believe that by
turning to God according to the simple pattern he proclaimed they could find meaning in their lives;
and in doing so they came to have a new sense of their own dignity. In this sense, his evangelical
approach had elements of what would now be called “an option for the poor.” Given this situation it
is not surprising that many responded to his call and that their spiritual experience fitted into the
pattern of sudden conversion which he preached. And, of course, when people saw others being
converted in this striking manner they were deeply affected by it and inclined to follow the same
route. One sees a rather similar pattern today in the occasional evangelical crusades which attract
large numbers, and also in some of the more Pentecostal Churches and the “healing Churches” which
are common in developing countries and particularly among immigrants who come to the West from
these developing countries.
—On the other hand, the fact that sudden conversion is not common in the mainstream Churches
constitutes a challenge to the leadership and the members of these Churches. Have they toned down
the Christian message or allowed its central focus to get blurred by an accretion of less essential
features? Should they reach out to the unchurched masses through evangelical crusades? When
asking themselves this question they need also to recall that the evangelizing strategy of Wesley did
not focus exclusively on preaching to large audiences. He went to enormous trouble to organize his
new converts into small supportive groups who prayed and studied together, and who practiced a
quite strict discipline under the guidance of carefully trained leaders. 2 Crusades without adequate
follow-up in nurturing communities are likely to be a mere “flash in the pan.”
Faith
An intriguing question about Wesley’s teaching on “salvation by grace alone” is the part played
in it by human acceptance of God’s gift. As I noted in chapter 3 above, Wesley insists that
justification and regeneration are not merited or “earned” by any human works. While he holds that
repentance and the fruits of repentance are necessary, they are not the cause of justification.
Furthermore, repentance and its fruits are not proximately necessary; only faith is proximately
necessary. This raises the question why the faith of the convert should not be seen as another form of
“works”.
Wesley did address this question to some extent. As I pointed out in chapter 5, he saw faith as
both a faculty and an act. Both of these aspects of faith are a gift of God. But this still leaves the
question of why the act of faith should be considered to be so significantly different from other
human acts, that it is not considered to be a human “work”. I have not found any detailed treatment
of this issue in Wesley’s works. This is quite understandable since it is a theological question which
has come more to the fore since the development of our interest in, and knowledge of, human
psychology.
Even though Wesley lived long before the development of modern psychology, he did have a
great interest in, and facility for, examining his own inner experiences. He had great spiritual
sensitivity. So I feel sure that he was not simply playing with words when he insisted that faith is
necessary for adult justification, while at the same time insisting that no human “works” are
involved. He was instead putting words on his own spiritual experience, as well as what had emerged
in his deep sharing with others. In doing so he was using the conventional theological language of the
Reformation, rescuing it from mere formalism and ensuring that it come alive as an articulation of
the deep Christian experience of himself and his companions.
I venture to suggest that it would be in line with Wesley’s approach to see the act of faith at the
time of justification not as a human action in the usual sense—and therefore not as an instance of
“works”—but more as a particular kind of receptivity, an openness to God’s grace-ful action,
including also a longing to receive it. This is not a matter of being passive. In fact it requires a certain
Cf. Outler’s Introduction to the Bicentennial edition of Wesley’s Works, I, 16, where he points to the crucial role of
“the system of pastoral care and Christian nurture provided for the converts.”
2
effort, but one that is almost the opposite of the more usual effort to do something. Here one is
making the effort not to do anything, but to wait with eager expectation for God to act.
The cultivation of this attitude is required not merely at the time of one’s initial conversion but all
through the Christian life. In fact it seems to lie at the heart of the prayer of the devoted Christian. It
is not something that can be easily described, particularly in our very activist world; it has to be
experienced. It is an attitude that spiritual guides seek to encourage in those who come to them for
direction. In doing so they are continuing a contemplative tradition which goes back to the early
centuries of Christianity. All this indicates that Wesley was being true to a truly Christian instinct
when he insisted that faith is a necessary condition for the salvation of an adult, but refused to think
of faith as a “work”.
Atonement
I located my chapter about atonement in the “Background” section of this book. This was not
because Wesley considered it less important than other aspects of his Christian faith. In fact belief in
Christ’s atoning death was central to his personal belief and it was the foundation for all his
preaching. But in his teaching and preaching Wesley did not give a prominent place to the details of
how the atonement took place or even on how exactly it is applied to the repentant sinner. He was
content to insist that Christ’s atonement is the basis not merely for justification but for each further
stage of the Christian life. For him, the atonement is what made it possible for God to no longer
judge people in terms of the old Covenant of Works but instead under the New Covenant of Faith (cf.
chapter 15 above).
In the Western Churches—Protestant, Anglican, and Catholic—the theology of the atonement
had been worked out mainly in legal terms, in ways that many would now see as quite legalistic. The
main theology of the atonement with which Wesley was familiar relied on the theory put forward by
Anselm of Canterbury, who lived in the 11th century. His atonement theology was articulated in
terms of the satisfaction that was due to God and the “price” paid by Jesus to God on our behalf, to
restore God’s honor.
As I pointed out in chapter 17 above, the theology which was current at the time offered Wesley a
choice of just two models of the atonement. There was the “active obedience” theory which held that
Christ during his life fulfilled the law on our behalf. Wesley believed that the antinomians were using
this theology to justify their view that Christians no longer have to obey the law. So he opted instead
for the other alternative—the “passive obedience” theory which focused almost exclusively on the
death of Christ as making satisfaction to God. It seems clear that Wesley was never entirely at ease
with this theology as he had inherited it. But he never considered abandoning it or even modifying it
in any significant way.
However, when it came to dealing with people at a pastoral level Wesley let the whole legal
theology of the atonement sit quite lightly on him. He was more inclined to think in terms of the
person being healed from the weight and corruption of sin. Furthermore, in relation to his own
spiritual progress, while he loyally accepted that he needed to be set free from the penalty for sin, his
main concern was to be freed from “inbred sin” which he was inclined to see in terms of disease or
corruption.3 This is a topic to which I shall return in the next chapter where I reflect on the theme of
sanctification.
It is very important to distinguish between our fundamental Christian belief that Christ died for
our sins, “making peace through the blood of his cross” (Col 1: 20), and on the other hand any
particular theological theory which seeks to give us some understanding of how this atonement has
taken place. The distinction between the truth of the faith and the theology may not perhaps have
been so clear in Wesley’s time, or in Wesley’s own mind. He may well have taken for granted that
the satisfaction theory of atonement was a matter of fundamental Christian doctrine rather than a
There is, then, a good basis for the view of Randy Maddox that Wesley’s main focus in relation to salvation was
therapeutic rather than forensic—see, for instance, Responsible Grace, 96 and 144.
3
particular theological theory put forward as an explanation for the doctrine of atonement. This helps
one to understand why he loyally held on to the current theology based on the theory of satisfaction,
while not putting much emphasis in his preaching on the forensic details of this particular theology.
I do not think that followers of Wesley are untrue to his inspiration if they display interest in
more recent attempts to provide theological accounts of the “at-one-ment” brought about by Christ.
At the present time the Anselmian theory of satisfaction made by Christ to God is widely
experienced to be unduly forensic; it suggests a seriously misleading image of a vengeful God, one
that is incompatible with the concept of a compassionate God which is central in the teaching Jesus.
It is not surprising then that we Christians today should find ourselves in sympathy with Wesley’s
unease with it. We believe that it is legitimate and even necessary to look for a more adequate
theological approach.
We must, however, recognize that the mystery of Christ’s redemptive love will always surpass
our understanding. This means that no theological theory can claim to provide a fully adequate
explanation of the atonement. But it is possible to throw some light on the mystery by using images
and analogies which seem more meaningful to the people of our time than the theory which says that
Christ died to satisfy the injured honor of God.4
Prevenient Grace
I suggested in the Preface of this book that, while there are significant differences of emphasis in
Wesley’s teaching between what he taught shortly after 1738 and what he taught in much later years,
there is a general continuity in his teaching at the “doctrinal” level in all the years after 1738. There
is, however, one possible exception to this, one major point on which the development of his thinking
was perhaps rather more than a change of emphasis. This was the issue of whether a person prior to
conversion is necessarily totally corrupt.
There is no clear indication that Wesley ever held that God’s grace is limited to Christians and to
those in the process of being converted. But at the time of his conversion—and particularly in his
landmark 1738 sermon “Salvation by Faith”—he spoke as though all are lost in sin prior to a genuine
conversion to the Christian Faith. This does not imply that he had abandoned his view that God could
deal with pagans in some other mysterious providential manner. But at this time he put all his
emphasis on the need for conversion. Consequently, he made little or no room for the operation of
grace in a person prior to conversion, apart from the grace which awakens one to the consciousness
of sin and to the need to repent and turn to God.
Over the years, however, he became more and more aware of a need to broaden his conception of
the reach of God’s compassion. His controversy with the Calvinists helped to sharpen his sense of the
danger of over-emphasizing the total corruption of the person. His own strong sense of the mercy of
God meant that he could not envisage that people could be lost except though their own free choices.
As I noted in chapter 19, he suggested late in life that pagans may come under a dispensation that is
different from that which applies to Christians.
From an early stage in his career he had accepted the notion of prevenient grace. As time went on
he came to rely on it more and more to account for the action of God in people who have not (yet)
become Christian converts—enlightening them to show them what would be a wrong action, and
creating an unease of conscience in them when they have done something wrong (cf. chapter 19
above).
4
René Girard has made a significant contribution on this topic by the way in which he applies the concept of the
scapegoat to the saving work of Christ. See, for instance, Violence and the Sacred. Baltimore. Johns Hopkins
University Press: 1977; also, The Girard Reader. Edited by James G. Williams. New York: Crossroad: 1996. I have
myself attempted to supplement this approach by suggesting that modern people may find it helpful to think of the
work of Christ in terms of the “Suffering Servant” and the transformation of energy: Christ on the Cross allowed in
the hatred and rejection directed against him and succeeded in transforming this negative energy by his boundless
compassion and love. See, Donal Dorr, Divine Energy: God Beyond Us, Within Us, Among Us, Triumph Books:
Liguori, Missouri. 1996. 94-105.
Wesley came to accept the view that the atonement of Christ is applied to infants as soon as they
are born—though he did not proclaim this belief in public with any great enthusiasm. What this
means is that the total corruption of all the descendants of Adam is only a hypothetical rather than an
actual state. In other words, all humankind would have been totally corrupted were it not for Christ’s
atonement; but in the present dispensation, where Christ has come and died for all, this does not
actually happen.
For Wesley, then, the elements of goodness in people prior to conversion are not due to their
nature but entirely the work of God’s grace; in effect, there is no such thing in the present world as
the purely “natural man”.5 The concept of prevenient grace working in humans from the first moment
of their existence is what enables Wesley to maintain the principle of “grace alone” while avoiding
the Calvinist view that the “natural man” is totally corrupt and therefore “lost”.
In the years since Wesley’s time our world has become much more globalized. Far more people
from non-Christian backgrounds now live side by side with Christians. Consequently, most Christian
men and women are in touch with non-Christians who are obviously good people. Wesley’s teaching
on prevenient grace provides the basis for Christians today to continue to hold on to the fundamental
belief in “grace alone”, while at the same time believing that the grace of God and the power of the
Holy Spirit are at work in and through people who do not share the Christian faith.
It must be acknowledged that Wesley’s broad extension of the concept of prevenient grace does
not, at first sight, fit very easily with the urgency of his call for conversion. The tension between the
two positions is eased considerably when one adverts to the fact that in Wesley’s view the great
majority of adults had in fact fallen into sin and so needed to be converted. 6 But the fact that he was
prepared to accept a quite radical and controversial conception of prevenient grace operating in this
very broad way, shows the extent to which he was prepared to go in being true to his belief in the
sola gratia principle, while at the same time utterly rejecting a Calvinist application of this principle.
It is interesting to note that Wesley’s friend John Fletcher, and Wesley himself, had on this point adopted a view
which is similar to that proposed two centuries later by the Roman Catholic theologian Karl Rahner—see, for
instance, Rahner’s article “Gnade” in Lexikon für Theologie und Kirche IV, 997-8.
6
Wesley believed that he himself had fallen into sin when he was about ten years old; at least this was his view
around the time of his conversion-experience—see J, I, 465 (1738).
5