This new collection of essays is written with the conviction that John Wesley and George Whitefield are too often considered in isolation from each other, and deserve comparative studies of their parallel ministries. Some have already pioneered this path, focused on particular doctrines, notably Timothy L. Smith's Whitefield and Wesley on the New Birth (1986), James Schwenk's Catholic Spirit (2008) on their ecclesiology, and Ian Maddock's Men of One Book (2012) on their preaching. Here Maddock gathers a largely Antipodean team—eight of the twelve contributors are Australians—to consider further points of connection or contrast.The authors are drawn from a range of disciplines, as pastors, theologians, and historians, and the volume is designed mainly for a popular evangelical readership as ‘a catalyst for irenic conversation’ between those who divide into Reformed and Arminian camps as Whitefield and Wesley's followers have always done (8). For example, in a magisterial chapter full of pastoral wisdom, on Whitefield and Wesley's arguments over the atonement, Peter Adam seeks the root cause of ‘these disagreements between close friends and brothers in Christ’, blaming ‘misunderstanding, inconsistent theology, personal attack, and sin’. He cautions readers: ‘While correcting errors is a necessary part of Christian ministry, reaction against error alone is no way to find the truth. Those who react against others are in part defined by them. We must be defined by the Scriptures, not by our opponents’ (142–3).Several chapters tease out contrasts between the two protagonists. Maddock shows how Whitefield and Wesley both adopted the motto, ‘the world is my parish’, but applied this ‘expansive ministry charter’ in divergent ways (43). Whitefield emphasized ‘the world’ by his peripatetic transatlantic preaching; Wesley emphasized ‘my parish’ by his spiritual nurture of converts. Ed Loane observes the paradox that although Whitfield operated on the margins of Anglican institutions and modelled ‘evangelical ecumenism’, his legacy is a body of zealous Calvinists in the Church of England today. Conversely, although Wesley was ‘tenaciously devoted’ to the Church of England (63), his legacy was a separated denomination; as one nineteenth-century Methodist famously put it, Wesley was ‘like an oarsman who faced the Church of England while he rowed steadily away’ (86). Tom Schwanda compares their approach to the spiritual disciplines, arguing that Wesley stressed the Lord's Supper and fasting, while Whitefield stressed meditation and careful study of God's providence.The finest piece of historical writing in the collection is Martin Wellings's analysis of their homiletics, setting Wesley and Whitefield's performative technique within the wider context of sermon culture in the eighteenth century. The strongest theological chapter is by Jared Hood, who argues, against the received orthodoxy, that despite the Reformed/Arminian dispute between the two men, they were in fact ‘federalist brothers’ (123). Whitefield advised Wesley to ‘study the covenant of grace that you may be consistent with yourself’, and Hood agrees that Wesley was unaware of the implications of his underlying Reformed covenantalism. So Wesley experienced a Reformed/Arminian rivalry with Whitefield, but ‘the rivalry also existed in himself’ (106), which might explain tensions in his writings over justification and divine sovereignty. Wesley, avers Hood, was ‘within a hair's breadth of Calvinism’ (123).
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Dec 21, 2022
William Edward Cayley 
Open Access
