Wesley speaks so wonderfully
about this gift of prevenient grace that I could not refrain from quoting him
at length in order to begin this blog post:
Salvation begins with what is usually termed
(and very properly) preventing grace; including the first wish to please God,
the first dawn of light concerning his will, and the first slight transient
conviction of having sinned against him. All these imply some tendency toward
life; some degree of salvation; the beginning of a deliverance from a blind,
unfeeling heart, quite insensible of God and the things of God."Sermon: On
Working out our own Salvation
...‘preventing grace’; --all the drawings of the Father;
the desires after God, which, if we yield to them, increase more and more; --all
that light wherewith the Son of God ‘enlightens every one that comes into the
world’; showing every man ‘to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with
his God’; --all the convictions which His Spirit, from time to time, works in
every child of man--although it is true, the generality of men stifle them as
soon as possible, and after a while forget, or at least deny, that they ever
had them at all. Sermon: The Scripture Way of Salvation
... preventing grace. Every man has a greater or
less measure of this, which waits not for the call of man. Every one has,
sooner or later, good desires; although the generality of men stifle them
before they can strike deep root, or produce any considerable fruit. Everyone
has some measure of that light, some faint glimmering ray, which, sooner or
later, more or less, enlightens every man that cometh into the world. And every
one, unless he be one of the small number whose conscience is seared as with a
hot iron, feels more or less uneasy when he acts contrary to the light of his
own conscience. So that no man sins because he has not grace, but because he
does not use the grace which he has. Sermon: On Working out our Own
Salvation
In order to facilitate this
topic further I juxtapose Wesley’s notion of prevenient grace and what he
considered “the natural man”.
In the Methodist Conference
in 1745 Wesley stated that he and his preachers had come “to the very edge of
Calvinism” in certain respects. That is “in denying all natural free-will, and
all power antecedent to grace.”[1]
Likewise, in his What is an Arminian?
Answered by a Lover of Free Grace Wesley claims that his view of original
sin is in conformity with Calvinism: “…In this respect, there is not a hair’s
breadth difference between Mr. Wesley and Mr. Whitefield.”[2]
Although Wesley maintained
that by nature all men are totally depraved and incapable of any motion
towards God, by grace, the free will of man in some measure is
supernaturally restored. In his Predestination
Calmly Considered Wesley states: “But I do not carry free-will so far: (I
mean, not in moral things:) Natural free-will, in the present state of mankind,
I do not understand: I only assert, that there is a measure of free-will
supernaturally restored to every man, together with the supernatural light
which 'enlightens every man that comes into the world'.”[3]
In his Remarks on Mr. Hill’s Review Wesley
asserts that “every man has a measure of free-will restored to him by grace.”[4]
Even though Wesley’s notion
of total depravity, “the natural man”, is more of a logical abstraction, he
nevertheless maintains that every man who is born into the human condition can
not have any thoughts of God, or any conviction of sin, apart from grace. We
can see this expressed in his sermon Working
out our own Salvation where he states that “For allowing that all the souls
of men are dead in sin by nature, this excuses none, seeing there is no man
that is in a state of mere nature; there is no man, unless he has quenched the
Spirit, that is wholly void of the grace of God”.[5]
This measure of restoration
from being in a mere natural state, apart from prevenient grace, is an
unconditional benefit of the universal atonement at work in all men. Several
Wesleyan scholars clearly recognize this initial working of prevenient grace. In
his John Wesley’s Theology Today
Collin Williams states that “It is through Prevenient grace that he is given
the power to respond or resist. Prevenient grace creates within us the power to
accept faith or to refuse it.”[6]
In his Christian Theology H. Orton
Wiley explains that “…Arminianism maintains that through the prevenient grace of the Spirit, unconditionally
bestowed upon all men, the power and responsibility of free agency exist from
the first dawn of the moral life.”[7]
In his The Theology of John Wesley Kenneth
Collins states that “Prevenient grace must not be confused with free will. In
the Fall, man completely lost his freedom for God… in the loss of what Wesley
called the ‘moral image’. Thus freedom for God is not now a human possibility
but is restored by the grace of God.”[8]
This main discussion centers
upon what had been proposed by a Wesleyan scholar concerning the manner in
which the initial work of prevenient grace in all those born into grace is affected.
In his The Theology of John Wesley Kenneth
Collins explains that “…since men and women in the natural state, according to
Wesley, do not even have the freedom to accept or reject any offered grace,
then this gift itself must be graciously and irresistibly restored”[9]
This language of an
“irresistible grace” can unnerve some folk so it is advisable to replace the
word with “efficacious grace”, that is a grace given us that is effective on
its own merits, effecting the purpose for which it was sent. But is this not
the clear meaning of how prevenient grace is conceived in its initial work upon
all men who come into the world?
The notions of total
depravity and prevenient grace are not placed successively in order of time, as if at the moment of
conception we are in a state of mere nature and that within seconds the
prevenient grace of God initiates a work of restoration. But rather we could
take these two teachings in the order of
thinking, that is, by inheritance, all men who are conceived, all who
participate in human nature, are recipients of a depraved condition, that by
nature, all are slaves to sin. Yet, at the same time we are born in a state of
nature, we are in that very moment conceived in the realm of prevenient grace,
and as a preservative power, we are prevented from the full effects and
consequences of our inheritance. By the law of nature we have an inheritance of
a fallen condition, but by the principle of prevenient grace we are gifted with
a work of grace that is for all purposes efficacious in the lives of all men,
as the immediate effect of the universal atonement.
See my forth coming blog post
on the nature of original sin for a comparison between the Wesleyan and Catholic
perspectives, and also my previous blog post on the Wesleyan notion of irresistible
grace.
[1] Jackson, Wesley's Works 8:285
[2] Jackson,
Wesley's Works 10:359
[3] Jackson,
Wesley's Works 10:229-30
[4] Jackson, Wesley's Works 10:392
[5] Jackson, Wesley's Works 6:512
[6] Williams, John Wesley’s Theology Today, 41
[7] Wiley, Christian Theology Vol. II, 357
[8] Dunning, Grace, Faith, & Holiness, 339
[9] Collins, The Theology of John Wesley, 80
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