Grace, Creation, and the Fall of Humanity

The Ever-Present Grace of God

The key theme in Wesley's theology, which not only ties his various doctrines together, but which also lies behind them as their source and context, is the grace of God. From the creation of humanity to the glorification of the saints, from the gift of conscience to the gentle leading of the Holy Spirit, and from the conviction of sin to the restoration of the love of God and neighbor in the human heart, the grace of God is over all. In fact, there is no point in Wesley's theology of salvation where divine grace is not the leading motif, whether he is considering the fall of humanity or any step along the way in the process of redemption. Any interpretation of his theology that fails to take this vital ingredient into account in a significant way will necessarily be wide of the mark. Simply put, grace is the first chord struck in Wesley's theology, and hence in the present work as well.

Grace as Divine Favor and Empowerment

Many interpreters, especially those outside the Methodist tradition, have failed to note the subtlety, the nuances present in Wesley's soteriology (doctrine of salvation) due to his sophisticated understanding of grace. Wesley defines the grace of God in not one but two key ways. On the one hand, like Luther and Calvin before him, Wesley views grace, first of all, as the "undeserved favour" of God: "All the blessings which God hath bestowed upon man are of his mere grace, bounty, or favour: his free, undeserved favour, favour altogether undeserved." It fact, "it is the sheer givenness of spiritual insight and of divine grace," Albert Outler points out, "that distinguishes Wesley from Pelagius—and for that matter, from Arminius and Episcopius." On the other hand, this first conception by no means exhausts what Wesley means by grace. Beyond this, his considerable readings in the broad Catholic tradition (both Greek and Roman), which underscored participation in and empowerment through the life of God, helped Wesley to see grace in yet another way, as "the power of the Holy Ghost" to enable people to walk in the ways of God. Simply put, the former understanding accents the favor of God toward humanity; the latter, human participation and renewal.

Interestingly enough, earlier in this century George Croft Cell, a noted Methodist historian, put forth the thesis that Wesley's theology brings together a Protestant conception of grace and a Catholic conception of holiness:

The most important fact therefore about the Wesleyan understanding of the Gospel in relation to the Christian ethic of life is that the early Protestant doctrine of justification by faith and the Catholic appreciation of the idea of holiness or Christian perfection—two principles that had been fatally put asunder in the great Church conflicts of the sixteenth century—reappeared in the comprehensive spirit of Wesley's teaching fitly framed together in a well-balanced synthesis.

While considerable evidence can be gathered to support Cell's thesis, it is perhaps more accurate to suggest that the dividing line between the motifs of divine favor (Protestant emphasis) and human participation in the life of God (Catholic emphasis) lies not so much between the doctrines of justification by faith and Christian perfection or holiness, as Cell suggests, but actually lies within Wesley's intricate conception of grace itself. As Albert Outler points out in his introduction to Wesley's sermons, "The 'catholic substance' of Wesley's theology is the theme of participation—the idea that all life is of grace and all grace is the mediation of Christ by the Holy Spirit." Indeed, for Wesley, grace involves not only declaring sinners to be just out of the bountiful favor of God, but it also entails actually transforming, assisting, and renewing their hearts in holiness by that very same grace. Moreover, though these two senses of grace are intertwined throughout Wesley's writings, the particular sense that is emphasized often depends on the doctrine—such as repentance or justification—under review.

The Creation of Humanity

In light of the preceding distinction, it is not surprising that when Wesley describes the creation of humanity, he underscores grace not in the second sense as empowerment by the Holy Spirit, nor as divine/human cooperation, but as the utter favor, bounty, or goodness of God. "It was free grace that 'formed man of the dust of the ground,'" he writes, "'and breathed into him a living soul.'" Elsewhere, he affirms the initial goodness of Creation in that "every creature was 'good' in its primeval state." Nothing other than the freedom and goodness of God, then, are the source, the fount, of humanity.

Throughout his writings, Wesley maintains that God created humanity not as a simple creature but as a complex one, as one composed of both body and spirit. In an early manuscript sermon, "The Image of God," for instance, he elaborates:

But we should observe, first, that man even at his creation was a compound of matter and spirit; and that it was ordained by the original law that during this vital union neither part of the compound should act at all but together with its companion; that the dependence on each other should be inviolably maintained.

Concerning the first aspect, that is, the body, Wesley's thought does indeed contain some elements that are primitive even by eighteenth-century standards. Reviving the classical thought of Empedocles, Wesley contends, for example, that "the human body is composed of the four elements [dust, water, air, and fire], duly proportioned and mixed together." And in his sermon, "What is Man?" (1788), Wesley not only describes the body as a "curious machine" in a way reminiscent of Descartes, but also affirms that the body is suitably described as "a little portion of earth."

But a person is not simply a body; he or she is also what Wesley calls a "soul"—a selfmoving, thinking principle (res cogitans). And although Wesley asserts that in the present state of existence the human soul cannot be considered apart from the body, the two being intimately connected, yet the death of the body will not involve the death of the soul. Simply put, the essence of a person, what is often identified as the "I" or the "self," will continue to exist even when the body dies. "I cannot but believe this self-moving, thinking principle, with all its passions and affections," Wesley writes, "will continue to exist although the body be mouldered into dust."

Not only does Wesley affirm the immortality of the soul, he also closely identifies the spirit or soul of a human being—these terms are interchangeable for Wesley—with the image of God itself. For example, in his sermon "What is Man?" Wesley...