George Whitefield: “Occasional Theologian” and Lifelong Evangelist
Theology in the Pulpit
By his own admission, George Whitefield was not a theologian—at least, not of the conventional sort. Indeed, he never aspired to be one. In much the same way that his Methodist field-preaching compatriot John Wesley has been famously dubbed a “folk-theologian”1—a practical theologian as opposed to a systematic theologian—Whitefield might aptly be described as an occasional theologian. In other words, he tended to avoid abstract theological discourse in favor of expressing his theology through the medium of letters, treatises, and, above all else, sermons.
Whitefield was convinced that theology belongs in the pulpit. He preferred to communicate theology through sermons he delivered to live gatherings in specific locations and times rather than through attempting to produce timeless systematic theological treatises. His sermons were geared toward the spiritual transformation of his listeners (and readers), not the mere transfer of theologically oriented information, even theologically orthodox information. For example, after spending the bulk of his landmark sermon entitled “The Lord Our Righteousness” carefully defining and defending the doctrines of justification by faith and its corollary, imputation, Whitefield pivoted toward application, thereby illustrating his conviction that an unapplied theology is not merely impoverished but dangerous to the soul: “I have been too long upon the doctrinal part. To preach to your head without preaching to your heart is doing you no good.”2
Taken in isolation, quotes like this could easily be construed as evidence of the way Whitefield prioritized matters of the heart over and against the head. Well-worn pejorative tropes abound regarding his lack of theological acumen (at best) and cavalier disinterest in theology (at worst). Then there is the “old jibe”: “that Whitefield must have been eloquent indeed to make such utterances as his seem eloquent.”3
Whitefield on the Christian Life
Tom Schwanda, Ian Maddock
George Whitefield dedicated his life to teaching the Scriptures and calling people to know and love God. This biography explores the life of Whitefield as a prominent figure in the early evangelical revival in an honest, historical, and balanced way.
Some have contended that “almost any single sermon states the whole of [Whitefield’s] formal theology. His ideas are few; they are bluntly put and endlessly repeated.”4 Indeed, there is more than a grain of truth to this assessment. But what is no doubt intended here as a critique would almost certainly have been taken by Whitefield as a compliment—an accurate appraisal of his single-minded pursuit of a preaching ministry heavily focused on evangelism. In other words, if it is true that Whitefield’s sermon corpus does not span the whole counsel of God in the manner of a preacher in a settled pastorate with a long tenure, then that was by his itinerant evangelistic design: planting, not watering, the seed of God’s word was his chosen ministry course. He also intentionally utilized “plain language” in a bid to be understood by as many as possible, even if that meant running the risk of being labeled unsophisticated and anti-intellectual. Forewarning his audience, he wrote: “If any here do expect fine preaching from me this day, they will, in all probability, go away disappointed. For I came not here to shoot over people’s heads; but, if the Lord shall be pleased to bless me, to reach their hearts.” He was up-front and unashamed about his tone: “If the poor and the unlearned can comprehend, the learned and rich must.”5
Legacy of Calvinism
Of course, Whitefield did not always help his cause in being taken seriously as a theologian—practical, occasional, or otherwise. At points, he expressed his commitment to sola Scriptura with a simplicity that verged on the simplistic (and arguably even reductionistic), as though the Bible were his solitary (as opposed to his normative) source of theological authority. For example, he wrote in 1742, “I embrace the calvinistical scheme, not because of Calvin, but Jesus Christ, I think, has taught it to me.”6 A few years earlier, he declared to John Wesley, “Alas, I never read any thing that Calvin wrote; my doctrines I had from Christ and his apostles.”7
“To preach to your head without preaching to your heart is doing you no good.”
But even if Whitefield never directly engaged with Calvin’s literary legacy, he was certainly familiar with many of his theological descendants. For instance, in 1735 Whitefield purchased a copy of Matthew Henry’s Commentary (1706), and it is hard to overstate the influence the seventeenthcentury nonconformist’s exegesis—and Calvinistic theology—exerted upon Whitefield’s developing intuitions. Some have gone so far as to suggest that “Puritan theology, passed on as it was through the writings of Matthew Henry, may well have enjoyed the period of its greatest influence during the ministry of George Whitefield.”8
Whitefield’s Calvinism was nurtured during his time in New England in the fall of 1740, though he had already been exposed to this tradition before his second transatlantic voyage. His reading diet during the year leading up to his departure for America seems to have had an especially Calvinistic flavor. He read the sermons of the Scottish seceder Ralph Erskine, and they left a positive theological impression. So too did the sermons of the Cambridge divine John Edwards. On September 29, 1739, Whitefield wrote:
This afternoon, I was greatly strengthened by perusing some paragraphs out of a book called The Preacher, written by Dr. Edwards, of Cambridge. . . . There are such noble testimonies given . . . of justification by faith only, the imputed righteousness of Christ, our having no free-will, &c., that they deserve to be written in letters of gold.9
Whitefield might have had a lifelong allergic reaction to unapplied and abstract theology, decrying “letter-learned” professing Christians who wrote about the new birth but had experienced “no more of it than a blind man does of colours”; and yet, beneath this polemical rhetoric lurked a preacher who, when he arrived at Calvinistic convictions, was willing to expend significant time and energy proclaiming and defending them in the public arena.10 While strenuously avoiding jargon, Whitefield’s sermons nonetheless assume a high degree of theological literacy. He regularly cited and censured Arian, Socinian, Arminian, papist, and antinomian heterodoxy; he appealed to pastor-theologians ranging from Augustine to Solomon Stoddard as purveyors of orthodoxy. Indeed, as Thomas Kidd observes, “For those who only know Whitefield as a powerfully emotional preacher, the intellectual heft of his sermons may come as a surprise.”11
If “the revival theology the moderate evangelicals preached was basically Reformed theology (Calvinism) cast in a pietist accent,” then it would be hard to find a more public and vocal exemplar of these convictions during the eighteenth century than Whitefield.12 This theological trajectory typically emphasized a series of themes: conviction of sin, conversion (including justification and regeneration), and the pursuit of sanctification (or, as it has sometimes been styled, “consolation”).13 These doctrines all appear repeatedly and prominently in Whitefield’s writings, and we shall explore how each of them was expressed in his public ministry.
Notes:
- Albert C. Outler, “John Wesley: Folk Theologian,” Theology Today 34, no. 2 (1977): 150–60.
- George Whitefield, The Lord Our Righteousness (Glasgow, 1741), 16.
- David Crump, “The Preaching of George Whitefield and His Use of Matthew Henry’s Commentary,” Crux 25, no. 3 (1989): 19.
- Stuart Henry, George Whitefield: Wayfaring Witness (Nashville: Abingdon, 1957), 97.
- Whitefield, “Christ the Believer’s Husband,” in Works, 5:174.
- Whitefield to the Reverend Dr. C—, September 24, 1742, in Letters, 442.
- Whitefield to the Reverend Mr. J— W—, August 25, 1740, in Letters, 205.
- Crump, “Preaching of George Whitefield,” 24.
- Journals, 335.
- Whitefield, “The Folly and Danger of Being Not Righteous Enough,” in Works, 5:135.
- Thomas S. Kidd, George Whitefield: America’s Spiritual Founding Father (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2014), 156.
- Robert Caldwell, Theologies of the American Revivalists (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2017), 19–20.
- The eighteenth-century Massachusetts pastor Peter Thatcher summarized these doctrines succinctly as conviction, conversion, and consolation. See Caldwell, Theologies, 20.
This article is adapted from Whitefield on the Christian Life: New Birth to Enjoy God by Tom Schwanda and Ian Maddock.
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