George Whitefield’s Theology of Sin and Salvation

Conviction of Sin

Theological anthropology and soteriology were tightly interwoven in Whitefield’s proclamation of the gospel. Echoing Wesley’s pithy encapsulation of this theological relationship (“Know your disease! Know your cure!”¹), Whitefield was adamant that the doctrine of original sin was “the very foundation of the Christian religion.”² Motivating stark assertions like this was a belief that the “glad tidings of the gospel” are good news only to those who have first embraced the bad news of their utterly desperate plight and dire need of God’s gracious salvific intervention. In one sermon, he offered his audience a peek behind the curtain of his theological priorities, contending that responsible preaching of the gospel entails avoiding the offer of “healing before we see sinners wounded.” He continued, “Secure sinners must hear the thunderings of Mount Sinai, before we bring them to mount Zion.”³ Elsewhere, in his sermon “The Gospel, a Dying Saint’s Triumph,” Whitefield declared, “You cannot preach the gospel without preaching the law; for you shall find by and by, we are to preach something that the people must be saved by: it is impossible to tell them how they are to be saved, unless we tell them what they are to be saved from.”⁴

Whitefield held that no aspect of human nature remains unpolluted by the effects of the fallen nature every individual inherits from our first parents. That is, while Whitefield’s theology of original sin emphasized the imputation of the second Adam’s righteousness by faith as the antidote to the imputation of the first Adam’s sin to his posterity, it also stressed that Adam’s fall resulted in the depravity of his sinful nature being imparted to the entire human race. For instance, he declared, “We all stand in need of being justified, on account of the sin of our natures: for we are all chargeable with original sin, or the first sin of our parents.” Responding to the accusation that his theology renders God unjust, as well as the active cause of sin, he appealed to Paul’s argument in Romans 5, “where we are told that ‘in Adam all died’; that is, Adam’s sin was imputed to all . . . [and] this point seems to be excellently summed up in the article of our church, where she declares, ‘Original sin . . . is the fault and corruption of every man.’ ”⁵

On another occasion, Whitefield referred to the account of the fall in Genesis 3 as the origin of universal and inherent human depravity: “Our first parents contracted it [a prevailing enmity against God] when they fell from God by eating the forbidden fruit, and the bitter and malignant contagion of it hath descended to, and quite overspread, their whole posterity.”⁶ In addition to Scripture and tradition, Whitefield also appealed to empirical experience in support of the doctrine of original sin. For instance, he contended: “If we look inwardly, we will see enough of lusts, and man’s temper contrary to the temper of God. There is pride, malice, and revenge, in all our hearts; and this temper cannot come from God; it comes from our first parent, Adam, who, after he fell from God, fell out of God into the devil.”⁷

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. 

So important was a right understanding—and experiential conviction—of sin to Whitefield that he was prepared to assert, “If you have never felt the weight of original sin, do not call yourselves Christians.”⁸ For instance, in his sermon “The Lord Our Righteousness,” he was not content simply to rehearse the “mournful account” of Adam and Eve’s covenantbreaking transgression, one that rendered them—and by implication, their descendants—“in need of a better righteousness than their own.” Nor was it sufficient merely to assert the theological mechanics of imputation and Jesus’s active and passive obedience, whereby “Christ not only died, but lived; not only suffered, but obeyed for; or instead of, poor sinners.” Indeed, he warned, “Entertaining this doctrine in your heads, without receiving the Lord Jesus Christ savingly by a lively faith into your hearts, will but increase your damnation.”⁹

Instead, as he drew his sermon toward its rhetorical climax, Whitefield felt compelled to impress upon his listeners that unless they availed themselves of what he had earlier described as “divine philanthropy,” the existential reality of a looming eternity experiencing the horrors of a just divine judgment awaited them. Signaling his homiletical turn toward eliciting a personal conviction of sin among his listeners, he announced, “But it is time for me to come a little closer to your consciences.” In what would become a familiar feature of Whitefield’s sermons, he exhorted: “O Christless sinners, I am distressed for you . . . for whither would you flee, if death should find you naked? . . . O think of death! O think of judgment! Yet a little while, and time shall be no more; and then what will become of you, if the Lord be not your righteousness?” Vividly imagining the day of judgment when “Christ himself shall pronounce the irrevocable [damnatory] sentence” on those yet to experience the new birth, Whitefield empathized with his audience, imploring them to “close with Christ”: “You need not fear the greatness or number of your sins. For are you sinners? So am I. . . . And yet the Lord (for ever adored be his rich, free and sovereign grace) the Lord is my righteousness.”¹⁰

Unconditional Election

If Whitefield considered a right understanding of the doctrine of sin to be integral to a right proclamation of the gospel, then he also considered the doctrine of unconditional election to be an inextricable corollary of his solidifying Calvinist doctrine of salvation. In a letter to the Arminian John Wesley written in February 1741 he declared, “But I must preach the gospel of Christ, and that I cannot now do, without speaking of Election.”¹¹ Given humanity’s fallen state and inherent lack of capacity or desire to initiate salvation, by 1739 Whitefield had become convinced of the doctrinal necessity of unconditional election as an expression not of divine arbitrariness but of God’s everlasting love. Emphasizing God’s free grace in election— by which he meant God’s freedom to dispense or withhold grace—he wrote to a fellow believer: “Oh how doth the free, the distinguishing grace of God excite the love of those, who are made partakers of it! What was there in you and me . . . that should move God to chuse us before others? Was there any fitness foreseen in us, except a fitness for damnation? I believe not.” Reflecting a thoroughly Calvinistic interpretation of the so-called chain of salvation in Romans 8:29–30, Whitefield continued: “No, God chose us from eternity, he called us in time, and I am persuaded will keep us from falling finally, till time shall be no more. Consider the Gospel in this view, and it appears a consistent scheme.”¹²

Nowhere does Whitefield’s commitment to a Calvinistic conception of predestination come into sharper relief than in his very public doctrinal dispute with John Wesley between 1739 and 1742, one that eventually resulted in the fracturing of the Methodist movement along Arminian and Calvinist theological fault lines. In Whitefield’s estimation, to deny unconditional election (as was Wesley’s settled theological stance) was to deny the doctrine of original sin. This in turn, he argued, threatened the cherished Reformation principle of sola gratia: salvation by grace alone. In his published response to Wesley’s “Free Grace” sermon, Whitefield leveled a stunning charge against his one-time mentor: “You plainly make salvation depend not on God’s free-grace, but on man’s free-will.”¹³ Wesley recorded in his journal, “[Whitefield] told me he and I preached two different gospels, and therefore he not only would not join with me, or give me the right hand of fellowship, but was resolved publicly to preach against me and my brother wheresoever he preached at all.”¹⁴

Responding to Wesley’s characterization of Calvinist theology—that “by virtue of an eternal, unchangeable, irresistible decree of God, one part of mankind are infallibly saved, and the rest infallibly damned; it being impossible that any of the former should be damned, or that any of the latter should be saved”—Whitefield cast unconditional election as a necessary doctrinal implication of holding to an orthodox conception of original sin. He wrote, “But who ever asserted, that thousands and millions of men, without any preceding offence or fault of theirs, were unchangeably doomed to everlasting burnings?” Whitefield’s ensuing argument reflects his familiarity with Reformed confessional statements like the Westminster Confession of Faith and the Canons of Dort. Both of these statements describe God’s decision to actively elect some to salvation and pass by the reprobate using asymmetrical language, whereby the nonelect are ultimately judged for their sin rather than their nonelection. In this way, God is exonerated from the charge of being the author of unbelief.

Whitefield continued, “Surely Mr. Wesley will own God’s justice, in imputing Adam’s sin to his posterity; and also, that after Adam fell, and his posterity in him, God might justly have passed them all by, without sending his own Son to be a saviour for any one.” In sum, he perceived any denial of unconditional election as evidence of unwarranted optimism in one’s theological anthropology: “Unless you heartily agree to both these points, you do not believe original sin aright.”¹⁵ Whitefield the theologian might have been a zealous defender of unconditional election, but it is questionable how well he understood the nuances of Wesley’s anthropology. Indeed, if Wesley’s critique of Calvinism would appear to be more appropriately leveled toward hyper-Calvinism’s diminishment of genuine human responsibility, then Whitefield’s critique of Arminianism would seem to be more appropriately leveled against semi-Pelagianism, a stance from which Wesley explicitly distanced himself. After all, in one sense, he believed in original sin much as Whitefield did. For instance, in his 1759 sermon “Original Sin,” Wesley contended:

Is man by nature filled with all manner of evil? Is he void of all good? Is he wholly fallen? Is his soul totally corrupted? Or, to come back to the text [Gen. 6:5], is “every imagination of the thoughts of his heart evil continually”? Allow this, and you are so far a Christian. Deny it, and you are but a heathen still.¹⁶

That being said, Wesley always qualified his doctrine of sin with a theology of divinely and universally bestowed prevenient grace—a grace that would enable every person to respond positively, though nonmeritoriously, to the free offer of the gospel. For example, in his 1752 treatise “Predestination Calmly Considered,” Wesley clarified, “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 that supernatural light, which ‘enlightens every man that cometh into the world.’ ”¹⁷ If Whitefield was aware of this nuance in Wesley’s theology—one that affirmed a graciously freed will rather than a will partially free from the effects of the fall, he failed to acknowledge it. In other words, whatever genuine theological disagreements existed between Wesley and Whitefield when it came to the doctrine of election, these doctrinal differences were compounded and exacerbated by terminological misunderstandings— willful or otherwise.

Contrary to Wesley’s fears that Calvinist theology inevitably disincentivizes evangelism and “tends to destroy the comfort of religion, the happiness of Christianity,” the doctrine of unconditional election was a consistent source of encouragement for Whitefield, both in his preaching ministry and in his experience of divine assurance of salvation. For example, in response to Wesley’s charge that Calvinism renders “all preaching vain” (it being “needless to them that are elected,” since “they, whether with preaching or without, will infallibly be saved,” and “useless to them that are not elected,” since “they cannot possibly be saved”), Whitefield distinguished between primary and secondary causes in the actualization of God’s foreordained purposes. In this instance, God uses preaching as a proximate cause to accomplish the ultimate end of drawing his elect to himself. Whitefield wrote, “Hath not God, who hath appointed salvation for a certain number, appointed also the preaching of the word, as a means to bring them to it?” In this way, he was liberated to “preach promiscuously to all,” confident that God’s word will not fail to accomplish the purpose for which he has sent it forth.¹⁸

And far from undermining his sense of assurance, the doctrine of unconditional election brought Whitefield tremendous spiritual consolation. In his experience, the two doctrines were inextricably linked. He wrote to one correspondent, “Oh the excellency of the doctrine of election, and of the final perseverance of the saints, to those who are sealed by the Spirit of promise.”¹⁹ Acutely aware of the frailty and fickleness of his faith, Whitefield discovered immeasurable solace in God’s commitment to finish the good work he has begun in his elect. He wrote to Wesley,

As for my own part, this doctrine is my daily support: I should utterly sink under a dread of my impending trials, was I not firmly persuaded that God has chosen me in Christ from before the foundation of the world, and that now being effectually called, he will suffer none to pluck me out of his almighty hand.²⁰

This article is adapted from Whitefield on the Christian Life: New Birth to Enjoy God by Tom Schwanda and Ian Maddock.

Ian Maddock (PhD, University of Aberdeen) serves as senior lecturer in Christian thought at Sydney Missionary and Bible College. He is author of Men of One Book: A Comparison of Two Methodist Preachers, John Wesley and George Whitefield and is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Tom Schwanda (PhD, Durham University) is associate professor of Christian formation and ministry emeritus at Wheaton College and senior fellow for Christian spirituality for the C. S. Lewis Institute discipleship ministry. He is the author of The Emergence of Evangelical Spirituality: The Age of Edwards, Newton, and Whitefield and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

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