A summary of Methodist ideas to accompany and clarify the next two essays
This is a brief review of the shock-waves caused by the introduction of Wesleyan ideas into the Protestant world of the 18th century, and why Methodist teaching felt both scandalous and dangerous to many well-meaning and seriously faithful Christians. This essay is for those who want to better understand the issues of the two essays that follow it. Today most Methodists and Presbyterians never give any of this much thought, though in the evangelical, most Calvinist wing of the church, these same issues do come up quite frequently and Wesley, his mentor, Arminius, as well as Methodists can be deemed in error.
So very briefly: the Protestant Reformation is deemed to have started when a Roman Catholic priest, Martin Luther, challenged the might of Rome in 95 “theses.” The main thrust was that people are saved by their faith alone, and that studying the Bible is what teaches us how to be people of faith. After Luther, “protestant” theologians sprang up in several countries, but John Calvin and Huldrych Zwingli in Switzerland, and John Knox in Scotland became the main proponents. Many of the first leaders of Troy were New Englanders whose families had been influenced by the Scottish Presbyterian church, founded by Knox.
The Roman Catholic and Protestant churches all have St. Augustine as the basis of their understanding. Writing in the late 4th and early 5th centuries, it was Augustine who broke one of the last ties with the Jewish faith of Jesus, with his emphasis on “original sin” which replaced the idea Jesus would have known: “original blessing.” Once original sin – the idea that humanity is “sinful”, right from birth – was accepted wisdom, the question became: if we are all all broken, how do we become whole – how does someone get right with God? It took a few hundred years, but eventually a large body of Christians decided it could not be decided by priests or bishops, or even a pope; nor could it be by being able to buy favor through deeds or donations (the medieval “indulgences”, Luther decried) – it had to be a personal decision; it had to be about having the right faith as revealed in the Bible: this was the essence of the protestant reformation.
Calvin, Zwingli and Knox were the main explainers of this new take on faith, but they had challengers and chief among them was a minister of the Dutch Reformed church, Jacobus Armenius, and it was his arguments, not Calvin’s, which convinced John Wesley, founder of Methodism. The two understandings of the nature of God and how one “gets right” with God are incompatible, often in complete opposition. There are many resources to help someone understand these two opposing views and links follow my essay, but here is a short summary of Wesley’s objections to the already well established Calvinism of his day.
“The Five Points of Calvinism” are occasionally known by the acrostic TULIP: Total Depravity, Unconditional Election, Limited Atonement, Irresistible Grace, and Perseverance of the Saints. Wesley’s followers created their own four point summary of their faith from his writings: the Four Alls.
In Calvinism, Total Depravity means that everyone is born to sin, that loving God is unnatural for humans, and are therefore morally incapable of being “saved”, redeemed, or becoming holy, unless God affects it for them. Unconditional Election is the option that God chose, at the beginning of time, who would be elevated to being in relationship with God, regardless of their deeds and even, as we will see, will: the rest get to suffer the wrath they deserve for being born sinful (I realize you may be thinking what I do here…but I am just telling you what Calvinist belief is… I am obviously not Calvinist.) Limited Atonement decrees that only the elect, as above, get to enjoy the benefits of Christ’s atonement, that is, are forgiven for being born sinful. Irresistible Grace claims that because some people were chosen by almighty God, those people are acceptable to God whether they like the idea or not, because God cannot be resisted, and Perseverance of the Saints just means that because God chose them and they are saved and put right with God, they cannot lose that status. (If they later do something really heinous, then that shows they were never really one of the elect.)
In contrast, John Wesley, basing his writings on Arminius, denounced Total Depravity and declared people were not depraved but alienated – without a knowledge of God; instead of Unconditional Election, Wesley believed people can choose to be one with God, to choose to be God-fearing (God-loving). Instead of Limited Atonement, he proclaimed that God’s love is freely available to all – if they want it; as for Irresistible Grace: for Wesley, grace is not irresistible – someone can choose to resist God’s grace, so they have a choice to make. Lastly, instead of Perseverance of the Saints, Wesley wrote that people can have a sense of security and assurance in their faith, but that a life with God should bear the marks of that life in the way it is lived. It includes a call for holy living, so that the person does not fall back out of the state of grace.
So Wesleyan theology is sometimes summed up as being about the “Four Alls”:
All need to be saved (put in right relationship with God)
All can be saved (all does mean all)
All can know they are saved (feel reassured of being accepted by God)
All can be saved to the uttermost (we can continue to grow in holiness)
When the first Methodists arrived in the village, later city, of Troy, it was almost exclusively Protestant, and overwhelmingly Presbyterian. Of the other early faith groups – the Baptists were also strongly Calvinist; only the smaller group of Quakers, and the Episcopalians were not. A few decades later, Lutherans, Roman Catholics, Universalists and Unitarians and other faith groups arrived, less linked with Calvin, but the first pioneers of Troy, and especially the leaders would have considered, like most migrated New Englanders and recent European immigrants of the day, that Methodist teaching was radical, absurd, not sensible and probably dangerous.
What matters is: people took their faith and the concern of their eternal condition extremely seriously. What would happen to your eternal soul if you chose the wrong option? And in this choice the Methodist way was both more recent and a minority opinion: novel in every sense. But there was also something in this message that gave ordinary people hope and excitement, as we can tell by the fervor with which they embraced the teaching of preachers and those who spoke at the frequent revivals and camp meetings.
It is against that background that we see the likes of Dr. John Loudon so deliberately and ponderously, even shockingly, take a deliberate step away from the majority denomination of the early leadership of Troy, of which he was a member, renounce his Presbyterian membership, and join the Methodists. His treatise, printed over two magazine articles after his death, is testimony to the amount of theological research and thought and prayer he put into that decision. Two hundred years on, it is almost impossible for us to imagine or believe that all this took up so much of people’s time and waking thoughts. The fact that it did explains the difficulty of bringing a new faith idea into the public conscience, which was what our early State Street Methodists were aiming to do, despite public opposition. The following essay features Dr. Loudon, and the one after that describes the physical violence early Methodist preachers endured for their convictions and the mockery and prejudice faced by the Methodist societies.
Janet Douglass, Troy, NY
May 2026.
There is an excellent and succinct 11- minute video on YouTube, which can be found by searching for “The Four Alls: Summarizing Wesleyan Theology” by Rev. Daniel Hixon. It includes the New Testament verses Wesley created these all from, if you need further information on why he affirms these things.
From the internet site, The Voice: Biblical theological resources for grown Christians: “Tulip Calvinism compared to Wesleyan Perspectives” by Dennis Bratcher ” at https://www.crivoice.org/tulip.html or search for TULIP Calvinism and Wesleyan by Dennis Bratcher for a handy chart with the differences side-by-side.
There are also many contemporary arguments in favor of a Calvinist approach available on the web, as both text discussions and on YouTube.
janetintroy 