Wesley, Whitefield, and the ‘Free Grace’ Controversy

The Marrow controversy (1718–22) most often is understood as a dispute between evangelical and legalistic parties within the eighteenth-century Kirk. Various forms of this analysis, however, leave certain questions unanswered. Rather than a clash between evangelicalism and legalism, the Marrow controversy was a collision between two differing developments of Scottish federal theology. Through the theological refinement precipitated by John Simson’s views, Thomas Boston and Ebenezer Erskine had crafted, from within the Scottish federal tradition, an evangelical federalism that emphasized the freeness and immediacy of grace. Through that same process of refinement, James Hadow had constructed, from within the same coherent Scottish federal tradition, an ordered federalism that emphasized the means through which God sovereignly bestowed his free grace upon sinners. These two federal systems, when confronted with the particular doctrinal expressions of The Marrow of Modern Divinity, produced both radically different readings of the same text and enduring controversy.

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The ‘location’ of the ‘Free Grace’ controversy

Wesley, Whitefield, and the ‘Free Grace’ Controversy ◽

10.4324/9780429455254-2 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 19-47

Author(s):

Joel Houston

Keyword(s):

Free Grace

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Thomas F. Torrance and the problem of universalism

Scottish Journal of Theology ◽

10.1017/s0036930615000034 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 68 (2) ◽

pp. 164-186 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Paul D. Molnar

Keyword(s):

Catholic Church ◽

Karl Barth ◽

Objective Knowledge ◽

Salvation History ◽

Knowledge Of God ◽

Universal Salvation ◽

Existential Knowledge ◽

Free Grace ◽

The Voice ◽

The Trinity

AbstractWhile Karl Barth and Thomas F. Torrance both believed in the possibility of universal salvation, they also rejected the idea that we could make a final determination about this possibility prior to the second coming of Jesus Christ. Hence, both theologians rejected what may be called a doctrine of universal salvation in the interest of respecting God's freedom to determine the outcome of salvation history in accordance with the love which was revealed in and through the death and resurrection of Jesus himself. This article explores Torrance's reasons for holding that ‘the voice of the Catholic Church . . . throughout all ages has consistently judged universalism a heresy for faith and a menace to the Gospel’. Torrance expressly believed in the ‘universality of Christ's saving work’ but rejected ‘universalism’ and any idea of ‘limited atonement’. He considered both of these views to be rationalistic approaches which ignore the need for eschatological reserve when thinking about what happens at the end when Christ comes again and consequently tend to read back logical necessities into the gospel of free grace. Whenever this happens, Torrance held that the true meaning of election as the basis for Christian hope is lost and some version of limited atonement or determinism invariably follows. The ultimate problem with universalism then, from Torrance's perspective, can be traced to a form of Nestorian thinking with respect to christology and to a theoretical and practical separation of the person of Christ from his atoning work for us. What I hope to show in this article is that those who advance a ‘doctrine of universalism’ as opposed to its possibility also have an inadequate understanding of the Trinity. Interestingly, Torrance objected to the thinking of John A. T. Robinson and Rudolf Bultmann because both theologians, in their own way, separated knowledge of God for us from knowledge of who God is ‘in himself’. Any such thinking transfers our knowledge of God and of salvation from the objective knowledge of God given in revelation to a type of symbolic, mythological or existential knowledge projected from one's experience of faith and this once again opens the door to both limited atonement and to universalism. Against this Torrance insisted that we cannot speak objectively about what God is doing for us unless we can speak analogically about who God is in himself.

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The Aseity of God as a Material Evangelical Concern

Journal of Reformed Theology ◽

10.1163/15697312-00801003 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 8 (1) ◽

pp. 61-78 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Christopher R.J. Holmes

Keyword(s):

New Testament ◽

Karl Barth ◽

Divine Attributes ◽

Doctrine Of God ◽

Antecedent Conditions ◽

Hypostatic Union ◽

Free Grace

‭An evangelical doctrine of God is concerned with not only the unfolding of the logic of God’s free grace but also the antecedent conditions whereby God is said to be gracious. In this article I demonstrate the extent to which for Karl Barth grace demands a “backward reference,” indeed the immanent processions of the Son and Spirit as the basis for their missions. Accordingly, I advance the notion that the question of antecedence—the “whence”—represents not simply a formal but rather a material concern, a concern which the Reformed appreciate. I unfold this contention with respect some New Testament texts and in relation to two doctrines, namely the doctrine of the divine attributes and that of the hypostatic union.‬

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