Thread: John and Charles Wesley

Just doing some research on the brothers and wondering if anyone had any information on them and their theologies. I was also wondering if they use to be Calvinists and than later recanted all that they had once believed in. Can anyone help me out with that?
blessings,
michael

You will find a decent simple treatment of their theological positions in the biog 'George Whitefield' by Arnold Dallimore.

Essentially, they were both arminian although Charles changed considerably towards the end of his life and became closer theologically to whitefield (calvinist) than to his brother John, who never wavered from his repulsive doctrine. (Love the man and his zeal, hate the doctrine!).

I don't think that either brother Wesley had a calvinist position before becoming such strong promoters of arminianism.

David Engelsma,writing in the Dec.15,2003 edition of the Standard Bearer takes on Iain Murray's rather flattering
treatment of John Wesley.He makes some excellent points.

Interestingly, both were Anglicans. I have been reading through John Wesley's journals and have not yet come across any statement in which he addresses his differences with the 39 Articles, which are Calvinistic.

I find John Wesley to be eccentric to the extreme. He was influenced by the Moravians.

At RUF we sing some of Charles Wesley's hymns, and there aren't any glaring errors in his writing, but I'm not exactly an expert on such things.uzzled:

We sing a lot of CHarles Wesley's hymns. They are excellent. We sing a few of John Wesley's hymns, and they are often edited for arminianism!

[quote:d7b34cc18c]
there aren't any glaring errors in his writing
[/quote:d7b34cc18c]

From the hymn, [i:d7b34cc18c]Christ the Lord is Risen Today[/i:d7b34cc18c]:

(2nd stanza) Lives again our glorious King, Alleluia!
Where, O Death is now thy sting? Alleluia!
Dying once he [b:d7b34cc18c]all[/b:d7b34cc18c] doth save, Alleluia!
Where thy victory, O Grave? Alleluia!



I asked an Arminian music professor if John Wesley was a universalist. He replied, "Oh, that was probably just a slip of the pen."

Here is a link to the "Wesley Center Online"

http://wesley.nnu.edu/JohnWesley.htm

You will find all you need to know about the Wesleys here.

I would sudjest that your read through John Wesley's sermons, (there is quite a collection on the site), to understand Wesley and to see how much in error he was you must read his sermons on various topics to get a feel for his systematic theology.

After reading just about all the sermons found on this site, I found Wesley to be very much in error and would be very concerned about someone who set under his teaching for a long period of time and bought in to his terrible error....

Blessings,
Terry