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Prevenient Grace in the Eighteenth Century

Prevenient Grace in the Eighteenth Century: John Wesley, Evangelical Awakening, and the Grammar of Grace Why the Eighteenth Century Matters Any serious account of prevenient grace within the Wesleyan-Holiness tradition must begin in the eighteenth century, not because later developments merely repeat Wesley’s thought, but because they reconfigure it. The eighteenth century furnishes the doctrinal grammar, pastoral instincts, and ecclesial experiments that later Holiness movements both inherited and reshaped. To misunderstand Wesley’s original articulation of prevenient grace is to misread the logic of subsequent revivalism, sanctification theology, and spiritual formation. This chapter therefore offers a close historical and theological analysis of prevenient grace as it emerged within the Evangelical Revival and early Methodism. It situates Wesley’s doctrine within its polemical context, examines its pastoral and practical deployment, and argues that prevenient grace functioned not as a discrete doctrine but as an architectonic principle—ordering Wesley’s understanding of salvation, human agency, ecclesial practice, and holiness of life. The Eighteenth-Century Theological Context: Grace Under Pressure Wesley’s theology of prevenient grace did not arise in a vacuum. It emerged amid intense theological pressures generated by post-Reformation debates over sin, freedom, and salvation. On one side stood Reformed predestination, which—at least in its popular reception—appeared to undermine the sincerity of universal gospel proclamation. On the other stood various moralistic and rationalist tendencies that assumed human capacity for virtue apart from transforming grace. The Church of England itself reflected this tension. While officially Augustinian, its pastoral practice often drifted toward a functional moralism, especially among the clergy of the early eighteenth century. Salvation was frequently framed as ethical improvement rather than spiritual regeneration. Against this backdrop, Wesley confronted two equally unsatisfactory alternatives: a determinism that threatened moral responsibility, and a moralism that diminished grace. Prevenient grace became Wesley’s theological solution to this impasse. Drawing deeply on Scripture, the early Church Fathers (especially the Greek tradition), and Anglican sacramental theology, Wesley articulated a vision of grace that was both universally operative and radically necessary (Collins, 2007). .... The Grammar of Grace Established In the eighteenth century, prevenient grace functioned as the grammar of Wesleyan theology—structuring how salvation, freedom, holiness, and responsibility were spoken about and lived out. It allowed Wesley to proclaim universal grace without denying human agency, and to demand holiness without collapsing into moralism. As subsequent chapters will show, this grammar would be variously simplified, amplified, and contested in the nineteenth century. But its original articulation remains the normative starting point for any Wesleyan-Holiness account of grace and human response. Select Bibliography (Eighteenth-Century Focus) Wesley, John. The Works of John Wesley, Bicentennial Edition. Nashville: Abingdon Press. Maddox, Randy L. Responsible Grace. Nashville: Kingswood Books, 1994. Collins, Kenneth J. The Theology of John Wesley. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2007. Outler, Albert C. John Wesley. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964. Rack, Henry. Reasonable Enthusiast. London: Epworth Press, 1989.