By Mark K. Olson. This is the first of several articles that will explore how Wesley understood his “warmed heart” at Aldersgate over the course of his life. The articles are drawn from my book Wesley and Aldersgate: Interpreting Conversion Narratives (Routledge, 2018).
Conversion & Evangelical Religion
In the autumn of 1737, Isaac Watts and John Guyse released Jonathan Edwards’s The Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God in the Conversion of Many Hundred Souls in Northampton, and the Neighbouring Towns, which narrated accounts of conversion during the revival of 1734 and 1735.[1] The Faithful Narrative became an instant classic and was used to promote revival on both sides of the Atlantic. By 1743 four major evangelical periodicals were in circulation to spread news about the revival and to share accounts of conversion.[2] To cite just one example, William McCulloch began the Glasgow-Weekly History in December 1741. In an article the following summer McCulloch claimed that “500 Souls” had been “savingly brought home to God” over the prior five months at Cambuslang, Scotland.[3] Accounts like these point out that the Evangelical Revival was marked by clusters of conversion during heightened seasons of great religious fervor, and these clusters were linked through networks of publications, letter writing, and itinerant preachers.[4] These factors reflect how the new evangelical movement was wedded to conversionism.
In recent years scholars have turned to the study of conversion to better understand the Evangelical Revival of the eighteenth century. Three decades ago, David Bebbington listed conversion as one of the four characteristics of evangelical religion, along with activism, biblicism, and crucicentrism (i.e. focus on the cross).[5] Bebbington’s placement of conversion at the head of his quadrilateral highlighted its importance to early evangelicals. More recently, David Hempton examined how early Methodists “embellished by memory” their experiences of the new birth and often presented them as “cosmic dramas.”[6] Mark Noll observed the “unswerving belief” of evangelicals in “the need for conversion,” with Clarence Goen explaining that this belief derived from drawing a sharp line between “the world and church, nature and spirit, sinner and saint.”[7] John Coffey clarified that the Evangelical Revival was part of a larger trend toward heart religion in opposition to nominal Christianity and the new moralism of latitudinarian theologies and Enlightenment philosophy.[8] Dissatisfied with a perceived lack of spiritual vitality in the established churches, many turned to an experiential faith, a religion of the heart, that would transform their inmost thoughts, feelings, and inclinations.[9] According to David Ceri Jones, what unified early leaders of the revival was not theological, for their doctrinal differences often ran deep, but experiential—an “experience of the New Birth underpinned by a shared understanding of the conversion process.”[10] It was this shared experience, analysed Bruce Hindmarsh, that evangelicals found their deepest identity as individuals.[11] As Hindmarsh noted, conversion was the “central identifying trait” of the new movement.[12]
Morphology of Evangelical Conversion
What conversion meant to early evangelicals requires a closer look at the term evangelical. The word comes from a transliteration of the Greek noun euangelion, which in the New Testament refers to the “good news of God’s saving act in Jesus Christ.”[13] For evangelicals the focal point of this saving act was the cross of Christ. They took seriously the biblical truths of human sinfulness and final judgment, and the biblical injunctions to repent and believe in Christ for an assurance of forgiveness and salvation. Central to evangelical conversion was faith in the cross of Christ as the atonement for one’s sin, original and actual.
During the sixteenth century the term “evangelical” became associated with the Protestant Reformation. Martin Luther proclaimed an “evangelical doctrine” of justification by faith alone.[14] In later life Luther commented that his rediscovery of justification as sheer gift led to a spiritual breakthrough, “Here I felt that I was altogether born again and had entered paradise itself through open gates.”[15] Luther was not alone, for justification by faith became a core tenet of the Protestant Reformation and was considered by many as the articulus stantis et cadentis ecclesiae—the article on which the church stands or falls.[16] The Protestant position on justification therefore stood in sharp contrast to the Roman Catholic perspective and this led to the word “evangelical” becoming a synonym for the Protestant faith. As heirs of the Reformation, eighteenth-century evangelicals considered justification by faith alone to be a core component of genuine Christian conversion.
The morphology of evangelical conversion was further developed by the Puritans. Building on the Reformed order of salvation, William Perkins described the order of conversion in The Golden Chain. Like links in a chain, the stages of conversion begin with a spiritual awakening from God’s law revealing one’s sin and inward sinfulness. Spiritual awakening produces fear of divine retribution and despair over one’s salvation. The good news of forgiveness and new life in Christ then kindles in the heart the sparks of saving faith.[17] Now justified, the convert’s faith is further tested by doubt and despair that leads to evangelical repentance and a new life of obedience until a firm assurance of final salvation is attained. Essential to the Puritan morphology was the relationship of law and gospel. Drawing on John Calvin’s three uses of the law, the Puritans taught that the law serves to convict of sin in preparation for God to impart saving faith through the gospel.[18] As Hindmarsh noted, “At its most fundamental level this order identified a progress from law to promise (or ‘gospel’ in the narrow sense), which corresponded to the psychological states of conviction and relief.”[19] The application of law and gospel to spiritual states would later form the skeleton structure of evangelical conversion in the eighteenth century.
Besides the Puritans, another source for the morphology of evangelical conversion was Continental Pietism.[20] While Pietism as a movement is often considered to have begun with the publication of Philip Spener’s Pia Desideria in 1675, it was August Hermann Francke who left an indelible mark on evangelical conversion in the eighteenth century.[21] Drawing upon his own conversion, Francke taught the necessity of a penitential struggle (Busskampf) followed by a sudden breakthrough (Durchbruch) to an assurance of faith and new birth:
“In . . . such great dread I fell once more upon my knees on this Sunday evening, and I appealed to God . . . for salvation from such a miserable state. Then the Lord, the living God, heard me from his throne while I was still on my knees . . . Then all my doubt vanished as quickly as one turns one’s hand; I was assured in my heart of the grace of God in Christ Jesus . . . All sadness and unrest of the heart was taken away at once . . . I arose a completely different person from the one who had knelt down.”[22]
An important difference between Francke’s morphology of conversion and the Puritan pattern was the timing of assurance. Whereas in Puritan theology assurance normally came years later, after one’s faith had been tested and proved genuine, Francke saw assurance as central to the crisis experience. Following his lead, early evangelicals saw assurance as a fundamental component of the conversion experience.
Evangelical Conversion Defined
From the above sketch a basic definition of evangelical conversion can be given. For starters, conversion was not seen as primarily a change from a secular to a religious way of life, as Catholicism taught, for most early evangelicals were already religious before their evangelical conversion.[23] Nor, was it identified with the sacrament of baptism, since large numbers of evangelicals in the eighteenth century were already baptized into the Christian faith.[24] Instead, evangelical conversion signified the new birth, received by faith in Christ as an atonement for sin, bringing a new sense of peace and joy from having one’s sins forgiven.[25] Jonathan Edwards offered a crisp definition when he stated that conversion is a “great and glorious work of God’s power, at once changing the heart and infusing life into a dead soul.”[26]
Inheriting a morphology from the Puritans and Pietists, early evangelicals understood conversion to be preceded by a season of deep conviction over one’s salvation, culminating in a breakthrough to an assurance of saving faith, followed by a new life of devotion and obedience.[27] In short, conversion followed a pattern of confliction—crisis—comfort, built on the motifs of law and gospel. Even though there was consensus on the definition of conversion, there were differences over its details by the main parties of the revival. Evangelical Calvinists understood conversion through the lens of their cherished doctrine of unconditional election.[28] Wesleyan Methodists framed conversion according to their Arminian principles, inherited from their high church Anglicanism. And the Moravians saw conversion through the lens of their Pietistic Lutheranism, except by 1739 they rejected Francke’s notion of a preparatory struggle.[29]
Wesley & Aldersgate
For many, Wesley’s “warmed heart” on May 24, 1738, has remained a riddle. On the surface, John Wesley’s Journal for the opening months of 1738 appears to be straight forward. Wesley had been a devout Anglican clergyman who had pursued holiness of heart and faithfully worshipped according to his Anglican tradition. He even travelled to the “ends of the earth” to bring the gospel to those who had never heard of Christ.[30] Yet, despite all this personal goodness Wesley discovered he had never been truly converted to Christ: “I went to America to convert the Indians; but Oh! who shall convert me?”[31]
Then he met Peter Böhler, a Moravian missionary to America. Böhler taught that salvation is a free gift to be received by faith alone in Christ alone. By mid-April Wesley was convinced of Böhler’s message and “resolved to seek” the gift of “justifying, saving faith.”[32] The breakthrough came about a month later on May 24th:
In the evening I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther’s Preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation, and an assurance was given me, that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.[33]
Even though Wesley’s account fits the above definition of evangelical conversion, to many it remains a “curious puzzle.”[34] For John Hampson, the first biographer, Wesley’s remarks in the 1774/75 Journal footnotes directly contradict his published account in the Journal.[35] Likewise, nearly 100 years later Luke Tyerman considered Wesley’s post-Aldersgate doubts “extremely puzzling” in light of his glowing testimony on May 24th.[36] The Anglican Robert Southey considered Aldersgate a contradiction since Wesley received “an assurance which had not assured him.”[37] More recently Richard Heitzenrater noted the irony in that Wesley later modified nearly every aspect of his initial perceptions of the event.[38] And, Henry Rack considered it more than likely that Wesley held “inconsistent positions” about what happened at Aldersgate.[39] Over the past two centuries there have been many attempts to make sense of Wesley’s numerous comments about his “conversion,” but in the end Aldersgate remains a riddle.
Rack noted two primary issues. The first concerns the “content of the experience and what it meant to Wesley at the time,” while the second involves the significance of the experience for his religious development and later career.[40] Another concern for scholars has been Wesley’s larger-than-life image to his posterity.[41] Aldersgate has been embellished with myths that a careful reading of the textual record cannot support. Most notable has been the idea that Aldersgate resolved all of Wesley’s anxieties and afterward he was a “simple lover of God.”[42] Another myth has been that Aldersgate represented the beginning of Methodism and of the Evangelical Revival.[43] Theodore Jennings referred to these myths as “Aldersgatism” for their distortion of the historical record and their perversion of Wesley’s core theological principles.[44]
Resolving the Riddle
Even though Aldersgate has been touted as Wesley’s “conversion” to genuine Christian faith, the meaning of every detail in the story has been vigorously debated. This led Randy Maddox to ask over thirty years ago, “How could a single event spawn such a variety of interpretations?”[45] In response he offered a couple reasons.
First, Maddox concluded the textual record is “inconclusive.” He proceeded to note how scholars spend “much of their time dealing with the ambiguities of Wesley’s references to the event.”[46] Robert Dale Parker explained how language includes features like paradox, tension, irony, and ambiguity.[47] These features have contributed to the “major textual dilemmas.” Beginning with the first biographers there have been repeated attempts to resolve the tensions between Wesley’s portrayal of May 24th in the Journal narrative with his depiction in the 1774/75 footnotes. Then there is the paradox of Wesley’s experience. Was it merely psychological, a mystical encounter, the attainment of perfect love, the moment of justification and eternal salvation, the attempt to become a Moravian, or simply “an assurance which had not assured him?”[48] The diversity of interpretations illustrates the paradoxical character of what transpired on that evening. When we pause and consider the extent of the discrepancies in the textual record, and the history of attempts to resolve them, we must acknowledge that the dilemmas are major and so far, unresolved.
This led Maddox to conclude that the riddle cannot be solved on “textual grounds alone.”[49] At first thought, this appears to make sense. However, when we look closely at past studies one fact stands out—there has not been a systematic analysis of the textual record that would help clarify Wesley’s perspective. Two examples are worth citing. 1. It is striking that no scholar in the past has examined in detail the language of Wesley’s testimony to establish his intent. Such an interpretive task is crucial to determine what Aldersgate meant to him at the time. 2. In the 1770s Wesley added a series of footnotes to the 1738 Journal. Yet, surprisingly, these footnotes have received little analysis by scholars.[50] Again, such an interpretive task is essential to ascertain Wesley’s mature point of view. These two examples illustrate why a new study is needed that will critically examine the full textual record, from Wesley’s initial impressions to his most settled thoughts. For by assessing Wesley’s interpretation as it matured, we can gain a better understanding of what the experience meant to him over the course of his life and what the experience contributed to his religious and theological development.
Second, Maddox suggested that the presuppositions of the interpreter’s own cultural and historical context have influenced how scholars have construed the textual record. He correctly noted there is today an increased sensitivity to the influence of the reader’s context on the process of interpretation. Parker made the same point when he observed that “texts do not make meaning by themselves. Readers make meaning.”[51] It is a fact that past interpretations of Aldersgate represent a diverse set of religious traditions and theological orientations, including Roman Catholic, Reformed, Lutheran, Anglican, and Methodist.[52] This in part explains why there have been divergent interpretations.[53]
Another factor has been the tendency to look for a single doctrine, tradition, or theory to solve most if not all the textual issues. Once again, there is little surprise that in so doing scholars have looked to their own religious and theological traditions for interpretive guidance. However, as we will see in forthcoming articles, Aldersgate defies single explanations because it was a complex event—even for John Wesley! Rack was correct when he cautioned against “one-sided, doctrinaire, unitary interpretations.”[54] In short, past studies have considered the discrepancies the central problem to understanding Wesley’s experience at Aldersgate. This study moves in a different direction: the ambiguities are the interpretive keys that unlock the richness of Wesley’s interpretation. The diverse portrayals of Aldersgate in the textual record reflect the different ways that Wesley understood his evangelical conversion. The aim of the forthcoming articles is not to solve the textual dilemmas, nor to harmonize them, but to explore each one for what it can reveal about how Wesley understood Aldersgate over the course of his lifetime.
Next Article
The next article will explore Wesley’s language in his Aldersgate testimony to show that he understood his experience to be a conversion event.
For a full study of this subject, see my book Wesley and Aldersgate: Interpreting Conversion Narratives (Routledge, 2018).
[1] C. C. Goen, ed. The Works of Jonathan Edwards: The Great Awakening, vol. 4 (Yale: Yale University Press, 1972), 129.
[2] The four periodicals were The Christian’s Amusement (1740), The Glasglow-Weekly History (1741), The Christian History (1743), and The Christian Monthly History (1743). Besides these periodicals George Whitefield and John Wesley both published their conversion accounts in 1740. See D. Bruce Hindmarsh, The Evangelical Conversion Narrative: Spiritual Autobiography in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 68, 88.
[3] Jonathan M Yeager, ed. Early Evangelicalism: A Reader (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 77.
[4] Hindmarsh, Evangelical Conversion Narrative, 62.
[5] David W. Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s (London: Routledge, 1989), 3.
[6] David Hempton, Methodism: Empire of the Spirit (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 60.
[7] Mark A. Noll, The Rise of Evangelicalism: The Age of Edwards, Whitefield and the Wesleys (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2003), 15; Goen, Works of Jonathan Edwards, 3.
[8] John Coffey, ‘Introduction’, in Heart Religion: Evangelical Piety in England & Ireland, 1690-1850, ed. John Coffey(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 9. On this larger trend, see Ted A. Campbell, The Religion of the Heart: A Study on European Religious Life in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1991); Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: Christian Doctrine and Modern Culture (Since 1700), vol. 5 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1989), 118-73.
[9] Coffey, Heart Religion, 9. The reference to the thoughts, feelings, and inclinations reflect early evangelical understanding of the heart (John Coffey, Heart Religion, 6).
[10] David Ceri Jones, ‘A Glorious Work in the World’: Welsh Methodism and the International Evangelical Revival, 1735-1750 (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2004), 69.
[11] Hindmarsh, Evangelical Conversion Narrative, 10.
[12] Hindmarsh, Evangelical Conversion Narrative, 72.
[13] M. Eugene Boring, ‘Gospel, Message’, NIDB 2:629; Mark Noll, The Rise of Evangelicalism, 16.
[14] Martin Luther, ‘Preface to the Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans’, in Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings, Third Edition, eds. Timothy F. Lull and William R. Russell (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2012), 81, 85.
[15] Martin Luther, ‘Preface to the Complete Edition of Luther’s Latin Writings’, in Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings, eds. Lull and Russell, 497.
[16] Richard A. Muller, Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1985), 46. For information on the phrase, see Albert Outler’s comments in JW’s Works, 1:450 n 15.
[17] The analogy of sparks being kindled to describe the gift of faith comes from Perkins in The Golden Chain. See Joel R. Beedes, Assurance of Faith: Calvin, English Puritanism, and the Dutch Second Reformation (New York: Peter Lang, 1991, 1994), 110.
[18] For Calvin’s discussion on the three uses of the law, see John T. McNeil, ed. Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2 vols. (London: Westminster John Knox Press, 1960, 2006), 1:354-66.
[19] Hindmarsh, Evangelical Conversion Narrative, 15.
[20] Noll, Rise of Evangelicalism, 60-65.
[21] Hindmarsh, Evangelical Conversion Narrative, 59; Markus Matthias, ‘August Hermann Francke’, in The Pietist Theologians, ed. Carter Lindberg (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2005), 107-08; W. R. Ward, Early Evangelicalism: A Global Intellectual History, 1670-1789 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 42-45.
[22] Quoted from Matthias, ‘August Hermann Francke’, 102-03; and Hindmarsh, Evangelical Conversion Narrative, 58.
[23] On conversion within Catholicism, see Gordon T. Smith, Beginning Well: Christian Conversion & Authentic Transformation (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2001), 80-82.
[24] George Whitefield, Sermons of George Whitefield (Peabody: Hendrickson Publishers, 2009), 262; JWS, The New Birth IV.4 (Works, 2:199); Ward, Early Evangelicalism, 44.
[25] Campbell, Religion of the Heart, 90; Jones, ‘A Glorious Work in the World’, 18;Noll, Rise of Evangelicalism, 15
[26] Goen, Works of Jonathan Edwards, 177.
[27] This basic morphology has been stated in a variety of ways. See Bebbington, Evangelism in Modern Britain, 5;Goen, Works of Jonathan Edwards, 25-32; Hindmarsh, Evangelical Conversion Narrative, 15, 51, 89; Jones, ‘A Glorious Work in the World’, 69; Noll, Rise of Evangelicalism, 89.
[28] In the eighteenth century there were several groups of evangelical Calvinists in Great Britain: Calvinistic Methodists (e.g. George Whitefield), Scottish Presbyterians, Anglican evangelicals, and Dissenters. In America there were also Congregationalists (e.g. Jonathan Edwards), Presbyterians (e.g. Gilbert Tennent), Baptists (e.g. Roger Williams), and other groups.
[29] Frederick Dreyer, The Genesis of Methodism (London: Associated University Presses, 1999), 41; Noll, Rise of Evangelicalism, 84.
[30] JW Journal, 1 February 1738 (Works, 18:215).
[31] JW Journal, 24 January (Works, 18:211).
[32] JW Journal, 24 May 1738 (Works, 18:248).
[33] JW Journal, 24 May 1738 (Works,18:250).
[34] Frederick E. Maser, ‘Rethinking Wesley’s Conversion’, DG 49:2 (Winter 1978), 30.
[35] John Hampson, Memoirs of the Late Rev. John Wesley, A.M. 2 vols. (London: James Graham, 1791), 1:201-02.
[36] Luke Tyerman, The Life and Times of the Rev. John Wesley,Sixth Edition, 3 vols. (Stoke-on-Trent, Staffs: Tentmaker Publications, 2003; orig. London, 1870), 1:192.
[37] Robert Southey, The Life of Wesley and the Rise and Progress of Methodism, 2 vols. (New York: Wm. B. Gilley, 1820), 1:160.
[38] Richard P. Heitzenrater, Mirror and Memory: Reflections on Early Methodism (Nashville: Kingsword Books, 1989), 149.
[39] Henry D. Rack, Reasonable Enthusiast: John Wesley and the Rise of Methodism, Third Edition (London: Epworth Press, 2002), 147.
[40] Rack, Reasonable Enthusiast,147.
[41] On this point, see Richard P. Heitzenrater, The Elusive Mr. Wesley, Second Edition (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2003).
[42] Roberta C. Bondi, ‘Aldersgate and Patterns of Methodist Spirituality’, in Aldersgate Reconsidered, ed. Randy L. Maddox (Nashville: Kingsword Books, 1990), 21. For other myths see Randy L. Maddox, ‘Introduction’, in Aldersgate Reconsidered, 13-15.
[43] In a recent example A. Skevington Wood referred to Aldersgate as ‘the turning point in the Evangelical Revival’. He then added, ‘What happened in that little room was of more importance to England than all the victories of Pitt by land or sea’ (‘John and Charles Wesley’, in Introduction to the History of Christianity, ed. Tim Dowley, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2002, 454).
[44] Theodore W. Jennings, Jr., ‘John Wesley Against Aldersgate’, QR 8:3 (Fall, 1988), 20-22.
[45] Randy L. Maddox, ‘Aldersgate: A Tradition History’, in Aldersgate Reconsidered, ed. Randy L. Maddox (Nashville: Kingswood Books, 1990), 134.
[46] Maddox, ‘Aldersgate: A Tradition History’, 134.
[47] Robert Dale Parker, How to Interpret Literature: Critical Theory for Literary and Cultural Studies, Second Edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 18-19.
[48] Southey, Life of Wesley, 160.
[49] Maddox, ‘Aldersgate: A Tradition History’, 134.
[50] For example, note the limited analysis done by Collins, John Wesley, 78-80;Heitzenrater, Mirror and Memory, 144-45; and Hindmarsh, Evangelical Conversion Narrative, 126.
[51] Parker, How to Interpret Literature, 332. Parker made this comment in his review of Reader-Response Criticism.
[52] These include Roman Catholic (Knox, Piette, Todd), Reformed (Dallimore, Noll), Lutheran (Källstad, Schmidt), Anglican (V. Green, Hindmarsh, Podmore, Southey), Jungian psychology (Moore) and the big tent of Wesleyan Methodism (which includes the Holiness Movement). Within the Wesleyan tradition some support the ‘standard’ view (Coke and Moore, Collins, Rattenbury, etc.) and others do not (Heitzenrater, Jennings, Lee, etc.), and others present alternative interpretations (Cubie, Tuttle, etc.).
[53] On this point, see Heitzenrater, The Elusive Mr. Wesley, 37-38.
[54] Rack, Reasonable Enthusiast,147.
