John Wesley’s View Of Martin Luther -- By: Leo G. Cox

Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 07:3 (Summer 1964)
Article: John Wesley’s View Of Martin Luther
Author: Leo G. Cox


John Wesley’s View Of Martin Luther

Leo G. Cox

Since the middle ages two men have stood out as great leaders in our world in the area of church life. Martin Luther’s leadership in the Great Reformation of the 16th century and John Wesley’s leadership in the Evangelical Revival of the 18th century stand out as important. Students of history find it impossible to minimize the influence of either one of these men upon the modern world.

Generally Methodists have admired the work of Luther and looked upon the Reformation as a stepping stone to the Wesleyan Revival, but there has been too much ignorance of Luther among Wesleyans, and only very recently has the need been felt and steps taken toward an exploration of Luther’s works by Methodists. On the other hand, there is a natural tendency among Lutherans to regard the Wesley revival as the English form of pietism and to dismiss Methodism as a heresy.1It would undoubtedly be an aid to scholarship in both groups if each could better understand the other.

In this paper I shall seek to find out what Wesley himself thought of Luther and his work. Since Wesley lived 200 years after Luther, it will be interesting to note just what concepts he formed of this great man, and what differences he recognized between their two theologies.

I The View Hidden

Wesley was born in 1703 and came into what he called his evangelical conversion in May of 1738 at the age of 35. Thirteen years prior to this conversion date Wesley had determined to live the Christian life and had set up a system of discipline and religious practice that made Wesley a zealous servant of God. The change that came in 1738 was that of a seeker who becomes a finder and a man who had the form of godliness now receiving its power. Where before he. was a zealous servant of God, he now becomes a son.2

The first thirty-five years of Wesley’s life were years of intense training. He had the happy privilege of being born into a home of great piety and of intelligent discipline. His father was a clergyman for the Church of England and his mother was a woman of exceptional ability.

Both parents were born of a background of dissenting Puritans. These ancestors had suffered for their faith and left a legacy of courage and stability which John Wesley admired. However, they had revolted from the Puritanism of their parents and had returned to the established church. Their theology had largely been purged of its strong Puritan tendencies and had become a form of English-Arminianism. To them Justification was largely a matter of belief. Like Bishop Laud, they conceived of faith as a human ac...

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