By his own admission, George Whitefield was not a theologian – at least, not a theologian of the conventional sort. Indeed, he never aspired to be one. Instead, in much the same way that his Methodist field-preaching compatriot John Wesley has been famously dubbed a “folk-theologian”—a practical theologian as opposed to a systematic theologian—Whitefield might aptly be described as an occasional theologian. In other words, he tended to avoid abstract theological discourse in favor of expressing his theology through the medium of letters, treatises—and above all else—sermons.
This paper explores the way in which Whitefield expressed this conviction that theology belonged in the pulpit, not the ivory tower. He preferred to communicate theology through sermons he delivered to live gatherings in specific locations and times rather than through attempting to produce timeless systematic theological formulations. These sermons were geared towards the spiritual transformation of his listeners (and readers), not the mere transfer of theologically oriented information, even theologically orthodox information.
Whitefield might have had a lifelong allergic reaction to unapplied and abstract theology, decrying “letter-learned” professing Christians who wrote about the new birth but had experienced “no more of it than a blind man does of colours,” and yet we shall observe that beneath this polemical rhetoric lurked a preacher who arrived at cherished and non-negotiable Calvinistic convictions—convictions that he was willing expend significant time and energy proclaiming and defending in the public arena. While strenuously avoiding jargon, Whitefield’s sermons nonetheless assume a high degree of theological literacy. He regularly cites and censures Arian, Socianian, Arminian, Papist and Antinomian heterodoxy; he appeals to pastor-theologians ranging from Augustine to Solomon Stoddard as purveyors of orthodoxy. Indeed, as Kidd observes, “For those who only know Whitefield as a powerfully emotional preacher, the intellectual heft of his sermons may come as a surprise.”
If, to a large degree, the revival theology that first-generation evangelicals preached was thoroughly consistent with Nicene orthodoxy, then Whitefield’s was cast in an especially Calvinistic accent. This theological trajectory typically emphasized a series of themes: conviction of sin, conversion (including justification and regeneration) and the pursuit of sanctification (or, has sometimes been styled, “consolation”). These doctrines all appear repeatedly and prominently in Whitefield’s writings, and we shall briefly explore how each of them was expressed in his public ministry in turn.