Articles of Religion Methodist

The Articles of Religion are the doctrinal statement of American Methodism, adapted by John Wesley in 1784 from the Church of England’s Thirty-nine Articles for the newly organized Methodist Episcopal Church, and first published as twenty-four articles in the church’s 1790 Book of Discipline.¹ The present United Methodist Book of Discipline prints twenty-five, plus two further articles the 1939 Uniting Conference added.² Though historically descended from the Reformed confessional family through the Church of England, Wesleyan Methodism stands further from that family’s normal pattern than the Church of England itself,³ most visibly in dropping any article on predestination and election.

Historical Development

Wesley cut the Thirty-nine Articles down to twenty-four for the Methodist societies then organizing as an independent church in America; the American church’s own Book of Discipline first printed them in 1790.¹ Wesley was himself a Loyalist who wrote against American independence and only “accepted the providential result,”⁴ which is one reason the resulting document could not simply keep the Anglican article asserting the English monarch’s supremacy over the church. In its place the Methodist Articles state that the “United States of America” are “a sovereign and independent nation,” governed by officers who hold power “according to the division of power made to them by the Constitution.”⁵

Wesley’s abridgment also dropped several Anglican articles outright: the one receiving the Nicene, Athanasian, and Apostles’ Creeds; the one on Predestination and Election; the one on the authority of General Councils; the one on avoiding excommunicated persons; the one commending the Book of Homilies; and the one on episcopal consecration.⁶ Reformed theologians have long classed Wesleyan Methodism as historically descended from the Reformed family through the Church of England, while judging it “even yet more distinctly than the parent church of England removed from the normal type of the general class”³: a judgment for which the missing Predestination article is the plainest textual evidence.

Despite these excisions, Bavinck observes that Methodism as a movement “did not depart from one or the other of the Anglican Church’s Thirty-nine Articles but concentrated the entire truth of the Christian religion around two points: a personal conversion” and “a new life characterized by Christian perfection,” so that “certain dogmas were opposed, modified, or deemed of secondary importance”⁷ less by rewriting the inherited text than by where the movement placed its practical weight. That shift shows most in how the surviving Articles on sin and free will are read: Article VII still calls fallen man’s nature genuinely corrupt, and Article VIII still denies that he can turn to faith “without the grace of God… preventing us,”⁸ but Wesleyan theology reads both through a doctrine of universal prevenient grace, a work of the Spirit that “gives us back our free will that we lost in Adam,” after which “it is ultimately up to us how we use that free will.”⁹ Barrett cites the Articles themselves as evidence that this Arminian synergism still affirms real depravity and a genuinely bound will, whatever it makes of the remedy.¹

Content of the Articles

Trinity, Christ, and the Holy Spirit (Articles I-IV)

The first four articles state Nicene Trinitarian orthodoxy in terms close to the Apostles’ Creed: one God in three persons, “the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost”; the Son’s incarnation, uniting “the Godhead and Manhood” in one person who “truly suffered, was crucified, dead, and buried”; his bodily resurrection and ascension, where he “sitteth until he return to judge all men at the last day”; and the Holy Ghost’s full deity, “of one substance, majesty, and glory with the Father and the Son.”¹⁰

Scripture (Articles V-VI)

Article V states the doctrine of biblical sufficiency directly: “The Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation; so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man that it should be believed as an article of faith,” and lists the Old and New Testament books as canonical.¹¹ Article VI affirms that “the Old Testament is not contrary to the New,” since Christ, “the only Mediator between God and man,” offers everlasting life in both; ceremonial and civil precepts of the Mosaic law do not bind Christians, but “no Christian whatsoever is free from the obedience of the commandments which are called moral.”¹²

Sin, Free Will, and Justification (Articles VII-XII)

Article VII, “Of Original or Birth Sin,” calls it “the corruption of the nature of every man, that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam, whereby man is very far gone from original righteousness, and of his own nature inclined to evil, and that continually.” Article VIII, “Of Free Will,” states that fallen man “cannot turn and prepare himself, by his own natural strength and works, to faith, and calling upon God,” apart from preceding grace.⁸ Article IX, “Of the Justification of Man,” states that believers “are accounted righteous before God only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, by faith, and not for our own works or deservings,” calling the doctrine “most wholesome… and very full of comfort.”¹³ Articles X through XII qualify that doctrine: good works cannot put away sin but are faith’s necessary fruit and evidence; “works of supererogation” beyond God’s commandments cannot be taught “without arrogancy and impiety”; and sin committed after justification, if truly repented of, does not by itself amount to the unpardonable sin against the Holy Ghost.¹⁴

The Church and Public Worship (Articles XIII-XV)

Article XIII defines the visible church as “a congregation of faithful men in which the pure Word of God is preached, and the Sacraments duly administered according to Christ’s ordinance.”¹⁵ Article XIV rejects “the Romish doctrine concerning purgatory, pardon, worshiping, and adoration, as well of images as of relics, and also invocation of saints” as “vainly invented, and grounded upon no warrant of Scripture.”¹⁶ Article XV requires that public prayer and the sacraments be conducted “in a tongue… understood by the people,” not one foreign to the congregation.¹⁷

The Sacraments (Articles XVI-XX)

Article XVI recognizes only two sacraments “ordained of Christ our Lord in the Gospel,” Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, against the five other rites “commonly called sacraments,” which it judges to lack “any visible sign or ceremony ordained of God.”¹⁸ Article XVII calls baptism “not only a sign of profession… but also a sign of regeneration or the new birth,” and directs that “the baptism of young children… be retained in the Church,”¹⁹ a point where Methodist practice diverges from the confessional Reformed Baptist position of baptizing only professing believers by immersion. Article XVIII states that the Supper is “a sacrament of our redemption by Christ’s death,” in which believers receive Christ’s body and blood “only after a heavenly and spiritual manner,” and explicitly denies transubstantiation as “repugnant to the plain words of Scripture.”²⁰ Article XIX requires that “the cup of the Lord… be denied to” no layperson,²¹ and Article XX states that Christ’s “one oblation… once made, is that perfect redemption, propitiation, and satisfaction for all the sins of the whole world,” so that the Mass’s claim to re-offer him “for the quick and the dead” is “a blasphemous fable and dangerous deceit.”²²

Ministry and Civil Life (Articles XXI-XXV)

Article XXI permits ministers to marry “at their own discretion.”²³ Article XXII allows rites and ceremonies to differ “according to the diversity of countries, times, and men’s manners,” so long as nothing is “ordained against God’s Word,” and lets “every particular church… ordain, change, or abolish” them for edification.²⁴ Article XXIII, discussed above, names the United States’ officers as the delegated rulers of “a sovereign and independent nation.”⁵ Article XXIV denies that Christians’ goods are held in common while urging generosity to the poor,²⁵ and Article XXV permits an oath before a lawful magistrate “in justice, judgment, and truth.”²⁶

Two further articles, not part of Wesley’s original set, were appended by the 1939 Uniting Conference. One, from the Methodist Protestant Church’s own Discipline, defines sanctification as “that renewal of our fallen nature by the Holy Ghost, received through faith in Jesus Christ… whereby we are not only delivered from the guilt of sin, but are washed from its pollution, saved from its power, and are enabled, through grace, to love God with all our hearts.”²⁷ The other interprets Article XXIII for congregations outside the United States, stating “the duty of all Christians, and especially of all Christian ministers, to observe and obey the laws and commands of the governing or supreme authority of the country of which they are citizens or subjects or in which they reside.”²⁸

Related Doctrines

Articles of Religion (Anglican), the document Wesley abridged
John Wesley, the Articles’ author
Arminianism, the tradition the Articles’ surviving free-will and grace language is read within
Prevenient grace and Free will, the doctrines at issue in Articles VII-VIII
Total depravity, Original sin, and Justification, doctrines the Articles state in their own terms
Baptism and Worship, where Methodist and Reformed Baptist practice diverge most visibly

References

Matthew Michael Barrett, “Arminian Synergism in Theological Perspective,” in “Reclaiming Monergism: The Case for Sovereign Grace in Effectual Calling and Regeneration” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2011), 253-316, 264 (citing Articles VII and VIII of “The Articles of Religion of the Methodist Church, adopted by the United Methodist Church, which were written and adapted by John Wesley from the Church of England’s Thirty-Nine Articles in 1784 and intended for Methodists in America,” and noting that “these twenty-four articles were first published by the church’s Book of Discipline in 1790”). ↩ ↩² ↩³
Articles of Religion (Methodist), headnotes to “Of Sanctification” and “Of the Duty of Christians to the Civil Authority” (Uniting Conference, 1939). ↩
Archibald Alexander Hodge, Outlines of Theology (New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1879), 103. ↩ ↩²
Loraine Boettner, The Reformed Doctrine of Predestination (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1932), 281. ↩
Articles of Religion (Methodist) (1784/1790), art. XXIII, “Of the Rulers of the United States of America.” ↩ ↩²
Articles of Religion (Methodist) (1784/1790), arts. I-XXV, compared against The Thirty-nine Articles of Religion (1571), arts. 8, 17, 21, 33, 35, and 36. ↩
Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 2, “The History and Literature of Dogmatic Theology.” ↩
Articles of Religion (Methodist) (1784/1790), arts. VII-VIII, “Of Original or Birth Sin” and “Of Free Will.” ↩ ↩²
Greg Welty, quoted in Barrett, “The Scriptural Affirmation of Effectual Calling,” in “Reclaiming Monergism” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2011), 88-171, 135. ↩
Articles of Religion (Methodist) (1784/1790), arts. I-IV. ↩
Articles of Religion (Methodist) (1784/1790), art. V, “Of the Sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures for Salvation.” ↩
Articles of Religion (Methodist) (1784/1790), art. VI, “Of the Old Testament.” ↩
Articles of Religion (Methodist) (1784/1790), art. IX, “Of the Justification of Man.” ↩
Articles of Religion (Methodist) (1784/1790), arts. X-XII. ↩
Articles of Religion (Methodist) (1784/1790), art. XIII, “Of the Church.” ↩
Articles of Religion (Methodist) (1784/1790), art. XIV, “Of Purgatory.” ↩
Articles of Religion (Methodist) (1784/1790), art. XV, “Of Speaking in the Congregation in Such a Tongue as the People Understand.” ↩
Articles of Religion (Methodist) (1784/1790), art. XVI, “Of the Sacraments.” ↩
Articles of Religion (Methodist) (1784/1790), art. XVII, “Of Baptism.” ↩
Articles of Religion (Methodist) (1784/1790), art. XVIII, “Of the Lord’s Supper.” ↩
Articles of Religion (Methodist) (1784/1790), art. XIX, “Of Both Kinds.” ↩
Articles of Religion (Methodist) (1784/1790), art. XX, “Of the One Oblation of Christ, Finished upon the Cross.” ↩
Articles of Religion (Methodist) (1784/1790), art. XXI, “Of the Marriage of Ministers.” ↩
Articles of Religion (Methodist) (1784/1790), art. XXII, “Of the Rites and Ceremonies of Churches.” ↩
Articles of Religion (Methodist) (1784/1790), art. XXIV, “Of Christian Men’s Goods.” ↩
Articles of Religion (Methodist) (1784/1790), art. XXV, “Of a Christian Man’s Oath.” ↩
Articles of Religion (Methodist), “Of Sanctification” (added by the Uniting Conference, 1939). ↩
Articles of Religion (Methodist), “Of the Duty of Christians to the Civil Authority” (adopted by the Uniting Conference, 1939). ↩