Enclosed is a brief excerpt from a paper I wrote at Colorado Christian University concerning John Wesley's doctrine of atonement. His doctrine went against the standard doctrine of the time in the denomination of which he served as a minister, the Church of England, which is captured in Article 17 of the Church of England's Articles of Religion, popularly termed the Thirty-nine Articles, which can be found in the back of any The Book of Common Prayer.
"A professor of theology at Emory University in the 1960’s, William Ragsdale Cannon, made the following statement regarding John Wesley’s theology involving the work of Christ on the cross: '…the work of Christ, which is the sole cause of redemption, is interpreted in a universal sense, so that Christ is said to have lived and died for every [person] whether a [person] accepts the gift of his atonement or not. The effects of Christ’s work for the individual are conditional, however, being dependent on [a person’s] willingness to receive them'" (8).
(8) William Ragsdale Cannon, The Theology of John Wesley (New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1946), 250.
{From The Roots of Wheat Ridge United Methodist Church, by Hunter Irvine, a paper submitted on 4/13/12 to Dr. Aaron Smith for Theology 302: Evangelical Theology, at Colorado Christian University.}
