A marker takes the colour of the side it landed on — blue toward the left pole,
orange toward the right. The shape says which tradition; the colour never does.
The rails draw confessional Presbyterian and Reformed churches for the Calvinist side, Wesleyan and Methodist churches for the Arminian side. Both labels are wider than that. Reformed Baptists and many Anglicans are Calvinist too; Free Will Baptists, the Nazarenes and most Pentecostals are Arminian, and Pentecostals would sit at the continuationist end of the gifts rail.
What they share
Neither says a person makes the first move. Westminster calls it effectual calling, the summons of God that actually brings a person in; Wesley calls it prevenient grace, the grace that runs ahead of any decision. Both begin with God reaching someone who could not have reached Him.
Both baptise infants and both land in the sacramental band. Wesley urged his people to receive communion as often as they possibly could, and wrote a sermon setting out why.
One people of God. Both land in the same band on Israel and the church, so neither runs a separate track for the nation and neither teaches a rapture.
Both hold justification by faith and receive the ancient creeds. Both are children of the Reformation: Geneva by way of Scotland, the Church of England by way of one of its own priests.
Where they differ
Both sides below are stated the way people who hold them would state them. Landing in
the same band is not agreeing, and landing in different ones is not a verdict.
Election comes first in the Reformed telling. God chose a people before the world was made, not because He foresaw anything good in them, and the grace that raises the spiritually dead makes the unwilling willing. Calvinists call that grace effectual, meaning it does not fail, not that anyone is dragged in unwilling. Because the work is His from the start, the finishing is His too. A Calvinist preacher still calls everyone in the room to repent and believe; what he will not do is treat the outcome as the hearer's contribution.
Arminian (Wesleyan)
firmly synergist
Wesley's name for the first move is prevenient grace, the grace that runs ahead of any decision. It reaches everyone, so nobody can say the offer never came, and it does for a person what he could not do for himself: it gives him back the ability to answer at all. Then he answers, and he may say no. That is what Wesleyans mean by free will, and it is why a call to respond belongs at the end of a sermon, and why an Arminian pulpit warns as well as reassures.
In plain wordsBoth say God moves first. Calvinists say He also settles the answer; Arminians say the person still has to give it.
Cessationist means the miraculous gifts have stopped, and the Reformed case for it sits in the Confession's first paragraph: the former ways God used to make His will known have now ceased, because everything needed is written down. The claim is about revelation rather than power. A Reformed congregation prays hard for the sick, by name and out loud, and expects God to answer. What it does not expect is someone standing up with a fresh word from God.
Arminian (Wesleyan)
continuationist-leaning
This is one of the few older Protestant traditions that never turned cessationist. Wesley argued that the miraculous gifts faded because Christians' love had grown cold, not because God had withdrawn them. Wesleyan services are not Pentecostal and tongues are uncommon, but prayer for healing is at home and the door was never shut. Pentecostalism is a grandchild of this family, by way of the holiness movement, and a Wesleyan who prays for a miracle is not stepping outside the tradition.
In plain wordsBoth pray for the sick. Reformed churches do not expect God to say anything new; Wesleyans leave that door open.
Reformed worship runs on what its own writers call the regulative principle: nothing enters a service unless Scripture calls for it. That rules out a great deal, and it also rules out a script. The Westminster Assembly replaced the Book of Common Prayer with a Directory, which gives a minister advice instead of words to read aloud, so every prayer is his own and the sermon carries the hour. Some congregations sing only the psalms. It looks the more formal of the two from the door and is the freer by the measure this rail uses.
Arminian (Wesleyan)
liturgy-leaning
Wesley was an Anglican priest who never left, and he sent his American followers a prayer book of his own editing. Wesleyan worship keeps a service book, the church year and prayers the church has used for centuries, with prayer offered on the spot and a great deal of singing over the top. Charles Wesley wrote thousands of hymns, and the family learned its theology from them. A Wesleyan service can be dignified and loud in the same hour.
In plain wordsThe Reformed service looks the stricter of the two and is the freer by its own rules.
Beyond the compass
The Compass measures six things, not everything. These differences are real and
sit outside all six.
Can grace be lost?
None of the six rails measures this, and it is the difference people feel most. Dort's fifth head of doctrine teaches that those God keeps, He keeps to the end: a believer may fall badly and still not fall away, because the keeping is His work. Wesleyans hold that someone who really believed may afterwards turn away, which is why their preaching warns as well as reassures. One pastor answers the frightened by naming whose work it was; the other answers by calling them back.
Whom did Christ die for?
Dort answered in two halves: the death of the Son is of infinite value, abundantly sufficient for the sins of the whole world, and it was intended to save those given to Him. Arminians hold that Christ died for every person without exception, and that the benefit is received by faith. Nobody here thinks the cross was too small. The question is what it was meant to accomplish, and for whom.
How they came to differ
Jacobus Arminius was a Reformed pastor and then a professor at Leiden, and he died in 1609 without leading a movement. The year after, his followers put their case to the Dutch authorities in a document called the Remonstrance: five articles on election, on the reach of Christ's death, on how helpless a person is without grace, and on whether grace can be resisted. The fifth left open, for further study, whether a believer can finally fall away.
The reply took nine years and an international synod. Dort sat from 1618 to 1619 with delegates from several countries, answered the five articles point for point, and the Remonstrant ministers lost their pulpits.
It ran again in English, that time between friends. In 1739 John Wesley preached and printed a sermon called Free Grace against predestination. George Whitefield, the other great preacher of the revival, begged him not to and then answered him in print, and the awakening split into Calvinist and Wesleyan wings that have never rejoined. Whitefield asked that Wesley preach his funeral sermon, and in 1770 Wesley did.
Walking in
In a confessional Reformed church nobody asks you to come forward. The invitation is to hear the gospel and trust it, the prayers are the minister's own words, the sermon runs long, and communion may be monthly or quarterly. In a Wesleyan church there is a printed order to follow, the church year, set prayers, then hymn singing with the volume up, and a call to respond is at home. Both baptise babies, and in both the parents make promises.
Did you know?
The five points of Calvinism were the Arminians' idea first. The Remonstrance of 1610 made five claims, the Synod of Dort answered them one by one in 1619, and the argument has been counted in fives ever since. The word TULIP is a twentieth-century invention.
What we read
Calvinist (Reformed)
The Canons of Dort (1618-19)
Five heads of doctrine, written to answer the five Remonstrant articles.
Calvinist (Reformed)
The Westminster Confession of Faith (1646)
Chapter 1 on authority, chapter 3 on God's decree, chapter 10 on calling.
Calvinist (Reformed)
The Heidelberg Catechism (1563)
A Reformed catechism written to be taught, in a personal voice.
Arminian (Wesleyan)
The Remonstrance (1610)
The five articles that named the party.
Arminian (Wesleyan)
John Wesley, Free Grace (1739)
The sermon that divided the revival.
Arminian (Wesleyan)
The Methodist Articles of Religion (1784)
Wesley's edit of the Thirty-Nine Articles, predestination left out.
