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Three church traditions hold a variant, differently accounted stance toward Predestination and Free Will in this atlas: Methodism, Neo-Orthodoxy and Presbyterianism. Unlike several other clusters in this pool, reading each account individually does not collapse the three into two. It finds three real positions, two historic poles and a modern reworking of one of them.

Two Historic Poles

Presbyterianism holds the Reformed position, confessed in the Westminster standards. Methodism holds the Arminian position: election is conditional on foreseen faith, and grace may be resisted. These are the two poles of the historic Protestant argument over predestination, each named in this atlas by the tradition that has held it since the Reformation.

A Third Position That Rebuilds One of the First Two

Neo-Orthodoxy's own account does not restate either pole and does not split the difference between them: Barth's doctrine of election "reworks classical Reformed predestination Christocentrically, Christ himself as both the electing God and the elected human, a different account rather than a simple affirmation or denial of the older doctrine." That is a genuinely third position, but not an equal third leg standing apart from the other two the way Methodism stands apart from Presbyterianism. It is the Reformed pole rebuilt from within, sharing that pole's starting point and arriving somewhere neither older position names. Three variant rows, three real positions: two poles of one argument, and one tradition that took one of those poles apart and reassembled it around a different centre.

Where To Read More

• Predestination and free willSin, Grace and the Human ConditionThe doctrine itself; three bodies counted, and all three genuinely differ
• MethodismChristianityThe Arminian position: election is conditional on foreseen faith, and grace may be resisted
• Neo-OrthodoxyModern SchoolsReworks classical Reformed predestination Christocentrically, a different account rather than a simple affirmation or denial
• PresbyterianismChristianityThe Reformed position, confessed in the Westminster standards