author
F. (Francis) Hodgson
1805–1877
An English-born Methodist minister who made his life in the United States, he is remembered for vigorous religious writing and a clear, argumentative style. His best-known work challenges Calvinist ideas of predestination and reflects the theological debates of mid-19th-century America.
1 Audiobook
The Calvinistic Doctrine of Predestination Examined and Refuted
by F. (Francis) Hodgson
About the author
Born in Driffield, England, on February 13, 1805, Francis Hodgson later emigrated to the United States with his family and grew up in West Chester, Pennsylvania. He became a minister in the Methodist Episcopal Church and was noted in church reference works as an effective preacher, speaker, and theological debater.
Hodgson is best known today for The Calvinistic Doctrine of Predestination Examined and Refuted, first published in 1855. In that book, he argues against Calvinist teaching on predestination and defends a Methodist, Arminian understanding of human freedom and moral responsibility.
He retired in 1876 and died in Philadelphia on April 16, 1877. Reliable biographical information about him is fairly limited online, but the surviving record presents him as a serious 19th-century religious writer whose work was shaped by the doctrinal controversies of his time.