Of Greatest Importance: Jonathan Edwards and True Conversion Discerning and applying the scriptural rules concerning true religion which are serviceable to ministers in counseling and conducting souls committed to their care Jonathan Edwards Conference 2011 The Jonathan Edwards Society Northampton, Mass. October 7, 2011 Rev. Wesley Pastor 1 Introduction As a New England pastor, my singular burden is for souls. Some twenty years ago I planted a church in Vermont, trusting in the gospel, “the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes” [Rom. 1:16], to convert souls even in spiritually parched New England. My burden is that my people might secure safe passage into heaven. Over time I came to appreciate the challenges of bearing that burden. The gospel and its application, so straightforward in seminary, proved quite complex in the crucible of the pastorate. Marriages between professing Christians failed. Committed congregants nursed persistent and serious sins. Youth, having come to Christ as children, wandered in their teens. This Christianity made no sense. Where was the life-changing power? Had the gospel failed? Or was there some other explanation? The answer lies in the nature of true religion. Jonathan Edwards, in his masterful Religious Affections, asserted that the resolution of this one issue trumped all others: There is no question of greater importance to mankind, and that it more concerns every individual person to be well resolved in, than this: What are the distinguishing qualifications of those that are in favor with God, and entitled to his eternal rewards? Or, which comes to the same thing, What is the nature of true religion? and wherein lie the distinguishing notes of that virtue which is acceptable in the sight of God?1 This question consumed Edwards: “It is a subject on which my mind has been peculiarly intent, ever since I first entered on the study of divinity.”2 Edwards felt a pastor’s burden for souls, particularly for helping his people discern the state of their own souls. Yet the nature of true religion was subject to much confusion and dissension. “[T]hough it be of such importance, and though we have clear and abundant light in the word of God to direct us in this matter, yet there is no one point wherein professing Christians differ more one from another.”3 Still, “it is beyond doubt that the Scriptures abound with rules, which may be very serviceable to ministers in coun- 1 Jonathan Edwards, A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, in The Works of Jonathan Edwards (Carlisle, Penn.: Banner of Truth, 1984), 1:234. 2 Edwards, Religious Affections, 1:234. 3 Edwards, Religious Affections, 1:234. 2 seling and conducting souls committed to their care in things appertaining to their spiritual and eternal state.”4 Today there is pervasive disinterest in and even hostility toward the examination of a person’s Christian profession. Yet there remains no question of greater importance than the nature of true saving faith. Edwards, dubbed “extraordinary” even by Marsden and considered by many the “most brilliant of all American theologians,” is a worthy consultant on this topic.5 We must seek to know something of his “peculiarly intent” mind, to know the “notes of that virtue” abounding in scripture and useful to shepherds in counseling their flock.6 By tracing Edwards’ developing understanding through its historical context to its maturity in Religious Affections, and by understanding these rules ourselves, ministers will be better equipped to apply them, as Edwards did, to the counsel and direction of the souls committed to our care. Development of Edwards’ Rules Edwards’ understanding developed over three periods roughly corresponding to the frontier phase (1734-39), peak (1740-43) and decline (1744-55) of the First Great Awakening. The first phase was somewhat of a honeymoon period. Edwards called the emerging revival “the foremost act of God since the Reformation and the greatest ever in America.”7 His “lengthy and glowing account,” published in 1737 as A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God, testified to the powerful movement of God’s Spirit.8 4 Edwards, Religious Affections, 1:263. 5 See George M. Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 1, for the most recent and highly esteemed critical biography of Edwards. Also Murray or Dwight for the perspectives of admirers: Iain H. Murray, Jonathan Edwards: A New Biography (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1987), xv-xvii; Sereno E. Dwight, The Life of President Edwards (New York: Carvill, 1830; repr., Puritan Reprints, 2007), 2. 6 Edwards, Religious Affections, 1:263. 7 Edwards did acknowledge some corruption in his own church’s revival. In analyzing the awakening, he remarked in a December 1743 letter to a fellow minister in Boston: “[I]n the years 1740 and 1741, the work seemed to be much more pure, having less of a corrupt mixture than in the former great outpouring of the Spirit in 1735 and 1736.” See Jonathan Edwards, An Account of the Revival of Religion in Northampton in 1740-1742, in Jonathan Edwards: On Revival (Carlisle, Penn: Banner of Truth, 1984), 158. Also Marsden, Jonathan Edwards, 169. 8 Marsden, Jonathan Edwards, 163. In the 1738 sermon series later published as Charity and its Fruits, Edwards reported, “The Spirit of God has been poured out wonderfully here. Multitudes have been converted. Scarcely a family has been passed by.” Jonathan Edwards, Charity and Its Fruits: Christian Love as Manifested in the Heart and Life, (ed. Tryon Edwards; Carlisle, Penn.: Banner of Truth, 2000), 49. 3 Such high approbation reflected Edwards’ understanding and observation of the nature of true religion. He described it in his 1734 sermon A Divine and Supernatural Light as “a true sense of the divine excellency of the things revealed in the word of God, and a conviction of the truth and reality of them thence arising.”9 This understanding was encapsulated in Charity and Its Fruits: “All the virtue that is saving, and that distinguishes true Christians from others, is summed up in Christian love.”10 Edwards explained: True love is an ingredient in true and living faith, and is what is most essential and distinguishing in it. … A truly practical or saving faith, is light and heat together, or rather light and love, while that which is only speculative faith, is only light without heat; and, in that it wants spiritual heat or divine love, is in vain, and good for nothing.11 Unlike many of his contemporaries, Edwards recognized that intellectual “light” without the “heat” of love did not meet the scriptural requirements for saving faith.12 The next phase was the perfect laboratory to develop this thesis. The period 1740-43, corresponding to the main phase of the Awakening, shows an attempt to balance increasingly extreme positions of both the movement’s supporters and its detractors. The Yale controversy in 1741, with students accusing faculty of being unregenerate; the revival meeting “excesses” of shrieking, roaring, trances and dances; and an unscriptural confidence in distinguishing sheep from goats, created a critical need for balance.13 That balance is evident in several works but best exemplified in Edwards’ September 1741 Yale commencement address, published as The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God.14 Edwards first lists nine signs “which are no evidences that a work is not from the Spirit of God,” 9 Jonathan Edwards, A Divine and Supernatural Light, in Works, 2:14. 10 Edwards, Charity and Its Fruits, 3. 11 Edwards, Charity and Its Fruits, 13. 12 New Lights, like Edwards, saw true religion as chiefly consisting in raised affections produced by the light; Old Lights, most notably Charles Chauncy, placed true religion primarily in enlightened understanding and disdained raised affections. 13 Marsden, Jonathan Edwards, 231-235, 269-284. In the spirit of confident assessment of men’s souls, the wild James Davenport even personally challenged Charles Chauncy’s conversion and status (p.272). 14 Others include Some Thoughts Concerning the Present Revival of Religion in New England and An Account of the Revival of Religion in Northampton in 1740-1742, both published in 1743. 4 a challenge to both Old and New Lights.15 He then enumerates five “distinguishing scripture evidences and marks of a work of the Spirit.”16 Finally, Edwards admonishes the Old Lights to accept the revival as a work of God’s Spirit and not oppose it, and warns the New Lights to avoid excessive behaviors that could discredit the work.17 The final period, 1744-55, saw theological reflection and prodigious publication. Revival fires were dim if not completely extinguished when, in 1746, Edwards published Religious Affections to correct the excesses which, he believed, were largely to blame for quelling the Awakening.18 He devoted the bulk of the work to correcting New Light enthusiasts, at times sounding much like Charles Chauncy, his Old Light nemesis.19 Though Edwards did continue to build on Affections, this work clearly demonstrates a grasp of scriptural rules informed by decades of study and reflection, and experience with thousands of true and false conversions amid two major awakenings.20 To that “most widely read and admired of his theological works” we now turn.21 Understanding Edwards’ Rules Edwards’ magnum opus was organized into three parts. Part I defined and defended the doctrine, principally against the Old Lights, that “true religion, in great part, consists in holy affections.”22 Part II listed “some things which are no signs that affections are gracious, or that they are not.”23 15 Jonathan Edwards, The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God, in Works, 2:261-266.