Sweet burning in my heart: The Spirituality of Jonathan Edwards

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1 Sweet burning in my heart: The Spirituality of Jonathan Edwards Address given at the launch of the Jonathan Edwards Centre, Ridley College, Melbourne, 29 April Introduction: who was Jonathan Edwards? Habitually, Jonathan Edwards inspires apparently-extravagant claims. Try this for size. When the Church in Australia wakes up to Jonathan Edwards it will experience true revival. So I passionately believed in 1985 at the conclusion of a life-changing study leave at Yale, working on the Jonathan Edwards papers in the Bieneke, the university s library with the translucent marble walls. Here Edwards s papers are studied alongside first-century papyri and receive the same scientific scrutiny. In that year I went to the launch of the seventh volume of the Yale edition of Edwards works. Since then a further 19 volumes have been published. Together they surely must represent one of the great achievements of twentieth-century historical scholarship. The selection of Ridley College, Melbourne, as an overseas campus of the Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale, depending on your religious beliefs, is either auspicious or providential. The potential of this antipodean outpost to bless the Australian Church is incalculable. Rhys Bezzant, who is writing his doctoral thesis on Edwards, and is the human vehicle for this happy development, is to be warmly congratulated. Jonathan Edwards ( ) is often called the last of the Puritans and the first of the evangelicals. But he is also first in the sense that he is preeminent among evangelicals: none has approached within light years either of his ability or his spirituality. As to his ability, America's greatest living Church historian, Martyn E. Marty, has this to say, and it's a testimony which creeps up on you and suddenly ambushes you: Recently I attended the meeting of the American Academy of Religion and related sciences. There were gathered together several thousand scholars and teachers of theology and biblical studies from throughout this country and some from other nations. It was, I thought to myself, probably the largest concentration of theological minds ever assembled in the United 1

2 States at any time since Jonathan Edwards sat in his study alone. 1 And Professor Perry Miller, foremost historian of American Puritanism, calls JE 'the greatest philosopher-theologian yet to grace the American scene'. 2 While I am in the business of wowing you with the greatness of Edwards, let me tell you that though he died 30 years before Australia was settled, he had, from as early as age 21, prophesied a role for Australia (which he labelled Terra Australis or Hollandia Nova he thought they were two different places) in the evangelisation of the world once its own indigenous people had received the gospel. He was not only a philosopher, a theologian, and a prophet. He was also, and primarily, a pastor and preacher: for that more than ability is needed. So, as to his spirituality, here is Martyn Lloyd-Jones striking testimony: I am tempted... to compare the Puritans to the Alps, Luther and Calvin to the Himalayas, and Jonathan Edwards to Mount Everest! He has always seemed to me to be the man most like the apostle Paul... So the task confronting me, if I may follow my analogy of mount Everest, is to decide whether to approach him by the south Col 3 or north Col 4. There are so many approaches to this great summit; but not only so, the atmosphere is so spiritually rarified, and there is this blazing whiteness of the holiness of the man himself, and his great emphasis upon the holiness and the glory of God; and above all the weakness of the little climber as he faces this great peak pointing up to heaven. 5 Spirituality defined Now, before we go on to talk about JE s spirituality, we had better say what spirituality is. I take it that, for a Christian, the thing which is most important to know and practice, is not theology, which is the study of ideas about God, but spirituality, the unity of the mind and heart in the experience of God. Spirituality is not about knowing God only with your intellect. It is concerned with finding him in the world of your own experience in 1 I have put this into the first person. John R. Richardson, An Interview with Jonathan Edwards, no date or place, p xivf. 2 Ibid., p.xv. 3 The lowest point of the ridge joining Mt Everest to the fourth highest mountain in the world, Lhotse. It is the route which must be traversed by those who wish to approach the summit of Everest from Nepal. 4 the pass or col connecting Everest and Changtse in Tibet. 5 The Puritans, p

3 response to the intuition of your heart. It is experiential, contemplative knowing, not just cognitive knowledge. Cognition, the reason, is essential, but only in so far as it is united with the heart and experienced in one s own life in the pursuit, not of the knowledge of God, but of God himself. Spirituality is about experiencing God s presence; it is concerned with life lived coram deo - in the presence of God. Spirituality is concerned with seeing God, the beatific vision. And spirituality is concerned with seeing God s face, not only in the Bible, but also in our world, in the environment, in nature; and seeing God in our hearts, that is in our experiences, in all the circumstances of life; and seeing God in our relationships, because God himself is a loving relationship of three persons. Edwards was one of the main architects of evangelical theology, and he was passionate about the need to find the God of the Bible in all things, and especially in creation (nature) and in all the circumstances and experiences of life (history). Spirituality illustrated in an experience of Jonathan Edwards Once, as I rode out into the woods for my health, in 1737, having alighted from my horse in a retired place, as my manner commonly has been, to walk for divine contemplation and prayer, I had a view that for me was extraordinary, of the glory of the Son of God, as Mediator between God and man, and his wonderful, great, full, pure and sweet grace and love, and meek and gentle condescension. This grace that appeared so calm and sweet, appeared also great above the heavens. The person of Christ appeared ineffably excellent, with an excellency great enough to swallow up all thought and conception which continued, as near as I can judge, about an hour; which kept me the greater part of the time in a flood of tears, and weeping aloud. I felt an ardency of soul to be, what I know not otherwise how to express, emptied and annihilated; to lie in the dust, and to be full of Christ alone; to love him with a holy and pure love; to trust in him; to live upon him; to serve and follow him; and to be perfectly sanctified and made pure, with a divine and heavenly purity. (Edwards, Works, 1, xlvii). Three approaches to the Spirituality of Jonathan Edwards 3

4 There are so many ways we can approach the spirituality of Jonathan Edwards. We can, for example, (1) tell his spiritual biography, his life s story; we can (2) study his description of those whom he esteemed as the embodiment of spiritual graces, eg. his own wife, Sarah, and David Brainerd, missionary to the American Indians; and we can (3) read his own descriptions of the spiritual life in his sermons and his books, looking for his distinctive insights into the spiritual life. I. Jonathan Edwards Biography 1.1 An overview of his Life JE was born in 1703 in Windsor, Connecticut. He was one of 11 children but the only son. His father, Timothy, was minister of the local Congregationalist church. His mother was Esther, the daughter of Solomon Stoddard, who was known as the Pope of American congregationalism. Esther was famous for her strong powers of reasoning, and she bequeathed these powers to her son, and he combined with them ardour of soul. He went to Yale college at the age of 12. In 1723 he was pastor of a Presbyterian Church in NY for only eight months, and then he tutored in Yale for about three years. Then came the call to Northampton, Mass. He was pastor there for 23 years during which time the revivals came, first in his own church in Northampton in 1734 and then the Great Awakening which blew the lid off New England in the early 1740s. From the experience of revival he distilled his understanding of the spiritual life in a number of books which have become spiritual classics - first in A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God in the Conversion of Many Hundred Souls in Northampton (1736) Then in The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God applied to the Uncommon Operation that has lately appeared on the Minds of many of the People of this Land (1741) Then in Some Thoughts concerning the Present Revival of Religion in New- England and the Way in which it ought to be Acknowledged and Promoted (1742) Then in 4

5 A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections (1746) which is one of the most treasured of the church s studies of spirituality. In 1750 Edwards moved to Stockbridge in Western Massachussetts, where he wrote his greatest works of philosophical theology, On the Freedom of the Will (1754), The Nature of True Virtue (1755) and On Original Sin (1757). In that year (1757) a revival came to Princeton College in New Jersey. 6 Edwards was very excited by this event, seeing it as 'a hopeful sign of the spread of the gospel into the American world' in preparation for the 'glorious days' of the Church. Edwards was then invited to become President of Princeton, but he no sooner took up the office than he died following a smallpox inoculation in His last words were not about God, but were about his wife and spirituality: Give my kindest love to my dear wife, and tell her that the uncommon union which has so long subsisted between us has been of such a nature as I trust is spiritual and therefore will continue forever Conversion in the Spiritual Life In 1721 when he was about 18 Edwards underwent a conversion experience. He was reading I Timothy 1.17 at the time - 'Now to the king eternal, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honour and glory for ever. Amen.' And Edwards was overwhelmed by the sense of God's greatness and glory. He wrote in his Personal Narrative, As I read the words, there came into my soul, and was, as it were, diffused through it, a sense of the glory of the divine Being; a new sense quite different from anything I ever experienced before. Never any words of scripture seemed to me as these words did. I thought with myself, how excellent a Being that was and how happy I should be, if I might enjoy that God, and be rapt up in him in heaven, and be as it were swallowed up in him for ever! I kept saying, and as it were singing over these words of Scripture to myself; and went to pray to God that I might enjoy Him, and prayed in a manner quite different from what I used to do; with a new sort of affection... From about that time, I began to have a new kind of apprehensions and ideas of Christ, and the work of redemption, and the glorious way of salvation by him. An inward, sweet sense of these things, at times, came into my heart; and my soul was led away in pleasant views and contemplations of them. And my mind was greatly engaged to spend my time in reading and 6 John Gillies Historical Collections, pp E. D. Dodds, Marriage to a Difficult Man; The "Uncommon Union" Of Jonathan and Sarah Edwards (Philadelphia,, 1971)

6 meditating on Christ, on the beauty and excellency of his person, and the lovely way of salvation by free grace in him. I found no books so delightful to me, as those that treated of these subjects. Those words Cant. 2.1, used to be abundantly with me, 'I am the Rose of Sharon and the Lily of the valleys'. 8 The words seemed to me, sweetly to represent the loveliness and beauty of Jesus Christ... The sense I had of divine things, would often of a sudden kindle up, as it were, a sweet burning in my heart; an ardour of soul, that I know not how to express. Conversion is a gift of God in which God gives us a new sense of divine things. The sense of the presence and reality of God and the possibility of the union of his soul with Him was thereafter the essence of his spirituality. So in the thought of Jonathan Edwards, conversion is the appropriate, felt response to the majesty of God and the desire of sinners to live for God and not themselves. Conversion was viewed as a vision and perception of the essential beauty of God. The Christian life was considered to be an unselfish devotion to that vision. Religion had to be felt to be real. Therefore a seeker after God could not be happy without being sensible of sin or ravished by a sense of the beauty of God. Accordingly, conversion experienced sometimes as a single act and sometimes as a process was integral to human happiness and therefore to purposefulness. 9 It is the necessary foundation to true spirituality. 2. Edwards' Models of Spirituality 2.1 Sarah: his wife Edwards s world was not primarily the world of men: surrounded first by his mother and ten sisters, and then by his wife and eight daughters, his was a world mainly of women. 10 Like his father, he was in love with his wife. His daughters he educated much like his sons, which meant that they were exceptionally well educated women by contemporary standards. Edwards s chief context, then, was the domestic one where women were his closest companions. The spirituality of Jonathan Edwards, perhaps as pure and remarkable as any found in the Christian Church, is the domestic spirituality of everyday life. 8 The Song of Songs has played a distinguished role in the history of Christian spirituality see, for example its place in the spirituality of Bernard of Clairvaux and St John of the Cross. 9 John H. Gerstner, Jonathan Edwards: A Mini-Theology, Tyndale House Publishers, Wheaton, 1987, ch The Quest for the Historical Edwards in Kling and Sweeney, Jonathan Edwards at Home and Abroad, p.5. 6

7 To identify the thought processes from which Edwards constructed his domestic spirituality, it is necessary to review briefly his experience of marriage, family and love. When Edwards was twenty years of age, he fell in love with Sarah Pierpont, aged 13. Her father was a minister of New Haven; her greatgrandfather, was the Puritan preacher, Thomas Hooker, the founder of Hartford. 11 Jonathan married Sarah after four years courting. Their marriage was a big success. His biographer, Samuel Hopkins, who spent a lot of time in the parsonage at Northampton, reported of their relationship that no person of discerning could be conversant in the family without observing and admiring the great harmony, and mutual love and esteem that subsisted between them. 12 With her grace, charm and beauty, she was a hit with the rustic worthies of Northampton, where Jonathan served as minister from 1726 to He was gratified that the Indians at Stockbridge, where he served from 1751 to 1757, also warmed to his wife. 13 Coinciding with his falling in love with Sarah, Edwards arrived at the conviction that that sexual love is an anticipation or type of divine love. It was during his Yale tutorship in 1725, very close to the precise date of their engagement, 14 that he wrote: How greatly are we inclined to the other sex! Nor doth an exalted and fervent love to God hinder this, but only refines and purifies it. God has created the human nature to love fellow creatures, which he wisely has principally turned to the other sex. Christ has an human nature as well as we, and has an inclination to love those that partake of the human [nature] as well as we. That inclination which in us is turned to the other sex, in him is turned to the church, which is his spouse... Therefore when we feel love to anyone of the other sex, 'tis a good way to think of the love of Christ to an holy and beautiful soul. 15 Motherhood and family also produced a cluster of images which pointed to the spiritual life. The Holy Spirit, Edwards depicted as a mother-like, passionately-loving mediator between the Father and the Son. 16 Care for children he saw as a model or sign of Christ s care for the church, and ministers are to be like mothers in their care for their congregations. By 11 Minkema, The Edwardses, p Carol F. Karlsen and Laurie Crumpacker, The Journal of Esther Edwards Burr, (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1984): Gerald R. McDermott, Jonathan Edwards confronts the Gods (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000): Jonathan Edwards, The 'Miscellanies' (entry Nos a-z, aa-zz, and 1-500), ed. by Thomas Schafer, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 13 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994): The 'Miscellanies, ed. Schafer, p.331f. 16 Minkema, The Edwardses, p

8 late 1738, with six young children, he likened ministers, who nourish their people at the breasts of ordinances, to both the Virgin Mary and young mothers who nourish their babies after travailing in pain to bring them forth. On the basis of Sarah s care for their infants, Edwards produced a detailed job description for the Christian minister: 'Tis a very constant care; the child must be continually looked after. It must be taken care of both day and night. When the mother wakes up in the night, she has her child to look after, and nourish at her breast; and it sleeps in her bosom, and it must be continually in the mother's bosom or arms, there to be upheld and cherished. It needs its food and nourishment much oftener than adult persons; it must be fed both day and night. It must be very frequently cleansed, for 'tis very often defiled. It must in everything be gratified and pleased. The mother must bear the burden of it as she goes to and fro. 17 Edwards identified true religion, we might say genuine spirituality, with the affections. True religion, he declared famously, consists so much in the affections that there can be no true religion without them. 18 Edwards was careful to distinguish, however, between the natural affections and divine affections. Only those affections which arise from the operation on the heart of a divine or supernatural power are truly divine affections. Natural love between the sexes is essential for the good ordering of the natural world, but that does not make it a divine love. A corollary was that marriage, being a human institution, required human affections, and while divine affections were essential for salvation, they were not necessarily essential for a successful marriage. What was necessary was good sense, agreement as to respective roles, complementarity, good communication skills, agreed values, and mutual attraction. But Jonathan himself, as we have seen, judged his union with Sarah to be more than this. It was uncommon. It was spiritual. Their relationship would survive their deaths. They would see each other in heaven which he defined as a world of love. Edwards believed, in spite of his rather surprising common sense approach, that the presence of the divine affections purified and sweetened the natural affections, making a good union not only spiritual which would survive into the next life, but also better in this life. Edwards s lengthy description of Sarah s spirituality is found in his study of the Great Awakening entitled Some Thoughts concerning the Present Revival of Religion in New-England (1742). 19 Its purpose was to 17 Jonathan Edwards, Notes on Scripture, ed. Stephen J. Stein, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol.15 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998): 288, cf.27, Jonathan Edwards, Religious Affections, ed. John E. Smith, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol.2 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959): The Great Awakening, ed. Goen, p

9 authenticate the revival and to model the piety made possible and desirable by genuine revival. It also reveals in fascinating detail the extent to which Sarah s thoughts and affections were aligned with those of her husband. She was his prize exhibit. Edwards depicts her as the personification, not only of Christian character, but also of the truths of the gospel which were so precious to him and which he believed could not be embraced without their affecting the body. Jonathan refers to the spiritual effects on Sarah s body twenty-one times. Sarah also manifested an overwhelming sense of the glory of the work of redemption, a sight of the fulness and glorious sufficiency of Christ, the sureness of his covenant, the immutability of his promises, a sweet rejoicing of soul at the thoughts of God s being infinitely and unchangeably happy, and so on... and on!! All the great Edwardsean doctrines and teachings had engaged and transformed her affections. No-one believed and lived what he taught as fully as she. Here is a marriage of like minds and a marriage of like spirits, of those who have breathed together the same Spirit. 20 She exemplified all the passions of his heart. 2.2 David Brainerd In 1749 JE published the journals of David Brainerd, missionary to the American Indians. It is said to be the first missionary biography ever published. Brainerd's Diary was decisive in the missionary motivation of William Carey, Henry Martyn, and Samuel Marsden. John Wesley was asked, 'What can be done to revive the work of God where it has decayed?' Wesley answered, 'Let every preacher read carefully the life of David Brainerd.' That one whose ministry lasted only three years should have been so influential is amazing, except that our Lord was the same. It is a dangerous thing to say, but one wonders if three years of total commitment to God is worth more than 30 of half-hearted service. Brainerd died at the age of 29 after 19 weeks illness, during which he was attended by Edwards's daughter, Jerusha. She found caring for Brainerd a great delight, but it is not true as the folklore has it that she was engaged to him. Nevertheless she lies buried next to him at Northampton. The purpose of this missionary biography is to show by way of example what the power of godliness and 'vital religion' truly is. For while Brainerd, like Edwards himself, was a sharp thinker and a very good theologian, he especially excelled in inward experiential Christianity. The Christian life is God-centred living. It means giving reverence to all the commands of God, and it is 'not rapture but habit'. The greatest sign 20 McClendon, Ethics, p

10 that an affection is genuine - sign no. 12 in Edwards list of divine affections - is consistent habit. It is the hypocrite - one not truly converted - who like a meteor flashes and falls. But the saint or 'professor' - one who is truly saved by grace - shines like a fixed star. Edwards concluding 'Reflections and Observations' on Brainerd (pp in the Yale edition, vol 7) are said by Iain Murray in his biography of JE to be possibly the most important descriptive pages on the Christian life which JE ever wrote. You should read these pages for yourselves one day, but I was struck by the following pointers to the spiritual life as exemplified by David Brainerd. That conversion which is a true foundation of the spiritual life consists primarily of a spiritual awareness of the perfection of God, rather than of some feeling that God is especially interested in me. It consists of: a manifestation of God's glory and the beauty of his nature as supremely excellent in itself; powerfully drawing and sweetly captivating his heart; bringing him to a hearty desire to exalt God, set him on the throne, and give him supreme honour and glory as the King and Sovereign of the universe; and also a new sense of the infinite wisdom, suitableness, and excellency, of the way of salvation by Christ; powerfully engaging his whole soul to embrace this way of salvation, and to delight in it. His first faith did not consist in believing that Christ loved him and died for him in particular. 21 His spirituality was the same in private as in public: His religious affections and joys were not like those of some who have rapture and mighty emotions from time to time in company; but have very little affection in retirement and secret places. 22 His spirituality did not consist of experience without practical application: In him was to be seen the right way of being lively in religion... chiefly in being active and abundant in the labours and duties of religion; 'not slothful in business', but 'fervent in spirit', serving the Lord' [Rom 12.11], and 'serving his generation, according to the will of God' [Acts 13.36] 3. The distinctive features of JE s spirituality 3.1 The affections the key to a practical spirituality 21 p p

11 In 1746 was published Edwards' Treatise on Religious Affections. In it Edwards was attempting to answer two questions:- What is true religion? And what is a genuine work of the Spirit of God? Am I right in suggesting that these questions are just as important for us as they were for him? In this pluralistic, multicultural country of many faiths and religious surrogates, what is true religion? In this more religious, less Christian country which speaks more of the spirit and less of Jesus, what is a genuine work of the Holy Spirit? The answers to these questions are simple, practical and challenging. Let s begin with the challenge. By affections he meant, not so much emotions, which change all the time. Our emotions wax and wane, come and go, grow hot and cold. They are not a reliable guide to action. By affections, he meant rather our ruling inclinations, our abiding passions. These are more constant and do not change easily or often. They are the settled inclination of the will. They are the main passion which drives us; they are the ruling motive to action. Affections are the central orientation of the self. They are signposts indicating the direction of the soul, whether the soul is towards God in love or away from God and toward the world. Put simply they are what we love most. One of Edwards great insights is the psychological fact that we are, or we become, what we love most, what we are most passionate about. And what we really love most, as distinct from what we say we love most, is what drives us and controls our lives and our destinies. If I say I love Jesus but I spend all my waking hours and sleeping dreams planning how to grow my house and my bank balance, then I don t love Jesus most. I love money most. Recently, I had a good conversation with a medical doctor who through the trials in his life had become a Buddhist. I put Edwards conviction that we are what we love most to him, and he said I think we are what we fear most. It is a good insight. Probably love and fear are two sides of the one penny, and whether his perspective and mine owe anything to the two different religions we embrace he a Buddhist, I a Christian or to our two difference personalities he a pessimist, I an optimist, I don t know. But, let us get practical. How are we to know if an impression on the affections, such as happens at times of revival, is a work of the Spirit of God or of mere human origin or of an evil spirit? In one of the most practical of his writings, The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God (I741), Edwards demonstrated that there are five distinguishing marks of the Holy Spirit's work 23. It will be a genuine work of God if it: 23 These are from the DM. In the RA, there are 12 signs that any affections are gracious:- 11

12 1. Makes you love Jesus more. 2. Makes you love sin and the devil less. 3. Makes you love the Bible more. 4. Makes you love the gospel the key doctrines of salvation - more. 5. Makes you love other people more. It is simple. It is also very practical and especially relevant to us today. The question What is true religion? is on everyone s mind with the increasing emphasis on Australia as a multifaith nation. Of all the religious options we have, how do we decide which, if any, are true religion? Edwards answer to that is based on the last of his five tests, namely true religion makes us love other people more in a practical, caring way. The forces of globalisation have brought the tectonic plates of the world s great religions into contact. We are faced with the question in an acute form: which and what is genuine faith? And how will we establish genuine faith in our land? Edwards reminds us that in Scripture we are expected to do good works, if not thereby to attain salvation, then to prove the authenticity of faith. And, further, we are expected to do good works in the public view the Lord commanded us to let our light shine, not only in our hearts, but before men and women (Matthew 5.16). It is by our fruits that the genuineness of our works will be known (Matthew 7.20). The best proof of the genuineness of our faith is not an internal, invisible, subjective one, but an external, visible, objective one, namely our practice, our loving care for others. People of all religions can agree that our inner life must be subjected to a public test; that our actions are to bear the scrutiny of all people. Therefore, the way to determine, in a pluralistic world, which faith is the genuine one, is not through theological controversy and doctrinal disputation, not through insisting on the right of everyone to his or her own internal inclinations, but through the 1. if they arise from those influences on the heart which are spiritual, supernatural, and divine. 2. if they appeal to the heart as amiable and excellent in themselves and not because of any appeal to self-interest. 3. if they appeal to the heart because of their moral excellency 4. they arise if the mind is rightly and spiritually enlightened to understand and grasp divine things. 5. If they are accompanied by a reasonable conviction that divine things are real and certain. 6. If they are accompanied by humiliation of heart. 7. If they result in a change of nature. 8. If they promote a spirit of love, meekness, quietness, meekness forgiveness and mercy, such as was found in Christ. 9. They soften the heart and are accompanied by a tenderness of spirit 10. If they result in symmetry of graces - all the fruit of the spirit. 11. If they are never satisfied with their spiritual attainments, but constantly long for more. 12. If they result in constant practice. 12

13 consistent, persevering practice of actions for the good of all. Actions motivated by faith, hope and love, and not by fear, mistrust and hate: Actions, not for my own good, or in my own self-interest, but for the common good. The way ahead for all the religions of Australia is not via theological argument but by the test of loving practice. 3.2 Reality A second emphasis of Edwards of considerable spiritual significance is his belief that reality is more foundational than truth. Already in his earliest sermons we can see that he understood that the purpose of preaching was not so much to teach people the truth about God, but to awaken people to see the reality of God. What is reality? Reality is the world as it is perceived by God. Reality is God s perspective on everything. It is when people see themselves and their world and the Lord himself from God s perspective that they are revived. Revival is when people wake up to Reality. Edwards pursued that reality in all aspects of creation, but most particularly in the drama of redemption, because it was to contain that drama that the world was made. Just as reality was more foundational than truth, so salvation was greater than creation. Now, you will be thinking: here we go again with a Christian thinker who puts all the emphasis on salvation in the next life rather than caring for the world in this life. But, in fact, that is a serious misunderstanding of what Edwards is all about. You can separate creation from salvation conceptually in Edwards thinking. They are not one and the same thing. To be created is not to be saved. Not all who are created will be saved. But if salvation is the text, creation is always the context in which it takes place. Nature, the creation, is important in many expressions of spirituality, and Edwards' spirituality is no exception. But his love of nature was based on the conviction that the whole of creation bears witness to God's scheme of redemption. Everything in the physical world is a sign of things in the spiritual world. There is not a blade of grass or a leaf on or off a tree which is without spiritual signification. The sign in nature Edwards called a type, and the spiritual reality to which it pointed Edwards called the archetype. We live, Edwards believed, in a typological world. Every natural thing and every historical event is a type of a divine thing, an image, a shadow, a figure, a type, a signification, a representation of divine things. You think the world beautiful? It's only a shadow of a greater beauty. You know you have a wonderful relationship with a loved one? It's a sure sign of a yet more wonderful relationship with the lover of your soul. Edwards was a thoroughgoing typologist. Everything in nature and in history was a type of something higher and more spiritual. Edwards world is full of meaning; every thing, every event, every experience points towards God s redemptive plan for us. 13

14 But, just to complete the picture, if redemption trumps creation, there is something more important than redemption. In 1731 in Boston Edwards delivered a public sermon entitled God Glorified in the Work of Redemption. It was based on his core conviction that God s selfglorification was the most important of all doctrines and man s redemption by Christ the most important manifestation of God s glory. 24 Edwards, then, ranked doctrines in order of importance: first, God s glory, second redemption, third providence, fourth, creation. 25 Yes, creation is subservient to redemption, because God created in order to redeem and he redeemed in order to glorify himself. God's glory is the end for which God's creation and redemption are the means. 26 It is the most beautiful facet of the shining diamond of Edwards s spirituality that, ultimately, it is not all about us; it is about God and his glory. To love God for his own sake, for the sake of his own perfection and beauty, and not for what we can get out of that relationship is the ultimate aim of the spiritual life. True, we love him because he first loved us, but as he takes us to himself, our desire will be for his glory alone. In this, the loss of oneself in the contemplation of the divine glory, Edwards is at one with the best in the Catholic tradition of spirituality. In reflecting on the spiritual implications of God s concern for his own glory, it is easy to project our own human feelings on to God. We wonder if God is self-centred: does he need the homage of creation or the worship of the church to fulfil himself? Both possibilities are untenable. What is going on, then? God does not seek his own glory or communicate his glory to human beings out of any need arising from any deficiency. Rather this is the way of love. When God becomes our all in all so that we no longer concern ourselves with our own needs, God becomes our good. It is who we are good, like God. We become what we love most. It is hard to put it in a way which does not sound both crude and heretical. But there is a sense in which in Christ we are taken into the heart of the Godhead. Humankind, saved in Christ, squares the Trinity: Father, Son, Holy Spirit and Holy Church. Our glorious destiny, denied 24 In conscious opposition to the Deists who contended that the generalisations accessible to reason from creation is sufficient, Edwards insisted on the historical particularities of redemption accessible only to faith. 25 Jonathan Edwards, A History of the Work of Redemption, John Frederick Wilson, ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989) sermon thirteen, 66, 286, 26 Rhys Bezzant, History of the Work of Redemption (1739), draft chapter of his PhD thesis on Edwards s ecclesiology. As Edwards said in his wonderfully rhetorical peroration to sermon twentynine: This Work of Redemption is so much the greatest of all the works of God, that all other works are to be looked upon either as part of it, or appendages to it, or are some way reducible to it. And so all the decrees of God do some way or other belong to that eternal covenant of redemption that was between the Father and the Son before the foundation of the world; every decree of God is some way or other reducible to that covenant And seeing this Work of Redemption is so great a work, hence we do not wonder that the angels desire to look into it. And we need not wonder that so much is made of it in Scripture, and that tis so much insisted on in the histories, and prophecies, and songs of the Bible, for the Work of Redemption is the great subject of the whole Bible. In its doctrines, its types, its songs, its histories, and its prophecies. (Wilson, 513,514.) 14

15 to the angels, is that we are to be the spouse of Christ at his wedding banquet. So the spiritual journey becomes an asymptote curve, beginning in this life, rising slowly to the point of our death, and then exponentially so that we spend all eternity in dynamic growth into the likeness of Christ, forever approaching his perfection and becoming one with him without becoming the same as he is. We will never become God; but we will spend all eternity becoming more like Him whom we love most. It is that astonishing potential which is the chief motivation for the spiritual life of the Christian. 3.3 Pleasure A related emphasis of Edwards spirituality is that God is to be enjoyed. God is happy and the author of our happiness, our pleasure. This, you may know, is the main point being made by John Piper, the best-known populariser of Edwards in America today. Piper speaks of Christian hedonism. The Christian way of life is the most pleasurable way of life. A sermon Edwards preached more than once is entitled The Pleasantness of Religion. 27 It is based on the text Proverbs : My son, [you eat] honey, because it is good; and the honeycomb, which is sweet to thy taste: so shall the knowledge of wisdom be unto thy soul... The doctrine or thesis or argument of this sermon is that being a Christian is worth it for the sake of the pleasure of it alone. Typically, he defends this thesis with five subsidiary arguments: First, the Christian gets just as much pleasure from the gratification of his five senses as the sensual man, and indeed more because he does not glut his senses which only leads to revulsion. Second, religion sweetens temporal delights and pleasures, because they are indulged with a good conscience, in peace, at the right time. Third, the joys of illegitimate pleasures are short-lived and quickly overtaken by sorrow which leaves the wicked worse off than before. Fourth, the sorrows accompanying any godly practices are shortlived and quickly overtaken by the delights which they inevitably promote. Sorrow for sin leading to repentance increases our pleasure. 27 Sermons and Discourses , ed. Minkema,

16 Fifth, pleasures of the soul, which the godly can experience, are far better than those of the body, to which the ungodly are limited. 3.4 Salvation is an Experience The sermon which ignited the revival in Northampton in 1734 was entitled Justification by faith alone. We Protestants believe that we know what this means for this is, as Luther said, the one doctrine by which the church stands or falls. But Edwards doubts if we know what we are talking about. He explains in this sermon that we are not justified by faith at all let alone by faith alone. We are justified by Christ, and faith is that which unites us to Christ, who is our salvation and our life. Any benefit we have in Christ, Edwards insists, is not by any value that there is in faith. Faith is only appropriate in God s sight, insofar as it unites us to the Mediator, in and by whom we are justified. 28 It is the experience of being united to Christ which saves us. Justifying faith, Edwards tells us in this sermon, is that by which the soul, that before was separate, and alienated from Christ, unites itself to him... tis that by which the soul comes to Christ and receives him. 29 That union makes you happy. And, in response to this sermon, happiness came to many hundreds of souls in Northampton, Mass, in Shortly after I had worked through this sermon for the first time it is 100 pages long in the Yale volume of sermons I had occasion to counsel a member of one of Sydney s largest Bible-based Anglican churches who shared with me that he was miserable in his faith. He believed that he had been well taught and knew the theology and believed it all. But it did not seem to work. He did not feel that he was in a happy relationship with God. We Sydney Anglicans are given to saying that feelings and happiness are not primarily what it s all about, but he knew that too! So instead of the normal Sydney response, well, you are not meant to be happy, with the help of this sermon, I suggested to him that intellectual assent to the theological truth that we are justified by faith is not the way we are saved. Faith unites us to Christ, and it is that vital union which saves us. Intellectual assent is not an adequate response to the vitality of that union which is better experienced in the affections than affirmed in the mind. Feeling happy might not be an infallible guide to salvation, but joy is a valid symptom of it! It is a great pleasure to be saved. It is such a happy experience. 30 Conclusion 28 Sermons and Discourses , ed. Lesser, Sermons and Discourses , ed. Lesser, Kimnach, Minkema, Sweeney, The Sermons of JE: A Reader, xxiii. 16

17 The spirituality of the divine affections, then, is practical, helping us to test a genuine movement of God s Spirit, it awakens us to the vast Reality that God wants to make us like himself and to share his happiness with us, and it is an experience which we can feel in our hearts as the transcendent majestic God becomes in Jesus our best friend and only Saviour. A prayer from Edwards: And now may the peace of God, and the joy of believing, and the light of the knowledge of God's glory in Christ, and the love of God dwelling in the heart be yours now and for evermore. Amen. Stuart Piggin stuart.piggin@mq.edu.au 17