Tag Archives: Edwards

Transmission of Original Sin

24 Monday Sep 2012

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Thus ’tis easy to give an account, how total corruption of heart should follow on man’s eating the forbidden fruit, though that was but one act of sin, without God’s putting any evil into his heart, or implanting any bad principle, or infusing any corrupt taint, and so becoming the author of depravity. Only God’s withdrawing, as it was highly proper and necessary that he should, from rebel-man, being as it were driven away by his abominable wickedness, and men’s natural principles being left to themselves, this is sufficient to account for his becoming entirely corrupt, and bent on sinning against God.

And as Adam’s nature became corrupt, without God’s implanting or infusing any evil thing into his nature; so does the nature of his posterity. God dealing with Adam as the head of his posterity (as has been shewn) and treating them as one, he deals with his posterity as having all sinned in him. And therefore, as God withdrew spiritual communion and his vital gracious influence from the common head, so he withholds the same from all the members, as they come into existence; whereby they come into the world mere flesh, and entirely under the government of natural and inferior principles; and so become wholly corrupt, as Adam did.

Edwards Original Sin, p. 383

 

Kierkegaard’s understanding of anxiety/dread as the ‘vertigo’ of freedom presupposes a spiritual vacuum around freedom – that is, a  fallen, alienated, condition.  In the beginning, it was not so, when God created man, he was created  in divine delight and was bathed continually in the sunshine of God’s favor. But anxiety, which brings forth sinful attitudes, was inevitable as soon as humankind lost its spiritual environment of love.

Clarification of what is meant by ‘transmission’ may also clear the way of unnecessary stumbling-blocks. With all due respect to the Reformed theology to which I am indebted, I have been led to question the doctrine of alien guilt transferred – that, the doctrine of the imputation to all of Adam’s own trespass, his act of transgression.  If Scripture definitely taught such a doctrine, however offensive to modern taste, I should readily bow to its authority. But where does Scripture require it? My investigation did not find it in the only passage from which is it draw, Romans 5.  Could it be, then, a case of laying heavy burdens upon people’ shoulders, beyond the express demands of God?

The following scheme seems to suit the language and logic of the Bible.  Alienation from God, the condition of being deprived and depraved, follows immediately upon the first act of sinning – for Adam himself and for his seed after him. It affects his descendents from the very start of their existence, because of their relationship to him. It is voluntary, in as much as it implies a disposition of the will, even in its most embryonic form; it is guilty.

Blocher, Henri. Original Sin: Illuminating the Riddle. Downers Grove, IL.: IVP Academic, 2000.

Edward Taylor: Meditation on Canticles 2.1d

28 Tuesday Aug 2012

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 Having noted the offer of the world from its “pedlars stall”, Taylor shifts to the response of Love to the world. Taylor marks the transition by a pair of accented syllables  (a spondee) at the very outset of the line, which then resolves to the iambic for the remainder:

Love pausing on’t, these Clayey Faces she

The effect of the accents is to slow the reading: the combination of a single accented syllable, a pause for the time between words and another accented syllable makes it impossible to read the first portion of the line quickly. The speed of the line thus forces attention onto Love as an actor and Love’s decision.

It is also interesting that Love has moved from a “sparke” the poet possesses in the first line to a personified actor in the second stanza.

By “clayey faces”, Taylor emphasizes the “earthliness” of the world’s offerings which contrast with the “pilgrim life” sought by Love. In referencing  a “pilgrim’s life”, the focus turns from Vanity Faire (to use Bunyan’s image) to the heavenly kingdom:  the desire for the “heavenly” country – the “city” which God has prepared for his pilgrim’s (Heb. 11:16).

Love seeks Beauty – which comes from God himself, for God is love:

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

(1 John 4:7-12 ESV). What then will Love find most beautiful: The Rose of Sharon, the Lord himself.  It is “beauty” which leads Love to unlock the chest:

                                                            And there does see

                        The Rose of Sharon, which with Beauty shines.

                        Her chest unlocks: the Sparke of Love out breaths

 

The concept of “beauty” was a frequent concern with the son of Edward Taylor’s friend – one Jonathan Edwards.  Indeed, Edwards describes the effective and true spiritual apprehension of true religious affection to be this apprehension of beauty:

 

From hence it may be surely inferred, wherein spiritual understanding consists. For if there be in the saints a kind of apprehension or perception, which is in its nature, perfectly diverse from all that natural men have, or that it is possible they should have, till they have a new nature; it must consist in their having a certain kind of ideas or sensations of mind, which are simply diverse from all that is or can be in the minds of natural men. And that is the same thing as to say, that it consists in the sensations of a new spiritual sense, which the souls of natural men have not; as is evident by what has been before, once and again observed. But I have already shown what that new spiritual sense is, which the saints have given them in regeneration, and what is the object of it. I have shown that the immediate object of it is the supreme beauty and excellency of the nature of divine things, as they are in themselves. And this is agreeable to the Scripture: the Apostle very plainly teaches that the great thing discovered by spiritual light, and understood by spiritual knowledge, is the glory of divine things, II Corinthians 4:3–4. “But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost; in whom the God of this world hath blinded the minds of them that believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them,” together with v. 6, “For God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ”: and ch. 3:18 preceding, “But we all, with open face, beholding as in a glass, the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image, from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.” And it must needs be so, for as has been before observed, the Scripture often teaches that all true religion summarily consists in the love of divine things. And therefore that kind of understanding or knowledge, which is the proper foundation of true religion, must be the knowledge of the loveliness of divine things. For doubtless, that knowledge which is the proper foundation of love, is the knowledge of loveliness. What that beauty or loveliness of divine things is, which is the proper and immediate object of a spiritual sense of mind, was showed under the last head insisted on, viz. that it is the beauty of their moral perfection. Therefore it is in the view or sense of this, that Spiritual understanding does more immediately and primarily consist. And indeed it is plain it can be nothing else; for (as has been shown) there is nothing pertaining to divine things besides the beauty of their moral excellency, and those properties and qualities of divine things which this beauty is the foundation of, but what natural men and devils can see and know, and will know fully and clearly to all eternity.

 

From what has been said, therefore, we come necessarily to this conclusion, concerning that wherein spiritual understanding consists; viz. that it consists in a sense of the heart, of the supreme beauty and sweetness of the holiness or moral perfection of divine things, together with all that discerning and knowledge of things of religion, that depends upon, and flows from such a sense.

 

Religious Affections, Yale Edition (available online at edwards.yale.edu) on pages 271-272.

 

In short, Taylor’s poem at this point coincides with the later systematic and philosophical treatment of Edwards on the matter of beauty and spiritual apprehension. Indeed, Taylor’s description of the Rose in the remainder of the poem fits consistently with Edwards’ understanding of beauty as a moral perfection.

Boice on Prayer

22 Friday Jun 2012

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In his sermon on Acts 12:1-19, James Montgomery Boice made the following observations about the prayer of the disciples as Peter lay in prison:

First, they were praying to God. This may sound trivial until one considers that much prayer is more spoken to the air than truly brought to God.  Prayer is not merely speaking, it is “actually a meeting with God.” Thus, rather than consider how long have I prayed, we would better ask how long we have been God.

Second, they were praying together. Now, it is not the volume of prayer which matters:

7 “And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. Matthew 6:7–8 (ESV)

The belief that God can hear better if we speak more is simply pagan. Boice rightly notes, “The value of united prayer is that the minds and hearts of God’s people are being brought together on that matter.”

Third, the Christians were praying earnestly. “Those who study revivals tells us that there has never been a great revival that has not been preceded by strong, fervent, united prayer by Christians people.”  On this, I would recommend Jonathan Edward’s A Call to United Extraordinary Prayer.

Fourth, the Christians were praying specifically. Dr. Rosscup has said that if we do not pray specifically, we will never know when God has answered our prayer.

The Half-Way Covenant

08 Friday Jun 2012

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Mardsen writes in Jonathan Edwards:

Since seventeenth-century New England Puritans found is so difficult to determine who was truly converted, they were never able to settle entirely the questions of who should have access to the sacraments or be regarded as part of the church (29).

The question became known as the “half-way covenant”.[1]  The issue of the half-way covenant is stated thus:

What happened fi those baptized children grew to adulthood were never certifiably converted, even though they might be upstanding in other respects? Should the children of these half-way (baptized) church members be baptized? If God’s covenant, as the Old Testament clearly said, extended to many generations, how could the grandchildren of the regenerate be denied the sacrament? After much debate, a synod of clergy declared in 1662 that children of the half-way members could be baptized [yet practice did vary from congregation to congregation, since the synod had no authority over individual congregations) (Mardsen, 30).

Hodge provides the following details of the synod:

This is also the theory which was known in New England as the “Half-Way Covenant.” Many were recognized as entitled to present their children for baptism, who were not prepared for admission to the Lord’s Supper. The controversy on this subject began in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1654, 1655. Several councils were called, which failed to produce unanimity. The question was referred to a Synod of divines to meet in Boston. The Synod met and sat two or three weeks. “As to the case of such baptized persons as, without being prepared to come to the Lord’s Supper, were of blameless character, and would own for themselves their baptismal obligations, it decided that they ought to be allowed to present their children for baptism. This assuming of baptismal obligations was called by opponents, taking the Half-way Covenant.”12

The Synod decided in favour of the following propositions:

“1. They that, according to Scripture, are members of the visible Church, are the subjects of baptism.

“2. The members of the visible Church, according to Scripture, are confederate visible believers, in particular churches, and their infant seed, i.e., children in minority, whose next parents, one or both, are in covenant.

“3. The infant seed of confederate visible believers, are members of the same Church with their parents, and when grown up are personally under the watch, discipline, and government of that church.

“4. These adult persons are not, therefore, to be admitted to full communion, merely because they are, and continue members, without such further qualifications as the Word of God requireth thereunto.

“5. Church-members who were admitted in minority, understanding the doctrine of faith, and publicly professing their assent thereto, not scandalous in life, and solemnly owning the covenant before the Church, wherein they give up themselves and their children to the Lord, and subject themselves to the government of Christ in the Church, their children are to be baptized.

“6. Such church-members, who either by death, or some other extraordinary providence, have been inevitably hindered from publicly acting as aforesaid, yet have given the Church cause, in judgment of charity, to look at them as so qualified, and such as, had they been called thereunto, would have so acted, their children are to be baptized.

“7. The members of orthodox churches, being sound in the faith and not scandalous in life, and presenting due testimony thereof; these occasionally coming from one church to another may have their children baptized in the church, whither they come, by virtue of communion of churches. But if they remove their habitation they ought orderly to covenant and subject themselves to the government of Christ in the church where they settle their abode, and so their children to be baptized. It being the church’s duty to receive such into communion, so far as they are regularly fit for the same.”13

These propositions are founded on the following principles:

1. That as under the old economy the Temple was one, it had its outer and inner courts, and those who had access to the former were not thereby entitled to enter the latter; so under the new dispensation the visible Church is one, but it includes two classes of members; baptized professors of the true religion, and those who, giving evidence of regeneration, are admitted to the Lord’s Supper.

2. That the qualifications for baptism and for full communion are not identical. Many may properly be admitted to the former, who are not prepared for the latter.

3. That baptism being a sign and seal of the covenant of grace, all who are baptized, whether adults or infants, are properly designated “foederati,” members of the visible Church, believers, saints, Christians.

4. That those baptized in infancy remain members of the visible Church until they are “discovenanted,” as the Congregationalists express it; or, separated from it by a regular act of discipline.

5. That being members of the Church, if free from scandal and continuing their profession, they are entitled to present their children for baptism.

The decision of this Synod did not put an end to the controversy. It was, however, in accordance with the views of the majority of the New England churches. Its chief opponents were found among “the more conservative class of laymen. Its advocates among the clergy were from the first a majority, which went on increasing from generation to generation; and the Halfway Covenant, as it was opprobriously called, came to be approved by the general practice of the Congregational churches of New England.”14 Such, also, it is believed, although on somewhat different principles, was the general practice of the Presbyterian Church in this country until within a comparatively recent period of its history.

Charles Hodge, vol. 3, Systematic Theology (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1997), 567-69.
At  Solomon Stoddard’s [grandfather to Jonathan Edwards; Edwards would eventually pastor this congregation] church[2], the question was as to whom could take Communion. Stoddard opened it to those whose lives were free of scandal on the grounds: (1) it was difficult to know who was truly converted; and (2) the Lord’s Supper was “a converting ordinance” (31). This entire matter would become of tremendous importance in the career and life of Jonathan Edwards as the implications of knowing a true conversion and the right of access to the baptism and communion played out.
Augustus Strong has the following note about Edwards, the halfway covenant and Stoddardism:

“It has been often intimated that President Edwards opposed and destroyed the Halfway Covenant. He did oppose Stoddardism, or the doctrine that the Lord’s Supper is a converting ordinance, and that unconverted men, because they are such, should be encouraged to partake of it.” The tendency of his system was adverse to it; but, for all that appears in his published writings, he could have approved and administered that form of the Halfway Covenant then current among the churches. John Fiske says of Jonathan Edwards’s preaching: “The prominence he gave to spiritual conversion, or what was called ‘change of heart,’ brought about the overthrow of the doctrine of the Halfway Covenant. It also weakened the logical basis of infant baptism, and led to the winning of hosts of converts by the Baptists.”

Augustus Hopkins Strong, Systematic Theology (Bellingham, Wa.: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 2004), 952-53.

[1]

The reasons for the breakdown of faith throughout this dismal era were manifold, but undoubtedly one of the greatest influences was the historic “Halfway Covenant,” established at the Synod of 1662. Briefly stated, this agreement granted church membership to unregenerate persons, baptized in infancy, who demonstrated

  … understanding [in] the doctrine of faith, and publicly professing their assent thereunto; not scandalous in life, and solemnly owning the covenant before the church wherein they give up themselves and their children to the Lord, and subject themselves to the government of Christ in the church, their children are to be baptized….

Therefore, under the instruction of this doctrine, reasonably civil, baptized, but unconverted adults were denied nothing within the church except participation in holy communion, which was still reserved strictly for the converted. Tragically, it was Solomon Stoddard, grandfather of Jonathan Edwards, who later led a crusade to eliminate

 this one last precious distinction and permit unconverted church members to join the regenerate around the Lord’s table because, in his words, “… sanctification is not a necessary qualification to partaking of the Lord’s Supper,” and “the Lord’s Supper is a converting ordinance.”60  This clear apostasy, although violently opposed by Mather and numerous others, soon became a common practice throughout much of New England. So established did this procedure become in future years that clergymen who refused the Lord’s Supper to baptized unconverted members of a local church could be taken to civil court and duly prosecuted!61  The result, according to one historian, was that within the church at large “the unconverted soon outnumbered the converted.”62

Reformation and Revival Volume 8, 2 (Carol Stream, Illinois: Reformation and Revival Ministries, 1999), 79-80.

[2]

 One of the most influential leaders in American Protestantism from the settlement of Massachusetts (1630) to the colonial Great Awakening (ca. 1740). From his pulpit in Northampton, Massachusetts, where he served from 1672 to 1729, Stoddard’s ideas exerted a powerful influence, not only in the Connecticut River valley, but in Boston and in New England as a whole.

“Pope” Stoddard, as his opponents called him, was best known for his innovations in church discipline. By his day many New England Congregational churches had adopted the Halfway Covenant. This allowed baptized members who had not made a personal profession of faith to bring their infants for baptism even as it kept all except those who could personally confess their faith from participating in the Lord’s Supper. Stoddard proposed that all who lived outwardly decent lives should be allowed to take Communion. At the same time he also urged the churches of Massachusetts to develop a “connectional” or “presbyterian” plan of oversight in order to ensure the orthodoxy of local churches and ministers. These different aspects of Stoddard’s thought have led some historians to praise him for his democratic principles (in opening up the Lord’s Supper) and others to condemn him as autocratic (for proposing tighter outside control of local churches).

Walter A. Elwell and Walter A. Elwell, vol. 1, Biographical Entries from Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, electronic ed., Baker reference library; Logos Library System (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1998).

Timothy Edwards and the Marks of True Conversion

06 Wednesday Jun 2012

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Mardsen sees the question of true, saving grace – a true conversion to be one of the central themes to the story of Jonathan Edwards. Mardsen provides impressive evidence for this question running through the life of Edwards (it was not the only theological concern for Edwards, but it was a central element of his theology: think only of the controversy which led to Edwards being removed from his pulpit and consider the importance of Religious Affections, the matter of Whitefield – and the other preachers of the Great Awakening).

Mardsen notes that Edward’s father “was an expert on the science of conversion.  Nothing was more challenging than to be able to tell what was truly a work of God and what was self-deception” (26). “Satan’s favorite trick was self-deception. Self-generated religious enthusiasm could look like the real thing for a time but soon would fade away” (26).

Timothy Edwards saw three salient principles to discern a true conversion. First, the matter of conviction: did one see himself in the position of being guilty before God and thus in need of redemption. “Recognition of the precariousness of both life and death, a ‘sense of a person’s sad state with reference to eternity,’ as Timothy Edwards phrase, often precipitated an initial awakening” (26). 

The second step was one of humiliation. “Potential converts not only had to recognize their guilt deserving eternal flames, but be ‘truly humbled’ by a total sense of their unworthiness” (28).

Third, one would receive God’s “new spirit created in them” a regenerating spirit which would lead to true repentance and a new life led by the Holy Spirit.

George Mardsen, Jonathan Edwards A Life

Buy the book and read it — it is extraordinary. Mardsen also has written a much shorter biography called A Short Life of Jonathan Edwards. Hundreds of pages o well researched and documented material is not your goal, take the shorter book — it is also quite good.

Jonathan Edward’s Grandmother

05 Tuesday Jun 2012

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Timothy’s [Jonathan’s father] mother was a scandal and disgrace Three months after she married Richard Edwards, in 1667, Elizabeth Tuthill (or Tuttle) revealed she was pregnant by another man. Richard nonetheless protected her by paying the fine for fornication himself and arranging to have the child raised by her parents. The problem proved to me much deeper. Elizabeth was afflicted with a serious psychosis. She was given to fits of perversity “too grievous to forget and too much to relate here,” repeated infidelities, rages, and threats of violence, including the threat to cut Richard’s throat while he was asleep. The Tuthill family was evidence that New England was not the staid place that we might imagine, but rather one where humans suffered the same horrors found in any ear. One of Elizabeth’s sisters murdered her own child, and a brother killed another sister with an ax. Jonathan Edwards is sometimes criticized for having a too dim view of human nature, but it may be helpful to be reminded that his grandmother was an incorrigible profligate, his great-aunt committed infanticide, and his great-uncle was an ax-murderer.

Mardsen, Jonathan Edwards, A Life

22

Edward Taylor, The Experience.1

13 Friday Apr 2012

Posted by in Edward Taylor, Hebrews, Meditation, Mortification, Prayer, Puritan

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The Experience (undated).

Taylor begins desire to again know an experience which took place during prayer in preparation for communion:

                                                                ev’n in that pray’re
4      Pour’de out to God over last Sacrament

Refers to the subjective state as “sweet content[ment].” He states he was brought near to God – which is an objective statement and yet knowable only as a subjective matter:

5     What Beam of Light wrapt up my sight to finde
6      Me neerer God than ere Came in my minde?

This ecstasy of Taylor, rather than being a strange improper thing for a good Puritan Christian is precisely what the famous son of Taylor’s friend Timothy Edwards would commend as “true religion”:

DOCTRINE. True religion, in great part, consists in holy affections.

                …..

What has been said of the nature of the affections, makes this evident, and may be sufficient, without adding anything further, to put this matter out of doubt: for who will deny that true religion consists, in a great measure, in vigorous and lively actings of the inclination and will of the soul, or the fervent exercises of the heart.

That religion which God requires, and will accept, does not consist in weak, dull and lifeless wouldings, raising us but a little above a state of indifference: God, in his Word, greatly insists upon it, that we be in good earnest, fervent in spirit, and our hearts vigorously engaged in religion: Romans 12:11, “Be ye fervent in spirit, serving the Lord.” Deuteronomy 10:12, “And now Israel, what doth the Lord thy God require of thee, but to fear the Lord thy God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve the Lord thy God, with all thy heart, and with all thy soul?” And ch. 6:4–5, “Hear, O Israel; the Lord our God is one Lord; and thou shalt love the Lord thy God, with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.” ‘Tis such a fervent, vigorous engagedness of the heart in religion, that is the fruit of a real circumcision of the heart, or true regeneration, and that has the promises of life; Deuteronomy 30:6, “And the Lord thy God will circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love the Lord thy God, with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live.”

If we ben’t in good earnest in religion, and our wills and inclinations be not strongly exercised, we are nothing. The things of religion are so great, that there can be no suitableness in the exercises of our hearts, to their nature and importance, unless they be lively and powerful. In nothing, is vigor in the actings of our inclinations so requisite, as in religion; and in nothing is lukewarmness so odious. True religion is evermore a powerful thing; and the power of it appears, in the first place, in the inward exercises of it in the heart, where is the principal and original seat of it. Hence true religion is called the power of godliness, in distinction from the external appearances of it, that are the form of it, II Timothy 3:5, “Having a form of godliness, but denying the power of it.” The Spirit of God in those that have sound and solid religion, is a spirit of powerful holy affection; and therefore, God is said to have given them the spirit “of power, and of love, and of a sound mind” (II Timothy 1:7). And such, when they receive the Spirit of God, in his sanctifying and saving influences, are said to be baptized with the Holy Ghost, and with fire; by reason of the power and fervor of those exercises the Spirit of God excites in their hearts, whereby their hearts, when grace is in exercise, may be said to burn within them; as is said of the disciples (Luke 24:32).

The business of religion is, from time to time, compared to those exercises, wherein men are wont to have their hearts and strength greatly exercised and engaged; such as running, wrestling or agonizing for a great prize or crown, and fighting with strong enemies that seek our lives, and warring as those that by violence take a city or kingdom.

This approval of religious affections was not a matter peculiar to Edwards among the Puritans (Edwards, although active after the time of Puritans was very much a spiritual descendent of their theology).

The Real Power in Counseling

09 Thursday Feb 2012

Posted by in Biblical Counseling, Discipleship, Ministry, Preaching, Quotations, Spiritual Disciplines

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Counselors of every stripe will ask the question, How do people change? These final two paragraphs from Jonathan Edwards’ A Divine and Supernatural Light explain:

[This third element is at the heart of counseling and discipleship]

Third. This light is such as effectually influences the inclination, and changes the nature of the soul. It assimilates the nature to the divine nature, and changes the soul into an image of the same glory that is beheld; 2 Corinthians 3:18, “But we all with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image, from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.” This knowledge will wean from the world, and raise the inclination to heavenly things. It will turn the heart to God as the fountain of good, and to choose him for the only portion. This light, and this only, will bring the soul to a saving close with Christ. It conforms the heart to the gospel, mortifies its enmity and opposition against the scheme of salvation therein revealed: it causes the heart to embrace the joyful tidings, and entirely to adhere to, and acquiesce in the revelation of Christ as our Savior; it causes the whole soul to accord and symphonize with it, admitting it with entire credit and respect, cleaving to it with full inclination and affection. And it effectually disposes the soul to give up itself entirely to Christ.

Fourth. This light, and this only, has its fruit in an universal holiness of life. No merely notional or speculative understanding of the doctrines of religion, will ever bring to this. But this light, as it reaches the bottom of the heart, and changes the nature, so it will effectually dispose to an universal obedience. It shows God’s worthiness to be obeyed and served. It draws forth the heart in a sincere love to God, which is the only principle of a true, gracious and universal obedience. And it convinces of the reality of those glorious rewards that God has promised to them that obey him.

 

Outline of A Divine and Supernatural Light

09 Thursday Feb 2012

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A Divine and Supernatural Light

And Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona: for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. Matthew 16:17

Upon this occasion Christ says as he does to him and of him in the text: in which we may observe,

1. That Peter is pronounced blessed on this account.

2. The evidence of this his happiness declared; viz. that God, and he only, had revealed it to him. This is an evidence of his being blessed,

(1) As it shows how peculiarly favored he was of God,

(2) It evidences his blessedness also, as it intimates that this knowledge is above any that flesh and blood can reveal. …

God is the author of such knowledge; …

Doctrine. There is such a thing, as a spiritual and divine light, immediately imparted to the soul by God, of a different nature from any that is obtained by natural means.

In what I say on this subject at this time, I would

I. Show what this divine light is.

II. How it is given immediately by God, and not obtained by natural means.

III. Show the truth of the doctrine.

And then conclude with a brief improvement.

I. I would show what this spiritual and divine light is. And in order to it would show,

First, in a few things what it is not. And here,

1. Those convictions that natural men may have of their sin and misery is not this spiritual and divine light. [There may even be conviction of sin which arises from an operation of the Holy Spirit stirring up natural faculties.]

 There is this difference; that the Spirit of God in acting in the soul of a godly man, exerts and communicates himself there in his own proper nature. Holiness is the proper nature of the Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit operates in the minds of the godly, by uniting himself to them, and living in them, and exerting his own nature in the exercise of their faculties. … But as he acts in his holy influences, and spiritual operations, he acts in a way of peculiar communication of himself; so that the subject is thence denominated “spiritual.”

2. [It is not an impression, intuition of the imagination.]

3. [It is not the revelation of some new information not found in the Scripture.]

4. [It is not being affected by hearing a Bible story – even the story of Jesus.]

Second. Positively, what this spiritual and divine light is.

And it may be thus described: 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.

This spiritual light primarily consists in the former of these, viz. a real sense and apprehension of the divine excellency of things revealed in the Word of God. A spiritual and saving conviction of the truth and reality of these things, arises from such a sight of their divine excellency and glory; so that this conviction of their truth is an effect and natural consequence of this sight of their divine glory. There is therefore in this spiritual light,

1. A true sense of the divine and superlative excellency of the things of religion; a real sense of the excellency of God, and Jesus Christ, and of the work of redemption, and the ways and works of God revealed in the gospel.

A.        [This is not mere “rational[] belie[f]” that Jesus is glorious. It is a “sense of the gloriousness of God in his heart.]

B.        [There are two types of knowledge of God: (i) an intellectual, “notional” sense; and (ii) “the sense of the heart”.]

C.        [Proposition of sense developed]

 i.          The first, that which is merely speculative or notional: as when a person only speculatively judges, that anything is, which by the agreement of mankind, is called good or excellent, viz. that which is most to general advantage, and between which and a reward there is a suitableness; and the like.

ii.         And the other is that which consists in the sense of the heart: as when there is a sense of the beauty, amiableness, or sweetness of a thing; so that the heart is sensible of pleasure and delight in the presence of the idea of it. … There is a difference between having a rational judgment that honey is sweet, and having a sense of its sweetness. A man may have the former, that knows not how honey tastes; but a man can’t have the latter, unless he has an idea of the taste of honey in his mind. So there is a difference between believing that a person is beautiful, and having a sense of his beauty. The former may be obtained by hearsay, but the latter only by seeing the countenance.

2. There arises from this sense of divine excellency of things contained in the Word of God, a conviction of the truth and reality of them: and that either indirectly, or directly.

            A. Indirectly, and that, two ways.

i. [Removing prejudices against truth.]

ii.It not only removes the hindrances of reason, but positively helps reason. It makes even the speculative notions the more lively. …

B.   A true sense of the divine excellency of the things of God’s Word doth more directly and immediately convince of the truth of them; and that because the excellency of these things is so superlative. There is a beauty in them that is so divine and godlike, that is greatly and evidently distinguishing of them from things merely human, or that men are the inventors and authors of; a glory that is so high and great, that when clearly seen, commands assent to their divinity, and reality. [This is an “intuitive and immediate evidence”. ]

II. I proceed now to the second thing proposed, viz. to show how this light is immediately given by God, and not obtained by natural means. And here,

First. [God uses man’s natural, rational faculties. God deals with a human being “according to his nature”.]

Second.  [God uses the written Scripture as the objective source:] for here is by this light only given a due apprehension of the same truths that are revealed in the Word of God; and therefore it is not given without the Word. The gospel is made use of in this affair: this light is “the light of the glorious gospel of Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:4). [It is not wholly new information, not new words – it is a new appreciation and relationship to the information.]

Third. [Natural means are used to convey the objective facts. God makes use of those objective facts to immediate create “the sense of the divine excellency of them in our hearts.”]  So that the notions that are the subject matter of this light, are conveyed to the mind by the Word of God; but that due sense of the heart, wherein this light formally consists, is immediately by the Spirit of God. As for instance, that notion that there is a Christ, and that Christ is holy and gracious, is conveyed to the mind by the Word of God: but the sense of the excellency of Christ by reason of that holiness and grace, is nevertheless immediately the work of the Holy Spirit.

[An analogy here might help: Imagine reading a love-letter addressed to someone else – perhaps to someone who lived long ago. You could read the letter and understand the words. You could study the grammar and the syntax and never know what it is to experience the love conveyed by the letter.  Now the one to whom the letter was addressed would read the words and the words would be linked with the conveyance of the love, but the love would not be in the words – rather the love is in the one who conveyed the words and uses the words to convey the love.]

III. To show the truth of the doctrine; that is, to show that there is such a thing as that spiritual light that has been described, thus immediately let into the mind by God. And here I would show briefly, that this doctrine is both scriptural, and rational.

First, ’tis scriptural. [1 John 3:6; 3 John 11; John 14:19 & 17:3.] And this light and knowledge is always spoken of as immediately given of God [Matt. 11:25-27; 2 Cor. 4:6; 1 Cor. 3:18; Gal. 1:15-16; Ps. 119:18; Ps. 25:14.]

[Here is a very important point in Edwards’ argument: This light , this sense of the divine excellency of God in Jesus Christ cannot but be joined inherently with true saving faith: One cannot know truly God as a Savior in Jesus Christ and not believe and trust upon that Savior.]

And that a true and saving belief of the truth of religion is that which arises from such a discovery, is also what the Scripture teaches. As John 6:40, “And this is the will of him that sent me, that every one that seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life.” Where it is plain that a true faith is what arises from a spiritual sight of Christ. And John 17:6–8, “I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world…. Now they have known that all things whatsoever thou hast given me are of thee; for I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me, and they have received them, and known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me.” Where Christ’s manifesting God’s name to the disciples, or giving them the knowledge of God, was that whereby they knew that Christ’s doctrine was of God, and that Christ himself was of him, proceeded from him, and was sent by him. Again, John 12:44–46, “Jesus cried and said, He that believeth on me, believeth not on me, but on him that sent me; and he that seeth me seeth him that sent me. I am come a light into the world, that whosoever believeth on me should not abide in darkness.” Their believing in Christ and spiritually seeing him, are spoken of as running parallel.

Second, this doctrine is rational.

1. ‘Tis rational to suppose that there is really such an excellency in divine things, that is so transcendent and exceedingly different from what is in other things, that if it were seen would most evidently distinguish them. We can’t rationally doubt but that things that are divine, that appertain to the supreme Being, are vastly different from things that are human; that there is that godlike, high, and glorious excellency in them, that does most remarkably difference them from the things that are of men; insomuch that if the difference were but seen, it would have a convincing, satisfying influence upon anyone, that they are what they are, viz. divine. What reason can be offered against it? Unless we would argue that God is not remarkably distinguished in glory from men.

[This underscores a great fault in the apologetic questions of unbelievers. While secondary things such as historical validity of a particular recorded event may be ascertained by mere natural reason, the ultimate question – the truth of God in Jesus Christ – cannot be ascertained by such means. It is like trying to prove love or beauty by reference to chemistry alone. Certain types of knowledge can only be had by certain types of faculties and evidence. To complain that chemistry does not prove that Bach is majestic is madness – and yet that is the complaint of the scoffer.]

2. If there be such a distinguishing excellency in divine things, ’tis rational to suppose that there may be such a thing as seeing it. …[Additionally, we should not be surprised that a man’s mind polluted with sin should not see such a light.]

3. ‘Tis rational to suppose that this knowledge should be given immediately by God, and not be obtained by natural means. … Why should not he that made all things, still have something immediately to do with the things that he has made? [This seems to be a great complaint inherent – although not expressed – in many complaints of the evidence of Christianity. While various propositions can be demonstrated by reason and history, the key point – the beauty of Christ – cannot be known except by immediate operation of the Holy Spirit upon the soul of man. This helps understand the scope of presuppositionalist and evidentialist apologetics. The evidentialist can demonstrate that certain facts or arguments are reasonable or plausible. Such arguments can take away excuses for unbelief but can never convey saving faith. Only the direct proclamation of the Gospel when used by the Spirit will convey the divine and supernatural light.]

[A second element of this point is, Why wouldn’t God save his best gift for his personal action. He may convey lesser gifts by use of secondary means. But his greatest gift he leaves to his own immediate operation.]

‘Tis rational to suppose, that it should be beyond a man’s power to obtain this knowledge, and light, by the mere strength of natural reason; for ’tis not a thing that belongs to reason, to see the beauty and loveliness of spiritual things; it is not a speculative thing, but depends on the sense of the heart.

I will conclude with a very brief improvement of what has been said.

[Improvement.]

I. This doctrine may lead us to reflect on the goodness of God, that has so ordered it, that a saving evidence of the truth of the gospel is such, as is attainable by persons of mean capacities, and advantages, as well as those that are of the greatest parts and learning. [This supernatural light is not the product of extraordinary intelligence. Since it is conveyed immediately, it does not depend upon natural abilities. This demonstrates the gracious of God who does not limit the gift to the inherent abilities of the human being but distributes the gift of supernatural sight independent of natural abilities.]

II. This doctrine may well put us upon examining ourselves, whether we have ever had his divine light, that has been described, let into our souls. [On the matter of testing yourself, see William Guthrie’s The Christian’s Great Interest.]


III. All may hence be exhorted, earnestly to seek this spiritual light.

First. This is the most excellent and divine wisdom, that any creature is capable of.

 Second. This knowledge is that which is above all others sweet and joyful.

[This third element is at the heart of counseling and discipleship]

Third. This light is such as effectually influences the inclination, and changes the nature of the soul. It assimilates the nature to the divine nature, and changes the soul into an image of the same glory that is beheld; 2 Corinthians 3:18, “But we all with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image, from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.” This knowledge will wean from the world, and raise the inclination to heavenly things. It will turn the heart to God as the fountain of good, and to choose him for the only portion. This light, and this only, will bring the soul to a saving close with Christ. It conforms the heart to the gospel, mortifies its enmity and opposition against the scheme of salvation therein revealed: it causes the heart to embrace the joyful tidings, and entirely to adhere to, and acquiesce in the revelation of Christ as our Savior; it causes the whole soul to accord and symphonize with it, admitting it with entire credit and respect, cleaving to it with full inclination and affection. And it effectually disposes the soul to give up itself entirely to Christ.

Fourth. This light, and this only, has its fruit in an universal holiness of life. No merely notional or speculative understanding of the doctrines of religion, will ever bring to this. But this light, as it reaches the bottom of the heart, and changes the nature, so it will effectually dispose to an universal obedience. It shows God’s worthiness to be obeyed and served. It draws forth the heart in a sincere love to God, which is the only principle of a true, gracious and universal obedience. And it convinces of the reality of those glorious rewards that God has promised to them that obey him.