This post was written by Randy Newman on November 17, 2008
Several years ago I wrote that C.S. Lewis might be considered the “patron saint” for the Christian academic.
Lewis embodied that elusive combination of a keen intellect and a softened heart. He loved the Lord and he valued the mind. For him, there exists no conflict, tension, or disjuncture between the intellectual sphere and the emotional one.
Today I want to talk of someone else who serves as a valuable role model for us in this same way: Jonathan Edwards.
As the key figure in the Great Awakening that began in 1734, Edwards was the pastor of the Congregational church in Northampton, Massachusetts and a leading intellect of his day. Again, those two descriptions were not considered to be antithetical.
It is not my intention to present a whole biography of Edwards here. I simply want to encourage you to get to know him. Here are a few suggestions to help:
1. Begin by reading some of Edwards sermons. He is most accessible here. Because of language changes and the depth of his thought, reading Jonathan Edwards is difficult. But the sermons are far easier than his treatises.
2. Don’t begin with “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” While this is an excellent sermon, and one that is far different than the lampooned interpretations usually offered in high school social studies classes, I’d suggest you begin with “A Divine and Supernatural Light” or “Praise, One of the Chief Employments of Heaven” or “God Glorified in Man’s Dependence.”
3. Here’s an important emphasis of Edwards you must not miss: Loving and following God must engage both the mind and the “affections.” At Edwards’ time, he was responding to the Enlightenment’s over-emphasis on reason and intellect. In our day, Edwards serves as a helpful corrective against an over-emphasis on emotions and an irrational approach to spirituality. To the modernist and the postmodernist, Edwards’ writings imply “A plague on both your houses!”
Consider this section from “A Divine and Supernatural Light:”
He that is spiritually enlightened truly apprehends and sees it [God’s
glory], or has a sense of it. He does not merely rationally believe that God
is glorious but he has a sense of the gloriousness of God in his heart.
There is not only a rational belief that God is holy, and that holiness is a
good thing, but there is a sense of the loveliness of God’s holiness. There
is not only a speculatively judging that God is gracious, but a sense how
amiable God is upon that account, or a sense of the beauty of this divine
attribute.
May we today embrace, pursue, and enjoy our God with all our being and may we love him with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind.
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