Progress of Theology in America: Jonathan Edwards

Introductory Posting

Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), Personal Narrative.

Edwards remains the greatest theological genius America has produced. As a preacher he led the revival of the 1730s in Northampton, Massachusetts, that prefigured the Great Awakening, and he later wrote the great history and defense of the Awakening itself. As a philosophical theologian, he produced a remarkable synthesis of the new philosophy of Newton and Locke and classical Calvinism. This selection, written in the early 1740s, shows Edwards' characteristic psychological care in analyzing religious experience and his central commitment to the radical sovereignty of God (p. 111).

The doctrine of God’s sovereignty (the fact that He will choose who He will for salvation and reject others) used to seem like such a horrible thing. It did not make any sense and it did not seem fair. But there has come an alteration of experience and of the senses. God has produced a great change at the point of conversion. Now the believer can spend much time in contemplation and meditation on the subject and see the perfect harmony in the sovereignty of God. The believer now has a sense of God’s glory and majesty. More and more they come to an inward sense of sweetness, seeing His glory in everything. The believer now fixes his mind God. What was so terrible before is now so sweet. The feeling of God can cause a person to burst out in song or any such thing because they simply cannot contain themselves. Prior to this state of salvation, the unconverted used to examine himself in all diligence, pursuing holiness under his own strength and by his own means. As Edwards states “My experience had not the taught me, as it has done since…the bottomless depths of secret corruption and deceit there was in my heart.” This is original sin. This is the sin nature of humanity. But miraculously there comes a change from the hand of God. Now the believer has a much greater sense of God’s grace. The believer has an abhorrence of his own righteousness. Any goodness coming from within the self is nauseating. There is now a more full and constant sense of the sovereignty of God. There is more sense of Christ as mediator revealed through the gospel. The soul of the Christian receives grace from God and in turn emits the sweet aroma of the Lord. God is now seen as who He is and loved for it. The believer has affections for God and in turn, affections for others.

Tomorrow: David Walker