Jonathan Edwards on revival, then and now.
At a time when critics are attacking intellectual weakness, theological decline, and worldliness among evangelical Christians, there are also rumors of revival. Tens of thousands of men attend rallies and rededicate their lives to Christ and recommit to their marriages. Students in Christian colleges line up to testify and confess their sins. In Toronto, a congregation nestled among airport hotels becomes a jet-age version of the frontier camp meetings, drawing its attendance not just from the next county, but from other continents. Are events like these the overture to another great awakening -- or even just a small one?
Jonathan Edwards, the Puritan theologian who has been called the greatest mind produced by America, was also the greatest theologian of revival. When we talk about renewal in the contemporary church, Edwards's writings provide us with the best standards available to help us judge what is genuine, what is spurious, and what is a mixture waiting to be purified.
THE INTROVERTED EVANGELIST
Early in his pastoral career, Edwards had to grapple with what it would mean for his congregation to be revived. His church was solidly orthodox and had experienced several harvests of conversions under Edwards's grandfather, Solomon Stoddard. In the 1730s, however, the church's orthodoxy was merely "notional," as Puritans would say. Parishioners knew their catechism and could rattle off the elements of Christian faith, but few of them cared deeply about Christ. They were absorbed and fascinated by business and everyday life, and they gave little attention to God.
In 1734, Edwards preached “A Divine and Supernatural Light,” advancing a new theory of religious semantics. Professing Christians who have had truth drilled into them by others can talk a good game even when they are totally out of touch with supernatural reality. They can move pieces of theology around like markers on the map of a territory they have never visited.
Real Christianity requires encounter with truth, but that truth must be illuminated by the presence of the Holy Spirit. Only this can produce “a true sense of the divine excellency of the things revealed in the word of God.” One of the effects of this encounter will be a delight in the glory of God. The convert “does not merely rationally believe that God is glorious, but he has a sense of the gloriousness of God in his heart...there is a sense of the loveliness of God's holiness.” Biblical Christianity is therefore a Spirit-illumined orthodoxy that transforms the heart and reorients the whole life to focus on God and seek his will.
It is clear from Edwards's “Personal Narrative” that he is describing his own experience in these passages. When he first encountered the Scripture under the illumination of the Holy Spirit, his life began to change:
“My mind was greatly engaged to spend my time in reading and meditating on
Christ, on the beauty and excellency of his person, and the lovely way of
salvation by free grace in him.... I walked abroad alone, in a solitary
place in my father's pasture, for contemplation.... There came into my
mind so sweet a sense of the glorious majesty and grace of God, as I know
not how to express.... I seemed to see them both in a sweet conjunction;
majesty and meekness joined together: it was a sweet, and gentle, and
holy majesty; and also a majestic meekness; an awful sweetness; a high,
and great, and holy gentleness.”
A part of this new, Spirit-driven concern in the young Edwards was a fervent interest in revival and the extension of Christ’s kingdom.
“I had great longings for the advancement of Christ's kingdom in the
world.... If I heard the least hint of any thing ... that appeared ...
to have a favourable aspect on the interests of Christ's kingdom, my soul
eagerly catched at it, and it would much animate and refresh me. I used
to be eager to read public news-letters, mainly for that end; to see if I
could not find some news favorable to the interests of religion in the
world.”
Edwards may not have suspected that his own congregation would be one of the major foci of the revival for which he was praying. He was an intellectual introvert who had devoured John Locke at 14 and could not manage the small talk needed for parish visitation. He spent 14 hours a day in his study. He read his sermons from manuscript on Sunday morning, staring intermittently at the bell rope. He was the last person to know “How to Promote and Conduct a Revival,” to use R. A. Torrey’s phrase.
But in 1734, revival broke out in his Northampton, Massachusetts, congregation. It began among the young people, who had been drifting away from the church but who now wanted to meet with Edwards to discuss his sermons. Most modern pastors would be willing to settle for this as revival enough; but as often happens, the awakening spread to the adults. Edwards stresses that spiritual things had become so pressingly real to these that it cured their addiction to the world:
“A great and earnest concern about the great things of religion, and the
eternal world, became universal in all parts of the town.... All other
talk but about spiritual and eternal things, was soon thrown by....
Other discourse than of the things of religion, would scarcely be
tolerated in any company. The minds of people were wonderfully taken off
from the world, it was treated amongst us as a thing of very little
consequence. They seemed to follow their worldly business, more as a
part of their duty, than from any disposition they had to it; the
temptation now seemed to lie on that hand, to neglect worldly affairs too
much, and to spend too much time in the immediate exercise of religion.”
Intense conviction of sin was nearly universal among those responding to the Northampton revival. Deeper sins like pride and envy were the focus. Some were even convicted that they were not more convicted.
Though their catechetical training should have shown most parishioners the way out of the sloughs of conviction, most had to come to Edwards in his study to be led to the Savior. The pastoral calling Edwards had always avoided was now being done in reverse!
Two other additional aspects of the Northampton revival should be noted. First, congregational worship was enlivened. Parishioners were now no longer working only from theological maps, they were in touch with the territory of divine reality:
“Our public assemblies were then beautiful: the congregation was alive in
God's service, every one earnestly intent on the public worship, every
hearer eager to drink in the words of the ministers as they came from his
mouth; the assembly in general were, from time to time, in tears while
the word was preached; some weeping with sorrow and distress, others with
joy and love, others with pity and concern for the souls of their
neighbours.”
Second, personal witnessing was enlarged on a scale unprecedented among Puritans. Lay witnessing rose to a new prominence. The sharing of the gospel, which was previously directed mainly from clergy to laity, now flowed in new channels -- from wives to husbands, and even from children to parents: “The town seemed to be full of the presence of God: it never was so full of love, nor of joy, and yet so full of distress, as it was then.... It was a time of joy in families on account of salvation being brought unto them; parents rejoicing over their children as new born, and husbands over their wives.”
WAVES OF REVIVAL
Edwards did not think of the Northampton revival as something apart from God's aims in the rest of the church. In the 1739 sermons on “The History of Redemption,” he indicates that sacred history alternates between periods of spiritual decline, relentless as the gravity of sin, and eras of grace, in which the Holy Spirit is poured out on the people of God, enabling them for spiritual warfare that will take ground from the flesh, the world, and the Devil. This spiritual force is evident in the generation that conquered Canaan, in Pentecost and the subsequent Christianizing of the Roman Empire, and in the Protestant Reformation. Edwards projected a future alternation of declines and awakenings that would ultimately lead to the church's millennial glory.
The ebb and flow of spiritual warfare accounts for the typical sine curve in the history of revivals. If we graph the military history of World War II, we see that ground is gained, then lost, than regained and expanded. The Normandy invasion is the equivalent of a major spiritual awakening, which raises the church to a new level of purity and influence. The history of the kingdom of God begins as a point of light on a fallen planet, which expands, contracts, and expands again, liberating territory until all the earth is full of light, full of the glory of God, as the waters cover the sea.
But Edwards’s model of revival and decline, based on the ebb and flow of spiritual warfare, implied that an awakening might be more like a street fight than a spring morning. A revival movement might be diluted, disfigured, or even invaded by the resisting forces of sin and Satan.
Edwards saw this happen first in 1735 when one of his parishioners heard a persistent voice telling him to cut his own throat, and finally did so. Edwards comments that during the height of the revival, “Satan seemed to be unusually restrained” by the freeing of persons afflicted by depression and temptations; but that with the suicide, “Satan seemed to be more let loose, and raged in a dreadful manner.”
Edwards evidently believed that injecting spurious and disfiguring elements into a revival is a main part of demonic strategy. He would certainly agree with J. Edwin Orr that in any awakening, the first person to wake up is the Devil.
Edwards soon saw more evidence of this, in the explosive period of revival in New England from 1739 to 1742. The great evangelistic rallies at which George Whitefield preached were powerfully effective in securing conversions, but they were disfigured by Whitefield's unguarded suggestions that his opponents were not real Christians. Gilbert Tennant's “The Danger of an Unconverted Ministry” split the Presbyterian Church for 17 years, and James Davenport's praying for the conversion of local ministers, by name, from the pulpit, brought chaos to churches on Boston's North Shore. (Tennant would later heal the breach in his church by admitting that the Philadelphia Presbytery was probably just sleepy, not dead. Davenport later confessed that he did not know what spirit drove him during the revival.)
Edwards was suddenly faced with a storm of criticism, often focused on real problems in the revival. His first response was almost purely defensive. “Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God” (1741) begins by stating that there are many elements in the revival that are neither sure signs of the Spirit nor marks of the flesh or the Devil, but that are simply indifferent -- a kind of accidental package surrounding the real core of spiritual awakening.
It proves nothing that revivals emerge from protracted meetings or that they seem to cause strange bodily effects. Strong preoccupation with religion or imaginative visions prove nothing either way. If revival phenomena seem to spread by contagion or imitation, this is again inconclusive. Imprudence and irregularity, satanic delusions, and even the subsequent apostasy of some converts do not disprove the real activity of the Spirit in a revival. More positively, Edwards finds five biblical marks of a genuine revival:
1. It exalts Jesus Christ.
2. It attacks the powers of darkness.
3. It exalts the Holy Scriptures.
4. It lifts up sound doctrine.
5. And it promotes love to God and man.
Edwards was convinced that there could be a lot of immaturity in a genuine revival: "In the spring innumerable flowers and young fruits appear flourishing and bid fair, that afterwards drop off and come to nothing.... So a shower causes mushrooms suddenly to spring up, as well as good plants to grow.... (In the spring of the year when the birds sing, the frogs and toads also croak.)"
THE DEFENDER TURNS CRITIC
In subsequent writings, Edwards turns more and more from defending the revival to critiquing its defects. In “Thoughts on the Revival in New England” (1742), after opening with a strong portrayal of the revival's power, he offers a searching critique of carnal religiosity. He is concerned that revival leaders have begun to confuse their own hunches and impulses with God's leading. Above all, he laments the prevalence of spiritual pride, “the main door by which the devil comes into the hearts of those who are zealous for the advancement of religion...the main handle by which the devil has hold of religious persons...to clog and hinder a work of God.” Pride is so serious an impediment because it diverts Christians from repentance and makes them censorious:
“Spiritual pride is very apt to suspect others; whereas an humble saint is
most jealous of himself, he is so suspicious of nothing in the world as
he is of his own heart.... The eminently humble Christian has so much to
do at home...that he is not apt to be very busy with other hearts.... He
is apt to esteem others better than himself, and is ready to hope that
there is nobody but what has more love and thankfulness to God than he.”
Spiritually proud Christians, on the other hand, are quick to censure others and quick also to separate from them if their beliefs or behaviors do not measure up. They can manifest a carnal spirituality that sets others’ teeth on edge, a self-assurance and unholy boldness, and a dogmatic inflexibility that either argues continually or will not even dialogue. Spiritual pride “often disposes persons...to affect a singular way of speaking.” It “takes great notice of opposition and injuries that are received.” It preens itself, while it neglects others. In the early 1740s, Edwards longed for revival leaders who were not pompous and contentious, who were mere humble Christians:
“Christians who are but fellow-worms, ought at least to treat one another
with as much humility and gentleness as Christ...treats them. The
eminently humble Christian is as it were clothed with lowliness,
mildness, meekness, gentleness of spirit and behaviour.... Pure
Christian humility has no such thing as roughness, or contempt, or
fierceness, or bitterness in its nature; it makes a person like a little
child...or like a lamb, destitute of all bitterness, wrath, anger, and
clamour.”
[see also #3676]
#3675
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