Jonathan Edwards was a pastor in New England about 300 years ago. He played a pivotal role in the revival that is known as the First Great Awakening. He was recognised for his towering intellect and many people still consider him to be the greatest mind America has ever produced, though technically he lived before America was a country.
I recently finished reading George Marsden’s captivating biography of Edwards. Actually, I have been reading quite a bit about Edwards lately, including Marriage to a Difficult Man: The Uncommon Union of Jonathan and Sarah Edwards, Formed for the Glory of God: Learning from the Spiritual Practices of Jonathan Edwards, and Edwards on the Christian Life: Alive to the Beauty of God.
His life and ministry have deeply impacted mine and I want to offer some reflections.
A Very Serious Person
Jonathan Edwards was socially awkward and extremely intense. He was much happier in his study than he was interacting with people. Reflecting on this fact has been encouraging for me. There is always some pressure on pastors to be extroverted, socially cool, ‘life of the party’ type of people. But this is not true.
Consider this assessment of Edwards, offered by Marsden after describing a remarkable revival that took place in Edwards’ church. He says, “[Edwards’s] personal role was astonishing. The town seemed to be made over in his image, which was no small feat in light of his perfectionist standards and spiritual intensity. Somehow his combination of transparent spirituality and unrelenting crystal-clear logic was winning the hearts of the community. People identified with this demanding young preacher who set before them an exalted spiritual vision.”
Pastors do not need to be the most social people. If you are, that’s great! But either way, what we need is to be serious about God. We need to continually present before our people ‘an exalted spiritual vision.’
A Man of the Heart
Edwards was a towering intellect. He spent 13-14 hours in his study each day and wrote on a bewildering number of topics. Yet his focus was constantly on the affections (or emotions) of his people. Without compromising truth or theology, his goal was always to raise his listeners’s affections to the highest degree possible.
He yearned for ecstatic experiences of God and his beauty. Whenever his wife, children, or church members experienced such encounters with God, he was delighted. He was also eager to use external circumstances whenever possible—such as an earthquake in his region, or the death of a young person in the town—to bring home to people’s hearts the urgency of their need for God.
Edwards knew that intellectual knowledge that does not affect people’s hearts is useless.
Keenly Interested in World Affairs
Though Edwards had a scholarly bent and loved to study, he was not a cloistered theologian. He took an intense interest in the world events of his day, often viewing them as contributing to the fulfilment of biblical prophecy. He was also keen to learn about other religions.
Edwards stayed as current as he could on the philosophical and intellectual currents of his day. He lived in the middle of the period called the Enlightenment, when a sea-change was taking place in people’s perspectives on knowledge, God, and the world.
Most of Edwards’s works, including his treatises on original sin, virtue, and free will, were not written in a vacuum. He wrote them to address what he viewed as the philosophical and theological challenges of his time. It is challenging to me that pastors must not remain only within the four walls of the church. We should constantly be engaging with what is happening in the world around us.
Rejected by His Church
Marsden calls Edward’s years between 1734 and 1744 as “one of the most remarkable decades in the history of parish ministries.” Yet by 1750 he was voted out of his church, with only 23 of the 230 male members of the church voting to keep him as a pastor.
This was a good reminder to me of how quickly public opinion can change about a person. Just because things seem to be going well today, it does not mean they will always be like this. The inverse is also true. Just because I am going through a difficult time in my church now, it does not mean it will always be this way.
Thankfully, in God’s providence, when the church voted Edwards out of his church, God led him to ministry among Native Americans. During this time he wrote some of his most significant works. Finally, he went on to become President of what would eventually become Princeton University.
Surprisingly Missions-minded
Edwards was very eager for the Native Americans in his area to hear the gospel. He eventually gave several years of his life trying to reach them with the good news about Jesus.
When the young missionary David Brainerd showed up (and ultimately died) at his house, Edwards stopped all his work. He focused all his energy to compile and edit Brainerd’s diaries. This became Edwards’s best-known book and inspired future missionaries such as William Carey, Adoniram Judson, Henry Martyn, and many others.
Edwards also wrote a book encouraging ‘concerts of prayers’ for the express purpose of the advancement of God’s kingdom in the world. He was very concerned that all people should hear about the saving work of Christ.
I am so thankful God has raised up men of God like Jonathan Edwards over the course of church history. I am also grateful for the scholars who have laboured hard to study and write about historical figures like Edwards. Edwards’s life is an encouragement and a challenge to me as a pastor, and to all of us as Christians.
But I am most thankful that the Lord who was over Edwards’s life and ministry is the same as the Lord over our lives and ministry. He is the head of the church in every generation and he will build his church through every generation.
