ReformationUCC.org

By Dr. Phil Corr (c) 2007

In George Marsden’s authoritative biography of Jonathan Edwards, Marsden devotes almost nine pages (50-58)to Edwards’ spiritual life after Edwards’ conversion. The following are some quotations relating to this important period in the life of Jonathan Edwards.

“Probably in late fall 1722, perhaps in response to the difficulties in sustaining high levels of
spiritual intensity, Jonathan undertook the Puritan practice of framing a set of resolutions to discipline himself, adding new entries as needed.”

“True to his Puritan heritage, he often came back to the use of time. He early resolved, ‘never to lose one moment of time; but improve it the most profitable way I possibly can.’”

“Many of his resolutions and diary entries have to do with cultivating practical Christian virtues…. Most of the specifically practical resolutions have to do, however, with correcting personal faults.”

“Like both Franklin and Cotton Mather before him, Edwards literally kept score of how well he did, or as we would put it, of the evidence of God’s grace.” “In his diary he also kept track of his spiritual highs and lows.”

“The mature Edwards looked back on this rigor as involving ‘too great a dependence on my own strength; which afterwards proved a great damage to me.’ Yet he never abandoned his belief in the value of strict spiritual disciplines, as his later “Life of David Brainerd” would reveal.

“His theological explanation in his “Personal Narrative” for the difference between his early and his mature experiences as a convert as that he now had ‘a more full and constant sense of the absolute sovereignty of God, and a delight in that sovereignty; and have had more of the sense of the glory of Christ, as a mediator.’ Both of these sensibilities, that one must trust more in God’s care and in Christ’s intercession, fit with his self-criticism that he had earlier depended too much on his own efforts.

“At the same time, if we notice that it was in his early years after conversion that he ‘lived in a more constant delight and pleasure’ than afterward, then we must also recognize that his tome of more constant delight was also a time of moving back and forth between his spiritual mountains and deep valleys. Only steady habits of spiritual disciplines kept his emotional swings under control.”

“Out of his disconcerting religious struggles–which were by no means over–arose one of the major agendas of his later career. How could one tell the difference between true and false religious affections? At age nineteen he had already determined to apply his philosophical or scientific talents to the task of setting the world right on that topic. That question touched him at the center of his being. Not only was his eternal destiny of agonizing personal importance, how he answered the question was deeply tied to his relationship to his parents, his extended family, his community, his church and his career. In the light of all the ink already poured into that most difficult question by earlier divines, the task of once and for all resolving it might have seemed a formidable life’s work in itself. Yet for the young Jonathan it was only part of a far larger design that he was already drafting to redirect the thought of Christendom.” This would have to do with his efforts to bring about a harmony of all knowledge, a scientific-religious unified field theory–but that discussion awaits another article.