A God Entranced Vision of All Things E-Book

• Herausgeber: Crossway
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 533

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2004

Beschreibung

"Useful men are some of the greatest blessings of a people. To have many such is more for a people's happiness than almost anything, unless it be God's own gracious, spiritual presence amongst them; they are precious gifts of heaven." Certainly one of the most useful men in evangelical history was the man who preached those words, pastor and theologian Jonathan Edwards. Commemorating his 300th birthday, general editors John Piper and Justin Taylor chose ten essays that highlight different aspects of Edwards's life and legacy and show how his teachings are just as relevant today as they were three centuries ago. Even within the church, many people know little more about Edwards than what is printed in American history textbooks-most often, excerpts from his best-known sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." They unjustly envision Edwards preaching only fire and brimstone to frightened listeners. But he knew and preached God's heaven as much as Satan's hell. He was a humble and joyful servant, striving to glorify God in his personal life and public ministry. This book's contributors investigate the character and teachings of the man who preached from a deep concern for the unsaved and a passionate desire for God. Studying the life and works of this dynamic Great Awakening figure will rouse slumbering Christians, prompting them to view the world through Edwards's God-centered lens.

Leseprobe

A GOD ENTRANCED VISION of

A God-Entranced Vision of All Things

Copyright © 2004 Desiring God Foundation and Justin Taylor.

Published by Crossway Books a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers 1300 Crescent Street Wheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided by USA copyright law.

Cover design: Josh Dennis

Cover photo: Courtesy of the Billy Graham Center Museum, Wheaton, IL

First printing, 2004

Printed in the United States of America

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture references are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture references marked NASB are from the New American Standard Bible®copyright © by The Lockman Foundation 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995. Used by permission.

Scripture references marked KJV are from the King James Version.

Scripture references marked NIV are from The Holy Bible: New International Version®. Copyright © 1973, 1978,1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved. The "NIV" and "New International Version" trademarks are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by International Bible Society. Use of either trademark requires the permission of International Bible Society.

Scripture references marked Phillips are from the New Testament in Modern English, translated by J. B. Phillips, copyright © 1958, 1959, 1960, 1972 by J. B. Phillips. Used by permission.

All emphases within Scripture quotations have been added by the authors.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A God-entranced vision of all things : the legacy of Jonathan Edwards 300

years later / edited by John Piper and Justin Taylor.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 13: 978-1-58134-563-6 (pbb : alk. paper)

ISBN 10: 1-58134-563-1

1. Edwards, Jonathan, 1703-1758. I. Piper, John, 1946-. II. Taylor, Justin, 1976

BX7260.E3G63    2004

2004004264

230'.58'092—dc22

CH       19   18   17   16   15   14   13   12   11   10

15   1 4    13    12    11    10    9    8    7    6    5    4

To lain H. Murray

CONTENT

Contributors

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Justin Taylor

PART ONE THE LIFE AND LEGACY OF EDWARDS

1

A God-Entranced Vision of All Things: Why We Need Jonathan Edwards 300 Years Later

John Piper

2

Jonathan Edwards: His Life and Legacy

Stephen J. Nichols

3

Sarah Edwards: Jonathan's Home and Haven

Noël Piper

PART TWO LESSONS FROM EDWARDS'S LIFE AND THOUGHT

4

The Glory of God and the Reviving of Religion: A Study in the Mind of Jonathan Edwards

J. I. Packer

5

Pursuing a Passion for God Through Spiritual Disciplines: Learning from Jonathan Edwards

Donald S. Whitney

6

How Jonathan Edwards Got Fired, and Why It's Important for Us Today

Mark Dever

7

Trusting the Theology of a Slave Owner

Sherard Bums

PART THREE EXPOSITIONS OF EDWARDS'S MAJOR THEOLOGICAL WORKS

8

The Great Christian Doctrine (Original Sin)

Paul Helm

9

The Will: Fettered Yet Free (Freedom of the Will)

Sam Storms

10

Godly Emotions (Religious Affections)

Mark R. Talbot

Appendix 1: A Divine and Supernatural Light. . .—An Edwardsean Sermon

John Piper

Appendix 2: Reading Jonathan Edwards: Objections and Recommendations

Justin Taylor

A Note on Resources: Desiring God Ministries

Scripture Index

Person Index

Subject Index

CONTRIBUTORS

Sherard Burns. M.A.B.S., Reformed Theological Seminary, Orlando. Associate Pastor of Evangelism, Discipleship, and Assimilation, Bethlehem Baptist Church.

Mark Dever. Ph.D., Cambridge University. Senior Pastor, Capitol Hill Baptist Church, Washington, D.C.

Paul Helm. M.A., Oxford. J. I. Packer Chair in Theology and Philosophy, Regent College; Emeritus Professor, University of London.

Stephen J. Nichols. Ph.D., Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia. Associate Professor, Lancaster Bible College and Graduate School.

J. I. Packer. D.Phil., Board of Governors' Professor of Theology, Regent College. John Piper. D.theol., University of Munich. Preaching Pastor, Bethlehem Baptist Church.

Noël Piper. B.A., Wheaton College. Homemaker, writer, speaker.

Sam Storms. Ph.D., University of Texas at Dallas. President of Enjoying God Ministries, Kansas City.

Mark R. Talbot. Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania. Associate Professor of Philosophy, Wheaton College.

Justin Taylor. M.A.R. cand., Reformed Theological Seminary. Director of Theology, Executive Editor, Desiring God Ministries.

Donald S. Whitney. D.Min., Trinity Evangelical Divinity School; D.theol. cand., University of South Africa. Associate Professor of Spiritual Formation, Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We wish to express our gratitude to God for the gifts of several people who assisted with this project: Scott Anderson carried a heavy load in coordinating the original conference, without which this book would not exist; Vicki Anderson cheerfully assisted with numerous administrative duties that have made our jobs easier; Steve Nichols graciously answered a number of questions throughout this project; Ted Griffin did his usual helpful, thorough edits; and Carol Steinbach once again faithfully assembled the indexes with the assistance of Hannah Steller and Dan Brendsel. We would be remiss if we did not acknowledge our wives, Noël and Lea, and most importantly, our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.

INTRODUCTION

Justin Taylor

Twenty-five hundred people gathered in Minneapolis in October 2003 to celebrate the 300th birthday of Jonathan Edwards (17031758), considered by many to be "the greatest philosopher-theologian yet to grace the American scene."1 The conference, hosted by Desiring God Ministries, was entitled "A God-Entranced Vision of All Things: The Unrivaled Legacy of Jonathan Edwards."

This book is a continuation and expansion of that tercentenary celebration, with the aim of introducing readers to Edwards, and more importantly, to his "God-entranced vision of all things." The phrase is adapted from Mark Noll's lament:

Evangelicals have not thought about life from the ground up as Christians, because their entire culture has ceased to do so. Edwards' piety continued on in the revivalist tradition, his theology continued on in academic Calvinism, but there were no successors to his God-entranced worldview or his profoundly theological philosophy. The disappearance of Edwards' perspective in American Christian history has been a tragedy.2

The contributors to this volume pray that God will turn this tragic tide, and that the Bride of Christ will once again cherish and proclaim this Christ-exalting, God-entranced vision.

This vision is not properly Edwards's, but God's. God is the designer and definer of reality, and all of life must be lived to his glory. "Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God" (1 Cor. 10:31), working "heartily, as for the Lord and not for men" (Col. 3:23). We are commanded by Christ to "love the Lord [our] God with all [our] heart and with all [our] soul and with all [our] mind" (Matt. 22:37). If we do anything apart from faith in God, we have sinned (Rom. 14:23), and God is displeased (Heb. 11:6). "Chance" is a myth, "autonomy" is a lie, "neutrality" is impossible. Everything is created by God, everything is controlled by God, and everything's proper purpose is to be for God and his glory. All things are "from him and through him and to him.... To him be glory forever" (Rom. 11:36; cf. 1 Cor. 8:6). Or as Edwards put it: "the whole is of God, and in God, and to God, and God is the beginning, middle and end in this affair."3 This is the God-given, God-centered, God-intoxicated, God-entranced vision of all things. Edwards did not invent this vision. But God gave him the grace to articulate this vision as well as or better than anyone ever has. To illustrate the flavor and contours of his vision, listen to Edwards's words as he preaches to his Northampton congregation on the beauty of God and our enjoyment of him:

The enjoyment of God is the only happiness with which our souls can be satisfied. To go to heaven, fully to enjoy God, is infinitely better than the most pleasant accommodations here. Fathers and mothers, husbands, wives, or children, or the company of earthly friends, are but shadows; but God is the substance. These are but scattered beams, but God is the sun. These are but streams. But God is the ocean. Therefore it becomes us to spend this life only as a journey toward heaven, as it becomes us to make the seeking of our highest end and proper good, the whole work of our lives; to which we should subordinate all other concerns of life. Why should we labour for, or set our hearts on, any thing else, but that which is our proper end, and true happiness?4

EDWARDS'S NEGATIVE REPUTATION

While there has been an amazing resurgence of interest in and respect for Edwards in the academy,5 he still suffers from an "identity problem" in the church. Most know little about him other than the fact that he delivered America's most famous sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," often reprinted in literature anthologies and American History textbooks. Contemporary fire-and-brimstone preachers are often grating and graceless, and Edwards is imagined to be the same. But nothing could be further from the truth. What most of us don't know is that while "Edwards did know his hell... he knew his heaven better."6 John Gerstner concludes his study on Edwards's view of heaven and hell in this way:

If he spoke more of hell, it was only because he feared more people were going there, and he desired to set them on their way to heaven.... Even as he defended "the justice of God in the damnation of sinners" he triumphantly extolled the divine and everlasting mercy in the salvation of saints. Jonathan Edwards was in his truest element not as the faithful, fiery preacher of "sinners in the hands of an angry God"— though this he ever was and remained—but as the rhapsodic seer of the "beatific vision."7

It is true that Edwards's worldview often sounds strange to our modern ears. Some of what he writes is hard to understand; some of it is simply hard to accept. But as readers encounter Edwards, they would be well-advised to consider the counsel of biographer George Marsden:

If there is an emphasis that appears difficult, or harsh, or overstated in Edwards, often the reader can better appreciate his perspective by asking the question: "How would this issue look if it really were the case that bliss or punishment for a literal eternity was at stake?"8

AN OVERVIEW OF THIS PRESENT VOLUME

Part One of this book examines Edwards's life and legacy. After arguing that God rests lightly upon the evangelical church today, John Piper shows why we need to recover the weight of the glory of God through Edwards's vision that "God is glorified not only by His glory's being seen, but by its being rejoiced in." He addresses the question of how this might happen and then lets Edwards answer several objections to this worldview. Steve Nichols provides a chronological overview of Edwards's life, offering insight into the man, an introduction to his theology, and an exploration of his legacy in the academy and in the church. Noël Piper gives us a window into the godly, albeit imperfect Edwards home through a biography of Sarah, Jonathan's wife. Jonathan wrote to her on his deathbed that their marriage was an "uncommon union," and Mrs. Piper shows us that Sarah was Jonathan's "home and haven."

Part Two looks at the lessons, both positive and negative, that we might appropriate from Edwards for today. J. I. Packer unpacks Edwards's theology of revival as a reviving of religion for the glory of God, while also comparing the contribution of John Wesley (born in the same year as Edwards). Packer believes that Edwards's theology of revival is perhaps "the most important single contribution that Edwards has to make to evangelical thinking today,"9 and in this essay he tells us why. Don Whitney explains what is meant by "spiritual disciplines," looks at how Edwards pursued his passion for God through them, and suggests lessons we can learn from his practice of these personal, biblical practices designed for the increase of godliness and Christlikeness. Mark Dever explains the circumstances surrounding the firing of Edwards from the pastorate in Northampton and explores the significant theological issues at stake, showing the implications for our doctrine of the church and the practice of church discipline. Finally, Sherard Burns has been assigned the difficult task of examining how Edwards could pursue a God-entranced vision of all things and yet own slaves. Burns explores the eighteenth-century context and also reminds us of the absolute sovereignty of God even over the pain and tragedy of America's "peculiar institution." He does all of this while weaving a careful path through the Scylla of callow condemnation on the one hand and the Charybdis of easy exoneration on the other.

For Part Three, we have asked three Edwards scholars to help us understand some of his most influential and demanding works: Paul Helm on Original Sin, Sam Storms on Freedom of the Will, and Mark Talbot on Religious Affections. These chapters re-present, as it were, Edwards's theses and arguments in an understandable way and show how his theology has contemporary application for our lives. Our hope is that these guides might encourage you to set about the task of working through these profound and challenging writings on your own.

Finally, we have included two appendices. The first is an Edwardsean sermon given by John Piper on 2 Corinthians 3:18—4:7. In the second, I attempt to answer some objections and recommend some resources regarding the challenge of reading Edwards today.

EDWARDS'S LEGACY: HE LEFT GOD WITH US

The risk in publishing a book about one man's vision of God is that the focus will be upon the man to the neglect of God himself. On the other hand, it is possible to dishonor God by not gladly receiving and appropriating the gifts he has given us. In fact, to neglect and to forget these forerunners in the faith is to be disobedient to God, who commands us through the author of Hebrews to "Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith" (Heb. 13:7). Edwards spoke the word of God to us, and we are thus commanded to remember, to consider, and then to imitate him, insofar as he imitated the Lord (cf. 1 Thess. 1:6).

Perhaps the most fitting tribute we can give to Edwards comes from the words of Edwards himself. Here is how he counseled his flock to view faithful ministers of the gospel:

Useful men are some of the greatest blessings of a people. To have many such is more for a people's happiness than almost anything, unless it be God's own gracious, spiritual presence amongst them; they are precious gifts of heaven.... Particularly, I would beseech and exhort those aged ones that yet remain, while they do live with us, to let us have much of their prayers, that when they leave the younger generations, they may leave God with them.10

Edwards was one of the greatest blessings the church has ever known. His life and writings have glorified God and increased our understanding of and happiness in God. He was a precious gift of heaven.

Upon hearing the news that Jonathan had died, his wife Sarah wrote in a letter to their daughter Lucy: "O what a legacy my husband, and your father, has left us! We are all given to God; and there I am, and love to be."11 His legacy is that when he left this earth, he left God with his family—and with us.

Our prayer is that we all might recover and embrace this God-entranced vision of all things, growing in grace and knowledge, for the glory of God in Christ.

Soli Deo gloria.

1 Perry Miller, "General Editor's Note," The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 1, Freedom of the Will, ed. Paul Ramsey (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1957), viii.

2 Mark Noll, "Jonathan Edwards, Moral Philosophy, and the Secularization of American Christian Thought," Reformed Journal 33 (February 1983): 26 (emphasis added).

3 Jonathan Edwards, "The Dissertation Concerning the End for Which God Created the World," in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 8, Ethical Writings, ed. Paul Ramsey (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1989), 531.

4 Jonathan Edwards, "The Christian Pilgrim," in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, ed. Edward Hickman, 2 vols. (1834; reprint, Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1974), 2:244.

5 See Sean Michael Lucas, "Jonathan Edwards Between Church and Academy: A Bibliographic Essay," in The Legacy of Jonathan Edwards: American Religion and the Evangelical Tradition, ed. D. G. Hart, Sean Michael Lucas, and Stephen J. Nichols (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 2003), 228-247.

6 John H. Gerstner, Jonathan Edwards on Heaven and Hell (reprint, Morgan, Penn.: Soli Deo Gloria, 1998), 9.

7 Ibid., 93. The most powerful ways to verify this judgment is to read Edwards's sermon, "Heaven Is a World of Love," in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 8, Ethical Writings, ed. Paul Ramsey (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1989), 366-397. An excellent summary that captures both the content and the flavor of Edwards's view of heaven can be found in chapter 9 of Sam Storms's book, One Thing: Developing a Passion for the Beauty of God (Rosshire, England: Christian Focus, 2004).

8 George M. Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Life (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003), 5.

9 J. I. Packer, A Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life (Wheaton, 111.: Crossway Books, 1990), 316.

10 Jonathan Edwards, "The Death of Faithful Ministers a Sign of God's Displeasure," in The Salvation of Souls: Nine Previously Unpublished Sermons on the Call of Ministry and the Gospel by Jonathan Edwards, ed. Richard A. Bailey and Gregory A. Wills (Wheaton, 111.: Crossway Books, 2002), 34, 39.

11 Sereno E. Dwight, "Memoirs of Jonathan Edwards," in Works, ed. Hickman, l:clxxix.

PART ONE

1 A GOD-ENTRANCED VISION OF ALL THINGS: WHY WE NEED JONATHAN EDWARDS 300 YEARS LATER

John Piper

One of the reasons that the world and the church need Jonathan Edwards 300 years after his birth is that his God-entranced vision of all things is so rare and yet so necessary. Mark Noll wrote about how rare it is:

Edwards' piety continued on in the revivalist tradition, his theology continued on in academic Calvinism, but there were no successors to his God-entranced world view or his profoundly theological philosophy The disappearance of Edwards' perspective in American Christian history has been a tragedy.1

Evangelicalism today in America is basking in the sunlight of ominously hollow success. Evangelical industries of television and radio and publishing and music recordings, as well as hundreds of growing mega churches and some public figures and political movements, give outward impressions of vitality and strength. But David Wells, Os Guinness, and others have warned of the hollowing out of evangelicalism from within.

The strong timber of the tree of evangelicalism has historically been the great doctrines of the Bible:

God's glorious perfections

man's fallen nature

the wonders of redemptive history

the magnificent work of redemption in Christ

the saving and sanctifying work of grace in the soul

the great mission of the church in conflict with the world, the flesh, and

the devil

the greatness of our hope of everlasting joy at God's right hand

These unspeakably magnificent things once defined us and were the strong timber and root supporting the fragile leaves and fruit of our religious affections and moral actions. But this is not the case for many churches and denominations and ministries and movements in Evangelicalism today. And that is why the waving leaves of present evangelical success and the sweet fruit of prosperity are not as promising as we may think. There is a hollowness to this triumph, and the tree is weak even while the leafy branches are waving in the sun.

What is missing is the mind-shaping knowledge and the all-transforming enjoyment of the weight of the glory of God. The glory of God—holy, righteous, all-sovereign, all-wise, all-good—is missing. God rests lightly on the church in America. He is not felt as a weighty concern. Wells puts it starkly: "It is this God, majestic and holy in his being, this God whose love knows no bounds because his holiness knows no limits, who has disappeared from the modern evangelical world."2 It is an overstatement. But not without warrant.

What Edwards saw in God and in the universe because of God, through the lens of Scripture, was breathtaking. To read him, after you catch your breath, is to breathe the uncommon air of the Himalayas of revelation. And the refreshment that you get from this high, clear, God-entranced air does not take out the valleys of suffering in this world, but fits you to spend your life there for the sake of love with invincible and worshipful joy.

In 1735 Edwards preached a sermon on Psalm 46:10, "Be still, and know that I am God." From the text he developed the following doctrine: "Hence, the bare consideration that God is God, may well be sufficient to still all objections and opposition against the divine sovereign dispensations."3 When Jonathan Edwards became still and contemplated the great truth that God is God, he saw a majestic Being whose sheer, absolute, uncaused, ever-being existence implied infinite power, infinite knowledge, and infinite holiness. And so he went on to argue like this:

It is most evident by the Works of God, that his understanding and power are infinite.... Being thus infinite in understanding and power, he must also be perfectly holy; for unholiness always argues some defect, some blindness. Where there is no darkness or delusion, there can be no unholiness.... God being infinite in power and knowledge, he must be self-sufficient and all-sufficient; therefore it is impossible that he should be under any temptation to do any thing amiss; for he can have no end in doing it.... So God is essentially holy, and nothing is more impossible than that God should do amiss.4

When Jonathan Edwards became still and knew that God is God, the vision before his eyes was of an absolutely sovereign God, self-sufficient in himself and all-sufficient for his creatures, infinite in holiness, and therefore perfectly glorious—that is, infinitely beautiful in all his perfections. God's actions therefore are never motivated by the need to meet his deficiencies (since he has none), but are always motivated by the passion to display his glorious sufficiency (which is infinite). He does everything that he does—absolutely everything—for the sake of displaying his glory.

Our duty and privilege, therefore, is to conform to this divine purpose in creation and history and redemption—namely, to reflect the value of God's glory—to think and feel and do whatever we must to make much of God. Our reason for being, our calling, our joy is to render visible the glory of God. Edwards writes:

All that is ever spoken of in the Scripture as an ultimate end of God's works is included in that one phrase, the glory of God.... The refulgence shines upon and into the creature, and is reflected back to the luminary. The beams of glory come from God, and are something of God and are refunded back again to their original. So that the whole is of God, and in God, and to God, and God is the beginning, middle and end in this affair.5

This is the essence of Edwards's God-entranced vision of all things! God is the beginning, the middle, and the end of all things. Nothing exists without his creating it. Nothing stays in being without his sustaining word. Everything has its reason for existing from him. Therefore nothing can be understood apart from him, and all understandings of all things that leave him out are superficial understandings, since they leave out the most important reality in the universe. We can scarcely begin to feel today how God-ignoring we have become, because it is the very air we breathe.

This is why I say that Edwards's God-entranced vision of all things is not only rare but also necessary. If we do not share this vision, we will not consciously join God in the purpose for which he created the universe. And if we do not join God in advancing his aim for the universe, then we waste our lives and oppose our Creator.

How TO RECOVER EDWARDS'S GOD-ENTRANCED VISION OF ALL THINGS

How then shall we recover this God-entranced vision of all things? Virtually every chapter in this book will contribute to that answer. So I will not try to be sweeping or comprehensive. I will focus on what for me has been the most powerful and most transforming biblical truth that I have learned from Edwards. I think that if the church would grasp and experience this truth, she would awaken to Edwards's God-entranced vision of all things.

No one in church history that I know, with the possible exception of St. Augustine, has shown more clearly and shockingly the infinite— I use the word carefully—importance of joy in the very essence of what it means for God to be God and what it means for us to be God-glorifying. Joy always seemed to me peripheral until I read Jonathan Edwards. He simply transformed my universe by putting joy at the center of what it means for God to be God and what it means for us to be God-glorifying. We will become a God-entranced people if we see joy the way Edwards saw joy.

JOY IS AT THE HEART OF WHAT IT MEANS FOR GOD TO BE GOD-GLORIFYING

Listen as he weaves together God's joy in being God and our joy in his being God:

Because [God] infinitely values his own glory, consisting in the knowledge of himself, love to himself ... joy in himself-, he therefore valued the image, communication or participation of these, in the creature. And it is because he values himself, that he delights in the knowledge, and love, and joy of the creature; as being himself the object of this knowledge, love and complacence.... [Thus] God's respect to the creature's good, and his respect to himself, is not a divided respect; but both are united in one, as the happiness of the creature aimed at, is happiness in union with himself.6

In other words, for God to be the holy and righteous God that he is, he must delight infinitely in what is infinitely delightful. He must enjoy with unbounded joy what is most boundlessly enjoyable; he must take infinite pleasure in what is infinitely pleasant; he must love with infinite intensity what is infinitely lovely; he must be infinitely satisfied with what is infinitely satisfying. If he were not, he would be fraudulent. Claiming to be wise, he would be a fool, exchanging the glory of God for images. God's joy in God is part of what it means for God to be God.

Press a little further in with me. Edwards makes this plain as he sums up his spectacular vision of the inner life of the Trinity—that is, the inner life of what it is for God to be one God in three Persons:

The Father is the deity subsisting in the prime, unoriginated and most absolute manner, or the deity in its direct existence. The Son is the deity [eternally] generated by God's understanding, or having an idea of Himself and subsisting in that idea. The Holy Ghost is the deity subsisting in act, or the divine essence flowing out and breathed forth in God's infinite love to and delight in Himself. And ... the whole Divine essence does truly and distinctly subsist both in the Divine idea and Divine love, and that each of them are properly distinct persons.7

You cannot elevate joy higher in the universe than this. Nothing greater can be said about joy than to say that one of the Persons of the Godhead subsists in the act of God's delight in God—that ultimate and infinite joy is the Person of the Holy Spirit. When we speak of the place of joy in our lives and in the life of God, we are not playing games. We are not dealing with peripherals. We are dealing with infinitely important reality.

JOY IS AT THE HEART OF WHAT IT MEANS FOR US TO BE GOD-GLORIFYING

So joy is at the heart of what it means for God to be God. And now let us see how it is at the heart of what it means for us to be God-glorifying. This follows directly from the nature of the Trinity. God is Father knowing himself in his divine Son, and God is Father delighting in himself by his divine Spirit. Now Edwards makes the connection with how God's joy in being God is at the heart of how we glorify God. What you are about to read has been for me the most influential paragraph in all the writings of Edwards:

God is glorified within himself these two ways: (1) by appearing ... to himself in his own perfect idea [of himself], or in his Son, who is the brightness of his glory. (2) by enjoying and delighting in himself, by flowing forth in infinite ... delight towards himself, or in his holy Spirit.... So God glorifies himself towards the creatures also [in] two ways: (1) by appearing to ... their understanding. (2) in communicating himself to their hearts, and in their rejoicing and delighting in, and enjoying, the manifestations which he makes of himself.... God is glorified not only by his glory's being seen, but by its being rejoiced in. [W]hen those that see it delight in it: God is more glorified than if they only see it; his glory is then received by the whole soul, both by the understanding and by the heart. God made the world that he might communicate, and the creature receive, his glory; and that it might [be] received both by the mind and heart. He that testifies his idea of God's glory [doesn't] glorify God so much as he that testifies also his approbation of it and his delight in it.8

The implications of this paragraph for all of life are immeasurable. One of those implications is that the end and goal of creation hangs on knowing God with our minds and enjoying God with our hearts. The very purpose of the universe—reflecting and displaying the glory of God—hangs not only on true knowledge of God, but also on authentic joy in God. "God is glorified," Edwards says, "not only by his glory's being seen, but by its being rejoiced in."

Here is the great discovery that changes everything. God is glorified by our being satisfied in him. The chief end of man is not merely to glorify God and enjoy him forever, but to glorify God by enjoying him forever. The great divide that I thought existed between God's passion for his glory and my passion for joy turned out to be no divide at all, if my passion for joy is passion for joy in God. God's passion for the glory of God and my passion for joy in God are one.

What follows from this, I have found, shocks most Christians, namely, that we should be blood-earnest—deadly serious—about being happy in God. We should pursue our joy with such a passion and a vehemence that, if we must, we would cut off our hand or gouge out our eye to have it. God being glorified in us hangs on our being satisfied in him. Which makes our being satisfied in him infinitely important. It becomes the animating vocation of our lives. We tremble at the horror of not rejoicing in God. We quake at the fearful lukewarmness of our hearts. We waken to the truth that it is a treacherous sin not to pursue that satisfaction in God with all our hearts. There is one final word for finding delight in the creation more than in the Creator: treason.

Edwards put it like this: "I do not suppose it can be said of any, that their love to their own happiness ... can be in too high a degree."9 Of course, a passion for happiness can be misdirected to wrong objects, but it cannot be too strong.10 Edwards argued for this in a sermon that he preached on Song of Solomon 5:1, which says, "Eat, friends, drink, and be drunk with love!" He drew out the following doctrine: "Persons need not and ought not to set any bounds to their spiritual and gracious appetites." Rather, he says, they ought

to be endeavoring by all possible ways to inflame their desires and to obtain more spiritual pleasures.... Our hungerings and thirstings after God and Jesus Christ and after holiness can't be too great for the value of these things, for they are things of infinite value.... [Therefore] endeavor to promote spiritual appetites by laying yourself in the way of allurement.... 11 There is no such thing as excess in our taking of this spiritual food. There is no such virtue as temperance in spiritual feasting.12

This led Edwards to say of his own preaching and the great goals of his own ministry:

I should think myself in the way of my duty to raise the affections of my hearers as high as possibly I can, provided that they are affected with nothing but truth, and with affections that are not disagreeable to the nature of what they are affected with." 13

White-hot affections for God set on fire by clear, compelling, biblical truth was Edwards's goal in preaching and life, because it is the goal of God in the universe. This is the heart of Edwards's God-entranced vision of all things.

Perhaps the best way to unfold the implications of this vision is to let Edwards answer several objections that are raised.

Objections to Edwards

Objection #1: Doesn't this make me too central in salvation? Doesn't it put me at the bottom of my joy and make me the focus of the universe?

Edwards answers with a very penetrating distinction between the joy of the hypocrite and the joy of the true Christian. It is a devastating distinction for modern Christians because it exposes the error of defining God's love as "making much of us."

This is ... the difference between the joy of the hypocrite, and the joy of the true saint. The [hypocrite] rejoices in himself; self is the first foundation of his joy: the [true saint] rejoices in God.... True saints have their minds, in the first place, inexpressibly pleased and delighted with the sweet ideas of the glorious and amiable nature of the things of God. And this is the spring of all their delights, and the cream of all their pleasures.... But the dependence of the affections of hypocrites is in a contrary order: they first rejoice ... that they are made so much of by God; and then on that ground, he seems in a sort, lovely to them.14

The answer to the objection above is "no." Edwards's call for a God-enthralled heart does not make the enthralled one central. It makes God central. Indeed it exposes every joy as idolatrous that is not, ultimately, joy in God. As St. Augustine prayed, "He loves thee too little who loves anything together with Thee, which he loves not for thy sake."15

Objection #2: Won't this emphasis on pleasure play into the central corruption of our age, the unbounded pursuit of personal ease and comfort and pleasure? Won't this emphasis soften our resistance to sin?

Many Christians think stoicism is a good antidote to sensuality. It isn't. It is hopelessly weak and ineffective. And the reason it fails is that the power of sin comes from its promise of pleasure and is meant to be defeated by the superior promise of pleasure in God, not by the power of the human will. Willpower religion, when it succeeds, gets glory for the will. It produces legalists, not lovers. Edwards saw the powerlessness of this approach and said:

We come with double forces against the wicked, to persuade them to a godly life.... The common argument is the profitableness of religion, but alas, the wicked man is not in pursuit of profit; 'tis pleasure he seeks. Now, then, we will fight with them with their own weapons.16

In other words, Edwards says, the pursuit of pleasure in God is not only not a compromise with the sensual world, but is the only power that can defeat the lusts of the age while producing lovers of God, not legalists who boast in their willpower. If you love holiness, if you weep over the moral collapse of our culture, I pray you will get to know Edwards's God-enthralled vision of all things.

Objection #3: Surely repentance is a painful thing and will be undermined by this stress on seeking our pleasure. Surely revival begins with repentance, but you seem to make the awakening of delight the beginning.

The answer to this objection is that no one can feel brokenhearted for not treasuring God until he tastes the pleasure of having God as a treasure. In order to bring people to the sorrow of repentance, you must first bring them to see God as their delight. Here it is in the very words of Edwards:

Though [repentance] be a deep sorrow for sin that God requires as necessary to salvation, yet the very nature of it necessarily implies delight. Repentance of sin is a sorrow arising from the sight of God's excellency and mercy, but the apprehension of excellency or mercy must necessarily and unavoidably beget pleasure in the mind of the beholder. 'Tis impossible that anyone should see anything that appears to him excellent and not behold it with pleasure, and it's impossible to be affected with the mercy and love of God, and his willingness to be merciful to us and love us, and not be affected with pleasure at the thoughts of [it]; but this is the very affection that begets true repentance. How much soever of a paradox it may seem, it is true that repentance is a sweet sorrow, so that the more of this sorrow, the more pleasure.17

This is astonishing and true. And if you have lived long with Christ and are aware of your indwelling sin, you will have found it to be so. Yes, there is repentance. Yes, there are tears of remorse and brokenheartedness. But they flow from a new taste of the soul for the pleasures at God's right hand that up till now have been scorned.

Objection #4: Surely elevating the pursuit of joy to supreme importance will overturn the teaching of Jesus about self-denial. How can you affirm a passion for pleasure as the driving force of the Christian life and at the same time embrace self-denial?

Edwards turns this objection right on its head and argues that self-denial not only does not contradict the quest for joy, but in fact destroys the root of sorrow. Here is the way he says it:

Self-denial will also be reckoned amongst the troubles of the godly But whoever has tried self-denial can give in his testimony that they never experience greater pleasure and joys than after great acts of self-denial. Self-denial destroys the very root and foundation of sorrow, and is nothing else but the lancing of a grievous and painful sore that effects a cure and brings abundance of health as a recompense for the pain of the operation.18

In other words, the whole approach of the Bible, Edwards would say, is to persuade us that denying ourselves the "fleeting pleasures of sin" (Heb. 11:25) puts us on the path of "pleasures forevermore" at God's right hand (Ps. 16:11). There is no contradiction between the centrality of delight in God and the necessity of self-denial, since self-denial "destroys the root... of sorrow."19

Objection #5: Becoming a Christian adds more trouble to life and brings persecutions, reproaches, suffering, and even death. It is misleading, therefore, to say that the essence of being a Christian is joy. There are overwhelming sorroivs.

This would be a compelling objection in a world like ours, so full of suffering and so hostile to Christianity, if it were not for the sovereignty and goodness of God. Edwards is unwavering in his biblical belief that God designs all the afflictions of the godly for the increase of their everlasting joy.

He puts it in a typically striking way: "Religion [Christianity] brings no new troubles upon man but what have more of pleasure than of trouble."20 In other words, the only troubles that God permits in the lives of his children are those that will bring more pleasure than trouble with them—when all things are considered. He cites four passages of Scripture. "Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven" (Matt. 5:11-12). "Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness" (Jas. 1:2-3). "Then they left the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the name" (Acts 5:41). "You joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one" (Heb. 10:34).

In other words, yes, becoming a Christian adds more trouble to life and brings persecutions, reproaches, suffering, and even death. Yes, there are overwhelming sorrows. But the pursuit of infinite pleasure in God, and the confidence that Christ has purchased it for us, does not contradict these sufferings but carries them. By this joy and this hope we are able to suffer on the Calvary road of ministry and missions and love. "For the joy that was set before him" Jesus "endured the cross" (Heb. 12:2). He fixed his gaze on the completion of his joy. That gaze sustained the greatest act of love that ever was. The same gaze—the completion of our joy in God—will sustain us as well. The pursuit of that joy doesn't contradict suffering—it carries it. The completion of Christ's great, global mission will demand suffering. Therefore, if you love the nations, pursue this God-entranced vision of all things.

Objection #6: Where is the cross of Jesus Christ in all of this? Where is regeneration by the Holy Spirit? Where is justification by faith alone?

I will not answer these questions here, but rather in the sermon reprinted in the first appendix at the end of this book. Sometimes the more precious and important things you save for last.

Objection #7: Did not Edwards extol the virtue of "disinterested love" to God? How could love to God that is driven by the pursuit of pleasure in God be called "disinterested"?

It's true that Edwards used the term "disinterested love" in reference to God.

I must leave it to everyone to judge for himself... concerning mankind, how little there is of this disinterested love to God, this pure divine affection, in the world.21

There is no other love so much above the selfish principle as Christian love is; no love that is so free and disinterested, and in the exercise of which God is so loved for himself and his own sake.22

But the key to understanding his meaning is found in that last quote. Disinterested love to God is loving God "for himself and his own sake." In other words, Edwards used the term "disinterested love" to designate love that delights in God for his own greatness and beauty, and to distinguish it from love that delights only in God's gifts. Disinterested love is not love without pleasure. It is love whose pleasure is in God himself.

In fact, Edwards would say there is no love to God that is not delight in God. And so if there is a disinterested love to God, there is disinterested delight in God. And in fact, that is exactly the way he thinks. For example, he says:

As it is with the love of the saints, so it is with their joy, and spiritual delight and pleasure: the first foundation of it, is not any consideration or conception of their interest in divine things; but it primarily consists in the sweet entertainment their minds have in the view... of the divine and holy beauty of these things, as they are in themselves.23

The "interest" that he rules out does not include "sweet entertainment." "Interest" means the benefits received other than delight in God himself. And "disinterested" love is the "sweet entertainment" or the joy of knowing God himself.24

Objection #8: Doesn't the elevation of joy to such a supreme position in God and in glorifying God lead away from the humility and brokenness that ought to mark the Christian? Doesn't it have the flavor of triumph alism, the very thing that Edwards disapproved in the revival excesses of his day?

It could be taken that way. All truths can be distorted and misused. But if this happens, it will not be the fault of Jonathan Edwards. The God-enthralled vision of Jonathan Edwards does not make a person presumptuous—it makes him meek. Listen to these beautiful words about brokenhearted joy.

All gracious affections that are a sweet odor to Christ, and that fill the soul of a Christian with a heavenly sweetness and fragrancy, are brokenhearted affections. A truly Christian love, either to God or men, is a humble brokenhearted love. The desires of the saints, however earnest, are humble desires: their hope is a humble hope; and their joy, even when it is unspeakable, and full of glory, is a humble brokenhearted joy, and leaves the Christian more poor in spirit, and more like a little child, and more disposed to a universal lowliness of behavior.25

The God-enthralled vision of Jonathan Edwards is rare and necessary, because its foundations are so massive and its fruit is so beautiful. May the Lord himself open our eyes to see it in these days together and be changed. And since we are great sinners and have a great Savior, Jesus Christ, may our watchword ever be, for the glory of God, "sorrowful, yet always rejoicing" (2 Cor. 6:10).

1 Mark Noll, "Jonathan Edwards, Moral Philosophy, and the Secularization of American Christian Thought," Reformed Journal 33 (February 1983): 26.

2 David Wells, No Place for Truth: Or Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology? (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1993), 300.

3 Jonathan Edwards, "The Sole Consideration, That God Is God, Sufficient to Still All Objections to His Sovereignty," in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, ed. Edward Hickman, 2 vols. (1834; reprint, Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1974), 2:107.

4 Ibid., 107-108.

5 Jonathan Edwards, "The Dissertation Concerning the End for Which God Created the World," in The Works of Jonathan Edivards, vol. 8, Ethical Writings, ed. Paul Ramsey (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1989), 526, 531.

6 Ibid., 532-533 (emphasis added).

7 Jonathan Edwards, "Essay on the Trinity," in Treatise on Grace and Other Posthumously Published Writings, ed. Paul Helm (Cambridge: James Clarke and Co., 1971), 118.

8"Miscellanies," no. 448, in The Works of Jonathan Edwards (WJE), vol. 13, The "Miscellanies," ed. Thomas Schafer (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1994), 495, emphasis added. See also "Miscellanies," no. 87 (251-252), no. 332 (410), and no. 679 (not in the New Haven volume). In another place where Edwards speaks of God's joy in being God and our joy in his being God, he makes explicit that this is why God's passion for our joy and his glory are not at odds.

Because [God] infinitely values his own glory, consisting in the knowledge of himself, love to himself, [that is,] complacence and joy in himself; he therefore valued the image, communication or participation of these, in the creature. And it is because he values himself, that he delights in the knowledge, and love, and joy of the creature; as being himself the object of this knowledge, love and complacence... .[Thus] God's respect to the creature's good, and his respect to himself, is not a divided respect; but both are united in one, as the happiness of the creature aimed at, is happiness in union with himself. "Dissertation Concerning the End for Which God Created the World" (532-533).

9 Jonathan Edwards, "Charity and Its Fruits," WJE, 8:255.

10 It's the same thing C. S. Lewis said in The Weight of Glory: If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory, and Other Addresses (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1965), 2.

11 Jonathan Edwards, "Sacrament Sermon on Canticles 5:1," sermon manuscript (1729), Beinecke Library, Yale University.

12 Jonathan Edwards, "The Spiritual Blessings of the Gospel Represented by a Feast," in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 14, Sermons and Discourses, 1723-1729, ed. Kenneth Minkema (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1997), 286.

13 Jonathan Edwards, "Some Thoughts Concerning the Revival," in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 4, The Great Awakening, ed. C. C. Goen (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1972), 387.

14 Jonathan Edwards, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 2, Religions Affections, ed. John Smith (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1959), 249-250 (emphasis added).

15 Augustine, Confessions, X.24.

16 Jonathan Edwards, "The Pleasantness of Religion," in The Sermons of Jonathan Edwards: A Reader, ed. Wilson H. Kimnach, Kenneth P. Minkema, and Douglas A. Sweeney (New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press, 1999), 23-24.

17 Ibid., 18-19.

18 Edwards, "The Pleasantness of Religion," 19.

19 Edwards explains the paradox of self-denial in another way: "There is no pleasure but what brings more of sorrow than of pleasure, but what the godly man either does or may enjoy" (ibid., 18). In other words, there is no pleasure that godly people may not enjoy except those that bring more sorrow than pleasure. Or to put it in the astonishing way that makes it understandable: Christians may seek and should seek only those pleasures that are maximally pleasurable—that is, that have the least sorrows as consequences, including in eternity.

20 Edwards, ibid., 18. He goes on to say, "Reproaches are ordered by God for this end, that they may destroy sin, which is the chief root of the troubles of the godly man, and the destruction of it a foundation for delight" (19).

21 Jonathan Edwards, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 3, Original Sin, ed. Clyde A. Holbrook (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1970), 144.

22 Jonathan Edwards, Charity and Its Fruits (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1969), 174.

23 Edwards, Religious Affections, 249, emphasis added.

24 Norman Fiering is right in the following quote if you take "disinterested" in the absolute sense of no benefit whatever, not even the "sweet entertainment" of beholding God: "Disinterested love to God is impossible because the desire for happiness is intrinsic to all willing or loving whatsoever, and God is the necessary end of the search for happiness. Logically one cannot be disinterested about the source or basis of all interest." Norman Fiering, Jonathan Edivards' Moral Thought in Its British Context (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1981), 161.

25 Edwards, Religious Affections, 348-349.

2 JONATHAN EDWARDS: HIS LIFE AND LEGACY

Stephen J. Nichols

Those prone to visit historical sites are likely to be disappointed when it comes to sites associated with the life of Jonathan Edwards. The home of his birth and early years in East Windsor, Connecticut, no longer stands. Neither does his home at Northampton, Massachusetts, nor his home at Stockbridge. At the former, a Roman Catholic church marks the spot; as for the latter, a sundial stands in its place. The church building where Edwards listened to his father preach in East Windsor has long been gone. The church at Northampton is actually the fifth building since Edwards last preached a sermon there; Stockbridge is on its fourth building. A rock along the side of the road marks the spot where the church at Enfield, Connecticut, once stood, the place where Edwards delivered the most famous American sermon of all time, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God."

The legacy of Edwards's life and thought, however, stands in stark contrast to the paucity of the remains of his homes and churches. In the nineteenth century, theologians and church leaders all vied for the claim to carry Edwards's mantle, asserting to be his true heir. In the twentieth and now the twenty-first century, scholars, clergy, and laity all continue to look to the New England divine for ideas and inspiration. In fact, Edwards may be even more well-known and discussed now than he was in his own lifetime. And greater still is the potential for the impact of his thought and life to direct future generations of the church toward a God-centered life.

This ongoing legacy has everything to do with the breadth of Edwards's writings and the depth of his encounter with God. While the material remains of Edwards's life may be scarce, the literary remains literally fill shelf after shelf. Among these writings are his great treatises, such as the classic theological text Religious Affections and the classic philosophical text Freedom, of the Will.1 Additionally, he left behind 1,400 sermons, the bulk of which have yet to be published. Add to this mix volumes of notes on a variety of subjects, the "Miscellanies," exegetical reflections that amount to biblical commentaries, scientific essays, and a host of letters. Edwards left enough material to keep scores of historians, philosophers, theologians, pastors, and laity quite busy. And busy they have been. No other colonial figure, not even Benjamin Franklin or George Washington, has generated the literature from dissertations to popular articles and treatments as Jonathan Edwards has. The number is fast approaching 4,000.2

The writings of Edwards comprise only part of the explanation for his legacy. The other part is the depth of his encounter with God. Edwards remarkably managed to hold together what we tend to split apart. He saw Christianity as engaging both head and heart, while much of popular evangelicalism suffers greatly from pendulum swings in this regard. He had an overwhelming vision of the beauty and excellency of Christ, the love and sweet communion of the Holy Spirit, and the glory and majesty of God, while simultaneously seeing wrath and judgment, punishment and justice, as also comprising the divine nature. He had a profound sense of grace and forgiveness, coupled with an acute sense of guilt and repentance. In short, Edwards knew the beauty of Christ because he knew palpably the ugliness of sin. In fact, it might just be the case that precisely because of his awareness of sin, he so exalted the sweetness of his Savior. And perhaps there is much for evangelicals of today and tomorrow to learn here.

Edwards learned these ideas in the trenches of his life, through the highs and lows of his ministry, through the times of rejoicing and mourning with his family, and in the twists and turns of his Christian pilgrimage. In the pages that follow, we will take a brief tour of this life, learning from his example and exploring his legacy for today.

LAST OF THE PURITANS

On a Sabbath day in January 1758, Jonathan Edwards preached his farewell sermon to a band of Mohican and Mohawk Indians and to a handful of English families along the plains of the Housatonic River, snaking through the Berkshire Mountains on the western frontier of Massachusetts. Edwards had come to Stockbridge from his pastorate in Northampton, a post he had held for twenty-three years. He was now leaving for Princeton, New Jersey, where he would be installed as president of Princeton University, holding office in good health for only six weeks. The manuscript for the sermon that day consists of some mere outline points and a few sketchy sentences, only shadows of the full parting words for his Indian flock. In typical sermon style, he ends with a series of applications, saving his final comments for those who "have made it [their] call to live agreeable to the gospel."3

Though hardly known, this sermon, and this line in particular, resonates deeply with that which is greatly known of his life. These comments serve not only as a fitting conclusion to his ministry at Stockbridge; they encompass the mission of his life. His first exposure to the gospel came in the parsonage of East Windsor, Connecticut, the home of Timothy Edwards and Esther Stoddard Edwards and their eleven children—Jonathan and his ten sisters. The Latin tutoring he received from his sisters, the love for reading his parents gave him that would only grow in the coming years, and his own omnivorous mind all fitted him to enter the recently established Yale University at twelve years of age. Graduating at the head of his class, he decided to stay at Yale in pursuit of a Master's degree.4

After completing his course work, but prior to writing his thesis, Edwards, still a teenager, accepted a call to pastor a Presbyterian church in New York City, in the vicinity of modern-day Broad and Wall Streets. He meticulously prepared his sermons, sometimes writing out a single sermon as many as five times before preaching it. He also spent many mornings horseback riding along the banks of the Hudson River. It was during these days that Edwards began writing his "Resolutions." Eventually reaching seventy in number, these rules and guidelines for his life became his mission statement. A sampling reveals his discipline and his desire to live wholeheartedly for God:

52. 1 frequently hear persons in old age say how they would live if they were to live their lives over again. Resolved, that I will live just so I can think I shall wish I had done, supposing I live to old age. 56. Resolved, never to give over, nor in the least to slacken my fight with my corruptions, however unsuccessful I may be. 70. Let there be something of benevolence in everything I speak.

The first resolution is even more instructive. Here Edwards commits his life to "do whatsoever I think to be most to God's glory and to my own good, profit, and pleasure." Here Edwards captures the vision of the first question and answer of the Westminster Shorter Catechism, which declares that the "chief end of man" is to both "glorify God and enjoy him forever." For Edwards, as for the Catechism, the two aims of God's glory and one's pleasure are in fact one and the same thing. What cannot be missed here is the centrality of this for Edwards's life. It is no less remarkable that Edwards learned and lived this as a nineteen-year-old.5