The Presence and Priority of The Spiritual Disciplines in The Sermons of Jonathan Edwards 

Description

On any given Sunday pastors all across the world will step into their pulpits to declare biblical truth. In accordance with Scripture, they will often preach a gospel message, proclaim the doctrines of the faith, and give their congregations several points of application. But no amount of mere emotional appeal that plays only upon the affections, leaving the will and behavior unaffected, can substitute or suffice for the work of spiritual exercises inherent to the means of grace God has in mind for the sanctification of the believer. Jonathan Edwards addresses these issues over the course of his thirty-year ministry as America’s foremost Puritan theologian and pastor. First in New York, and then in Northampton, Edwards established the practice of promoting the spiritual exercises that had come to shape his earlier years as a young man and disciple. In this project, I sought to prove that Edwards applied these very spiritual exercises through his pulpit ministry to his congregation. To that end, I examined and evaluated over 700 of Edwards’ sermons, searching for the presence and application of these particular spiritual exercises.

Edwards saw the means of grace as cooperating both in the call to salvation and in the growth of his spiritual life through sanctification. Furthermore, Edwards promoted prayer, meditation, contemplation, self examination, worship, and study as viable exercises for continual sanctification in the New York pastorate, the church in Northampton, and to a lesser degree in Stockbridge, an English/Indian mission.

Edwards’s principal audience was the adults of his congregation, but, notably, he also sought opportunities with the youth of his parish, specifically in Northampton. Here, he addressed the generational gap and the increasingly traumatic challenges facing the community as it transformed itself from a “tightly-knit” agricultural puritan family unit to an expanding economic center, where the availability of land and the future of “older” youth brought pressure upon the family, the community culture, and Edwards’s congregation. Edwards was acutely aware of the need for the next generation to take up the cause of discipline and godliness, and to this end he directed his efforts.

In an ideal world, one might hope to see Edwards’s championing of the spiritual exercises as remaining constant to the end of his Stockbridge years. But unfortunately, the lack of sophistication of his audience, their inability to understand a pastor who could not speak their language, and the imperative of a simple gospel with an emphasis only on the necessity of moral rightness and good stewardship of family and employment overwhelmed his desire to speak to the deeper and more residual spiritual needs. One must wonder how his future at Princeton would have played out in his work with future pastors and teachers. Would they have caught his vision for the value of the spiritual exercises? Would his growing frustration with the world as he saw it make him retreat into the world as he wanted it, and how might he have massaged his legacy and added to our understanding of pastoral theology? This dissertation proved that Edwards, through his preaching and teaching, transmitted the same spiritual exercises he practiced throughout his life to the congregations he pastored with the intent of building consistency in thought and action, all the while, motivating them to pursue a vibrant and God-centered life.