Jonathan Edwards, Introspective Spirituality, and Holiness by Grace

[image error]I have long admired Jonathan Edwards for his relentless resolve and spiritual tenacity. At the same time I sometimes wonder if there was something spiritually unhealthy about certain aspects of it.

Take, for example, his method of examining the question, "Am I humble?" He writes:

If on the proposal of the question, you answer, "No, it seems to me, none are so bad as I." Don't let the matter pass off so; but examine again, whether or no you don't think yourself better than others on this very account, because you imagine you think so meanly of yourself. Haven't you a high opinion of this humility? And if you answer again, "No; I have not a high opinion of my humility; it seems to me I am as proud as the devil"; yet examine again, whether self-conceit don't rise up under this cover; whether on this very account, that you think yourself as proud as the devil, you don't think yourself to be very humble.

It's an insightful exploration of the psychology and effect of indwelling sin and self-deception and self-justification. But do this too much—or leave it there—and it can become so inward that it becomes paralyzing rather than freeing.

The biblical balance requires much wisdom. I think John Piper puts it well:  "Periodic self-examination is needed and wise and biblical. But for the most part mental health is the use of the mind to focus on worthy reality outside ourselves." Or more memorably, Robert Murray McCheyne wrote, "For every look at yourself take ten looks at Christ." It's the difference between looking and staring. (See also this seminar from David Powlison.)

I was interested to see that Sean Michael Lucas addressed this in his new book God's Grand Design: The Theological Vision of Jonathan Edwards (Crossway, 2011). He shows that there may be some development on this issue through Edwards's life:

With all of his "violent" striving for holiness, Edwards sometimes seemed to exemplify the temptation to gain holiness by works, rather than by grace. His diary was filled with reproachful reminders that his spiritual condition depended upon self-denial in eating, drinking, and sleeping; that he was not properly using his time for God's glory; and that he needed to devote even more time to private prayer. As he focused on these exercises of self-denial and turned his gaze inward, his religious feelings ebbed and flowed. Over a two-week period at the end of 1722, his spirituality ran the gamut: on December 21, "This day, and yesterday, I was exceedingly dull, dry, and dead"; the next day, he reported, "This day revived by God's Spirit"; by December 24 he had "higher thoughts than usual of the excellency of Jesus Christ and his kingdom," only to return "dull and lifeless" on December 29 and to experience dullness on both January 1 and 2. Such reporting went on throughout his diary, marking his spiritual temperature.

By engaging in this introspective spirituality at this point in his life, Edwards seemed to conflate his wholehearted pursuit of God's glory with right standing with God.

To be fair, at his best moments (or moments of frustration with his rigorous spiritual practice) Edwards recognized that his sanctification would progress only through the work of the Holy Spirit. At around the same time that Edwards renewed his baptismal covenant and gave himself anew to God, he also confessed in his diary, "I find by experience, that let me make resolutions, and do what I will, with never so many inventions, it is all nothing, and to no purpose at all, without the motions of the Spirit of God." In his pursuit of God's glory, through his self-examinations and strict resolution, Edwards realized that "it is to no purpose to resolve, except we depend on the grace of God; for if it were not for his mere grace, one might be a very good man one day, and a very wicked one the next." In a later meditation, Edwards reveled in the work of God's gracious Spirit: "Felt the doctrines of election, free grace, and of our not being able to do anything without the grace of God; and that holiness is entirely, throughout, the work of God's Spirit, with more pleasure than before."

In addition, Edwards would later recognize that his constant self-examinations and scheming for holiness occurred "with too great a dependence on my own strength; which afterwards proved a great damage to me." As he continued on in the Christian life, he learned two things: "my extreme feebleness and impotence, every manner of way; and the innumerable and bottomless depths of secret corruption and deceit, that there was in my heart." The only true solution to the intractable problem of human depravity would not be self-willed striving, but "a more full and constant sense of the absolute sovereignty of God, and a delight in that sovereignty . . . [and] more of a sense of the glory of Christ, as a mediator, as revealed in the gospel." If Edwards was to make any progress in the Christian life, it would be solely because of the sovereign work of God's Spirit motivated by God's amazing grace and rooted in God's glorious gospel.