Formed for the Glory of God: Learning from the Spiritual Practices of Jonathan Edwards

by Kyle Strobel

Edwards’s image of light helps to explain what religious affections are. God communicates himself by his Son and his Spirit. In the Son, we come to see and know God. In the Spirit, we have illumination to see and are given the love to respond to God in affection. The Son is the light of God and the Spirit is the heat of that light. Since the whole person must respond to God, there must be a response of understanding and of will, or, as Edwards puts it, there must be light and heat: “where there is heat without light, there can be nothing divine or heavenly in that heart; so on the other hand, where there is a kind of light without heat, a head stored with notions and speculations, with a cold and unaffected heart, there can be nothing divine in that light, that knowledge is no true spiritual knowledge of divine things.”[4] Knowledge of God is knowledge of a subject, not an object. Equally, knowledge of God is of the beautiful, glorious God. To know God is to love him, and to love him truly is to know him. This is why light demands heat and heat, light. One cannot have true knowledge of God without loving him. Likewise, one cannot have true love without knowing God. Unfortunately, more often than not, fallen people try to have one without the other. To receive both light and heat is to understand and will God—to turn your face to him in affection.