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A Shared Concern with Jonathan Edwards 133
historicity and meaning of what the Bible teaches, it seems facile to say
we can all just trust that “things are in order.”
Nonhistorians Are Not Expected to Leap into the Dark
It seemed to me that there had to be another way for the average layperson
with little time and little historical training to have a basis for firm
and justified knowledge that the Bible is true. The Bible does not teach
or assume that we come to faith by leaping into the dark. It assumes
that we embrace Christ and his Scripture by seeing real and compelling
grounds for faith.
I found help at this point from a surprising source. At least it surprised
me at the time. While I was wrestling with these things in Germany,
I was reading Jonathan Edwards for my own personal spiritual
enrichment amid all the critical studies. Little did I expect to find him
addressing this problem with such amazing insight and relevance. I was
so helped by Edwards that I wrote two articles about it. 8
Edwards’s starting point is not, What kind of certainty is possible
for historical reasoning? but rather, What is possible for the ordinary
members of the church? In his Treatise Concerning Religious Affections,
Edwards says ordinary people cannot come to well-grounded
faith the way a trained historian might:
It is impossible that men, who have not something of a general
view of the historical world, or the series of history from age to age,
should come at the force of arguments for the truth of Christianity,
drawn from history to that degree, as effectually to induce them to
venture their all upon it. 9
The voice of the missionary 10 can be heard when he adds,
Miserable is the condition of the Houssatunnuck Indians and others,
who have lately manifested a desire to be instructed in Christianity,
8
John Piper, “Jonathan Edwards on the Problem of Faith and History,” Scottish Journal of Theology 31
(1978): 217–28; “The Glory of God and the Ground of Faith,” Reformed Journal 26 (November 1976):
17–20. The following comments about Edwards are based largely on these two articles.
9
Jonathan Edwards, A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, vol. 2, The Works of Jonathan Edwards,
ed. John Smith (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1957), 303.
10
From 1751 to 1758, Edwards was pastor of the church in the frontier town of Stockbridge, MA, and missionary
to the Indians. His concern for Indian evangelization extends back into his pastorate at Northampton,
as is shown by these comments in Religious Affections, which were written between 1742 and 1746.