The Reverend
John Piper, longtime pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis,
Minnesota, has been one of the major interpreters of Edwards to religious
audiences of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. As Piper
himself has written, "The theologian I have devoted myself to is Jonathan
Edwards."[1]
His ministry and his extensive writings have to a large extent been a
re-presentation of Edwards as a model for Christian living and thinking,
particularly in regard to what Piper calls "Christian Hedonism," which teaches
that a God-centered life, glorifying God in all things, is not the
stereotypical life of drudgery and self-denial but rather one of spiritual joys
and holy pleasures. Piper summarizes this approach: "God
is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him." His excitement
for Edwards has inspired many Christians, old and young, Reformed, Baptist, and
evangelical, to follow his lead, and Edwards is now used in seminaries and
churches from many backgrounds. In a manual on preaching, Piper--still
reflecting Edwin Cady's approach to Sinners-- expanded on how Edwards used
analogies and images to impress upon his hearers' hearts the nature of divine
realities. (John Piper, The Supremacy of God in
Preaching. Grand Rapids,
Baker, 1990. Pp. 88-90.)
Experience and Scripture teach that the heart is most
powerfully touched, not when the mind is entertaining abstract ideas, but when
it is filled with vivid images of amazing reality. Edwards was, to be sure, a
metaphysician and a philosopher of the highest order. He believed in the
importance of theory, but he also knew that abstractions kindled few
affections, and new affections were the goal of preaching. So Edwards strained
to make the glories of heaven look irresistibly beautiful and the torments of
hell look intolerably horrible. Abstract theological truth came to life in
common events and experiences.
Sereno Dwight says that "those who are conversant with the writings of
Edwards, need not be informed that all this works, even the most metaphysical,
are rich in illustration, or that his sermons abound with imagery of every
kind, adapted to make a powerful and lasting impression."[2]
In his most famous sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,"
Edwards referred to the phrase, "the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of
Almighty God " (Rev. 19:15). He says, "The word are exceedingly terrible. If it
had only been said, ‘the wrath of God,' the words would have implied that which
is infinitely dreadful: but it is ‘the fierceness and wrath of God.' The fury
of God! The fierceness of Jehovah! O how dreadful must that be! Who can utter
or conceive what such expressions carry in them?"
There is Edwards's challenge to every preacher of the Word of God. Who
can find images and analogies that come anywhere near creating the profound
feelings we ought to have when we consider realities like hell and heaven? We
dare not fault Edwards's images of hell unless we are prepared to fault the
Bible. For in his own view (and I surely think he was right) he was only
groping for language that might come close to what awesome realities are
contained in biblical phrases like "the winepress of the fierceness and wrath
of Almighty God."
Today we do just the opposite. We
grope for circumlocutions of hell and create images as far from the horror of
the biblical phrases as we can. Partly as a result, our attempts to make heaven
look attractive and make grace look amazing often appear extremely pitiful. We
would do well to labor with Edwards to find images and analogies that produce
impressions in our people comparable to reality.
But it was not only heaven and hell that pushed Edwards to find
analogies and images. He used the analogy of a surgeon with a scalpel to
explain some kinds of preaching. He used the similarity of a human embryo to an
animal embryo to show that at conversion a new life with all its new affections
may be there but not yet show itself as fully distinct from the unregenerate.
He pictured the pure heart with remaining impurities as a vat of fermenting
liquor trying to get clean of all sediment. And he saw holiness in the soul as
a garden of God with all manner of pleasant flowers. His sermons abound with
images and analogies to give light to the understanding and heat to the
affections.
[1]
Piper, "A Personal Encounter with Jonathan Edwards," The Reformed Journal 28 (Nov. 1978), 13.
[2]
Dwight, Life of Edwards, p. 188.
