Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield were friends.

For the most part, they labored together on the same page as far as the First Great Awakening was concerned. Both were pro-revival. And both defended itinerant preaching and the veracity of the working of the Spirit during the awakening. Edwards even hosted Whitefield in his own home and invited him to preach in his church. As far as we know that meeting was splendid and Edwards wept the whole time Whitefield preached. As for Whitefield, he was moved by the love that Jonathan had for his own wife Sarah.

But that doesn’t mean that the two got along perfectly all the time. They did have a couple of disagreements as we might expect from a Congregationalist and an Anglican. When we read through WJE 16 in the personal letters of Edwards, we can see that there was in fact some difficulty that came between them on a couple of occasions.

These disagreements were minor and did not cause lasting fracture. The tension between Edwards and Whitefield was probably not as intense as Whitefield’s engagement with the Wesleys on predestination, for example. Nor was it as intense as Edward’s arguments with some of his polemic interlocutors. But the tension can be perceived in at least three events.

In this video, I will tell you the true story of how Edwards and Whitefield got sideways on a handful of occasions.