Category: Articles

Don Whitney – Finding God in Solitude: The Personal Piety of Jonathan Edwards and Its Influence on His Pastoral Ministry

Editor’s Note: Recently, EdwardsStudies.com had the opportunity to speak to Don Whitney about his most academic work, Finding God in Solitude: The Personal Piety of Jonathan Edwards and Its Influence on His Pastoral Ministry (Peter Lang, 2014). While professor Whitney is known mostly for his interest in the spiritual disciplines and his successful popular level works, this book is a complete and thorough academic treatment on Jonathan Edwards.

donal-s-whitney

I caught up with Don Whitney, professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, recently by phone call. Dr. Whitney happened to be house hunting at the time, so thankfully, he graciously took my call between padlocks and for sale signs. Our chat was warm and inviting, just like the tone of his many helpful books. Among other things, I learned that Dr. Whitney has an enthusiastic admiration for quality ink pens, and has even written birthday letters on nice stationary to most of his church’s congregants in an elegant handwriting which he relearned as an adult.

What I did not know about Professor Whitney until somewhat recently is that he is a second-to-none Jonathan Edwards scholar. My first introduction to his writing came through his extraordinarily helpful book, Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life. I am sure that others who know him also encountered his writings the same way. Indeed, Whitney spent the better part of a few years combing through Jonathan Edwards writings, especially his personal writings in Volume 16 of the Yale Works.

My first clue that that Whitney had a fascination with Jonathan Edwards was when I heard his talk on the Northampton Divine at the Desiring God conference several years back. But I did not know he had studied Edwards formally. As we chatted on the phone, I could hear the tenor in his voice change when he described the experience of holding Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God in his own hands when he studied at the Beinecke Rare Book Library at Yale.

Whitney’s interest in JE began in earnest several years earlier when he was teaching a course on the lives of three great Christians. In that course, Whitney asked his students to read a biography of Edwards, Spurgeon, and Lloyd-Jones as well as a taste of their own writings. And, as is the course for many of us, his fascination with the New England Puritan kicked into another gear.

He was hooked on Edwards.

Finding God in Solitude as you might guess, stays in Whitney’s primary traffic lane: that is to say, it does not depart far from his special interest in the spiritual disciplines. In this work, Whitney looks at the overall piety of Jonathan Edwards. By the way, when using the word “piety,” we should not think of religious show or artifice in any way. Sometimes the adjective “pious” has a bit of a negative overtone. On the contrary, we are talking about the very sincere desire of one’s heart to be given over in obedience and sanctification to the Lord. Truly, Edwards modeled this desire for personal holiness, as the book catalogs.

Edwards, of course, is well known for his devotional life: his prayers in the woods, his singing along to God by horseback, his Blank Bible, his Miscellanies, and voluminous notes on Scripture. All of that work was forged in the quiet of the study alone with God, largely uninterrupted by the distractions of the world (especially those we face in the modern world). But even among Colonial Puritans, Edwards’s desire for solitude alone with God was remarkable. Whitney sees in all of this a great example that modern believers can imitate in some limited ways, although we ought not to expect to have Edwards’s mental powers.

It is true that Jonathan Edwards’s desire for solitude got him into trouble, as all who have read a biography of the Puritan well know (the “Bad Book Case” and the Lord’s Supper controversy come to mind). Edwards’s preference for company with God alone probably prevented him from being a more sociable pastor in many ways. At the same time, as Whitney argues in his book, that same desire for the Lord’s presence also resulted in some of the most important and profound theological treatises, books, and personal jottings that Colonial America would ever produce.

The book itself is a doctoral dissertation made somewhat more readable. Since it is an academic publication, this is likely to be one of Whitney’s lesser read books. That’s probably a shame. Not only that, but the price-tag at nearly $80 will be a hindrance to some. But for others who want a full-length treatment of how Edwards’s personal spiritual life effected him as a pastor of the Northampton Church, the book may very well be worth the cost.

I also asked Whitney if any of his more academic study on Jonathan Edwards would seep through into his popular writings. He assured me that it would, if only to a less intense degree than is given in this academic treatise. As a matter of fact, his newest work, Family Worship, quotes Edwards and length, and provided a new venue for Whitney to allow Edwards to continue to speak through the written press. Although not technically about Jonathan Edwards, Family Worship will have a tinge of Edwards’s scent throughout.

When I asked Whitney what originally attracted him to Jonathan Edwards, the SBTS professor said it was his rare and attractive combination of “life and doctrine; heart and mind.” It would be hard to disagree with that sentiment. True enough, that same emphasis which can be found in Jonathan Edwards also comes through in Don Whitney’s works. Surely it is a great thing when passion for the Lord of Glory and deep and reflective theology come together.

 

 

 

Announcement: EdwardsStudies.com Joins the JESociety in Joint Publishing Venture for a Collection of Essays

EdwardsStudies.com is excited to announce a partnership with the JESociety to bring into publication, in print format, a collection of Jonathan Edwards-related essays. The essays selected for this first time collaborative venture should be of a high quality, on par with graduate-level standards of excellence, and of equal caliber to publications in other academic journals.

how-to-write-my-essay-2

What Topics?

Essays submitted for consideration may be focused around Jonathan Edwards’s biography, ministry, theology, writings, sermons, personal correspondences, philosophy, or historical significance.

Who Should Submit Essays?

Pastors, theologians, students, historians, professors, teachers, church leaders, or other qualified individuals may submit essays. Please do not submit essays that have already been submitted for consideration in other periodicals. However, graded and returned papers from institutions of higher learning may be submitted for consideration, provided that they are not submitted for publication elsewhere.

What Length?

Essays submitted may be of varying lengths. Short essays may contain as few as 2,000 words and long essays may contain as many as 10,000.

Deadline

The deadline to submit essays will be June 1, 2016.

How Do I Submit an Essay for Consideration? 

Essays may be submitted for consideration to the following address: jonathan edwards studies (all one word) at gmail dot com.

Author Interview: Dr. Toby Easley “Jonathan Edwards: Beyond the Manuscripts”

EdwardsStudies.com is pleased to be talking today with Dr. Toby Easley. Toby has a doctorate from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and has been researching Edwards for years, including time spent during his doctoral research in the Beinecke Library at Yale where he examined the manuscripts of the Northampton Puritan.

Dr. Easley, where did you get started studying Jonathan Edwards?

I was introduced to Edwards through preaching and teaching as a child and youth. I also read Edwards’s “Sinners” sermon in my high school American Literature class. My teacher actually ridiculed his Calvinistic viewpoints, and due to my theological background at church, I saw through his negative view of Edwards. Later, during my undergraduate studies, a friend gave me an eighteenth-century copy of Original Sin. My interest in Edwards was kindled again, but it was in 2005 at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary that I began to immerse myself in his sermons and notebooks. In 2007, I presented a paper at the ETS Regional meeting titled “Jonathan Edwards: Extemporaneous or Manuscript Preacher?”

Tell us what it is like sifting through Edwards’s works in the Beinecke Library?

The experience for me was extremely enlightening. Looking at pictures online or in books does not do justice to viewing the actual sermons in the Beinecke Library. One important element of my research of Edwards’s sermons focuses on uncovering stereotypes and on the developmental stages of his sermons throughout his life. Therefore, I needed to observe his sermons in the various manuscripts and outline forms throughout the eras of his life.

How did this research inform your writing of your new book?

Along with all of the vast secondary source materials I read throughout the writing process, the ability to view the primary source materials in their eighteenth-century handwritten form cannot be underestimated. I do not believe I could have come to solid conclusions on many of my assertions had hands-on observations not been possible. Unfortunately for Edwards’s enthusiasts today, Edwards did not have a secretary who wrote his sermons as he delivered them. However, with men such as Spurgeon in the nineteenth-century, we have his personal sermon notes along with written notes of his actual delivery. This variance makes our interpretation of Edwards’s communication practices and actual delivery much more complicated over the course of his life.

So tell us about “Jonathan Edwards: Beyond the Manuscripts.” Give us an overview of this project and what you hope readers will learn here.

My desire is to take readers through the life of an eighteenth-century scholar and explain that a journey exists in one’s own preparation and speaking style. I also endeavor to draw the reader into Edwards’s age of spiritual awakening and, at the same time, reveal important twenty-first-century applications of his communication and developmental stages.

I also address questions people often ask. Was Jonathan Edwards striving to maintain a precision, while becoming more extemporaneous? Furthermore, do the manuscripts prove that he was a monotone, stoic, lifeless preacher, with insufficient ability to adapt and transition to diverse audiences and settings? I invite the readers not only to see the development of the man that many historians regard as “America’s greatest theologian and philosopher,” but also to discover if he ever moved beyond the manuscripts in preparation and delivery?

Were there any “Aha” moments for you during the writing of this project?

Yes, when I began to realize that Edwards was not just a great composer of sermons, he was also to a great extent involved in examining others’ rhetorical methods and developing his own communication strategies. I was also astonished by the numerous communication settings that he participated in and his ability to adapt in an effective manner. We observe that late in his life, he simultaneously pastored both an English and Mohican congregation at Stockbridge, and was finally willing to take on the position as President at the College of New Jersey.

Is this going to be available in both paperback and ebook format?

The book will be available in hardback, paperback, and ebook.  

Do you have any other major projects in the works for the future?

Yes, I am presently working on my next book on the Transatlantic exchange between Jonathan Edwards and John Erskine and the American and Scottish awakenings.

Any other Edwards-related recommendations or shout-outs for our readers?

Yes, I recently read a book written by:

Yeager, Jonathan M. 2011. Enlightened Evangelicalism: The Life and Thought of John Erskine. New York, New York, Oxford University Press.

Articles:

Crawford, Michael J. Spring. 1991. “New England and the Scottish Religious Revivals of 1742.” American Presbyterians 69, no. 1: 23-32.

 

Did Jonathan Edwards Inspire the Modern Missionary Movement?

This piece originally appeared at ObbieTodd.wordpress.com and is used with the author’s permission. Rev. Todd is Associate Pastor of Students at Zoar Baptist Church in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Originally from Kentucky, Obbie met his wife Kelly in the Bluegrass state and the two have been happily married since August 4, 2012. Obbie is currently a doctoral candidate in Theology at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary.

In June 1805, from Kettering, England, pastor Andrew Fuller wrote to American theologian Timothy Dwight concerning Fuller’s honorary diploma from Yale College. Fuller had attained considerable renown across the Atlantic for his treatises, owing much to the theological heritage bequeathed to him by Dwight’s grandfather, Jonathan Edwards. In this small letter, the reader discovers not only Edwards’ influence upon Fuller, but upon Fuller’s band of missionary compatriots as well: “The writings of your grandfather, President Edwards, and of your uncle, the late Dr. Edwards, have been food to me and many others. Our brethren Carey, Marshman, Ward, and Chamberlain, in the East Indies, all greatly approve of them.” The legacy of Jonathan Edwards prospered and grew in the theology and missiology of Andrew Fuller. In his defense of evangelistic Calvinism and puritanical piety, the man Charles Spurgeon called “the greatest theologian” of his century called upon the works of Edwards to meet a post-Reformation scholasticism beginning to relinquish its dedication to Scriptural principles. For all of his doctrinal and metaphysical influence, the “theologian of the Great Commandment” stirred Fuller to an even deeper spirituality with his Life of David Brainerd (1749), a biography of an American missionary to the Delaware River Indians. Fuller’s Memoirs of the Rev. Samuel Pearce (1800) bears striking resemblance to Edward’s work in many ways, giving credence to Chris Chun’s assertion that “Fuller’s main contribution was to expand, implicate, and apply Edwardsean ideas in his own historical setting.”

0000001049l

It is important to remember that while the two men lived in the same enlightened century, they also occupied both poles of it. Andrew Fuller was born in Soham, England in 1754: the year that Edwards’ Freedom of the Will was published and four years before Edwards’ death. Thus to say that the Congregationalist and the Particular Baptist were contemporaries would be false. However, their historical proximity was beneficial for Fuller, as he faced the same eighteenth-century rationalism as his predecessor. Edwards indeed lived on in his writings, serving to fuel Fuller’s theological aims years after his death. (Edwards’ Freedom of the Will was recommended to him by Robert Hall of Arnsby in 1775) Fuller responded forcefully to those who questioned his allegiance to Edwards: “We have some who have been giving out, of late, that ‘If Sutcliff and some others had preached more of Christ, and less of Jonathan Edwards, they would have been more useful.’ If those who talked thus preached Christ half as much as Jonathan Edwards did, and were half as useful as he was, their usefulness would be double what it is.”

Edwards’ Freedom of the Will helped him reconcile evangelistic preaching with the divine sovereignty of Calvinism. In his second edition of The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation (1801), Fuller acknowledges his debts to Edwards’ Freedom of the Will in distinguishing between natural and moral inability. In addition, Edwards not only aided Fuller in his response to the High Calvinism of John Gill and John Brine, but his Religious Affections equipped Fuller to refute Sandemanianism (“easy-believism”) as espoused by Archibald McLean. Fuller boasted that Edwards’ sermons on justification gave him “more satisfaction on that important doctrine than any human performance which I have read.”

Still, the name of David Brainerd was one Fuller held in high esteem. At Fuller’s funeral, friend John Ryland, Jr. could not help but mention Edwards’ famous biography: “If I knew I should be with…Fuller tomorrow, instead of regretting that I had endeavored to promote that religion delineated by Jonathan Edwards in his Treatise on Religious Affections and in his Life of David Brainerd, I would recommend his writings…with the last effort I could make to guide a pen.” Such a reference to Brainerd in Fuller’s funeral was apropos for a man who had served as the founding secretary of the Baptist Missionary Society since 1792. Fuller had dedicated himself to the Great Commission since his disillusionment from the Hyper-Calvinism of his childhood pastor John Eve that neglected to invite sinners to repent and believe in the Gospel. Men like Jonathan Edwards had aided Fuller in returning to the Scriptures.

It was in his last year at Soham that Fuller wrote A Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation (1786), but his removal to Kettering in 1782 would spell the beginning of a ministry set against “false Calvinism,” sparking the dawn of a movement. According to John Piper, Fuller helped initiate the first age in modern missions. (Hudson Taylor’s founding of the China Inland Mission in 1865 would begin another.) Here in the Northamptonshire Association of Baptist Churches, Fuller would meet the likes of John Ryland, Jr. of Northampton, John Sutcliffe of Olney, then a little later Samuel Pearce of Birmingham and William Carey of Leicester. Fuller’s famous relationship with Carey forged a now-legendary mission to India in which Fuller would “hold the rope” for Carey back in England. And Fuller regarded Pierce so highly that he wrote his Memoirs of the Rev. Samuel Pearce (1800) to serve as a paradigm of piety. The “seraphic Pearce” (1766-1799) has since been dubbed “the Baptist Brainerd” due to the strong correlation between the two men. According to Michael Haykin, it is important to note “Fuller’s clear indebtedness to what is probably the most popular of the American divine’s books, namely, his account of the life and ministry of David Brainerd (1718-1747).” Without a doubt, The Life of David Brainerd was a central document to the modern missions movement. Fuller began work on the Memoirs not long after hearing of Pearce’s death while on a fund-raising trip in Scotland for the Baptist Missionary Society. The news brought Fuller to tears…and action. The idea for Pearce’s biography was not a new one, but the proper window and impetus had been supplied. Fuller desired to show the world a remarkable example of Christian spirituality and support Pearce’s widow Sarah and her five children. The end product would be a biography that paralleled Edwards’ Brainerd in many ways, beginning with the very purpose it was written. For Fuller, “The great ends of Christian biography are instruction and example. By faithfully describing the lives of men eminent for godliness, we not only embalm their memory, but furnish ourselves with fresh materials and motives for a holy life.” This sounds remarkably like the beginning to Edwards’ biography of Brainerd: “I am persuaded every pious and judicious reader will acknowledge, that what is here set before them is indeed a remarkable instance of true and eminent Christian piety in heart and practice – tending greatly to confirm the reality of vital religion, and the power of godliness – that it is most worthy of imitation, and many ways calculated to promote the spiritual benefit of the careful observer.”

Important to note is that, in addition to the passionate evangelism and suffering of both Brainerd and Pearce, Fuller and Edwards both spend much of their biographies depicting the last months of their subjects – indicating that this was a significant part of the story they wished to tell. Nothing displayed Christian piety more than the passionate earthly exits of both men. And Fuller’s model clearly follows Edwards’. As Tom Nettles insightfully observes, “Intimate acquaintance with the ideas of a great theologian tends to make the student a wise and sensitive pastor. Fuller took the difficult ideas of Edwards, digested their spiritual implications and used them for the good of souls.” What the natural-moral inability distinction and religious sensibilities generated for Fuller’s polemical soteriology, the piety of David Brainerd did for Fuller’s own spiritual devotion.

Despite his never serving as an international missionary for the Baptist Missionary Society, Pearce’s zeal for evangelism is something Fuller wished to capture. Pearce once wrote to William Carey expressing his excitement at the prospect of serving with him abroad: “I should call that the happiest hour of my life which witnessed our both embarking with our families on board one ship, as helpers of the servants of Jesus Christ already in Hindostan.” Despite the vast gulf in continents, the strongest commonality between Pearce and Brainerd was their greatest mutual desire: the Gospel. Samuel Pearce stood next to William Carey on the conviction that Matthew 28:19-20 was still in effect for Christians everywhere: “I here referred to our Lord’s commission, which I could not but consider as universal in its object and permanent in its obligations. I read brother Carey’s remarks upon it; and as the command has never been repealed – as there are millions of beings in the world on whom the command may be exercised – as I can produce no counter-revelation – and as I lie under no natural impossibilities of performing it – I conclude that I, as a servant of Christ, was bound by this law.” Quotes like this one leave little doubt that the Memoirs of the Rev. Samuel Pearce packaged Fuller’s invitational Calvinism in biographical form.

With an ocean and decades between them, Brainerd and Pearce fixed their eyes upon the same target: the heathen. From an early age, Brainerd held a special place in his heart for the lost, and he pleaded with God to be sent on His behalf: “My great concern was for the conversion of the heathen to God; and the Lord helped me to plead with him for it.” Brainerd’s Godward focus continually directed him to the lost, not simply for their sake, but for his God’s: “Oh that all people might love and praise the blessed God; that he might have all possible honour and glory from the intelligent world!” Likewise, Samuel Pearce, who fought off Antinomians in his own Birmingham congregation, worked diligently to seek out those same heathen: “O how I love that man whose soul is deeply affected with the importance of the precious gospel to idolatrous heathens!”

Tom Nettles provides keen insight into the true depths of Edwards’ influence upon Andrew Fuller’s world: “Fuller and his entire circle of friends found within Jonathan Edwards the key to a peculiar theological perplexity that vexed their souls and virtually the entire Particular Baptist fellowship.” The faith and reason of the “public theologian” had emigrated from Northampton, Massachusetts to Fuller’s Northamptonshire Association, re-shaping the Great Commission for its late eighteenth-century context. While his Freedom of the Will helped Fuller reconcile the pastoral responsibility to plead for sinners and divine sovereignty to draw them, Edwards’ Life of David Brainerd served as the prototype in Andrew Fuller’s Memoirs of the Rev. Samuel Pearce, M.A. – a devotional biography meant to illustrate evangelical piety. The purpose, subject, and style of the respective biographies correlate to such a degree as to leave no doubt of Edwardean influence upon the missional thought of Andrew Fuller. In his book Andrew Fuller: Model Pastor-Theologian, Paul Brewster locates evangelism as the overarching theme of Fuller’s ministry: “Fuller’s greatest legacy among the Baptists: to support a missionary-oriented theology that helped foster deep concern for the salvation of the lost.” (106) Thanks to the life of David Brainerd and the pen of Jonathan Edwards, the modern missionary movement was born in the evangelism of Andrew Fuller.

Interview with Dr. Ken Minkema on the Forthcoming JE Encyclopedia

If you look at the back of almost any serious work on Jonathan Edwards, there is good chance that there is an endorsement given by Dr. Ken Minkema. Not only has Dr. Minkema written voluminously on Edwards himself, (including editing Vol. 14 of Edwards Works, Sermons and Discourses 1723-1729) but he also has a great knack for inspiring other Edwards scholars along the way. Dr. Minkema is executive director of the Jonathan Edwards Center and assistant adjunct professor of American Religious History at Yale Divinity School. He edits the Yale University journal and Works of Jonathan Edwards and has written or edited a number of books and articles on Edwards and other Puritans. Today, EdwardsStudies.com speaks with him about the forthcoming JE Encyclopedia project.

ES: Dr. Minkema, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to EdwardsStudies.com today. And if I may, let me also thank you on behalf of all of our readers for the many and varied ways that you and Dr. Neele (as well as your other colleagues) have expanded our field. Much respect to you both.

So tell us about the new Jonathan Edwards Encyclopedia project you have going on now. This sounds big.

32

KM: This has been a project that has been several years in envisioning and in the making. The new reference tools on Edwards that have come out in the last decade or more––Lesser’s Reading Edwards, a revised edition of Johnson’s Printed Writings, and most recently McClymond & McDermott’s Theology of Edwards, among other things––convinced the staff at the Jonathan Edwards Center (JEC) that it is time for an encyclopedia on Edwards to round things out. It is to serve as a go-to source for quick information on a given idea, writing, person, place, or event in Edwards’s life, along with a few sources with which a reader can follow up to further explore.

ES: Who is bringing this to publication?

KM: It is being published by Eerdmans Publishing in Grand Rapids. They have been very receptive of the idea, and have been very patient as they wait for the finished product.  I think they know that these sorts of projects can take much more time than originally (perhaps overly optimistically) thought.

ES: Do you have any idea when this project will be available for readers to purchase?

KM: Well, a couple of years ago would have been nice, but we are hoping to submit the manuscript by summer 2016.

ES: Will it also be available online at the Yale Center’s site, or will it be print only?

KM: The goal is to have it in print first, followed by an online version, perhaps available by subscription or pay-per-view. That has to be worked out with Eerdmans yet. One advantage of going online with it is that we can revise and add to it.

ES: Give us an idea of how many contributors you have writing for you, as well as some of their backgrounds.

KM: We have over a hundred contributors from many walks of life, from many countries: scholars, teachers, pastors, students, retirees, bus drivers, doctors, janitors, IT personnel, you name it; there are lot of Edwards enthusiasts out there, and the response from them has been remarkable. We are very appreciative of the interest they have shown. This is very much a collaborative effort, and reflects the wonderful fellowship around Edwards. What we did was to include an online environment on our website (edwards.yale.edu) where contributors can sign up, submit their essays, receive revisions, and make final submissions. It’s a variation of community sourcing that has worked really well for us.

ES: What are some of the subjects and entries that will be covered. I know there are many, but give us just a flavor.

KM: I’ll give you the entries under “A”: Adoption (doctrine of), Aesthetics, Affections, Agency, Aging, Allegory, America, Ames (William), Angels, Anti-Catholicism, Antichrist, Antinomianism, Apocalypse, Apostasy, Appetite, Ark of the Covenant, Armageddon, Arminianism, Art, Assembly of Divines, Assurance, Atheism, Atoms, Atonement, and Awakening.

ES: It sounds like a huge editing project for someone! Who gets that pleasure to sort through all the contributions?

KM: That would be and my colleague Adriaan Neele, under the supervision of the general editor, Harry Stout. As you say, it’s huge, perhaps larger than we could have known, but it has been worth it.

ES: What do you hope this project will achieve? In other words, what impact do you hope this project will have?

KM: We would like it to serve as a quick reference tool, but also to deepen knowledge of and engagement with Edwards’s life. There are a lot of supposed “facts” that circulate that are actually inaccurate or are wrongly applied to Edwards, to members of his family, or to people he knew.

ES: Before we let you go, do you have any other recommendations or new projects that our readers could get excited about?

KM: Another community sourcing project we have is our Global Sermon Editing Project, which provides volunteers (after some training) to edit sermons by Edwards from transcripts provided by the JEC. We are always looking for new folks, so we encourage them to go to the website and sign up. Through this initiative, volunteer editors can produce (and get attribution for) an edition of a sermon by Edwards that has in all likelihood has not been read since the eighteenth century. We are also sponsoring a new monograph series, “New Directions in Jonathan Edwards Studies,” published by Vanderhoeck & Ruprecht. This series gives young scholars in particular an opportunity to get innovative work on Edwards and related topics into print. Finally, Dr. Neele and I teach a course each June at Yale Divinity School focused on a particular theme in Edwards. This year is “Edwards and the Bible.” The course is open to the public (summerstudy.yale.edu), and we would love to have folks join the conversation.

 

Edwards’s Funeral Sermons: David Brainerd

David Brainerd was clearly very dear to Jonathan Edwards.

The young evangelist to the native Indians, whose journal has become one of the most endearing classics of missionary devotion/biography, held a special place in Jonathan Edwards’s heart. For one, the young Brainerd had a special relationship with Edwards’s daughter Jerusha, who nursed him during his dying days. For two, Edwards edited Brianerd’s journals himself, becoming his best selling book during his own lifetime. For three, Brainerd died in Edwards’s own home and the Puritan preacher performed his funeral sermon on October 12th, 1747, three days after the young evangelist died from tuberculosis.

This funeral sermon, entitled, True Saints, When Absent from the Body, Are Present with the Lord, is contained in the Hendrickson edition of Jonathan Edwards’s sermons, and is a stellar example of a Puritan funeral sermon. Like most Puritan sermons, it was long, filled with doctrine, avoided sentimentality and superficiality at all costs (so ubiquitous in modern eulogies today), and was aimed to pierce the heart.

Edwards is working upon the text of 2 Corinthians 5:8 which says, “We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.” As with almost all sermons of Jonathan Edwards, he does not depart from his standard tripartite formulation of text, doctrine, application. So, in the opening paragraphs, Edwards gives a brief contextual analysis from the Apostle Paul’s Corinthian correspondence. In so doing, Edwards reminds his hearers of the Apostle’s own courage in facing both danger and death in order to bring the Gospel to places where it has yet to be heard. Edwards’s own hearers would have no doubt made immediate connections to Brainerd’s own life and ministry among the Indians.

From this, Edwards deduces the following doctrine: “Departed souls of saints go to be with Christ in the following respects…” Then Edwards gives several implications including: “they go to dwell in the same abode with the glorified human nature of Christ” (p. 417); “the souls of true saints, when they leave their bodies at death, go to be with Christ, as they go to dwell in the immediate, full and constant sight or view of him” (p. 420); “departed souls of saints are with Christ, as they enjoy a glorious and immediate intercourse and converse with him” (p. 422) and a few others.

What Edwards is trying to do here, approaching from multiple angles, is to assure his hearers that those who have been converted to Christ, do immediately and without hindrance go directly into the blessed and glorious presence of Jesus Christ, the God-Man, who reigns in Trinitarian splendor with the Father and Spirit. There is no waiting. There is no delay. There is no place of purgation (contra: Roman Catholicism). After death, comes the blessed state.

As he gives this great assurance, Edwards ruminates on one of his favorite theological doctrines: the Beatific Vision. This is the concept that Heaven largely consists of a joyous, active, gazing upon the eternal beauty, majesty, and wonder of the divine nature of Jesus Christ. Far from “eternally green golf courses” and cartoonish views of heaven as clouds, harps, and halos, Edwards reveals the very thing that makes Heaven so heavenly – Christ is gloriously, dominantly, present.

He says,

Their beatifical vision of God is in Christ, who is that brightness or effulgence of God’s glory, by which His glory shines forth in Heaven, to the view of saints and angels there, as well as here on earth. This is the Sun of righteousness, that is not only the light of the world, but is also the sun that enlightens the heavenly Jerusalem; by whose bright beams it is that the glory of God shines forth there, to the enlightening and making happy of all the glorious inhabitants. (p. 420).

In this way, True Saints, becomes a joyful expression of eschatological gospel realities. Edwards makes sure his hearers know that this is not a somber occasion, but one for true rejoicing for God’s people. He stocks the sermon with language of “Christ’s kingly majesty,” “ineffable delight,” and “infinite complacence.”

By way of application, Edwards looks to the gifts and graces that Brainerd had which showed his own longing for Heaven most clearly. We note that it is not until late in the sermon that Edwards even mentions Brainerd specifically. This sermon is more about Jesus Christ then the deceased, that much is clear. When Edwards does draw the young missionary into the view of the mourners gathered through his oratory, he shows many of the ways that Brainerd lived in such a manner as to bring the heavenly Beatific Vision into better perspective through the missionary’s mortal pilgrimage here on earth.

He mentions several things in particular: Brainerd’s natural talents of mind and social disposition, his extraordinary piety as a lover of Jesus Christ, and especially his willingness to endure loss and hardship for the sake of the Gospel. In one place, Edwards extols,

He in his whole course acted as one who had indeed sold all for Christ, and had entirely devoted himself to God, and made his glory the highest end, and was fully determined to spend his whole time and strength in his service (p. 439).

By this point, many hearers in the congregation (not to mention modern readers) have not only heard a good bit about Heaven, but in a uniquely Edwardsean way were able to “see” and “taste” it. Not only that, but they have been given an example of a man (Brainerd) who lived in such a way through his selflessness and sacrifice that those beauties and joys were shown manifestly in his life.

Edwards then concludes the sermon with a post-script. In this portion, (noted separately on pages 444 – 448 of the Hendrickson edition), Edwards gives a fuller treatment of the details of Brainerd’s life than he was able to do in the main portions of the spoken sermon.