The “Sense Of The Heart”: Edwards’s Public Expression Of His Pietistic Understanding Of Religious Experience

By Karin Spiecker Stetina

What is the single greatest challenge facing North American evangelicals today? When this question was posed to the Wheaton Bible Theology Department, Dr. Daniel Block, Knoedler Professor of Old Testament, responded: “demonstrating the mind of Christ by living according to the ethics of the Kingdom of God.” He suggests that “the test of true faith is found in neither creedal orthodoxy nor passionate worship”; rather, it is “verified by living according to the supreme command of Christ, loving God with all of our being and loving our fellow human beings as ourselves.” [1] Block’s answer echoes Jonathan Edwards’s concern nearly three hundred years before him. [2] Though Edwards is often recognized for his philosophical and scientific mind as well as his fiery Puritan sermons, promoting a biblical understanding of true faith was his primary goal throughout his life.

Edwards desired more than anything to make known the biblical truth that he had personally experienced—that true religion is rooted in an understanding of God’s glory, love, and grace revealed in Jesus Christ and supernaturally imparted to the soul of mankind. [3] The new nature of the soul, which is established by the Holy Spirit and the Word, transforms the heart, mind, and actions of the Christian after the righteousness of Christ. Edwards recognized, as Block, that following Christ’s supreme commandment is evidence of true faith and transformation of the soul to the image of God. The core idea of the new nature of the soul, which emerged in Edwards’s early sermons in New York as a product of his own religious experience, evolved in his later public writings into the concept of the “sense of the heart.” [4] In chronologically examining his early writings and three of his public works that deal with the topic of religious experience—A Divine and Supernatural Light, A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, and Nature of True Virtue—it is evident that Edwards’s biblical interpretation of his spiritual encounters was foundational to his theology throughout his career.

Edwards’s Early Theology

In his personal writings, Edwards described having experienced redemption from sin and felt that his whole life was being transformed by the Holy Spirit to this new spiritual nature. [5] As a Christian he was privy to new thoughts, feelings, and inclinations. This “new sense” was more than an intellectual knowledge. It impacted his whole being and resulted in love for God and a desire to give himself entirely to Him. During his New York pastorate, he attempted to provide his congregation with the occasion for a similar experience. Edwards encouraged his congregants to pursue experiencing God’s redemptive work—which is the result of Christ infusing new life into the soul by means of the Holy Spirit and the Word.

By the time Jonathan Edwards left New York in 1723, he had developed a strong biblical foundation for his theology. He returned to Yale with the goal of continuing to grow in his faith. [6] Though Edwards did not see the increase in spirituality that he had hoped for, his studies provided him with the philosophical and theological tools of John Calvin, John Locke, Isaac Newton, and the likes of Francis Hutcheson to express his understanding of religious experience. [7] The regenerate state for Edwards was a unique spiritual experience that was difficult to convey. Edwards used his academic training at Yale, particularly his studies of John Locke, to articulate a distinction between the “understanding of the head” and the “sense of the heart.” [8] Edwards’s devotion to Scripture and to following Jesus Christ, however, kept him from being captivated by these theological and philosophical systems. [9]

Building on his earlier descriptions of religious experience, Edwards describes the experience of the Christian as a “new sense of the heart,” “sight or discovery,” or “a lively or feeling sense of heart.” [10] Just as the words of 1 Timothy 1:17 had appeared new to him, Edwards describes the converted as having a new understanding of spiritual notions. Consequently, the “things of religion” seem “new to them...preaching is a new thing...the Bible is a new book.” [11] Edwards’s own biblically grounded experience of a new “sense of the glory of the Divine being” in his soul became a core part of his public theology of religious experience. [12]

A Divine And Supernatural Light

After completing his Master’s degree and tutoring at Yale, Jonathan Edwards came to Northampton, Massachusetts in 1726, as an associate pastor to his elderly grandfather, Solomon Stoddard. On February 22, 1729, approximately two years after he had been ordained and had married Sarah Pierrepont, he became the minister of the church. While at Northampton, Edwards continued to expound upon his experience of God’s redemptive work in the soul, using the new tools he had gained at Yale.

In 1733, a year in which the people of Northampton were plagued first by locusts and then by influenza, Edwards gave one of his most celebrated sermons describing the nature of true religious experience. In A Divine and Supernatural Light, Edwards preached about the need for a spiritual transformation of the inner nature to truly know and love God. The sermon, published in 1734, has rightly been described as a miniature of “the whole of Edwards’ system.” [13] In this work he draws together the themes and ideas from more than a decade of personal experience, biblical reflection, and preaching on religious experience. [14]

In A Divine and Supernatural Light, Edwards returns to the analogy of light that he had used in his early sermons to communicate his experience of the “renewing and sanctifying” work of the Holy Spirit in the soul. [15] In this work, Edwards utilizes terminology reminiscent of Locke to help explain his biblically grounded understanding of faith. He begins the sermon by establishing the biblical basis for the difference between a notional knowledge of Christ and a spiritual apprehension of Christ with Jesus’ response to Peter’s confession of faith in Matthew 16:17. Edwards writes of how Jesus confirmed Peter’s direct revelation of Christ’s divine nature by the Holy Spirit, which resulted in saving faith. The description of the experience of the “divine light,” or a spiritual apprehension of Christ, parallels his own experience that he had recorded over ten years prior in his personal writings.

In this sermon, Edwards advocates that such a supernatural experience in the soul of the converted is fundamental to true religion. While he recognizes the importance of natural capacities including the conscience and reason, Edwards asserts that true religious knowledge is qualitatively different from natural sensory knowledge. [16] Recalling his earlier writings, he describes it as a result of the Spirit acting in the redeemed as a “new, supernatural principle of life and action.” [17] “Natural men,” according to Edwards, only know God as an object; they have no real apprehension of the glory of God. Though they may recognize their sin and may be able to construct proofs of God’s existence by use of their reason, they have no comprehension of who He is. They lack “a real sense and apprehension of the divine excellency...a spiritual and saving conviction of the truth and reality of these things.” [18]

The Spirit of God acts in a very different manner in the regenerate person. Edwards explains, in words similar to early writings from the New York period, that spiritual knowledge is supernaturally conferred to the souls of “saints” by a “new sense” of the heart, an “indwelling principle” that makes all things new. [19] This spiritual light does not consist of new truths or propositions not contained in the Word of God. Rather, it is a supernatural apprehension of those things that are taught in the Scriptures. [20]

Edwards argues that it is only by this divine light of the Spirit that the soul can be brought into a saving relationship with Christ. This true revelation of divine things produces love, appreciation, and faith in God. Reminiscent of his own experience, he explains that when spiritual light is “immediately imparted to the soul by God,” the converted is able to know God subjectively as a living, personal God. [21] He contends, “[T]his light is such as effectually influences the inclination, and changes the nature of the soul,” providing a new foundation from which the human faculties operate. [22] Elaborating on his New York works, Edwards writes, “It conforms the heart to the gospel...and it effectually disposes the soul to give up itself entirely to Christ.” [23]

Edwards exhorts his audience to seek this spiritual light, alluding to the great benefits he had personally experienced. He writes that there is no greater pleasure on earth than experiencing the divine light shining into the soul. This light allows the soul to know and enjoy the beauty and “glory of God in the face of Christ.” Furthermore, it “assimilates the [human] nature to the divine nature, and changes the soul into an image of the same glory that is beheld (2 Cor. 3:18).” [24] As a result the soul is weaned from the world and drawn to a “sincere love to God.” The internal change is reflected in a “universal holiness” of life. [25]

The new spiritual foundation of the soul, the “sense of the heart,” which Edwards describes in A Divine and Supernatural Light, is what stands at the core of both his personal experience and his theology. In addressing the question of the difference between the “natural man,” who understands God objectively, and the “regenerate man,” who has a sense of God in his soul, Edwards communicates publicly what he had privately experienced. The nature of true religion is not merely a “notional or speculative understanding of the doctrines of religion.” [26] Rather, it consists of a new “sense of the heart” supernaturally imparted, a “sense of the glory of the Divine being...quite different from anything” a person had ever experienced before. [27] As he personally knew, “there is nothing so powerful as this to support persons in affliction, and to give the mind peace and brightness, in this stormy and dark world.” [28]

Religious Affections

In the Divine and Supernatural Light, Edwards explains the nature of true religious experience on an individual level, arguing that it consists of a “new sense” of the heart conveyed by the Spirit of God. Edwards continues to expand on this theme in A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections (1746). Writing this work after he had witnessed both the fruits and the disappointments of the revivals, Edwards sets out to defend the true religion that he had personally experienced by arguing against both the excesses and errors of the revivals as well as against the rationalist opponents of a heartfelt faith.

Though he had experienced the loss of his uncle, Joseph Hawley, when he committed suicide after becoming emotionally distraught and feeling hopeless during the revivals, Edwards still remained hopeful of the revivals in his earlier work, A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God (1737). His optimism quickly faded, however, when he saw the lack of perseverance of many revival “converts.” In Religious Affections, he reconsiders the nature of true religion, giving special attention to signs of an authentic religious experience. This work stands as his comprehensive explanation of the gracious work of the Holy Spirit in the soul.

The fundamental point of Religious Affections, as with the rest of his theology of religious experience, is that genuine piety is a result of the supernatural, transforming work of God in the soul. Edwards’s biblical, experimental theology of the gracious activity of the Spirit in the individual emerges in this three-part examination written at the end of the Great Awakening. In the first part, he defines the nature of religious affections and shows their fundamental importance in true religion. In the second section, he examines the unreliable criteria that had been used during the revivals for judging whether or not affections are of a gracious or saving nature. Finally, he describes the true signs of the holy affections that mark the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.

In Religious Affections, Edwards covertly develops and explains how the Holy Spirit had provided him with a new spiritual sense that resulted in the religious affections of love to God and Christian happiness. He begins with the scriptural picture of true religion in 1 Peter 1:8. In this passage, Peter observed how true religion operated in the lives of the early Christians, writing, “Whom having not seen ye love: in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable, and full of glory.” Edwards explains that this text teaches that true religion consists in the affections of love and joy. The former depends upon a spiritual apprehension of Jesus Christ, since He cannot be seen with bodily eyes. The latter is the fruit of faith. The nature of such joy is “unspeakable and full of glory.” Edwards writes, in words that could have been used to describe his own experience, that the joy of the early Christians “filled their minds with the light of God’s glory and made ’em themselves to shine with some communication of that glory.” [29]

From Peter’s biblical description Edwards argues that “true religion, in great part, consists in holy affections” or biblical fruits. [30] In words that correspond to the “sweet burning” he experienced in his own heart, Edwards writes that when the Spirit of God is received in the soul, the saving and sanctifying influences “may be said to burn within” the heart. [31] He believed that religious affections reveal the gracious activity of the Spirit within the soul. [32] In light of the emotional excesses of the revivals, however, he insists that they must be tested by biblical criteria to discriminate between genuine faith and false piety.

In the first part of this work, Edwards argues that the chief affection of the converted soul is “love to God.” Speaking from Scripture and experience, Edwards declares that love, the first fruit of salvation, is the “fountain” of all holy affections. It is out of “a vigorous, affectionate, and fervent love to God” that a Christian experiences a hatred of sin, joy when God is graciously and sensibly present, hope in the future enjoyment of God, and fervent zeal for the glory of God. [33] Thus, the essence of all true religion resides in holy love. [34]

It is important to note, however, that Edwards was not, in contrast to emotionalism, equating Christianity with passionate feelings. He taught, as he had experienced, that religious affections, including love to God, are grounded in God’s saving work in Christ and impact the whole person. Edwards writes that “there must be light in the understanding, as well as an affected fervent heart”; for, “where there is heat without light, there can be nothing divine or heavenly in that heart.” On the other hand, in opposition to the rationalists, he proclaims that “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.” If the truths of Christianity are properly understood, Edwards argues they will affect the heart or soul. [35] He was careful in the second part of this work, however, to explain that affections cannot be judged to be gracious merely on account of their great effect on the intellect or feelings. [36] Rather, Christians must look to Scripture and their Christian practice to determine whether their affections are gracious.

The final part of Religious Affections, the twelve distinguishing signs, develops the center of Edwards’s biblical understanding of the gracious work of the Spirit. Though he never directly refers to his spiritual encounters, almost every sign corresponds to his experience. Edwards’s biblical, experimental foundation is particularly evident in his description of the Holy Spirit’s work being marked by a new sense of God’s glory and the transformation of the character and life of the saint after the holiness of Christ.

In conjunction with his New York writings, Edwards teaches that the Holy Spirit provides a “new spiritual sense” or a “new foundation” for the soul in redemption. [37] The first six signs describe the new spiritual foundation and its impact on the soul. He writes that the Holy Spirit “operates by infusing or exercising new, divine and supernatural principles; principles which are indeed a new and spiritual nature, and principles vastly more noble and excellent than all that is in natural man.” [38] Edwards goes to great lengths to describe how this nature enables God’s beauty and excellency to be perceived and enjoyed. [39] This spiritual apprehension leads to holy love, a conviction of the truths of the gospel, and “evangelical humiliation.” [40] These signs biblically describe and subtly interpret Edwards’s own experience of the glory and excellency of God. [41]

The seventh sign further elaborates on the impact of the Holy Spirit’s gracious work on the soul. Not only does the Spirit illumine the Christian to God’s holiness and glory, but He also transforms the soul after the divine nature. [42] In accordance with his own experience, Edwards explains through the use of Scripture that the Holy Spirit is united to the soul in conversion and becomes the new spiritual principle of life transforming the saint after the image of God. [43] This transformation is not, however, completed in an instant; it is a “continued conversion and renovation of nature.” [44] Over time, the new nature manifests itself in progressive transformation of the soul to Christ’s love and holiness.

The remaining five signs primarily urge Edwards’s readers to look to Scripture, as he had in his own life, to see whether or not they possess the marks of transformation. If they have a Christ-like character within themselves, mourn over their sins, have an increased appetite for God, and seek to obey God, then they exhibit the influence of the Spirit on their soul. [45] Based on 1 Corinthians 15:47-49, he writes, “As we have borne the image of the first man, that is earthly, so we must also bear the image of the heavenly” Savior. [46] He describes Christ’s character as one of true holiness and encourages his audience to look at the picture of Christ in the gospels and the Beatitudes as the standard to measure oneself, just as he had in his New York writings. He writes that “true Christians” are “clothed with the meek, quiet and loving temper of Christ.” [47]

The twelfth and most extensive sign, which recalls Edwards’s own desire for and pursuit of a holy life, states that “Christian practice or a holy life is a great and distinguishing sign of true and saving grace.” [48] He believes that love and gratitude to God are displayed in the persistent pursuit of obedience to God’s commands. Edwards argues that a holy life is the chief of all the evidences. [49] It “is much to be preferred to the method of the first conviction, enlightenings and comforts in conversion, or any immanent discoveries or exercises of grace whatsoever, that begin and end in contemplation.” [50] It is the most concrete way to identify God’s grace at work in the soul. While the “sense of the heart” precedes holy action, the existence of holy affections is most clearly evidenced by Christian practice. [51]

It is important to recognize that Edwards had no intention of establishing the twelve signs as empirical criteria to distinguish infallibly true Christians from false Christians. He believed that this judgment is God’s prerogative alone. Furthermore, Scripture and his own experience had convinced him that there is room for variation in religious experience and that the Spirit is not bound to a set order in converting and sanctifying the soul. [52] Scripture explicitly directs us “to try ourselves by the nature of the fruits of the Spirit; but nowhere by the Spirit’s method of producing them.” [53] Edwards’s primary purpose in Religious Affections was to proclaim what Scripture and experience had taught him: that true religion is God’s supernatural work in the soul by the Spirit and the Word.

Throughout Religious Affections, Edwards made abundant use of the works of theologians and philosophers, including John Calvin, Thomas Shepard, Solomon Stoddard, John Flavel, William Perkins, John Owen, John Smith, and John Locke. It is a mistake to deduce, however, as some scholars have, that Edwards’s doctrine of religious experience depends upon these works. [54] His thought is remarkably consistent with his own experience. Furthermore, he firmly insisted that his view of religious affections was founded upon Scripture. It seems that the works of these thinkers served to illustrate and further substantiate his position rather than influence it. This is true even of his frequent references to Calvin, Stoddard, Shepard, and Locke in this work. [55]

As the revivals came to a close, Edwards recognized the importance of proclaiming the spiritual sense or the “sense of the heart” as the foundation of religious experience. This key concept, communicated here in more philosophical language than in his New York writings, corrected the errors of emotionalism and rationalism by teaching that true religion is neither a matter solely of the affections nor of the mind. As the Word and Spirit had taught him, it is a matter of the whole person being spiritually transformed by Christ. [56]

Nature Of True Virtue

The capstone of Edwards’s defense of true religion as a unique experience of God’s supernatural work in the soul appears in his treatise The Nature of True Virtue (1755). In this polemical work, as in his other public writings, Edwards utilized intellectual tools to defend his personal understanding of religious experience against the threats of secular moralism. After the 1730s, Edwards became more aware of the dangers that secular moralism presented to the biblical doctrine of holiness. From his “Catalogue” and direct references it is fairly certain that by the time he wrote this treatise he had read Francis Hutcheson’s Inquiry into Beauty and Virtue and his Essay on the Passions, David Hume’s Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, and Bishop Butler’s Analogy, which included the “Dissertation of the Nature of Virtue.” [57] While Edwards found the works of the British moral philosophers helpful in explaining “common morality,” he disagreed with their idea that a “moral sense” naturally exists in humans apart from God that inclines one to holiness or “true virtue.” He believed this assertion was overly optimistic of human nature and stood in sharp contrast to what was taught in Scripture. He set out in this work to show that “true virtue,” which most essentially consists in “love to God,” results from a “union of the heart” with God. [58]

According to Edwards, the “moral sense” that the secular moralists spoke of was little more than the natural conscience, the perception of natural or “secondary beauty,” or some subtle form of “self-love.” He endeavored to distinguish this inferior concept from the spiritual sense or the “sense of the heart” that he had experienced in redemption. Edwards had found in his own life that he was incapable of truly knowing God and being holy apart from the influence of the Spirit. [59] In this treatise, he develops that insight by identifying the natural inclination of human nature apart from God as self-centered and showing the need for God’s grace in the soul in order for true holiness to exist. Using the language of the secular moralists, he writes that “true virtue,” or the disposition of “love to God,” is only possible if the Spirit has a “seat in the heart.” [60]

In this polemical treatise, Edwards continues to build on his understanding of holiness first expressed in his personal writings and later in Religious Affections, arguing that true virtue must be grounded in a first benevolence that has none prior to it. [61] Such a benevolence arises only when the object of that love is God. Edwards is not suggesting, however, that there is no virtue in a love that is not pure benevolence. In accordance with his own experience, he taught that there is a secondary object of virtuous benevolence, exemplified in love for the neighbor. [62] Rather, what Edwards is communicating is that there is nothing in the nature of “true virtue” in which “God is not the first and last.” [63]

In a passage of this treatise, Edwards paints a picture of the “virtuous” or godly disposition that was clearly modeled after a biblical interpretation of his own experience. Using secular moralist’s terminology, he writes:

By these things it appears that a truly virtuous mind, being as it were under the sovereign dominion of love to God, does above all things seek the glory of God, and makes this his supreme, governing, and ultimate end: consisting in the expression of God’s perfections in their proper effects, and in the manifestation of God’s glory to created understandings, and the communications of the infinite fullness of God to the creature; in the creature’s highest esteem of God, love to God, and joy in God, and in the proper exercises and expressions of these. And so far as a virtuous mind exercises true virtue in benevolence to created beings, it chiefly seeks the good of the creature, consisting in a knowledge of view of God’s glory and beauty, its union with God, and conformity to him, love to him, and joy in him. And that temper or disposition of heart, that consent, union, or propensity of mind to Being in general, which appears chiefly in such exercises, is virtue, truly so called; or in other words, true grace and real holiness. [64]

Early in his life, Edwards described the Holy Spirit as enabling him to apprehend the glory of God and feel love toward and joy in God. These experiences changed his life. He aspired to be totally dedicated to God and fully conformed to the divine nature. He also felt called to draw others to love God and be united and conformed to God. This passage reflects his biblical interpretation of that core experience. In this later work, he describes “true virtue” or “real holiness” as the spiritual exercise of the soul united to God. Edwards felt that the moralists had obscured this idea by falsely identifying “true virtue” solely with public benevolence, leaving the supernatural work of God entirely out of the equation. [65] The concept of the divine “sense of the heart” as the source of true holiness was Edwards’s way of correcting this problem.

Conclusion

Having personally encountered the conviction of sin and the reality of God’s glory and grace, Edwards sought to defend the salvation experience from the challenges of Emotionalism, Idealism, Secular Moralism, and Rationalism. Edwards desired to make known what he read in Scripture and experienced, namely that true religion consists of knowledge of God’s gracious love made manifest on the cross and supernaturally imparted to the soul by the Holy Spirit. He did so by publicly expressing his experience of salvation in the concept of the “sense of the heart.”

The significance of Edwards’s dependence upon the Word and his spiritual encounters has often been obscured by his innovative use of secular thought and Reformed theology in his public writings. It is clear from the works examined above, however, that Edwards had a unique ability to use intellectual tools in his public writings to express true religion as he experienced and biblically understood it. It is the hope of this work that new comprehensive studies will continue to recognize the significance of Scripture and Edwards’s own religious experience on his theology. Only then will more Edwardsean scholarship be able to move beyond categorizing him according to intellectual systems and know him as he intended: as a Christian and biblical pastor who desired to be an “instrument” of God’s glory — guiding people to love God [66]— a goal that is still apropos for all Christians today.

Notes

1. newBiTS, vol. 2, ed. 1, September 2009.
2. Edwards writes, “There is no question whatsoever, that is of greater importance to mankind, and that it more concerns every individual person to be well resolved in, than this.... What is the nature of true religion?” A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, introduction in Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 2. General editor: Perry Miller. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957– . Hereafter cited as YW.
3. This idea is also found in many of his religious forefathers. For example, John Calvin wrote, “We are called to a knowledge of God: not that knowledge which, content with empty speculation, merely flits in the brain, but that which will be sound and fruitful if we duly perceive it, and if it takes root in the heart” (The Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, vols. 20 and 21, The Library of Christian Classics [London: SCM Press, Ltd., 1960], 1.5.9).
4. Edwards favored the term “true religion” to refer to the religious experience of a Christian. This article uses this term to provide an intellectual construct that organizes Edwards’s understanding of the experience of God’s divine grace in redemption.
5. See Karen Spiecker Stetina, “The Biblical-Experimental Foundations of Jonathan Edwards’s Theology of Religious Experience,” PRJ 2 (2009):170-186, for a developed discussion on Edwards’s understanding of religious experience in his New York sermons.
6. Diary, YW 16:786.
7. Ibid.
8. Based on his use of the word “sense,” scholars have arguably linked Edwards to a number of different intellectual systems. Fiering points out that the term “sense” was used by devotional writers like Hooker and Cambridge Platonists such as More as a metaphor for feeling. Locke also employed the word to describe the mental effects of the immediate perception of physical objects. On the other hand, the British Moralists such as Hutcheson utilized the term to refer to an innate awareness of moral qualities such as virtue (Norman Fiering, Jonathan Edwards’s Moral Thought and its British Context [Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1981], 123-128). Edwards’s rather imprecise use of the term, however, defies categorization. Edwards saw the spiritual sensations as distinct from natural feelings, physical perceptions, or moral apprehensions. They came about only by the internal work of the Holy Spirit. It goes beyond this paper to detail Edwards’s use of Lockean language. It is important to note, however, that Edwards freely used Locke’s ideas and images in his later works to express the understanding of religious experience. In Locke, Edwards found a natural analogy that resonated with his own supernatural experience.
9. While he did not have as much time at Yale to study the Bible, it was enough of a priority that he began a personal notebook he entitled Notes on Scripture. From his Catalogue and writings, it is also clear that Edwards spent time studying the Puritan divines, Cambridge Platonists, British moral philosophy, and English Empiricism. As Hopkins records, Edwards found Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding more satisfying than “handfuls of silver and gold” are to a greedy miser (Samuel Hopkins, The Life and Character of Jonathan Edwards [Boston, 1765], 3).
10. FN, YW 4:171-172, 177. “Conversion is a great and glorious work of God’s power, at once changing the heart and infusing life into the dead soul.” Edwards further elaborates on his understanding of the “sense of the heart” in Misc. 782, “Ideas, Sense of the Heart, Spiritual Knowledge or Conviction, Faith,” YW 18:452-466.
11. YW 4:181.
12. Diary, YW 16:759; PN, YW 16:792.
13. Perry Miller, Jonathan Edwards, (New York: William Sloane, 1949), 44.
14. Edwards incorporated insights from his writings from the New York Period, particularly his personal writings and the sermon Christ, the Light of the World. He also included his thoughts on spiritual knowledge from Misc. 489, “Faith, or Spiritual Knowledge,” YW 13:533.
15. See, for example, Light, YW 10:533-546.
16. DSL, YW 17:411. He writes that God “deals with man according to his nature, or as a rational creature; and makes use of his human faculties.”
17. Ibid.; LCDG, YW 10:570-571.
18. DSL, YW 17:413. Edwards clearly separated himself from Locke by distinguishing between natural and supernatural apprehensions of God. Though he employed sensory language like Locke, Edwards’s understanding of spiritual perception more closely follows the Calvinistic, biblical concept of spiritual illumination and the infusion of the Holy Spirit.
19. Ibid. 17:411. “The Spirit of God...acts in the mind of a saint as an indwelling vital principle...he unites himself with the mind of a saint, takes him for his temple, actuates and influences him as a new, supernatural principle of life and actions.... The Holy Spirit operates in the minds of the godly, by uniting himself to them, and living in them, and exerting his own nature in the exercise of their faculties.” Diary, YW 16:759, 761-763. “This day revived by God’s Spirit, Affected with the sense of the excellency of holiness. Felt more exercise of love to Christ than usual. Have also felt sensible repentance of sin, because it was committed against so merciful and good a God.”
20. Ibid. 17:413. “A true sense of the divine and superlative excellency of the things of religion; a real sense of the excellency of God, and Jesus Christ, and of the work of redemption, and the ways and works of God revealed in the gospel.”
21. Ibid. 17:408.
22. Ibid. 17:424.
23. Ibid.; Diary, YW 16:762; Resolution 44, YW 16:756; Dedication, YW 10:553-554.
24. DSL, YW 17:424.
25. Ibid.
26. Ibid.
27. Ibid. 17:413; Diary, YW 16:762; PN, YW 16:792.
28. DSL, YW 17:424; Diary, YW 16:765.
29. RA, YW 2:94-95. PN, YW 16:792.
30. RA, YW 2:95.
31. Ibid. 2:100; PN, YW 16:793.
32. RA, YW 2:100.
33. Ibid. 2:107-108.
34. Ibid.
35. Ibid. 2:120.
36. Ibid. 2:130.
37. Ibid. 2:206.
38. Ibid. 2:207.
39. Ibid. 2:271.
40. In the second and third signs Edwards describes how the apprehension of the amiable nature of divine things results in holy love (RA, YW 2:244). In the fifth sign Edwards writes, “A view of this divine glory directly, convinces the mind of the divinity of these things, as this glory is in itself a direct, clear, and all-conquering evidence of it” (RA, YW 2:298). In the sixth sign Edwards speaks of the “evangelical humiliation,” or a sense of insufficiency and depravity, that true saints experience in response to their “discovery of the beauty of God’s holiness and moral perfection” (RA, YW 2:312).
41. PN, YW 16:792. “As I read the words, there came into my soul...a sense of the glory of the divine being; a new sense, quite different from anything I ever experienced before. I thought with myself, how excellent a Being that was; and how happy I should be, if I might enjoy that God, and be wrapt up to God in heaven, and be as it were swallowed up in him.”
42. RA, YW 2:340.
43. Ibid. 2:342; Misc. a, “Of Holiness,” YW 13:163; PN, YW 16:795.
44. RA, YW 2:343.
45. The eighth and ninth signs focus on what it means to have a Christ-like character. The tenth sign discusses the need and desire of the Christian to continually repent (RA, YW 2:367). The eleventh sign describes the increasing love for God and holiness (RA, YW 2:377). The twelfth sign tells of the progressive conformity of the behavior of believers to the Christian rules (RA, YW 2:383-461).
46. RA, YW 2:347.
47. Ibid.
48. Ibid. 2:406.
49. The seeds of the idea that holy practice is a sign of the gracious work of the Spirit are seen in his writings from the New York period, particularly the sermon WH, YW 10:473.
50. RA, YW 2:426.
51. Edwards’s emphasis on holy practice as evidence of true faith stands in contrast to Locke’s emphasis on the internal states of the mind.
52. RA, YW 2:162. Early in his life Edwards struggled with assurance of his salvation due to the fact that his conversion did not follow the sequential Puritan schemes of conversion that he had been taught. After finding assurance of faith in New York, he moved away from the strict salvation morphologies, teaching that the conversion experience can vary somewhat.
53. Ibid.
54. Perry Miller sees RA as an affirmation of Lockean Empiricism (Jonathan Edwards, 193). Conrad Cherry sees RA as an example of how Edwards chose to “broaden and impregnate” Calvinistic theology to address the eighteenth-century theological issues facing New England (The Theology of Jonathan Edwards [Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1966], 5, 78).
55. Edwards’s use of the metaphor of sweetness in RA to explain the “sense of the heart” is one example of his clever use of philosophical and theological tools to express his own thought. In distinguishing between having an intellectual understanding that honey is sweet and having a sense of its sweetness after tasting it, Edwards uses the same distinction between having a “merely notional understanding” about something and having “a sense of” the object as Locke expressed in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding. While Edwards utilizes the Lockean distinction between notional and sensual understanding, he in no way compromises his biblical, experimental theology of religious experience. There is no opposition in Edwards’s thought between understanding and affections, or the “mind” and the “heart.” According to Edwards, holy affections are possible only when the person has a “spiritual understanding” of the true nature of religion. For Edwards, like Calvin, a “sense” of the divine love is rooted in the person’s perception of the supreme holiness and beauty of God. This analogy which Calvin had used in his Institutes, was also readily available to Edwards in Scripture (e.g., Psalm 19:9-10).
56. Diary, YW 16:762.
57. Edwards referenced the ideas of secular moralists in NTV.
58. NTV, YW 8:540.
59. Diary, YW 16:760. “Dull. I find by experience, that let me make resolutions, and do what I will, with never so many inventions, it is all nothing, and no purpose at all, without the motions of the Spirit of God.... There is no dependence upon myself.... It is to no purpose to resolve, except we depend upon the grace of God.”
60. NTV, YW 8:540; Diary, YW 16:761; Light, YW 10:543.
61. NTV, YW 8:540-541.
62. Ibid. 8:544-545.
63. Ibid. 8:560.
64. Ibid. 8:559.
65. Ibid. 8:560.
66. In a letter “To the Reverend George Whitfield” in February of 1739, Edwards writes, “But pray, sir, let your heart be lifted up to God for me among others, that God would bestow much of that blessed Spirit on me that he has bestowed on you, and make me also an instrument of his glory” (YW 16:81). He makes a similar statement in an October 1748 letter “To Reverend John Erskine,” YW 16:262. Also his intention is seen in a letter in July 1751 “To Thomas Gillespie,” YW 13:383.