Jonathan Edwards, the Toronto Blessing, and the Spiritual Gifts: Are the Extraordinary Ones Actually the Ordinary Ones?

By John D. Hannah

[John D. Hannah is Professor of Historical Theology at Dallas Theological Seminary in Dallas, Texas.]

When interviewed recently by a leading Christian journal, the Anglican John R. Stott was asked his opinion of the Toronto Blessing Movement, a manifestation of charismatic renewalism, some suggest revival, which began in early 1994 in Canada. While reluctant overtly to criticize the phenomena per se, he mentioned several areas of concern: its overt anti-intellectualism; various animal-like utterances; and the falling exercise, sometimes referred to as “doing carpet time” or “resting in the Spirit.”[1] The movement, nonetheless, has become so large that thousands of visitors have transformed the once-small Airport Vineyard Church into a focal point of activity. Huge crowds have filled the ballrooms of our largest hotels across the country; and it has assumed international proportions.[2]

The defining characteristic of the movement has been the unique physical phenomena in the meetings, particularly certain physical and auricular manifestations. Diana Doucet describes what follows the initial phase of each gathering (a time of praise, testimony, and preaching), a period of renewal which normally lasts from two to four hours, as follows:

The meetings are wildly Pentecostal in style—not the type of worship services that normally attract dignified theologians or staid denominational leaders. On a typical evening, dozens of people can be found lying or rolling on the floor, many of them laughing uncontrollably.[3]

Corelli speaks of a “vast carpeted floor [which] becomes littered with bodies giggling, crying, writhing, quivering, or seemingly asleep.”[4] Pinnock suggests a scene in which “people fall into trances all over the floor. Some laugh uproariously, others shake and jerk, some roar like lions.”[5] Ostling paints an emotionally heightened image of the meetings with this description.

Soon a woman begins laughing. Others gradually join with hearty belly laughs. A young worshipper falls to the floor, hands twitching. Another falls, then another and another. Within half an hour there are bodies everywhere as supplicants sob, shake, roar like lions, and, strangest of all, laugh uncontrollably.[6]

As one might suspect, such a distinctive movement has produced a litany of comment and criticism. A cluster of interpretive approaches has emerged concerning it, including an advocate’s camp, a critical party, and a centrist group. The last seems to be cautious in both approbation and denunciation, not wanting to gainsay something which may be of the Lord.[7] Choosing not to focus either upon the polemics of the advocates[8] or the strident tones of the antagonists,[9] centrists have recognized both positive and negative facets in the movement. While citing the joy expressed in the meetings, Pollock, for example, is not alone in his concern over evidences of theological weakness.[10] Pinnock,[11] like Corelli,[12] shares Pollock’s concern, but cites the desperate need for revival in the churches. Beverly, who appears remarkably free from bias in the matter, notes that thousands have experienced renewal, and that the movement has a wonderful evangelistic fervor, a joyful spirit of celebration, and an essential evangelical theology. But he decries manifestations of spiritual pride and arrogance, misperception of prophecy, a de-emphasis on preaching, and unproven claims of healings.[13] Elsewhere, he sights the positive emphasis in the movement on the power of God and the lack of legalism, yet condemns a reductionistic view of the Holy Spirit, an anti-intellectual bias, an inadequate understanding of miracles, and a lack of emphasis on the person of Christ.[14]

Among the several arguments put forth in support of the movement’s physical manifestations, one has become intensely debated: historical precedents. Does the evidence of the past offer any insight into the validity of the current practices in the Toronto Blessing? Pinnock states that physical manifestations, such as those at the Airport Vineyard, are reminiscent of past revivals,[15] though Beverly suggests that the movement has been imprecise in its use of the past.[16] Most pointedly, would the Puritan/pastor/divine Jonathan Edwards, the so-called “Theologian of the Great Awakening,” defend the emotional manifestations in the Toronto Blessing? Though Edwards rejected an enthusiastic fringe in the eighteenth-century Awakening, he was basically a defender of the movement. Could he be called upon as a validating witness in Toronto? Guy Chevreau answers the question with an emphatic “yes.”[17] Grady, most likely following Chevreau, writes:

Currently, many Vineyard leaders are searching the Scriptures and history books to find a precedent for the phenomena they are witnessing in their services. In most cases, they are turning to the writings of 18th century revivalist Jonathan Edwards, who described bizarre manifestations of religious zeal in his journals. Edwards defended what he called “ecstasies,” “faintings,” and “agitations of the body” that he observed during the Great Awakening.[18]

DeArteaga takes a slightly different tact in calling Edwards to the defense of the Awakening. He sees him as a misinformed defender of the physical manifestations; that is, though he defended the Awakening, he did not really understand the deep import of the physical. He incorrectly argued that the physical was incidental to the moving of the Spirit, not the medium or proof of it. Also, being a cessationist, he rejected the fullness of the Spirit’s ministry and therefore rejected the possibility of a Spirit-led prophetic movement.[19] Equally strident, but in the opposite direction, arguing that Edwards would have rejected the Toronto Blessing, are the works of Victor Budgen, John MacArthur, and Haykin/McHale.[20] At least one writer has argued that Edwards would have adopted Beverly’s “mixed blessing” view, seeing both positive and negative elements in it.[21]

The pervasive use of Jonathan Edwards by both advocates and opponents of the Toronto Blessing brings us to the purpose of this article. The antithetical usages of the “Theologian of the Awakening” have caused Beverly to comment:

A proper study of the Toronto Blessing will also recognize complexity. There are intellectual, spiritual, and psychological issues that are complicated and cannot receive quick or hasty verdicts. Experts need to be consulted in different aspects. For example, both critics and proponents cite Jonathan Edwards as an ally. This demands a thorough study of the “real” Edwards.[22]

I propose to pick up on his insight, analyze the evidence and counter-evidence for the use of Edwards as a defender of the physical manifestations of the Toronto Blessing, and arrive at some resolution of the issue.

I. The Use of Jonathan Edwards in Defense of the Toronto Blessing

The most detailed argument for Edwards’s support is found in the work of Guy Chevreau, a pastor and teacher in the Toronto Airport Vineyard. Throughout the work, particularly in an extended chapter entitled “A Well-Traveled Path, Jonathan Edwards and the Experiences of the Great Awakening,” Chevreau finds justification for the Toronto Blessing in the experiences of religious revival in Edwards’s Northampton parish. For example, citing the instances of Buell preaching in Edwards’s pulpit as “protracted Revival meetings” and the fainting of Sarah, Edwards’s wife, he notes, “The expressions ‘took away my bodily strength’, ‘overbear the body’, and ‘fainting’ seem to be eighteenth-century equivalents to the falling, resting and ‘slain’ experiences at the Toronto Vineyard.”[23] In a summary statement, he says:

The following sample from Edwards’s writings helps put an historical background to the kinds of things experienced at the Airport Vineyard meetings; while the manifestations may be new to many of us, they are not untypical experiences when the Spirit of God comes to renew His people.[24]

A. The Argument from the Priority of Religious Experience

The essence of Chevreau’s point is that Edwards stood in marked contradistinction to the Puritan tradition[25] that he inherited because, following the insight of Locke, he rejected the Puritans’ “faculty” psychology. Thus, instead of stressing the centrality of the mind and the rational faculties, Edwards elevated the role of experience.[26] In his theory of the soul, the intellect was not given the status of highest arbiter. He thus rejected the sequential notion of thought, emotion, and will in the decision making process. Thus, for example, the central thesis of Religious Affections, a treatise on the nature of conversion, is that “true religion, in great part, consists in holy affections.”[27] Religion is not confined to the realm of the mind or the lair of dispassionate knowledge, but singularly embraces the affective side of man; true religion does not consist in dry orthodoxy! Richard Lovelace’s summary could easily be that of Chevreau or DeArteaga:

Edwards answers that the heart, the inmost center of the personality, must be touched by the Holy Spirit. This healing touch generates affections (driving motives that inform and direct the mind and will) flowing out of love for God Himself, not just gratitude for his gifts.[28]

Chevreau’s conclusion is that

When studied, what emerges as the resounding note throughout all his extensive theological writings is his passion for what he called “practical and vital Christianity,” religious knowledge as experience, held not in the head but in the heart.[29]

Thus, Edwards’s psychological theory is not passive, but stridently active; life is not contemplative so much as it is actively robust.

To sustain the argument that religious knowledge is neither passive nor dispassionate in Edwards, Chevreau culls from his Awakening narratives an array of illustrations. To show that Edwards was not into theological abstractions, but the lively and life-giving power of the Holy Spirit, he cites two examples: the renowned Northampton pastor himself and his wife. The mystic in the couple readily emerges as they experienced sweet and marvelous delights of the presence of God.[30] He concludes by citing a graphic passage of Edwards’s feelings on the matter:

Now, if such things are enthusiasm, and the fruits of a distempered brain, let my brain be evermore possessed of that happy distemper! If this be distraction, I pray God that the world of mankind may be all seized with this benign, meek, beneficent, glorious distraction![31]

B. The Argument from the Nature of a Revival

The argument at this point appears at least two-fold: first, physical manifestations often accompany the Spirit’s work and, second, the presence of various exercises should be accepted as long as there is an attempt to prevent extremes since they are actually ancillary to the Spirit’s work. As to the former thesis, Chevreau cites Edwards to the effect that the sight of the glory of the Lord regularly resulted in the experiences of bodily weakness, such as fainting, crying, and laughter, thereby providing a historical precedent for the phenomena in the Toronto meetings.[32] Edwards, for example, writes in his Faithful Narrative of his own Northampton people:

It was very wonderful to see how persons’ affections were sometimes moved—when God did as it were suddenly open their eyes… Their joyful surprise has caused their hearts as it were to leap, so that they have been ready to break forth in laughter, tears often at the same time issuing like a flood, and intermingling a loud weeping.[33]

In describing the intensity of the meetings, again a precedent for manifestations in Toronto, Chevreau quotes Edwards:

It was a very frequent thing, to see a house full of outcries, faintings, convulsions, and such like, both with distress, and also with admiration and joy. It was not the manner here, to hold meetings all night, as in some places, nor was it common to continue them till very late in the night; but it was pretty often so, that there were some that were so affected, and their bodies so overcome, that they could not go home, but were obligated to stay all night where they were.[34]

While physical manifestations often accompanied the Awakening in Edwards’s day, they were actually of secondary importance; they were incidental. Since this is the case, that they neither prove nor disprove something to be a work of God, any awakening where they are present should not be discounted out-of-hand. Arguing that a work of God is not to be judged a priori, but a posteriori, Edwards notes in a passage, not cited by Chevreau,

Many are guilty of not taking the Holy Scriptures as a sufficient and whole rule, whereby to judge this work, whether it be the work of God, in that they judge by those things which the Scripture don’t give as any signs or marks whereby to judge one way or the other, and therefore do in no wise belong to the Scripture rule of judging, viz. the effects that religious exercises and affections of mind have upon the body… The design of the Scripture is to teach us divinity, and not physic and anatomy.[35]

Thus, to reject the Awakening because manifestations are present is to make something that is really incidental crucial. Edwards did not, as contemporary critics are charged with doing, limit God and his manner of working, suggests Chevreau and DeArteaga.

Another important point is that true revivals are often messy by nature;[36] there is frequently the presence of disorder, an admixture of truth and error. The only issue that would discredit a supposed awakening is excess. Edwards wrote:

Another foundation error of those that reject this work, is their not duly distinguishing the good from the bad, and very unjustly judging of the whole by a part; and so rejecting the work in general, or in the main substance of it, for the sake of some things that are accidental to it, that are evil.[37]

Citing the Corinthians as a model (here I am expanding Chevreau’s citation), Edwards stated:

Yet what manifold imprudences, great and sinful irregularities, and strange confusion did they run into… And if we see great imprudences, and even sinful irregularities, in some who are great instruments to carry on the work, it will not prove it not to be a work of God.[38]

Chevreau tells us that, “very much aware of the truth of Edwards’ insights here, the pastors at the Airport Vineyard continue to try to manage ‘wild fire’ as it breaks out.”[39]

II. Jonathan Edwards: An Unlikely Proponent of the Toronto Blessing

On the surface, Edwards appears as a prime historical precedent for the phenomena of the Toronto Blessing. His emphasis on the importance of psychological experiences and advocacy of bodily manifestations, suggest that Edwards would have, at least, accepted Beverly’s “mixed blessings” approach; certainly he would not have taken the strident view of either Victor Budgen or John MacArthur. However, is this evaluation valid?

A. Edwards and the Argument from Religious Experience

That Edwards rejected the “faculty” psychology of his Puritan predecessors is a point that is not in dispute; the intellect (the mind) does not have the role of supreme arbiter over the will and affections in Edwards’s thought, as it may have had in his predecessors. Further, Edwards grasped the idea that true religion is profoundly experiential and lively. The totality, the entirety, of the person, is active in the embrace of religion, both the understanding and inclination.

The issue, however, goes a bit deeper. The Toronto Blessing Movement has been criticized for the denigration of the intellectual side of man and religion; some have faulted the movement for being weak in theology and anti-intellectual in perspective. Stott speaks of the movement as “self-consciously anti-intellectual,”[40] as does Beverly.[41] Pollock, Corelli, and Pinnock have expressed similar concerns over theological weakness and neglect of theological issues.[42] While Edwards may be called “the theologian of religious experience,” does he separate the intellect from the emotions so that the latter has the ascendancy in matters of religion? Is Chevreau correct when he asserts that,

When studied, what emerges as the resounding note throughout all his extensive theological writings is his passion for what he called “practical and vital Christianity,” religious knowledge as experience, held not in the head but in the heart.[43]

For Edwards, man is a unitary, interrelated, and interrelating whole; no single faculty is given a ruling status to the subserviency of another. Neither the understanding nor the will acts independently or hierarchically. Edwards makes the point in Religious Affections that the soul is composed of two faculties, the understanding and the will, the will and the affections being within the same faculty, though the latter is its core and is livelier.[44] Says Smith, “Edwards’s position will never be understood correctly by anyone who comes to it with some form of a heart/head dualism at hand.”[45] Indeed, Edwards argues that there is a direct relationship between the understanding and the emotions: “there must be light in the understanding, as well as an affected fervent heart.”[46] Affections are composed of the fruit[s] of the Spirit,[47] the principle of them being love and joy, as delineated in the Galatians passage, and are distinct from bodily exercises or passion. Passion differs from affectional emotions by its sudden violence, wherein “the mind [is] more overpowered, and less in its own command”; they are animalistic.[48] Smith summarized the difference succinctly:

An affection is not a passion; a passion overwhelms a person to the exclusion of understanding, whereas all affections involve ideas and perceptions. An affection is a response of the person accompanied by understanding.[49]

Further, affections are not to be equated with emotions; they are the inner core of man simultaneously composed of understanding and inclination.

In Some Thoughts Concerning The Revival, Edwards takes up the criticism that the ministers have emphasized the affections rather than the understanding, the same charge made against the Toronto Blessing (“that the affections are moved without a proportionable enlightening of the understanding”[50]). His reply is that affections are grounded in the understanding. “All affections are raised either by light in the understanding, or by some error and delusion in the understanding; for all affections do certainly arise from some apprehension in the understanding.”[51] Simply put, insufficient knowledge or distorted knowledge produces false affections; or, false affections arise from distorted or neglected truth. The problem is not the presence of affections, as such, but the nature, source, and manner of them.[52] Affections are mere impulses and imaginations when they do not arise from intense instruction in the Scriptures.[53]

That Edwards did not denigrate the intellect is evident throughout his writings; yet, perhaps, nowhere as clearly as in the sermon “Christian Knowledge.” Any notion that he subordinated the intellect, set up a head/heart dualism, or faculty prioritization is erroneous.

The heart cannot be set upon an object of which there is no idea in the understanding. The reasons which induce the soul to love, must first be understood, before they can have a reasonable influence on the heart.[54]

Not only is it the mind which distinguishes human beings from brute beasts, it is the highest faculty of man, given so that people may know God![55] The application of the sermon for his hearers is that they would “be assiduous in reading the Holy Scriptures,” “procure and diligently use other books which may help you to grow in this knowledge,” and “content not yourselves with only a cursory reading [of the Bible], without regarding the sense.”[56] In another writing, Edwards argued that reason, or the rational ability, is the highest faculty of the soul. He noted, for example,

All things in the soul of man should be under the government of reason, which is man’s highest faculty; and every other faculty or principle in the soul should be governed and directed by that to their proper ends.[57]

Neither the intellect nor the affections are the sum of religion, yet true religion is simultaneously and interrelatedly composed of both. With this said, the mind provides the substance of options that are willingly and affectionately chosen and, therefore, is the “highest” faculty.

Turning to the religious experiences of the various people Edwards chooses to illustrate his views, the same verdict is evident. The intellect neither rules over, nor is subject to, the emotions; there is a profound harmony and interrelatedness between the two faculties. The remarkable conversion of Abigail Hutchison (“She was of a rational understanding family: there could be nothing in her education that tended to enthusiasm, but rather to the contrary extreme”[58]) came as a result of an intense period of reading the Bible. Particularly as she meditated on 1 John 1:7 did she receive a lively sense of the excellency of Christ.[59] Phebe Bartlet, a child of four, is cited by Edwards in the same narrative; she had an identical experience, described in much the same terminology, through meditating on three passages from her catechism.[60] There are three other personal narratives that are perhaps more widely known from Edwards’s writings: David Brainerd’s, his wife’s, and his own. Edwards uses Brainerd’s diary to demonstrate the model saint; in his preface he states that he is using the missionary to distinguish between solid piety and enthusiasm. The former constitutes those affections which are “rational and scriptural,” while the latter are whimsical conceits and animal passions.[61] Edwards approvingly cites Brainerd’s mention of a convert who, while crying and laying flat, experienced a reality that was “solid, rational, and scriptural.”[62] In another instance of his preaching Brainerd notes, “The impressions they were under appear to be divine; the genuine effect of God’s Word set home upon their hearts by His Spirit” though it “produced no boisterous commotions of the passions.”[63] Sarah Edwards’s experience is distinct from the other personal-experience narratives, not in the emotional or rational content of it, but in that she came to this experience already converted to Christ; hers was a Christian’s experience of embracing Christ’s excellencies similar to that in her conversion. Edwards found polemical value in her narrative, for he places it in a section of Some Thoughts where he is urging the need to discriminate the false from the true. Her experience grew out of rational and scripture-oriented “views of the glory of the divine perfections, and Christ’s excellencies.”[64] Edwards’s own conversion came as a result of meditating upon 1 Tim 1:17:

As I read the words, there came into my soul … a sense of the glory of the divine Being, a new sense… 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 swallowed up in him.[65]

In comparing the Toronto Blessing and Edwards’s views, several things become apparent. First, Edwards did not denigrate the role of the intellect in describing the function of the inclination or heart. If the movement is indeed characterized by an anti-intellectual spirit, a diminution of theology, and a deemphasis on doctrinal preaching, Edwards would not have advocated it. Preaching the historic doctrines in the manner explained by the Reformed tradition (i.e., sin, Christ, regeneration, conversion) was assumed by Edwards—anything less was unbiblical. Erdt emphatically asserts:

Edwards did not advocate an anti-intellectualism… For the will to respond to a religious object, there must be a representational idea in the understanding… In order for grace to act, there must be present in the mind ideas of religion, God, and Christ through the reading of Scripture and the instruction of the minister. The more thoroughly such ideas are supplied, the more opportunity there is for grace to act.[66]

Second, Edwards did not indiscriminately sanction all affectional displays as spiritual. True affections are defined by their source, nature, and manner. The difference between emotions and passion is not one of outward effect and intensity, but whether the recipient remains in complete control of his/her rational faculties. True religion is worshiping God with an active mind, as well as informed emotions. Third, the loss of consciousness that Edwards narrates (such as fainting), is the result of being overcome with the wonder and beauty of Christ through elevating him in the preached Word. Normally this is the result of the miracle of conversion, when a person is abruptly translated from the state of darkness into light; the perception of the ideas of holiness can cause disorientation. This, however, is different from the Toronto meetings, where fainting affects converted people who experience renewal.[67]

B. Edwards and the Argument for Physical Manifestations

Edwards saw the emotional upheavals in the Awakening as potentially incidental and ancillary to a true work of God, a result of the dramatic change one experiences when passing from the state of darkness into light.[68] But would he have advocated the manifestations in the Toronto Blessing? Though he opposed enthusiasm, does the laughing, fainting, or roaring exercise qualify as enthusiasm? This issue in the Toronto Blessing has created the most controversy. Stott has stated that he “cannot possibly come to terms with those animal noises… Nebuchadnezzar’s animal behavior was under the judgment, not the blessing, of God.”[69] Further, falling or fainting in the Bible comes as a result of seeing a vision of God in his sovereign glory; it occurs without a vision of God in the blessing movement, he says. A most insightful evaluation of the place of physical manifestations in the Toronto Blessing Movement comes from the Vineyard Movement (the latter spawned the former and has been vitally connected to it ideologically). Recently the Vineyard Movement has severed ties with Toronto. Vineyard spokespersons cite several reasons for the action. Among them is the charge that physical manifestations are not incidental to Toronto’s concept of renewal, but, indeed, the heart of it.[70] The official ground for separation reads, in part,

We cannot at any time encourage, offer theological justification, or biblical proof-texting for any exotic practices that are extra-biblical… Neither can these practices be presented as criteria for true spirituality or as a mark of true renewal.[71]

The question, then, is this: would Edwards, unlike John Wimber, see the phenomena at Toronto as merely incidental and, therefore, would he support them, or at least not condemn them? How are we to understand the double negative (“not necessarily not”) of the twelve uncertain signs listed in the Religious Affections or the nine negative signs in Distinguishing Marks? (What Edwards means by this “double negative” is that the signs he lists are not certain evidences of true conversion; these signs prove the case neither way so that their presence is, thus, inconclusive.) Two things may be said of the negative signs. First, they are external effects, whereas true religion is in the inner core of a person’s being, the heart. Second, they are not to be taken as conclusive criteria for any kind of judgment, since they are inconsequential.[72] At the least, it can be said that both Toronto advocates and critics do not share the same verdict on these matters as Edwards, who writes:

And therefore those ministers and overseers of souls that busy themselves, and are full of concern about the involuntary motions of the fluids and solids of men’s bodies, and from thence full of doubts and suspicions of the cause, when nothing appears but that the state and frame of their minds, and their voluntary behavior is good, and agreeable to God’s Word; I say, such ministers go out of the place that Christ has set them in, and leave their proper business.[73]

The twelve negative signs, at the least, cannot be used either to support the awakening or denigrate it. Why? Because true religion is not to be identified with emotions or commotions.

Edwards’s ultimate defense of the Awakening is found in his Religious Affections, though Brainerd’s diary and his Stockbridge writings are germane. Before it, however, Edwards penned other works. A Faithful Narrative (1737) is a description of the Northampton revival, written before controversy arose. Distinguishing Marks (1741) began what Goen says was a critical, but sympathetic examination of the Awakening, which was quickly becoming divisive.[74] In the former, Edwards introduced the idea of the new or sixth sense for judging things; here he set forth the use of the negative sign (these are not to be taken as criteria of God’s presence[75]). The argument is extended in Some Thoughts Concerning The Revival; negative signs do not go to the heart of the matter. In Religious Affections (1746), Edwards argues that religion can be counterfeited by two pious types: “legal hypocrites,” represented by Chauncy, and “evangelical hypocrites,” who are the enthusiasts and antinomians in the New Light camp. The latter type of opposers of vital religion is the focus in his 1740s works; that is, Edwards’s chief goal is to unmask the evangelical hypocrites.[76] He says that those who are “living on experiences, and not on Christ,” are “more abominable in the sight of God, than the gross immoralities of those who make no pretenses of religion.”[77]

The question is this: what composed the essential teachings of the “evangelical hypocrites,” and is there an identification with teachings in the Toronto Blessing? It is clear that Edwards rejects impressions and impulses (the so-called extraordinary gifts of the Spirit); his stress is not the gifts of the Spirit but the graces of the Spirit. Of upmost importance is the insight that Edwards’s emphasis is not on the power of the Spirit, but the presence of the Spirit; the presence of the Spirit is synonymous with having his power. A Christian has the power of God because he/she has the Spirit. A person without the Spirit is the same as the person without power and is lost. Cherry notes the identity of the Spirit with the saint,

The Holy Spirit in his saving operation or in his creation of saving faith does not move simply “upon” or “toward” the human faculties of the intellect and will; he unites with them as their new principle of operation.[78]

Wilson-Kastner says of Edwards, “The Holy Spirit is the love of God personified… Love is no mere abstraction or theological generalization … but the person of the Holy Spirit, who proceeds from the Father and the Son.”[79]

Miraculous spiritual manifestations, whether they be prophetic visions or supernatural overpowerings, are not a vital part of true religion. In Distinguishing Marks, Edwards argues that divine grace comes through the ordinary gifts, the extraordinary having ceased, and counsels his readers not to “expect a restoration of these miraculous gifts in the approaching glorious times of the church.” He adds that it is better to have Christ for one hour than visions and revelations for a whole year. To emphasize such is to follow a “Jack-with-a-lanthon.”[80] In Some Thoughts, he rejects enthusiasm, impulses, and impressions, as an immaturity often accompanied with “effects on person’s bodies.”[81] Edwards argues that immediate revelations, words from the Spirit apart from the Word, and special comforts from God in impressions are to be denounced.[82] Cherry summarizes Edwards’s view:

God’s Word, on the one hand, contains both the norm of human experience and a divine promise that transcends the limitations of the experience. Enthusiasm abandons both values of the Word for the sake of preoccupation with human experience… Enthusiasm tears Spirit from Word and turns the works of the Spirit into wizardry.[83]

In a letter to Thomas Prince describing the Awakening in the early 1740s, Edwards states that the initial phase of the work was superior to the revival in 1735, but the latter part of it was not. It declined due to various raptures, violent emotional displays, and vehement zeal in presupposing the higher attainments of grace. He makes the point that grace is not to be judged by the degree of accompanying joy, that joy is not a sign of redemption, and that it is not the degree but nature of religious affections that are at issue.[84] In Religious Affections, he argues that such things as intensity of emotions, bodily weaknesses, and vibrant testimonies are not signs of grace.[85] Those who do see them as valid signs are “very ignorant and imprudently forward.”[86] Edwards’s point seems to be something like this: if the devil can duplicate it, it is not evidence that it is from the Lord (external ideas and animalistic impulses are the devil’s realm[87]). In the positive-signs section of the work, he is clear that “no revelation of secret facts by immediate suggestion is anything spiritual and divine,” secret facts being anything not specifically revealed in Scripture.[88] In the context of referring to “strange ecstasies, raptures, and immediate revelation,” while tracing the historical lineage of the enthusiasts of his day (i.e., from the Essenses, Gnostics, Montanists, Anabaptists, Antinomians, Familists, and Anne Hutchinson to the French Prophets), he is particularly denunciatory:

If revival of true religion be very great in its beginning, yet if this bastard comes in, there is danger of its doing as Gideon’s bastard Abimelech did, who never left till he had slain all his threescore and ten sons except one, that was forced to flee.[89]

He seems stridently cruel when he speaks of the “evangelical hypocrite,” those defined by extra-biblical interests, as “long[ing] to taste the love of God more than to have more love to God” and “long[ing] for discoveries for present comfort than the sanctifying influence of it.”[90]

Comparing the views expressed in the Toronto Blessing Movement with those of Jonathan Edwards concerning miraculous manifestations of the Holy Spirit, several points emerge. First, if the charge put forward from the Vineyard Movement that physical manifestations are not ancillary but essentially definitive of the movement is true, then Edwards can hardly be called upon to be a confirming witness. Second, to argue that the Awakening is a mixture of wheat and tares is not to identify either as such. Edwards’s concern throughout the 1740s was not with those who possessed light without heat, but the opposite. What troubled Edwards was the damaging, discrediting effort of those with heat, but little light. While physical manifestations were present, he saw them as incidental and unfortunate. Third, if the emphasis in the movement is upon the Spirit of God as a power source or force for the Christian (as purported by George Koch[91]) rather than an indwelling identity, it is difficult to call Edwards for support. Fourth, if the movement separates the witness of the Spirit from the Word, proposes that the Spirit is revealing new information not revealed in the Word, or suggests that the Spirit’s word is more than the illumination of the Word, it is precarious to offer Edwards as support. Fifth, if the movement embraces the continuation of the extraordinary gifts such as that of prophets or teaches a continuity of the first century with that of the current one in the gifts of the Spirit, Edwards offers little support.

C. Edwards and the Argument from the Cessation of the Miraculous Gifts

A significant underpinning of the Toronto Blessing Movement is the assumption of the continuation of all, or most, of the spiritual gifts through the centuries. Again, the issue of the prophetic gifts comes up in the notice of separation of the Vineyard Movement from the Toronto Airport Vineyard. While the Vineyard Movement is charismatic in its openness and advocacy of the spiritual gifts, it understands that Toronto’s use of them is extra-biblical.

We are concerned that among some of the TAV leadership there is an emerging “prophetic theology” centered on the rise of a new kind of ecstatic prophecy which would herald the advent of a second Pentecost, a second book of Acts and the last days revival. We feel that there are significant problems with this understanding of the nature of prophecy and the role of prophecy in the church.[92]

The point is that if Edwards is a cessationist, rejecting the notion of continuative revelation, immediate direction of the Spirit (that is, apart from the Bible, the witness of the Spirit being separated from the Word), prophecy, and tongues, he could hardly be called upon as an advocate of the Blessing Movement. Whatever the phenomena may be, the movement would be neither biblical nor spiritual.[93]

The most lengthy treatment of the issue of the spiritual gifts in the Edwards corpus is Charity and Its Fruits, a sermon series on 1 Corinthians 13 preached in 1738. The work is an attempt to contrast the extraordinary gifts of the Spirit to the ordinary gifts or the fruit[s] of the Spirit, love being the principle one. Edwards’s view is that tongues, miracles, and prophecy, the extraordinary gifts, ceased with the completion of the canon, when the church was fully established.[94] The Spirit’s work in granting the ordinary gifts is greater and more excellent than the temporal, extraordinary gifts because the latter are a sign neither of redemptive grace nor of the sanctifying influence of the Spirit.[95] Stated positively, the ordinary gifts or fruits will last into eternity, characterizing the saint in the glorified state. Such things as direct, immediate guidance of the Spirit and dream communications ceased with the first century.[96] Says Edwards,

So the first hundred years of the Christian era, or first century, was the age of miracles. But soon after that, the canon of the Scripture having been completed… And so there being now completed an established written revelation of the mind and will of God … the miraculous gifts of the Spirit ceased… And now there seems to be an end of all such fruits of the Spirit as these, and we have no reason to expect them any more.[97]

The extraordinary gifts were no special sign of God’s redeemed, having been granted at times to unbelievers; they are not the fruit of Edwards’s “sixth sense,” being the result of imagination and impulse.[98]

In another series of sermons preached in 1739, called The History of Redemption, Edwards argued the same point as in the earlier “Charity” series: that the extraordinary gifts, though greater in the first century than in the OT era, ceased with the century’s end. “And this [prophetic utterances] continued in a very considerable degree to the end of the apostolic age, or the first hundred years after the birth of Christ, which is therefore called the age of miracles.”[99] He goes so far as to denominate as an enthusiast anyone who “pretended to be inspired with the Holy Spirit as the prophets.”[100] In citing David Brainerd’s diary, which Pettit believes is a rebuke to the enthusiasts,[101] Edwards found in the missionary a model of true virtue; there are no traces of impulses, revelations, superstitions, antinomian delusions, or melancholic seizures. Brainerd confesses:

No, my soul now abhorred those delusions of Satan, which are thought to be the immediate witness of the Spirit, while there is nothing but an empty suggestion of a certain fact without any gracious discovery of the divine glory or of the Spirit’s work in their hearts … [such is] false religion, those heats and imaginations and wild and selfish commotions of the animal affections.[102]

In comparing Edwards’s views on the extraordinary gifts to those of the Toronto Movement, the following may be concluded. First, Edwards believed that the extraordinary gifts ceased at the end of the first century. Second, the extraordinary gifts were inferior to the ordinary gifts or fruit[s] of the Spirit, and only the latter should be sought. Third, the extraordinary gifts have no relationship to the end times and the glorious renewal and triumph of the church. Fourth, the power or enablement of the saint for service to God is to be found in prayer and proclamation, not in the extraordinary gifts. Fifth, to argue that the extraordinary gifts are present in the church is to fall into the error of the enthusiasts, a position that hinders the possibility of the renewal of the church.

D. Edwards and the Argument of Eschatological Significance

Though neither Chevreau nor DeArteaga suggests that Edwards’s eschatological view is relevant in establishing a historic defense of the Toronto Blessing, it is, nonetheless, important to grasp because it has a bearing on the overall use of Edwards as a defender of epiphenomenal practices. The Toronto Movement presents itself in the context of the “Latter Rain” revival, which will consummate the end of the age. The effusion of the miraculous is a sign of the end times. Stating differences between the Vineyard Movement and the Toronto Vineyard, Todd Hunter noted:

There is a difference in understanding of eschatology. The leadership of TAV has intended to tie this current outpouring with an expectation of a final day revival signified by signs and wonders, ecstatic experiences and other manifestations of power that supersede the normal practices of evangelism, healing, missions, and church planting.[103]

The question is this: what insight can be gained from Edwards’s eschatological view to determine if he can be used as support of the Toronto Movement? Further, how does Edwards’s understanding of eschatology and his view of the gifts of the Spirit interconnect?

It is evident from his writings that Edwards believed the Awakening had eschatological significance; it was the harbinger of the glorious end times. Speaking of the 1740s Awakening, and in contrast to the 1735 one, Edwards cast it in millennial terms: “Tis not unlikely that this work of God’s Spirit, that is so extraordinary and wonderful, is dawning, or at least a prelude, of that glorious work of God.”[104] He could say of it, “The New Jerusalem in this respect [numerous conversions] has begun to come down from heaven.”[105] For Edwards the glorious time of restoration would be on the earth, lasting not more than a thousand years prior to the advent of Christ and the final consummation of redemption. The Book of the Revelation was a chronological time line of the historic events from the time of Christ until his final triumph over his enemies. While the Awakening did not cause Edwards second thoughts about his earlier eschatological speculations, it did encourage him to take a nearer view of the fulfillment of the great vial judgments, the prelude to the millennium.[106] This was likely a change that had polemical value in the promotion of the Awakening. Edwards came to believe that he was living in the time of the fulfillment of the sixth vial judgment, the drying of the Euphrates, the economic destruction of the Antichrist.[107] Thus, Edwards could inform his hearers that they were living somewhere in the midst of the sixth vial before the final triumph of Christ over all evil in the pouring out of the seventh.[108]

What is the near millennium like? Is there to be an effusion of the extraordinary gifts of the Spirit as a sign of the end times? Is there to be a restoration of the miraculous gifts? After the final vial, the destruction of Christ’s enemies (“They are those societies that are fountains of Popery, fountains of popish doctrine and doctors, fountains of teachers of Antichristianism”[109]), a triumphal period will prevail in the history of the church. Edwards is clear that these events will be accompanied by an abundant effusion of the Holy Spirit, that the time of the sixth vial was a time of a unique outpouring of the Spirit on the church.[110] The two chief evidences of the outpouring of the Spirit, according to Edwards, are prayer and a vast ingathering of souls. The prayer for the Spirit is not for personal power or religious experiences, but for his redeeming work.

The Scriptures don’t only direct and encourage us in general to pray for the Holy Spirit above all else, but it is the expressly revealed will of God, that his church should be very much in prayer for that glorious outpouring of the Spirit that is to be in the latter days, and the things that shall be accomplished by it.[111]

The glorious time brought about by the Spirit will be an era of gospel diffusion and enlightened Christian faith, a state he sees already existing in England, but will then be universal:

As bright and polite as England: when ignorant heathen lands shall be stocked with most profound divines and most learned philosophers; when we shall from time to time have the most excellent books of devotion and wonderful performances brought from one end of the earth and another to surprise us.[112]

He notes: “We may suppose that it will be gloriously successful to bring in multitudes, and from many nations”;[113] “the word of God shall have a speedy and swift progress through the earth, as it is said that on the pouring out of the seventh vial”;[114] and “then the heathen nations shall be enlightened with the glorious gospel.”[115]

In Edwards’s description of the vial judgments, which will bring about a victorious triumph of the church by the Spirit, there is no mention of the “sign gifts,” only of the church’s holiness and a wonderful ingathering of souls. His view of these things is simply that the extraordinary gifts have no bearing on end time events. In Charity and Its Fruits, he writes,

Prophecy and miracles argue the imperfection of the state of the church, rather than the perfection… Why, therefore, should we expect that they should be restored again when the church is come, as it were, to the stature of a man?[116]

Elsewhere he says:

The gloriousness of the future times of the church is certainly no argument that they will then have prophecy and miracles. For surely it will not be more glorious than the heavenly state… It does not appear that there will be any need of miraculous gifts in order to bring about the glorious state of the church. God is able to do it without them.[117]

Though some had suggested in his day that the end times could not come without an effusion of the extraordinary gifts, he bluntly asserts, “What the Scripture says of the gloriousness of those times does not prove any such thing.”[118] Thus to Edwards, it is not the miraculous gifts that reveal the nearness of the kingdom, but the presence of the Spirit’s power producing holy saints in saintly service. It is a time of deep dependent prayer and the preaching of the gospel of Christ.

What can be gathered of Edwards’s eschatological views from his writings in the 1740s is as follows. First, he did not despair of the Awakening’s fruitfulness, as Chevreau appears to assert. He remained firmly convinced that he was living in the times of the sixth vial of the Revelation; his call for prayer was in keeping with the commands of Scripture, not the strategy of a desperate preacher. Second, the effusion of the Spirit which would bring about the final vials, destroying the last remnants of Antichrist, would not be evidenced by either enthusiasm (impulses or impressions), prophetic insights, dream interpretations, or miracle workings; it would come through prayer and proclamation. Third, the evidence of the Spirit’s working is not found in endowments of personal power, but in the fruit of gospel preaching and the Spirit’s indwelling. Fourth, Edwards’s eschatological vision is of an earthly hope of the triumph of Christian scholarship and godliness, which could be seen in microcosm in the Christian states of Europe and England.

III. Conclusion

The collected evidence suggests that Edwards should not be employed to validate either the spiritual experiences of many in the Toronto Movement or the hopes of charismatic renewalism in the end times. Though he was an advocate of heart-felt religion, he was not a charismatic Christian if it means that he advocated a continuation of the four-fold ministry of Ephesians 4, as well as the other extraordinary gifts of the Spirit. The greatest miracle-gift is not the elevation of the servant of God to strength, power, and victory; it is the elevation of the work of redemption, a calling of men and women to Christ through Spirit-empowered preaching and prayer. It is when a soul is lifted by redeeming grace to behold the beauty of Christ as do the angels in heaven. Edwards’s focus was on the glorious person and redemptive work of Christ; the gospel working love in the heart and love for neighbor was the greatest and only “extraordinary” work of grace. For this to be a practical reality in the life of the visible church, he labored in thinking, writing, praying, and preaching. The Spirit’s work is in revealing Christ through the Word in sacrament, prayer, and preaching, not in restoring to a derelict church an appreciation of the first century charismata. While biblical content was not everything to Edwards (he argued for the necessity of experiencing it), it was no small issue; in fact, it was the determining criterion of a true work of God and the hope of a glorious kingdom on earth.

Notes

1. R. McCloughry, “Basic Stott,” Christianity Today 40 (8 January 1996) 32.
2. Among the numerous articles describing the movement, the following have been particularly helpful: R. Corelli, “Going to the Mat for God: Tales of ecstasy draws hundreds to a Toronto church,” Maclean’s (13 March 1995) 56–57; J. Duin, “New Wine,” Charisma 20 (August 1994) 21–24, 26, 28; J. L. Grady, “Vineyard Revival Spreads Abroad,” Charisma 20 (September 1994) 74; J. Maxwell, “Is Laughing for the Lord Holy?” Christianity Today 33 (24 October 1995) 78–79; G. Preston, “The Toronto Wave,” Christian Century (16 November 1995) 9–10; R. N. Ostling, “Laughing for the Lord,” Time (15 August 1994) 38; S. Strang, “What Is This Laughing Revival?” Charisma 20 (August 1994) 102; and “The Giggles are from God,” Newsweek 125 (15 February 1995) 54. A highly commendable book-length treatment of the Toronto Blessing is J. Beverly’s Holy Laughter & The Toronto Blessing: An Investigative Report (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995).
3. D. Doucet, “Renewal Excites Canadian Churches,” Charisma 22 (June 1994) 52.
4. Corelli, “Going to the Mat for God,” 56.
5. C. H. Pinnock, “Can’t Tell God How & Where to Work,” Canadian Baptist 141 (March 1995) 9.
6. Ostling, “Laughing for the Lord,” 38.
7. Beverly (Holy Laughter, 22–24) has identified five interpretive positions, ranging from an extremely optimistic view to a negative, antichrist view (i.e., an eschatological revivalist view; a renewalist non-eschatological view; a mixed blessing view, a critical/negative view; and an eschatological/antichrist view).
8. The better defenses of the Toronto Blessing can be gathered from the several articles listed in note 2 above. For an extended defense, though largely historical in nature, see G. Chevreau’s Catch The Fire: The Toronto Blessing, An Experience of Renewal andRevival (Toronto: Harper Collins, 1994); W. DeArteaga, Quenching the Spirit:Examining Centuries of Opposition to the Moving of the Holy Spirit (Lake Mary, FL: Creation House, 1992); and J. White, When The Spirit Comes With Power, Signs and Wonders among God’s People (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1988).
9. For a synopsis of these arguments, see G. B. Koch, "Holy Laughter Part II: ‘The Force- or Pumped, Scooped, and Charged & Slain,’”SCP Newsletter 19 (Winter 1995) 1, 4, 6, 8, 13; W. Smith, “Holy Laughter or Strong Delusion?” SCP Newsletter 19 (Fall 1994) 1, 4–5, 8, 13; and D. Pollock, “Laughter, Swoonings, and Other Strange Things,” Lamplighter 15 (October 1994) 2–5. More lengthy treatments of this view can be found in V. Budgen, The Charismatics and the Word of God (Welwyn, England: Evangelical Press, 1985); M. A. G. Haykin and G. W. McHale, eds., The “Toronto Blessing”: a Renewalfrom God? vol. 3 of JonathanEdwards: The Man, His Experience and His Theology (Richmond Hills, Ontario: Canadian Christian Publications, 1995); and J. A. MacArthur, Reckless Faith (Carol Stream, IL: Crossway, 1994).
10. Pollock, “Laughter, Swoonings and Other Strange Things,” 2.
11. Pinnock, “Can’t Tell God How & Where To Work,” 9–10.
12. Corelli, “Going to the Mat for God,” 57.
13. J. A. Beverly, “Toronto’s Mixed Blessing,” Christianity Today 39 (11 September 1995) 24–26.
14. Beverly, Holy Laughter, 151, 153–59.
15. Pinnock, “Can’t Tell God How & Where To Work,” 9.
16. Beverly, “Toronto’s Mixed Blessing,” 25–26.
17. Chevreau, Catch The Fire, 70–144.
18. Grady, “Vineyard Revival Spreads Abroad,” 74.
19. DeArteaga, Quenching the Spirit, 43, 54.
20. Budgen, Charismatics and the Word of God, 165–78; MacArthur, RecklessFaith, 162–75; and Haykin/McHale, The “Toronto Blessing,” 295–307.
21. R. F. Lovelace, “The Surprising Works of God,” Christianity Today 39 (11 September 1995) 28–32.
22. Beverly, Holy Laughter, 31.
23. Chevreau, Catch The Fire, 77.
24. Ibid., 90
25. T. Erdt, Jonathan Edwards: Art and the Sense of the Heart (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1980) 3–8.
26. J. E. Smith, Jonathan Edwards: Puritan, Preacher, Philosopher (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992) 14.
27. J. Edwards, Religious Affections, vol. 2 of Works of Jonathan Edwards, ed. J. E. Smith (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1959) 95.
28. Lovelace, “The Surprising Works of God,” 31.
29. Chevreau, Catch The Fire, 71.
30. Ibid., 72–88. While Chevreau speaks of Edwards as a mystic, the label is dubious at best. C. Cherry notes: One had best leave the mantle of “mysticism” for another wearer than Edwards, for it fits him loosely at best. Even when the term “mystic” is defined broadly as “one who claims to know God through a form of spiritual inwardness,” it is not strictly applicable; for Edwards “spiritual inwardness” never replaces the visible means of grace and the outward orientation of faith. (The Theology of Jonathan Edwards [Garden City, NY: Anchor, 1966] 88)
31. J. Edwards, “Some Thoughts Concerning the Revival,” in The Great Awakening, vol. 4 of Works of JonathanEdwards, ed. C. C. Goen (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1972) 341. Chevreau quotes from the Hickman edition of the collected works of Jonathan Edwards (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth Trust, 1974) 1.378, though he fails to indicate that he deleted several sentences from a rather large section.
32. Chevreau, Catch The Fire, 90.
33. The citation from the Hickman edition is 1.354.
34. Ibid., 1.lviiib.
35. Edwards, “Some Thoughts Concerning the Revival,” 300.
36. DeArteaga, Quenching The Spirit, 55.
37. “Some Thoughts Concerning the Revival,” 314.
38. The citation is from the Hickman edition of Distinguishing Marks, 1.264b.
39. Chevreau, Catch The Fire, 117.
40. McCloughry, “Basic Stott,” 32.
41. Beverly, “Toronto’s Mixed Blessing,” 25–26.
42. Pollock, “Laughter, Swoonings, and Other Strange Things,” 1; Corelli, “Going to the Mat for God,” 57; and Pinnock, “Can’t Tell God How & Where To Work,” 10.
43. Chevreau, Catch The Fire, 71.
44. Edwards, Religious Affections, 96–97. See also Smith, Jonathan Edwards, 34.
45. Smith, Jonathan Edwards, 31.
46. Edwards, Religious Affections, 120.
47. J. E. Smith, “Religious Affections by Jonathan Edwards,” AmericanPresbyterians 66 (Winter 1988) 220.
48. Ibid., 98, 102.
49. J. E. Smith, “Testing The Spirits: Jonathan Edwards and the Religious Affections,” Union Seminary Quarterly Review 38 (Fall/ Winter 1981–82) 33.
50. Edwards, “Some Thoughts Concerning the Revival,” 385.
51. Edwards, Religious Affections, 386.
52. Ibid., 119. Edwards argues repeatedly that the affections per se do not determine validity, but the nature, source, and manner of them. See J. D. Hannah, “Evangelicalism, Conversion, and the Gospel: Have We Sold Our Heritage for Relevance?” in The Coming Evangelical Crisis, ed. J. H. Armstrong (Chicago: Moody, 1996) for a discussion of these issues.
53. Edwards, Religious Affections, 268.
54. J. Edwards, “Christian Knowledge,” in On Knowing Christ (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth Trust, 1990) 15.
55. Ibid., 17.
56. Ibid., 28–29.
57. J. Edwards, “Charity and Its Fruits,” in Ethical Writings, vol. 8 of Works of Jonathan Edwards, ed. P. Ramsey (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989) 277.
58. J. Edwards, “A Faithful Narrative,” in The Great Awakening, 191.
59. Ibid., 192–94. Attempts to identify Abigail’s experience of conversion with slaying or resting in the Spirit seem unwarranted (Chevreau, Catch The Fire, 37). First, it was a conversion narrative, not the experience of one seeking a deeper experience with God; second, bodily phenomena are incidental to the vision of the excellency of her redeemer; and, third, the narrative is that of a person of rapidly decaying health.
60. Edwards, “A Faithful Narrative,“ 199–205.
61. J. Edwards, The Life of David Brainerd, vol. 7 of Works of Jonathan Edwards, ed. N. Pettit (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985) 92.
62. Ibid., 307.
63. Ibid., 340.
64. Edwards, “Some Thoughts Concerning the Revival,” 332.
65. J. Edwards, An Account of the Conversion and Religious Experience … (London: J. Mathews, 1780) 7.
66. Erdt, Jonathan Edwards, 30–31.
67. Chevreau argues that the Toronto meetings are similar to the Northampton Awakening because both were instances of renewal, not revival (Catch TheFire, 129). That is, Sarah’s experience was typical of both religious events. The assumption appears to be that Edwards understood “professors” to be Christians. The data in A Faithful Narrative, Edwards’s most descriptive analysis of the awakening, does not support the claim. He indicates that the remarkable feature of the awakening had been its “saving effect.” Before three sacramental services, which were held bimonthly, 100, 80, and 60, respectively, were added to the church, making “an open explicit profession of Christianity” (p. 157). It must be remembered that neither church affiliation nor attendance on the Lord’s Table was restricted to believers, the Northampton church following the insights of S. Stoddard. The awakened were the lost, not the slumbering. “I hope,” writes Edwards, “that more than 300 souls were savingly brought home to Christ in this town in the space of half a year” (“A Faithful Narrative,” 158).
68. Edwards, “Distinguishing Marks,” in The Great Awakening, 232.
69. McCloughry, “Basic Stott,” 32.
70. J. A. Beverly, “Vineyard Severs Ties with ‘Toronto Blessing,’” Christianity Today 40 (8 January 1996) 66.
71. Letter, “Notice of Withdrawal of Endorsement From the Toronto Airport Vineyard,” 13 December 1995.
72. Smith, Jonathan Edwards, 32–33. C. Cherry states, “Edwards certainly did not condone these fruits of the Revival—he condemned what he called bastard religion enthusiasm and its numerous theological errors—but he held that the legitimate cannot be measured by the illegitimate” (“Imagery and Analysis: Jonathan Edwards on Revivals of Religion,” in Jonathan Edwards: His Life and Influence, ed. by C. Angoff [Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University, 1975] 26).
73. Edwards, “Some Thoughts Concerning the Revival,” 300–301.
74. C. C. Goen, “Introduction” to The Great Awakening, 66.
75. Ibid. See also Smith, Jonathan Edwards, 31–32.
76. W. Breitenbach, “Religious Affections and Religious Affectations,” in BenjaminFranklin, Jonathan Edwards, and the Presentation of American Culture, ed. H. S. Stout and B. B. Oberg (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993) 17.
77. Edwards, Religious Affections, 181.
78. Cherry, The Theology of Jonathan Edwards, 28.
79. P. Wilson-Kastner, Coherence in a Fragmented World: JonathanEdwards’ Theology of the Holy Spirit (Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1978) 28.
80. Edwards, Religious Affections, 278–82.
81. Edwards, “Some Thoughts Concerning the Revival,” 331.
82. Ibid., 432, 444.
83. Cherry, The Theology of Jonathan Edwards, 173.
84. Edwards, “To the Rev. Thomas Prince of Boston,” in The Great Awakening, 159. Cherry phrases it this way, "According to Edwards, it is not the degree but the source or origin of human affective experience that is crucial for the experience” (The Theology of Jonathan Edwards, 173).
85. Edwards, Religious Affections, 125–90.
86. Ibid., 135.
87. Ibid., 288.
88. Ibid., 226.
89. Ibid., 287.
90. Ibid., 282, 283.
91. Koch, “Holy Laughter,” 13.
92. Letter, “Notice of Withdrawal.”
93. DeArteaga is insightful in this regard, arguing that Edwards had a defective, Reformation-oriented view of the Holy Spirit; that is, he had a faulty view of the signs of the Spirit’s presence relegating the miraculous manifestations to the incidental (Quenching the Spirit, 54–56).
94. Edwards, “Charity and Its Fruits,” 153.
95. Ibid., 157–61. See also the discussion of these matters by Ramsey in the introduction to the volume (pp. 36–44).
96. Ibid., 364.
97. Ibid., 357–58.
98. J. Hoopes, “Jonathan Edwards’s Religious Psychology,” Journal of American History 69 (March 1983) 863.
99. J. Edwards, A History of the Work of Redemption, vol. 9 of Works of Jonathan Edwards, ed. J. F. Wilson (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989) 365.
100. Ibid., 431.
101. N. Pettit, “Introduction to the Diary of David Brainerd,” in The Life of David Brainerd, 5.
102. Edwards, The Life of David Brainerd, 450. Edwards repeats his view in several of his Awakening works. See, for example, “Distinguishing Marks,” 243, 278–79, 280; “Some Thoughts Concerning the Revival,” 300–302; and Religious Affections, 280.
103. Letter, “Vineyard News,” 20 December 1995. See also, Beverly, Holy Laughter, 23.
104. Edwards, “Some Thoughts Concerning the Revival,” 353.
105. Ibid., 346. See also pp. 353–54, where he offers biblical justification for his view.
106. S. J. Stein, “Introduction” to Apocalyptic Writings, vol. 5 of Works of JonathanEdwards, ed. S. J. Stein (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1977) 13–14.
107. J. Edwards, “An Humble Attempt,” in Apocalyptic Writings, 412–24. The vial judgments were interpreted as judgments on the Antichrist. The fifth vial was understood to have taken place in the Reformation where, “the Pope lost near half of his former dominion” (p. 381). See also the “Tractate On Revelation 16:12” (pp. 298–301).
108. Edwards, A History of the Work of Redemption, 462.
109. J. Edwards, “Miscellanies,” A-500, vol. 13 of Works of Jonathan Edwards, ed. T. Schafer (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994) 195.
110. Edwards, “A Humble Attempt,” 329, 347–48.
111. Ibid., 348.
112. Edwards, “Miscellanies,” 212.
113. Edwards, A History of the Work of Redemption, 461.
114. Ibid., 466.
115. Ibid., 470.
116. Edwards, “Charity and Its Fruits,” 362.
117. Ibid., 363.
118. Ibid., 170.