Sublime

In this chapter, we will look primarily at Edwards’s analysis of the lukewarm Christian. We will look at a sermon entitled “Living Unconverted Under Eminent Means of Grace,” move to a substantial selection from the Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God, and then examine sermons entitled “Many Mansions” and “True Grace Distinguished from

In one of the most famous passages from the entirety of his writings, Edwards went on to elegantly show how this “true sense” differs from a mere intellectual conviction:

Edwards knew that he did not need to please man; he needed to please God.

Though we may possess theological knowledge and even a strong drive to know the Word, Edwards calls us to check our hearts and the hearts of our fellow church members.

We had not heard of Jonathan Edwards’s book The Religious Affections (1746). Edwards, America’s first philosopher, based his teaching on St. Augustine’s trinitarian view of man derived from the New Testament. Edwards’s paradigm, Dixon said, was far more useful for clinical psychology than Charles Darwin’s 1872 book The Expressions of the Emotions i

conclude with chapter five by noting what Edwards’s view of conversion led him to do in his own church, demonstrating that Edwards was no ivory-tower thinker, but a pastor who lived his convictions even to the bitter—but scripturally faithful—end.

Edwards’s sketch of the terrors of judgment demonstrated that fearing God’s wrath did not mark a person as a true believer. But neither did a desire to be free of that judgment prove the existence of saving faith in the heart:

We now seek to apply the insights and practical experience of Edwards to our modern context. Though this is by no means an exhaustive proposal, it is a call to arms to Christians everywhere to seek true conversion and the vivifying life it creates.