From the JEC Blog

Yullin Church Funds New Lecture Series

by geoffrey.fulkerson | June 12th, 2013

testThe Jonathan Edwards Center at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School is pleased to announce a new lecture series on Edwards’ international reception, entitled “The Global Edwards.” With the generous support of the Yullin Church of South Korea, especially its pastor, Nam-Joon Kim, this new series will bring to campus the leading Edwards scholars working from outside the United States.

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Pastor Nam-Joon Kim

While Jonathan Edwards has long been recognized as the United States’ preeminent theologian, and one of the leading influences in the U.S. church, his international renown and global reception is less recognized. That is quickly changing, however, as represented in the new global Jonathan Edwards centers initiated from Yale and in several publications tied to Trinity’s Edwards Center, such as David W. Kling and Douglas A. Sweeney, eds.,Jonathan Edwards at Home and Abroad: Historical Memories, Cultural Movements, Global Horizons (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2003), and Oliver D. Crisp and Douglas A. Sweeney, eds., After Jonathan Edwards: The Courses of the New England Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).

In an effort to galvanize this international scholarship, we are therefore pleased to announce “The Global Edwards” series. It will feature international scholars engaged in the increasingly global conversation on Edwards’ life and influence.

All these lectures will be free and open to the public and posted on our Edwards Center website.

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Posted in Announcements, JEC at TEDS |

Jonathan Edwards for the Church Conference

by geoffrey.fulkerson | June 11th, 2013

confA notable feature of the recovery of the Reformed faith in the United Kingdom was God’s use of American theologian Jonathan Edwards in the ministries and lives of the leaders. Thomas Chalmers, Charles Spurgeon, A. W. Pink, John Murray, and D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones all considered the discovery of Edwards’ writings as turning points in their ministries. Indeed, it is at least possible that the qualitative influence of Edwards has been greater here than it has been among the American church. Jonathan Edwards for the Church seeks to promote such usefulness in a new generation.

The upcoming Jonathan Edwards for the Church Conference will take place next year on February 27 and 28 at Collingwood College, Durham (UK), and the speakers include Reformed ministers who have studied Edwards as well as specialist scholars who are also ministers. They are:

  • Nicholas T. Batzig
  • David Owen Filson
  • William Macleod
  • 
Gerald R. McDermott
  • John J. Murray
  • 
Jon D. Payne
  • William M. Schweitzer
  • 
Douglas A. Sweeney
  • Jeffrey C. Waddington

This conference will provide a forum in the UK for ministers and other interested Christians to share the riches of Jonathan Edwards’s astonishing ministry. We have seen half a century of rapidly escalating JE publications and research, and there have been many conferences held all over the world but this is believed to be the first held in England. While most of these conferences have been primarily for the academy, this conference is unashamedly for the church. Therefore, worship and prayer will be integrated into the program.

You can register now here. For more information please contact edwardsconference@gmail.com or visit edwardsconference.org.

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Posted in Announcements |

Sweeney’s Booknotes: Jonathan Edwards and the life of Godliness

by doug.sweeney | May 20th, 2013

Kyle Strobel, Formed for the Glory of God: Learning from the Spiritual Practices of Jonathan Edwards (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2013).

kyle-strobel_formed-for-the-glory-of-GodThis is a popular devotional book by an up-and-coming Edwards scholar. It offers important lessons in authentic spirituality from the life and work of Edwards.

The book has two parts. In Part One, Strobel offers “a broad overview of the journey of faith” with help from Edwards’ writings. “Here, we look at how our path is oriented to heaven, how it is an ascent in God’s glory and how it is the way of affection” (16). Or as Strobel puts this later, in the conclusion to Part One,

We started by focusing on heaven as a world of love, a place where love reigns because the God of love reigns there. This functions as a horizon point for us, because it helps to orient the Christian life. Heaven is the place we are striving toward, and therefore knowing the destination helps orient us in our pilgrimage. Second, we looked at salvation as grasping both beauty and glory, and ascending to the Father in the Son. Jesus becomes human so that we can participate in the divine life. The life of faith, therefore, is a life of   grasping the beauty and glory of God and becoming beautiful and glorious creatures of God. Third, we addressed religious affection, which is the way of the heart. God calls his people to love him with their whole hearts and follow him as faithful children. This love is seeing the beauty and glory of God in Christ by the illumination of the Spirit (66).

In Part Two, the author examines various tools for use on the journey. “Specifically,” he says, “I highlight spiritual disciplines, what Edwards called means of grace, and then the interconnection of knowledge of God and ourselves” (16). In chapters on “Spiritual Disciplines as Means of Grace,” “Knowledge of God and Knowledge of Self,” “Meditation and Contemplation,” and “Jonathan Edwards’s Spiritual Practices,” Strobel offers advice on how to grow in godliness by reappropriating practices such as meditation, contemplation, Sabbath observance, fasting, conferencing, soliloquy, silence and solitude, and prayer, as exemplified by Edwards.

It is important, Strobel avers, to read both parts of the book together, observing its overall “flow.” Stroble refuses to speak of practices, he says, “until we have a firm grasp of the big picture of the Christian life. If we started with practices, as so many have, we will ultimately lose sight of their role in leading us to Christ. Inevitably, I fear, a focus on disciplines digresses quickly to self-help. Edwards offers a different way” (16), a much more theological way than most popular books provide.

This primer on Christian godliness presents no new research. Nor is it aimed at academics. It is short, easy to read, and comes warmly recommended for believers seeking a closer walk with God.

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized |

Sweeney’s Booknotes: Asahel Nettleton and Revivalism

by doug.sweeney | April 1st, 2013

E-A-Johnston_Asahel-Nettleton-Revival-Preacher

E. A. Johnston, Asahel Nettleton: Revival Preacher, A Biography (Ashville, NC: Revival Literature, 2012).

This is a work of hagiography most likely to be read by Reformed evangelicals. Written by an evangelist, prolific Christian author, and conference speaker with Ambassadors For Christ International, its author also serves as a fellow of the Stephen Olford Center for Biblical Preaching.

Johnston’s book is the longest one on Nettleton to date. It is more current than Bennet Tyler’s Memoir of the Life and Character of Asahel Nettleton (1844); more thorough than J. F. Thornbury’s God Sent Revival: The Story of Asahel Nettleton and the Second Great Awakening (1977); and more readable and useful to a wider range of people than the now-dated dissertations written on Nettleton and his work: George Hugh Birney, Jr., “Life and Letters of Asahel Nettleton, 1783-1844” (Hartford Theological Seminary, 1943), and Sherry Pierpont May, “Asahel Nettleton: Nineteenth Century American Revivalist” (Drew University, 1969).

Aimed at kindred spirits seeking revival in the present, it is spiritually edifying but historically inaccurate. It is rather thinly researched, full of massive block quotations from the author’s favorite sources but hardly any interpretation of the subject’s life, work, or even historical location that is informed by recent scholarship or older social histories. It repeats the shop-worn caricatures of Nettleton’s opponents as harmful wolves in sheep’s clothing. (Nathaniel Taylor was as a Pelagian, Charles Finney one of the greatest threats to genuine religion in all of American church history, modern evangelical history a story of declension, etc.) It claims to provide reliable history of the New England Theology, but does so without reference to most of the leading works of scholarship by specialists in the field (Joseph Conforti, Allen Guelzo, David Kling, Mark Valeri, Jack Fitzmier, Mark Noll, Charlie Phillips, Oliver Crisp, et al.)

On the bright side, Johnston has reprinted 40 letters written by Nettleton to colleagues (taken from Birney’s dissertation); first-hand accounts of the revival of 1820, mainly in upstate New York, and Nettleton’s role in leading it; memories of Nettleton’s life by Francis Wayland and others; and large sections of important primary sources.

This is not a book for scholars, or for students of church history. But among modern-day Calvinists who are looking for support as they work to revive the church, it is a book that will be cherished. Evangelical Arminians (and others) will feel attacked. But Nettletonians should find in their eponym great inspiration.

Posted in BookNotes |

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