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Dissertation Note: “Rhetoric of the Revival: A Pragma-Rhetorical Analysis of the Language of the Great Awakening Preachers”

by Daniel Cooley | March 26th, 2013

Michał Choiński’s dissertation “Rhetoric of the Revival: A Pragma-Rhetorical Analysis of the Language of the Great Awakening Preachers”, completed at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland, aims to analyze the “rhetoric of revival” in ten New England revival sermons from 1739 to 1745. Using the academic methodology of rhetoric, the author unpacks the “mechanisms of rhetoric and the persuasive use of language” employed by several well known preachers of the First Great Awakening including George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, Gilbert Tennant, Jonathan Parsons, and Andrew Croswell.

The study is organized into three parts: methodology, cultural and historical background, and sermon analysis. In first chapter, Choiński defines the scope of rhetoric, he selectively reviews the history of rhetoric including the classic taxonomy or the “canon of rhetoric”: inventio, dispositio, elocutio, memoria, and pronunciatio. Combined with traditional rhetorical analysis, he utilizes the relatively new approach to rhetoric called the pragmatic approach defined as the “relations of signs to interpreters.”

Chapter two delivers an admirable historical and cultural overview of New England as it relates to the Great Awakening and to the subjects of his study. The author walks the reader through preaching practices in Puritan New England from 1620 to the dawn of the Awakening. He also considers the phenomenon of the Great Awakening from an historical standpoint and surveys some of the key historical interpretations. The author strikes a cautious but sympathetic tone in his treatment of his controversial topic. In the end, the author agrees that there was a general spiritual awakening in New England in the 1740s rather than a constructed or invented phenomenon on the basis of a few pockets of revival.

Chapter three, the bulk of the dissertation, is devoted to the analysis of ten sermons which the author selected to demonstrate the rhetorical range of material that was produced in the Great Awakening. His work here is largely composed of rhetorical commentary upon each of the sermons. The selections are Whitefield’s What Think Ye of Christ?, Abraham’s Offering Up His Son Isaac, The Lord Our Righteousness, The Conversion of Zaccheus, Jonathan Edwards’s Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, Future Punishment of the Wicked Unavoidable and Intolerable, and The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God, Gilbert Tennent’s The Danger of an Unconverted Ministry, Jonathan Parsons’s A Needful Caution in a Critical Day, and Andrew Croswell’s The Apostle’s Advice to the Jaylor Improved. A brief conclusion summarizes the findings concerning each of preachers. Concerning Edwards in particular, He observed “intricate rhetorical mechanisms” and “highly elaborate imagery and structured argumentation” as well as extended metaphors.

This dissertation will be useful for specialists who interested in the construction and delivery of revival sermons, especially concerning the preaching of the Great Awakening. The author’s expertise is in rhetoric, so his main contributions lie in that domain. A second group who may be helped by this dissertation are pastors who have formal training in rhetoric. These pastors could find sermon inspiration in this analysis of the “rhetoric of revival.” To be sure, this study’s aim is to describe the main rhetorical features of the selected sermons. While Choiński does pay close attention to the primary source materials in his study, he does not marshal any significant argument concerning the “rhetoric of revival.”

— Daniel Cooley, Senior Fellow of the Jonathan Edwards Center at TEDS

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Dissertation Note: “Typology as Rhetoric: Reading Jonathan Edwards”

by geoffrey.fulkerson | November 1st, 2012

Světlíková, Anna. “Typology as Rhetoric: Reading Jonathan Edwards.” PhD diss., Charles University (Prague, Czech Republic), 2012.

Jonathan Edwards’ typology has often attracted attention because it constitutes one of the unique aspects of his thought. Typology enjoyed a signal position in much of the history of Christian exegesis, but Edwards innovatively extended it beyond the interpretation of the Bible to apply it to both history and nature.

While scholars have debated the theological merits of Edwards’ typology, Anna Světlíková seeks to shake up the discussion by approaching it not from a theological or historical standpoint, but from a literary theory perspective. She claims that the current Edwards field is confined by “methodological limitations” (7), and one of the major overarching claims she posits is that the study of Edwards needs to benefit from the insight of literary theory. She offers her dissertation as a model of this literary approach. (Světlíková gave a lecture related to this topic at the Jonathan Edwards Center at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School on April 30, 2012, which is available on the “Media” page of our website.)

In her project Světlíková offers a rhetorical assessment of Edwards’ typology. She models her methodology on the deconstructive criticism of Paul de Man, J. Hillis Miller, and Jacques Derrida. To balance this literary method, she seeks to conduct “close readings” of the text and to contextualize Edwards’ typology in the history of typology (35).

The four chapters that form the bulk of her dissertation address the problem of language in Edwards’ typology and compare Edwards’ typology to the emblematic tradition, to the “performative” aspect of speech-act theory, and to allegory—always with a focus on the literary nature of these devices.

Central to Světlíková’s arguments are the notions of complexity, indefiniteness, and process. For example, she declines to offer a definition of Edwards’ typology, noting instead that typology exists as a range between two extremes and that she provides a treatment with “greater complexity than a simple definition could accomplish” (80). In fact, throughout her dissertation she compounds qualification upon qualification to develop a web of tension for understanding Edwards’ thought. And in some ways, the process is more important than the conclusion, as Světlíková states in her acknowledgements: “I do not think I have found some particular thing, indeed if there is something to be found it might not be a thing at all. This work, then, is not about what I have found; rather, it is a record of a part of that search” (iv).

This complexity is visible in her discussion of language. In essence, Světlíková rejects Edwards’ defense of his typology as inadequate, raising more questions than it answers. She notes that Edwards’ theory of types is grounded in his understanding of language, not just theology. But she finds Edwards’ idea of language troublingly complex and filled with tensions: she says that he thought language was referentially reliable, yet also complex; that he said typology communicated spiritual knowledge while such knowledge is incomprehensible; and that for Edwards, language has an arbitrary value to it, while at the same time it has a certainty about it when God reveals spiritual things through figures of speech. Světlíková concludes that the problem with Edwards’ typology is that instead of defining it in distinction to metaphors, he uses a metaphor to describe it. This complexity, she suggests, detracts from his typology.

In her discussion of the emblem, Světlíková argues that while Edwards may have anticipated the Romantic tradition in some points, he differed from it in several other literary ways. Particularly, while the Romantics situated the meaning of nature in the individual’s experience, Edwards situated the spiritual meaning of nature in its divinely endowed ontology. Thus, he seems to have had more in common with emblem and meditation traditions, even if they did not directly influence him.

In exploring the “performative” nature of Edwards’ typology, Světlíková claims that Edwards’ typology inevitably falls into subjectivism because the authoritative judgment of what constitutes a type lies ultimately in the individual self who “performs” the act of identifying a type. Edwards’ appeals to Scripture as the authoritative guide fail, she says, because while such appeals point to the “constative” nature of his typology, the “performative” nature cannot be denied. Still, Světlíková complicates her own analysis by saying that, in some ways, Edwards’ occasionalism and idealism imply that the self is wholly dependent on God. With the performative act of typology thus itself a type, authority may in some sense shift from self to God.

As she turns to a discussion of allegory, heavily informed by the literary theory of Michael Murrin and Paul de Man, Světlíková throws doubt on whether the discussion of Edwards’ typology as constative and performative is even the right question. In her comparisons, she argues that in one way Edwards connects more with Renaissance allegory because his types assume a divine presence, as does Renaissance allegory, while Romantic poetry assumes a divine absence. At the same time, she suggests that Edwards’ typology fails to establish a divine presence because he opens the possibility of misinterpretation or error in typology, which has more in common with the Romantic rejection of a reliable foundation.

In the end, Světlíková’s deconstructive literary approach points to the failure of Edwards’ theory of typology. She suggests that “an uncritical theological appropriation of Edwards might admire the gist of his natural typology,” but her study “points out that the typological project is inherently conflicted not because Edwards is wrong but because it cannot be otherwise, because such conflict is not even a failure of his theory but part of language itself” (206).

As a historian—and not a literary theorist—I approach this dissertation from one outside of Světlíková’s literary discipline while sharing her interest in Edwards. I appreciate that she seeks, at times, to contextualize Edwards historically. Her discussion also helpfully shows the limitations of language, which complicates Edwards’ understanding and practice of typology and raises fair questions about what it would actually look like for someone to adopt Edwards’ typology. And her comparisons of his typology with Renaissance allegory and Romantic poetry show how his theological commitments connect him more closely to the ideas of the former, while his expanded view of typology in nature foreshadows elements of Romanticism.

At the same time, a number of considerations from a historian’s viewpoint should be raised. Methodologically speaking, Světlíková does not explain how she chooses which Edwards texts to include in her study. And the lack of definition at times leaves the reader grasping for a concrete conclusion. In addition, the literary approach often sidelines the theological priorities in Edwards’ thought. For example, while Světlíková argues that Edwards’ typology falls into subjectivism, Edwards himself held theological constraints and guides for his typology, specifically reading types through the lens of God’s work of redemption. She also describes the subjectivity of Edwards’ typology by saying that while Scripture is the standard of interpretation, it is, in Edwards’ view, filled with figures and types, which undermines its authority since “typological judgment … can only be verified against more typology or figurative expressions which in turn are liable to the same problems of interpretation” (145). But this description of the Bible does not accurately reflect Edwards’ broader understanding of Scripture, his confidence that it communicates much with “the amiable simplicity of truth” (WJE 13:203), and his practice of using clear passages in Scripture to shed light on passages that were less clear (e.g., see WJE 22:101). When constrained by the analogy of Scripture and the analogy of faith, as we see from a historical and theological viewpoint, Edwards’ typology sheds much of its subjectivity.

From another angle, Světlíková takes a skeptical view of language and the ability to communicate through it. By saying that Edwards’ typology is bound to fail simply because of the nature of language, one wonders whether all communicative efforts are thus bound to fail. At best, we can recognize in such an argument the necessity of humility in discourse. But retaining a realistic optimism about the sufficiency of language gives Edwards’ typology a chance to float on its own merits.

To the larger question we must ask: how useful is literary theory for Edwards studies? In this study Světlíková raises some interesting questions about Edwards’ typology and tackles it from the unique standpoint of deconstructive literary theory. She ultimately argues that Edwards scholars need to open up their methodological approach to embrace literary theory as a way forward for interpreting Edwards. From this historian’s standpoint, though, while literary theory may have something to add to Edwards studies, it proves less helpful when it disconnects Edwards from his theology and historical setting.

~ David Barshinger, PhD

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Dissertation Notes: “The Relationship of the Old and New Testaments in the Theology of Jonathan Edwards”

by geoffrey.fulkerson | October 25th, 2011

Stephen R. C. Nichols, “The Relationship of the Old and New Testaments in the Theology of Jonathan Edwards (1703–58)” (PhD diss., University of Bristol, 2011).

In his famous letter to the Trustees of the College of New Jersey, Jonathan Edwards baited the imagination of Edwards scholars for years to come with his description of a “great work,” which he planned to call “The Harmony of the Old and New Testament,” but did not live to write. Stephen R. C. Nichols (not to be confused with fellow Edwards scholar Stephen J. Nichols of Lancaster Bible College) explores the notes for this work and its import in Edwards’ theology in his recent dissertation.

Nichols’ work aims to redress the lack of attention to Edwards’ interest in the Bible by studying his well-developed notes on the “Harmony,” and he structures his dissertation to mirror the three major sections of the work: prophecy, typology, and doctrine and precept. In each chapter, he looks first at Edwards’ full corpus as it bears on these three issues and only then turns to discuss the “Harmony.” He wraps up his dissertation with a case study of the soteriological harmony Edwards saw between the two testaments.

In his first chapter Nichols shows how Edwards sought to reveal the deists’ unreasonableness and offer a more reasonable way of reading biblical prophecy, namely by demonstrating that the Messiah brings harmony to the Old and New Testaments. For the representative deist foil to Edwards, Nichols uses Anthony Collins, author of A Discourse of the Grounds and Reasons of the Christian Religion (1724), in which he argued that the apostles ripped Old Testament texts out of their context to establish a connection between the Old Testament prophecies and the New Testament Christ, a connection he believed failed the test of reason. In his broad approach to prophecy, Edwards argued that the divine author can intend an ultimate meaning beyond that of the human author, that Scripture must be its own interpreter, and that the Holy Spirit gives the regenerate a new spiritual sense for recognizing these connections. Specifically in his notes on the “Harmony,” he presented a discussion of Old Testament prophecies of the Messiah, apart from New Testament citations of such passages, on a large scale and in minute detail to make a formidable argument that “a Messianic interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures is a thoroughly reasonable and coherent interpretation of those Scriptures” (23).

Nichols moves on in his second chapter to consider Edwards’ view of typology. He shows that Edwards’ expansive typology was consistent with his philosophical commitments to an “idealism that saw creation as inherently communicative, and being as inherently harmonious” (102). God upholds the creation by his being and communicates himself for the purpose of his glory through the creation, particularly in types. Scripture models the use of such types, but also constrains the interpreter in typology. Thus, in his notes on the “Harmony,” taken from his “Miscellanies” entry no. 1069, “Types of the Messiah,” Edwards made a robust argument using minute intra-Scriptural details that the Old Testament, standing alone, is by nature typological and that Jesus is the Messiah that it typifies. Nichols concludes that Edwards’ typological innovations, compared to his Puritan forebears, made it possible for him “to bind the Testaments more tightly together with his typology than his predecessors had been able to with theirs” (120).

In his third chapter on doctrine and precept, Nichols argues that the history of redemption and the covenant of grace provide the framework for Edwards’ understanding of the doctrinal harmony in the Old and New Testaments. Christ’s redemptive work in the incarnation is “the crux of history,” and all history, prior to and after Christ, is “a grand scheme divinely directed to God’s own glory through the redemption of Christ” (129). In discussing the covenant of grace, Edwards held that it is identical in substance in both the Old and New Testaments, but different in administration, which demonstrates the continuity between the two testaments. Nichols argues that Edwards’ notebook titled, “The Harmony of the Genius, Spirit, Doctrines and Rules of the Old Testament and the New,” represents his notes for the final third section of his “Harmony of the Old and New Testament,” and it shows, in its sketchy form, this same doctrinal harmony between the two testaments.

In his case study of Edwards’ soteriology in the fourth chapter, Nichols engages at length with Anri Morimoto’s notion of Edwards’ so-called “dispositional soteriology,” by which Morimoto argues that God creates grace in the elect, giving them a “new disposition” without them necessarily expressing faith explicitly in Christ (see Morimoto’s Jonathan Edwards and the Catholic Vision of Salvation). Also, Nichols challenges Gerald McDermott’s thesis, building on Morimoto’s, that Edwards laid the foundation for believing that people can be saved without the hearing of the Word (see McDermott’s Jonathan Edwards Confronts the Gods). Nichols particularly focuses on their arguments as they relate to the question of how the Old Testament elect were saved. The essence of what he argues is that for Edwards, the “new disposition” refers to the immediate indwelling of the Holy Spirit; justification is a declaration of righteousness, not a reward for righteousness; the Mediator, not obedience to the Law, is the grounds of salvation in the Old Testament just as in the New; and though God is free to save without means, he usually uses the means of the Word preached to call people to salvation. Ultimately, Edwards is squarely in the Reformed tradition of soteriology, except that through his expanded typology and prophecy he argued that the Old Testament elect actually had a greater understanding of Christ than his forebears believed possible. His approach to soteriology is uniquely framed by his understanding of the harmony of the Old and New Testaments.

As is evident from this note, Nichols seeks to accomplish quite a lot in this dissertation. His work is well-researched with thick notes, demonstrating a thorough understanding of the wider literature, and he adeptly engages the historiography on Edwards. He presents a robust argument that calls into question any wholesale acceptance of Morimoto’s dispositional soteriology and McDermott’s thesis that Edwards anticipated the possibility of salvation in non-Christian religions. This case study is a big argument packed into a small space, but it is one that should be given due consideration as these discussions are bound to continue in Edwards studies.

Nichols also makes a number of historiographical contributions related to Edwards and the Bible. He argues convincingly, contra Mason I. Lowance Jr., that Edwards did not arbitrarily use different models of typology—one conservative, one allegorical—but rather employed a single unitary approach to typology that encompassed all his typological endeavors, whether in biblically identified types or types in human history. Most significantly, Nichols makes a persuasive argument, contra Stephen Stein, that Edwards was not unrestrained in his use of the spiritual sense to interpret the Bible, but rather was guided by the analogy of Scripture and the analogy of faith. He also argues strenuously that the charges saying Edwards’ typology was arbitrary do not take into account his “sophisticated biblical literacy” (100). In fact a closer look shows that his types often allude to various passages throughout Scripture, which is why Edwards argued that one must become fluent in the language of the Bible to be fluent in the language of typology. Nichols lays to rest Stephen Stein’s claim that Edwards was unbounded in his biblical exegesis and typology.

In the end, Nichols shows how the Messiah, his kingdom, and his redemption draw together the whole Bible in harmony for Edwards, ably furthering the discussion of Edwards and the Bible, the area in Edwards studies that perhaps needs the greatest attention at this point in time. He makes several bold arguments that he supports with thick descriptions of Edwards’ notes for the “Harmony” and of Edwards’ broader corpus. His dissertation deserves a wide reading as Edwards scholars continue to flesh out the place of the Bible in Edwards’ thought.

— David Barshinger, Senior Fellow of the Jonathan Edwards Center at TEDS

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Dissertation Notes: “Orderly but Not Ordinary: Jonathan Edwards’s Evangelical Ecclesiology”

by geoffrey.fulkerson | March 23rd, 2011

Rhys Stewart Bezzant, “Orderly but Not Ordinary: Jonathan Edwards’s Evangelical Ecclesiology” (PhD diss., Australian College of Theology, 2010).

Did Jonathan Edwards care all that much about the church? Didn’t he undermine it by hammering for revival and emphasizing the conversion of the individual? And if he didn’t undermine it, were his efforts to restore a pure church model just a knee-jerk reaction against innovations by trying to return to the Eden of Puritan order?

These questions drive Rhys Stewart Bezzant’s learned dissertation on Edwards’ ecclesiology. Bezzant, the Director of the Jonathan Edwards Center Australia at Ridley Melbourne, contends that Edwards, in fact, wrote about the church at great length and that his ecclesiology forms a core element of his broader theology. He argues that while Edwards was indeed “not ordinary” in that he emphasized individual affections and immediate conversion, he was nonetheless “orderly” in his conception of the church as God’s ordained instrument for carrying the gospel to the world. Rather than return to an outdated old church model, Edwards brought the old and the new together into a new synthesis that addressed the concerns of his day.

Bezzant first grounds his discussion in the history of Reformation and Puritan ecclesiology. Several debates highlight the centrality of ecclesiology in Puritanism: the role of human preparation versus God’s providential rule, the means God uses to promote the gospel (e.g., the Halfway Covenant and the Antinomian controversy with Anne Hutchinson), and the church’s purpose as a stationary beacon or an out-moving mission. Bezzant thus establishes the continuity of interest in the nature and state of the church into the eighteenth century.

Bezzant orders the rest of his dissertation in three chronological phases of Edwards’ life, offering close readings of major texts with an eye toward ecclesiology. The first phase (1703–1734) examines Edwards’ early thoughts on ecclesiology, shaped by his father’s strict adherence to a three-step morphology of conversion and his grandfather’s unusual mixture of open communion and firm clerical authority. Edwards’ combating of “Arminian” philosophy in the Anglican church arose largely from his concern that its ecclesiastical polity threatened the local congregation’s authority. Ultimately, Edwards found the “grammar” for his ecclesiology in the work of the Trinity (59), and Bezzant argues that “his dynamic and ordered conception of Trinitarian relations has its echo in the dynamic yet ordered life of the church in the world” (65).

In the second phase of Edwards’ life, Bezzant explores the ecclesiological themes in Edwards’ writings during the waxing and waning of the revivals—including A Faithful Narrative, Charity and Its Fruits, A History of the Work of Redemption, Some Thoughts Concerning the Revival, and Religious Affections (1735–1746). On the one hand we clearly see the “not ordinary”—and potentially destabilizing—nature of Edwards’ ecclesiology in this era. Edwards distanced himself from preparationism, arguing that God can make a shorter work of conversion than prescribed in the morphology of conversion. On the other hand, Edwards upheld an orderly structure within which immediate conversion could take place. In Charity and Its Fruits, for example, Edwards preached that love, a distinctive quality of the church, produces order rather than chaos. God’s work of redemption also brought purpose to the church within God’s design, and Edwards’ emphasis on the objective signs of conversion further revealed his desire for order. Edwards’ mediating ecclesiological position was “to allow for the rise of new practices and conventions, without destroying the received order of the church” (123).

In the third phase Bezzant displays Edwards’ visions of the church and its purposeful ends by engaging An Humble Attempt, The Life of David Brainerd, An Humble Inquiry, A Farewell Sermon, and, briefly, Edwards’ Stockbridge treatises (1747–1758). Here Bezzant pulls back the curtain on Edwards’ grand vision of God’s purposes in human history, in which the church plays a pivotal role. His call to promote prayer grew out of his view that the universal church’s united action would hasten the millennium. Similar concerns underlay Edwards’ aims in upholding Brainerd as a model Christian who embodied a new ecclesiology—a break from the state-church conception of Christendom to a missional mode of spreading the gospel through a renewed church. Furthermore, Bezzant contends that the Communion controversy that largely contributed to Edwards’ dismissal from Northampton cannot be adequately explained by saying that he fearfully ran away from changing social norms to the safe contours of an old ecclesiology; instead, Edwards’ theological concern for the church’s visible union with Christ lay at the heart of his actions. His Farewell Sermon further highlights his “prophetic ecclesiology,” which destabilized the church in its laxity but upheld the visible reality of the church.

Ultimately, Bezzant shows that Edwards’ “ecclesiology was generated by superimposing revivalist conditions and social aspirations onto Reformed convictions (sometimes with the revivalist strand eclipsing his patrimony), making it innovatively evangelical rather than generically Protestant” (209). As Bezzant explains, “For Edwards, the order of the Word creates with the dynamism of the Spirit an elliptical account of the church’s life, which makes it both orderly but not ordinary.” (213)

One of the surprises with Bezzant’s dissertation is that it had not been previously written. He marshals evidence from such a wide array of Edwards’ major works to demonstrate decidedly that ecclesiology constituted a core component of Edwards’ theology and impacted his life in significant ways. How has this gone untreated at the monograph level for so long?

Only a couple things would have strengthened this already excellent work. First, it would have been helpful at the beginning of the dissertation to have some definition of Bezzant’s own category of “ecclesiology.” Bezzant robustly constructs Edwards’ category throughout his work, but at the outset it would have helped to understand the breadth of what Bezzant would consider in examining Edwards’ works. And second, on occasion Bezzant did not make plain the connection between his discussion of Edwards’ writings and Edwards’ ecclesiology. While Bezzant generally brought things together, it would have helped in a few places to make clearer links between his analysis of Edwards’ works and the doctrine of the church.

These quibbles aside, Bezzant’s work is a welcome contribution to Edwards studies, and it stands as a solid piece of scholarship that nuances our understanding of Edwards’ ecclesiology, an evangelical synthesis that both embraced innovation and grounded it in an ordered structure, all to further the gospel of Christ in this world.

— David Barshinger, Senior Fellow of the Jonathan Edwards Center at TEDS

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