Why “A Divine and Supernatural Light”?
Carrying on the premise behind an earlier post, another question I’ve been asked recently is, “why call the site ‘A Divine and Supernatural Light?’” This is a great question and one that should probably have been answered in the initial “an introduction” post, but oh well.
When I was trying to come up with a title for the site, I wanted something that best captured the whole of Jonathan Edwards’s life and ministry. Unfortunately, when most people today think of Edwards they would probably say that, according to the stated criteria, I should have named the site “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” One of the greatest tragedies in the American educational system today is the treatment of Edwards in high school English and college introductory literature courses. Typically, all students know of Edwards from these courses is Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God presented as the archetypal milieu of 18th century New England. Even worse, as was the case in a friend’s experience, some classes do not even read Sinners in its entirety, instead reading only the infamous spider passage. The result is scores of students having an incredibly skewed view of Edwards and his theology, colonial American society, and colonial American literature.
A better choice than Sinners, perhaps, is A Divine and Supernatural Light which you can read in its entirety here. This sermon is a wonderful example of the theological themes and trends that characterized the first half of the 18th century in colonial New England, a society so enraptured in the ebbs and flows of evangelical awakenings. Famous in its own right, though not to the degree of Sinners, this sermon speaks about the beauty and sweetness of God in who he is and how he saves humans from his wrath. The “divine light” that Edwards speaks of is “immediately imparted to the soul by God,” and consists in “a true sense of the divine excellency of the things revealed in the Word of God, and a conviction of the truth and reality of them, thence arising.”
This “new sense of divine things,” as Edwards describes it elsewhere, is of utmost importance in his overall theological system. Just as one cannot fully know or comprehend the sweetness of honey without tasting it, neither could one fully know or understand the beauty, loveliness, holiness, majesty, etc. of God without the awakening of the soul that comes through the Holy Spirit’s imparting the divine and supernatural light to that soul. One could certainly have some sort of knowledge of God without this light, what Edwards called “speculative knowledge,” but that knowledge would be insufficient for producing the sort of saving relationship that Edwards so desired all to possess.
The ideas found in this sermon would continue to be expounded upon and used by Edwards throughout his life, finding their fullest treatment in Edwards’s magisterial A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections. Much more than Sinners, A Divine and Supernatural Light offers a glimpse into the truly pastoral and aesthetic side of Edwards’s thought and writings, the meticulous nature that characterized many of his greatest arguments, and a broader sense of what was going on and being discussed culturally at the time of its preaching and publication. If only high schools and introductory college courses would teach this sermon, rather than a horribly imbalanced version of Sinners!
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