267. GOD’S EXISTENCE.

The mere exertion of a new thought is a certain proof of a God. For certainly there is something that immediately produces and upholds that thought; here is a new thing, and there is a necessity of a cause. It is not antecedent thoughts, for they are vanished and gone; they are past, and what is past is not. But if we say ’tis the substance of the soul (if we mean that there is some substance besides that thought, that brings that thought forth), if it be God, I acknowledge; but if there be meant something else that has no properties, it seems to me absurd. If the removal of all properties, such as extendedness, solidity, thought, etc. leaves nothing, it seems to me that no substance is anything but them; for if there be anything besides, there might remain something when these are removed.

Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume 13, The “Miscellanies:” Entry Nos. a–z, aa–zz, 1–500, ed. Thomas A. Schafer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 373.

I had the high privilege of attending the class last year and it was a wonderful experience, well worth the time and cost. In addition to the class lectures, there is also an afternoon devoted to examining Edwards’s actual manuscripts at the Beinecke Library, and a “field trip” at the end of the week to Edwards related locations around New England. I would absolutely recommend attending this class if you are able to go.

Here’s some more information about this year’s class:

June 21-25, 2010

The staff of the Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale University will present a weeklong course examining Jonathan Edwards’s Religious Affections, including the historical context and background, the argument, a discussion of the signs, Edwards’s use of marks of distinguishing grace in preaching, and contemporary spirituality.

The classroom portion of the course will feature lectures and discussions of common readings. There will be ample time allowed for questions and dialogue. Common readings will include a guided reading of Religious Affections and selections from printed collections of Edwards’s writings and secondary sources. Also, the course will be integrated with the use of materials located in The Works of Jonathan Edwards Online (www.edwards.yale.edu).

Special features of the course will be a viewing of Edwards’s manuscripts related to Religious Affections at Yale’s Beinecke Library and a day-long tour of Edwardsean sites on Friday: the Joseph Bellamy House, Bethlehem, CT, and the Dwight L. Moody historic site, Northfield, MA. For course-specific inquiries, please contact edwards@yale.edu.

Register for the course here.

If you’d like to read about my experience from last year, you can find those posts here.

The way that history is to be made use of for our instruction and guidance in matters of faith is twofold: ’tis either in interpreting the Scriptures, or confirming the things that are taught in the Scripture.

1. There is no doubt but that what is to be learned of the ancient customs and state of things at the time when the Scriptures were written, as this is to be learned from other authors, may be made use of in interpreting the Scripture; as well as the ancient use of that language in which the Scriptures are written, as it is to be learned from other authors, is to be made use of in interpreting the words and phrases that are found in the original of the Scriptures: for the customary use of words and phrases is one instance of ancient customs, and what is found in other authors may be as much relied upon with respect to other customs, as the customary use of words and phrases. And the knowledge of ancient customs and the state of things is needful to [be] known in order to an interpretation of the Scripture, the same way as the knowledge of the custom of speech. For, from knowing what was the custom of speaking from other authors, we argue that the penmen of Scripture speak in the same manner: for ’tis a known and manifest thing that custom governs the use of speech and language, and so also it is a known and manifest thing that the state of affairs, in every age and country, governs the use of speech in many respects.

Indeed, so hath God wisely ordered that the Scripture, in both these respects, is more sufficient for itself by far than any other book. Both the use and force of its own phrases is more fully to be learned from the Scriptures themselves, and also the customs and state of things on which the interpretation mainly depends. The manifest design of God in the Scripture, is to speak so plainly as that the interpretation should be more independent than that of any other book which is ever to be remembered, and should always be of great weight with us in our interpretation of the Scripture; and so we should chiefly interpret Scripture by Scripture.

2. Another way that we may make use of history, etc., in affairs of this nature, is to help our weakness and unbelief, and to confirm the truths taught us in the Scripture. History and other ancient writings may, as well, be made use of to confirm anything in the Scripture, according to the force of reason that is in them; as reason may be made use of for this purpose from experience, from our present observation of what passes in our own hearts, or what we observe among our neighbors, or what is to be seen or heard of in the present state of God’s church, or the world of mankind, or the present dispensations of God’s providence.

Whatever affords a just argument to reason, whether history or anything else, may and ought to be made use [of] fully, according to the proportion of weight, or force of real argument, there is in it. The only question there can be is concerning the proportion of weight of argument between the Scripture and other things; and the danger is of not laying weight enough on what we find in the Scripture, not laying such weight on it as God expects we should, on that which he has given to us on purpose, that it might be a sufficient, perfect, and infallible rule.

Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume 18, The “Miscellanies:” 501-832, ed. Ava Chamberlain (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 538-539.

Christ himself endured great trouble and a sense of God’s wrath before his exaltation and the enjoyment of God’s love. The people of Israel endured cruel bondage and were forty years in a desolate wilderness before they came to the pleasant land.

As men are in two exceeding different states, first a state of condemnation and then a state of justification, so it seems reasonable and wise that they should be so sensibly; first that they should be sensibly in a state of condemnation, before they are sensibly in a state of justification: that so the sense of the mind should be in the same order as the state of the soul. For as the glory of the thing is in its being in this order—tis the glory of redemption that it is after so exceeding miserable, extreme, necessitous [a] condition—so it tends much to the sensibleness of the glory, that the man should be first sensible of his misery and extreme necessity, and afterwards of Christ’s sufficiency and salvation. It tends much to the perception of the glory, for there is no glory without perception; and the perception God intended is surely as much in the person that is the subject of the work, as any. It may in some measure answer the end to look back and see past misery and danger, and so only to be sensible of [them] after they are past, but ordinarily not so well. And if this order ben’t observed and they are not made sensible so, I believe God often, by one means or other, keeps them or brings them into doubts about their condition after they are converted, and so makes them sensible, or some other way makes it up.

Flying for refuge denotes fear preceding safety, or at least a sense of danger and necessity attending the application of the soul to Christ. He that comes to Christ does as it were resort to him as an hiding place from the wind and as a covert from the tempest, and as he that resorts to a cool shadow in a weary land after he has been scorched and made

faint by the heat, and as he that comes at length to a river of refreshing water in a dry place after he has been sore distressed with thirst; and Christ is so much the sweeter to him. Proverbs 18:10, “The name of the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous runneth into it, and is safe.”

Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume 13, The “Miscellanies:” Entry Nos. a–z, aa–zz, 1–500, ed. Thomas A. Schafer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 428-429.

The emanation or communication of the divine fullness, consisting in the knowledge of God, love to Go, and joy in God, has relation indeed both to God and the creature: but it has relation to God as its fountain, as it is an emanation from God; and as the communication itself, or thing communicated, is something divine, something of God, something of his internal fullness; as the water in the stream is something of of the fountain; and as the beams are of the sun. And again, they have relation to God as they have respect to him as their object: for the knowledge communicated is the knowledge of God; and so God is the object of the knowledge: and the love communicated, is the love of God; so God is the object of that love: and the happiness communicated, is joy in God; and so he is the object of the joy communicated. In the creature’s knowing, esteeming, loving, rejoicing in, and praising God, the glory of God is both exhibited and acknowledged; his fullness is received and returned. Here is both an emanation and remanation. The refulgence shines upon and into the creature, and is reflected back to the luminary. The beams of glory come from God, and are something of God, and are refunded back again to their original. So that the whole is of God, and in God, and to God; and God is the beginning, middle and end in this affair.

I expect by very ridicule and contempt to be called a man of a very fruitful brain and copious fancy, but they are welcome to it. I am not ashamed to own that I believe that the whole universe, heaven and earth, air and seas, and the divine constitution and history of the holy Scriptures, be full of images of divine things, as full as a language is of words; and that the multitude of those things that I have mentioned are but a very small part of what is really intended to be signified and typified by these things.

Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume 11, Typological Writings, ed. Wallace E. Anderson, Mason I. Lowance, Jr., David H. Watters (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), 152.

Jonathan Edwards on Justification by Faith Alone: An Analysis of his Thought and Defense of his Orthodoxy by Jonathan Ray Huggins (April 2006)

Thy Kingdom Come: The Missionary Theology and Practice of Jonathan Edwards by Ronald S. Baines (December 2006)

The Educational Philosophy of Jonathan Edwards: An Analysis and Application of his Calvinistic Psychology by Erick John Blore (November 2007)

Good luck and don’t forget to check out aDaSL throughout the upcoming week, coming to you live from New Haven, CT and the Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale University!

Tony is famous for his Edwards-inspired do-it-yourself “Blank Bible Project” from a few years ago, and is, naturally, a fellow admirer of Jonathan Edwards.