Overview
This has fed an age-old problem: nominal Christianity. Though Edwards is sometimes presented as a scourge, a mean-hearted parson who lived to belt out thunderous damnations, a careful study of the historical record and of Edwards’ writings shows that he was in fact a Christian man devoted to the cultivation of true and saving faith in a spiritually fickle people he tenaciously loved.
The problem of noncommittal Christianity did not end with Edwards. It not only survives but thrives in the current day. In studying it then, we are studying ourselves. We see that nominal Christianity, a considerable challenge today, has historic roots. We need not face this problem alone, growing more discouraged by the day, flailing as we try method after method to address the problem. Instead, we can find solace, instruction, and encouragement from the biblically saturated life and ministry of Jonathan Edwards.
Easily accessible and readable, you do not need to be a scholar to enjoy these insights about Jonathan Edwards and his writings.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781575679273 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Moody Publishers |
| Publication date: | 01/21/2010 |
| Series: | The Essential Edwards Collection , #4 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 160 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
About the Author
DOUGLAS A. SWEENEY is Professor of Church History and the History of Christian Thought and Director of the Carl F. H. Henry Center for Theological Understanding at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He formerly served as a lecturer at Yale University, as an adjunct professor as Aquinas College, and as a visiting professor at both Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and Reformed Theological Seminary. Sweeney is the author of a number of books and articles about religious history and the American theologian, Jonathan Edwards. He resides with his wife, Wilma, and their son in Lindenhurst, Illinois.
Read an Excerpt
Jonathan Edwards on True Christianity
By Owen Strachan, Douglas Sweeney, Christopher Reese
Moody Publishers
Copyright © 2010 Owen Strachan Douglas SweeneyAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-57567-927-3
CHAPTER 1
The Contemporary Problem of Nominal Christianity
Wew things in the world speak to the soul with greater depth than a committed marriage relationship. When two people share love and cling to one another through decades of life, weathering trials, tragedies, and tense times, they offer the world an image of a greater reality.
But if the sweetness of true love easily moves us, the specter of halfhearted marital commitment equally raises our passions. Many of us have watched with sorrow and surprise as the covenants of many couples collapse. We have seen the story play out time and time again: the sweethearts everyone admires marry and raise adorable children in a happy home. Without warning, the marriage crumbles, often as a result of a spouse's unfaithfulness. Though everything seemed so perfect, we learn in the end that all was not well. There may have been sparks of true affection over the years, but ultimately, what looked like love was no love at all.
Relating Marriage and Faith
This situation parallels a matter of even greater significance: Christian faith. Just as marriage is not merely a slip of paper and a big ceremony, Christian faith is not merely a onetime confession of Christ and occasional church attendance. If we would reach heaven, if we would truly live by faith, we must be personally transformed by God such that we pursue Him, however imperfectly, on a constant basis. This, at base, is the nature of Christianity. Though still bearing sin, we fight for holiness and watch as God, over time, conforms us to the image of His Son. We back up our "profession"—our verbal commitment—to God by our lives, thus showing ourselves to be truly saved (see 1 John 1).
Unashamed sinners and passionate Christians form two clear scriptural groups. The Bible deals extensively with the unredeemed and the redeemed. But the Scripture also recognizes a third group. This group mirrors the half-hearted spouse discussed above: the lukewarm, interested but noncommittal, nominal Christian who professes true faith but shows little evidence of it (nominal refers to "name," that is, a faith in name only). To this group the voices of Scripture also devote much attention. The prophets call Israel to stop wandering from God; Jesus Christ tells deeply frightening stories about those who pursue Him half-heartedly (see Matthew 13:1–23, for example); Revelation informs us that at the last judgment, the Lord will spew the lukewarm from His mouth (Revelation 3:16). In these and many other instances, the Scripture warns the nominal Christian of clear and present danger. We are not merely dealing with earthly situations here. On the matter of true Christianity, we are confronting matters of eternal consequence.
Nominal Christianity in Our Day
As we will see in the quotations and statistics that follow, lukewarm faith is alive and well in our evangelical churches. By studying this problem in its contemporary form, we prepare ourselves to enter Jonathan Edwards's world in coming chapters.
Nominal Christianity is a notoriously difficult problem to trace and spot. Like a transmittable illness, one knows it's out there, but one can't pinpoint exactly where. Two things are immediately clear, though: the state of maturity of many Christians is quite low, and many churches are failing to educate their people in the basics of Christianity.
Confused Beliefs
Pollsters D. Michael Lindsay and George Gallup conducted research several years ago that revealed alarming beliefs among a significant number of people who claim to be evangelical.
According to Lindsay and Gallup, of those claiming to be born again:
• 33% hold a pro-choice stance on abortion
• 26% believe in astrology
• 20% believe in reincarnation (Lindsay, 40)
Many of these people are likely in evangelical churches that ostensibly teach biblical doctrine, and yet they hold views on various spiritual and moral subjects that directly conflict with the biblical witness. If their beliefs conflict with true Christianity, it is likely that their lives conflict as well.
Deficient Living
In a study of members of prominent evangelical mega-churches, Rodney Stark found the following data:
• ONLY 46% attend services weekly or more often
• Only 46% tithe
• Only 33% read the Bible daily (Stark, 47)
When Stark and his researchers asked the megachurch members the following question, "How often in the last month did you participate in witnessing/sharing your faith with strangers?" the following percentage answered that they witnessed one or more times:
• All Conservative Protestants 44%
• All Liberal Protestants 19% (Stark, 25)
This could initially seem encouraging. When one considers, though, that more than half of all conservative Protestants, people who seemingly have a great concern for personal evangelism, did not share their faith even once in the month with an unbeliever, reality begins to sink in.
A recent survey by an evangelical megachurch backed up this conclusion. It revealed that a significant number of its members who self-identified as spiritually healthy—"close to Christ" and "Christ-centered" were the words used in the survey—also marked themselves as "spiritually stalled" and "dissatisfied." Christianity Today commented on the survey that "About a quarter of the 'stalled' segment and 63 percent of the 'dissatisfied' segment contemplated leaving the church." (CT) These findings come from a seemingly thriving church reaching many thousands of people each year.
It is true that all Christians sometimes feel "stalled" in their faith. Sin is a part of our lives, and it will not leave us until we reach the other side. But because of the vast number of members who described themselves in this way, these numbers do not indicate health in the church.
Biblical Illiteracy
In his book Today's Pastors, George Barna documents the disheartening results of his study of the biblical literacy or knowledge of many Christians. First, Barna found that just four out of ten Christians read their Bible on a weekly basis. Second, according to Barna:
THOSE PEOPLE WHO DO READ will commit about one hour to Bible reading during the week. Those people actually will spend more time showering, commuting to and from work, watching television, reading the newspaper, eating meals or talking on the telephone. Obviously, the Bible is not a high priority in the lives of most people. (Barna, 48)
If we're still skeptical about the specter of listless Christianity, this statistic wakes us up. The decided minority of professing Christians who do crack the pages of the Word of God spend less time in it each week than they do in the shower.
David Wells, the eminent theologian and critic of evangelicalism, cites other Barna polls that show that a majority—52%—of evangelicals "reject the idea of original sin outright" (Courage to Be Protestant, 57). This means that a majority of professing believers simply reject one of the core doctrines of a Christian view of mankind altogether. Furthermore, Wells cites statistics that show that only 32% of professing evangelicalsbelieve in absolutes in truth or morality (Above All Earthly Pow'rs, 93). These are the sort of statements we expect from outspoken unbelievers, not professing Christians.
The Problem of Pornography
The harmful effects of pornography are well-known. Yet the church, commissioned to be an outpost of holiness in a world of evil, has struggled mightily to help its members turn away from pornography. Some of the most discouraging data comes from pastors, those charged to lead congregations through holy lives. The following data comes from the Safe Families website (www.safe-families.org):
• 37% of pastors say pornography is a current struggle
• In another survey, over half of evangelical pastors admitted viewing pornography last year
• Of pastors who had visited a porn site, 53% had visited such sites "a few times" in the past year, and 18% visit sexually explicit sites between a couple of times a month and more than once a week
If the pastors of God's churches are struggling as mightily as these polls suggest, one wonders how church members, many of them far less spiritually mature than pastors, are faring in the fight against lust.
The Tragedy of Divorce
Other data indicate that the church is not only failing in its mission to be distinct and unique, but it is full of the same cultural sins that the world practices. In some cases, the church actually may be surpassing the world in its sins. In 1999, the Barna Group found that conservative evangelicals apparently divorce at a higher rate than non-Christians. The following figures comparing rates of divorce between Christians and non-Christians echo this shocking claim:
• Non-Denominational 34%
• Mainline Protestants 25%
• Atheists/Agnostics 21% (www.associatedcontent.com)
This statistic paints an unflattering portrait of the state of Christian marriage. Of course, it needs to be qualified; one could point out here that professing Christians are more likely to marry than unbelievers and thus are more susceptible to divorce. One could also note that many conservative Christian theologians believe that divorce is allowed in some circumstances. With these points noted, though, it is clear that many Christians have bought into the American divorce culture. Rather than standing apart from the world in this area, many Christians mirror their unbelieving neighbors. In a society rapidly releasing itself from connection to Christian moral and theological thinking, many Christians are not even fighting the cultural tide, let alone stemming it. It is sweeping them away.
Sub-Christian Faith Among Young Adults
The lives and testimony of our children, though surely not ultimately dependent on the faith of parents, reveal with painful precision just how much faith makes its way into nominally Christian homes. Interviewers and researchers who have talked with hundreds of children of conservative Christian parents have found that modern "church kids" live and talk much like their secular peers. Christian Smith, a sociologist who has extensively studied the lives of religious young people, has found that in general, American teens practice what he calls "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism," a bland, relativistic spirituality that emphasizes doing good, feeling good, and believing in a benevolent, harmless, one-size-fits-all God. Smith's book Soul Searching includes many brief and often depressing interviews with teens conducted by the sociologist and his staff. For example, Smith comments:
VIEWED IN TERMS of the absolute historical centrality of the Protestant conviction about salvation by God's grace alone, through faith alone and not by any human good works, many belief professions by Protestant teens, including numerous conservative Protestant teens, in effect discard that essential Protestant gospel. One 15-year-old white conservative Protestant boy from Mississippi, for instance, explained, "If you just do the right thing and don't do anything bad, I mean nothing really bad, you know you'll go to heaven. If you don't, you're screwed [laughs], that's about it." Similarly, this 16-year-old black conservative Protestant girl from Pennsylvania told us, "Being a Christian, um, don't do many sins, read the Bible, go to church, living godly, that's about it. It's basically not committing sin, basically." (Smith, 136)
In another section, Smith discusses the absence of a connection between biblical thinking and day-to-day life:
QUITE OFTEN, TEENS said they did not think their religious faith affected their family relationships, they did not believe religion was relevant to the conduct of a dating relationship, they did not see that religion affected their life at school, and so on. This was often even true for teens who in the religious discussion explicitly said that faith was important and influential in their lives. One 16-year-old white mainline Protestant girl from Michigan, for example, who explicitly stated, "Religion is very important to me," denied in every other section of the interview that religion had anything to do with her relationships, dating, school work, or any other aspect of her ordinary life. (Smith, 140)
One could cite numerous other examples from Smith's text that make this same point. At base, it is clear that many modern teens from a wide variety of churches have little sense of the personal importance and eternal significance of Christ and His Word.
The teenage years are known for their difficulty and turmoil, and that must be stated. In addition, Christian parents cannot produce faith in their children, and even the best parents may see their children drift away from the faith. But these necessary qualifications do not silence the point made above. On a broad level, Christians and churches are struggling to pass on biblical Christianity. Many of us are not living robustly Christian lives; a good portion of our children are not, either.
A Brief Sweep of Factors Behind the Current Situation
It is not the purpose of this chapter to exhaustively trace the factors that led to our current situation. We are more concerned with the state of things on the ground, and cannot take the space necessary to sketch out a full-fledged answer to this important question, so the following survey will be brief. Readers desiring to look into this further would do well to look at a number of volumes cited in this chapter, including David Wells's texts No Place for Truth, Above All Earthly Pow'rs, and The Courage to Be Protestant.
To concisely identify a few key factors, we need to travel back in time a couple of centuries to eighteenth-century Europe, the "Age of Lights" or "Enlightenment." In this era, a number of key thinkers reacted against state churches and their dogma, labeling religious faith "superstition" and emphasizing the primacy of the human intellect. They questioned the authority and truthfulness of the Bible and sought to strip it of elements they deemed false and superstitious. It took some time for this manner of thinking to trickle down into society, but eventually, many European countries once characterized by religious faith became increasingly secularized in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This unbelieving line of thought spread to churches and seminaries and caused many in traditional church traditions to fall away from orthodox faith.
In time, religious leaders began to doubt even their hard-line liberal commitments. In the second half of the twentieth century, they accommodated to the secular "postmodern" spirit, avoiding "dogma" of any kind, and embracing mystery. Instead of emphasizing absolute truth, they spoke of truth for communities. That is, certain communities believed one way, and that was truth for them; others might believe something entirely different, and that was also true (for them). Some Christians from both conservative and liberal backgrounds adopted this spirit, creating a new kind of church, one light on doctrine and heavy on personal experience and mystery.
At the same time, the intellectual weakness of the church and the accommodation of its formative seminaries to liberal modes of thought drove many conservative Christian leaders to look to the booming American business sector for clues to vitality and growth. In the process, some American Christians lost connection to a Bible-centered model of preaching and, accordingly, a biblical worldview. Others who remained consciously biblical concentrated themselves so narrowly on political and social concerns that they seemed to make the church another Political Action Committee. Many "mainline" churches adopted liberal doctrines and deemphasized or even discarded fundamental doctrines of Christianity, though in the present day, a biblical witness of varying size persists in some denominations. Still more professing Christians have lost confidence and interest in local churches and have invested in parachurch organizations, trusting national leaders and ministries to lead them from afar without meaningful contact with a body of believers.
Pragmatism and Postmodernism in the Church
With the rise of the financial market and the cultural abandonment of various tenets of a Christian worldview, many of our evangelical churches have shifted from a richly biblical and theological perspective to one driven by pragmatic concerns. Congregations often do not make this shift to spite doctrine; instead, they do it because they think it will bring health and growth. Though they may mean well, a concern for numbers over a concern for personal faith makes it easy for nominalism to creep into the church. When churches concentrate so much on bringing people in, they can lose sight of building people up. That kind of atmosphere can make it easy for people to adopt a half-hearted faith, a Christianity that may be no Christianity at all.
Cultural critic Os Guinness has written persuasively about the pragmatic mindset in the church. He notes that
THE CONCERN "WILL IT WORK?" has long overshadowed "Is it true?" Theology has given way to technique. Know-whom has faded before know-how. Serving God has subtly been deformed into servicing the self. At its worst, the result is a shift from faith to the "faith in faith," which—along with faith in religion—is a perniciously distinctive American heresy. But even at its best, pragmatism results in an evangelicalism rich in ingenuity and organization but poor in spirituality and superficial, if not banal, in doctrine. We have become the worldliest Christians in America. (Guinness, 59)
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Jonathan Edwards on True Christianity by Owen Strachan, Douglas Sweeney, Christopher Reese. Copyright © 2010 Owen Strachan Douglas Sweeney. Excerpted by permission of Moody Publishers.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1. The Contemporary Problem of Nominal Christianity
Chapter 2. The Problem of Nominal Christianity in Edwards Day
Chapter 3. Edwards' Answer to Nominal Christianity
Chapter 4. Powerful Examples of True Christianity
Chapter 5. Edwards Dismissal and Contemporary Call to True Christianity
What People are Saying About This
When it comes to Jonathan Edwards's writing, where does an average reader (like me!) begin? Right here with The Essential Edwards Collection. Strachan and Sweeney provide a doorway into the life and teaching of one of church's wisest theologians. The authors have included notes of personal application to help us apply the life and teaching of Edwards to our own lives. I've read no better introduction to Jonathan Edwards.- C.J. Mahaney, President, Sovereign Grace Ministries
A great resource! Edwards continues to speak, and this series of books is an excellent means to hear Jonathan Edwards again live and clear. Pure gold; be wise and invest in it!- Josh Moody, Senior Pastor, College Church, Wheaton, Illinois
These primers on Jonathan Edward's life and thought - his passion for God - provide an excellent glimpse into a life lived unto God. And they help the rest of us slake our thirst for the majesty of our Savior. We owe a great debt to Owen Strachan and Douglas Sweeney for making Edwards and his vision of God so accessible to the rest of us thirsty pilgrims.- Thabiti Anyabwile, Pastor of First Baptist Church of Grand Cayman, Cayman Islands
Everyone says Jonathan Edwards is important. Quite frankly, however, his writing style is pretty dense by contemporary standards, so few pastors and other Christian leaders have invested much time reading him. This new series tackles the problem. Here is the kernel of much of Edwards's thought in eminently accessible form. -D.A. Carson, Research Professor of New Testament, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School
In The Essential Edwards Collection, Owen Strachan and Doug Sweeney point with knowledge and excitement to clear and searching sections that illuminate God's truth and search our hearts. In this collection, Edwards is introduced to a new generation of readers. His concerns are made our concerns. This is a worthy effort and I pray that God will bless it.- Mark Dever, Senior Pastor, Capitol Hill Baptist Church, Washington, DC.
This series is a fantastic introduction to the heart, mind, and ministry of the greatest theologian America has ever produced.- Mark Driscoll, Pastor of Mars Hill Church, President of the Acts 29 Church Planting Network.
Let Strachan and Sweeney serve as your guides through the voluminous writings of America's greatest theologian. They have been shaped by his godly counsel and moved by his passion for Christ. By God's grace, Edwards can do the same for you. Start your journey with The Essential Edwards Collection. - Collin Hansen, Author of Young, Restless, Reformed
Owen Strachan and Douglas Sweeney have done us all a great service by remixing and reloading the teaching of Jonathan Edwards for a new generation. They do more than introduce us to his writing: they show us how his biblical teaching relates to a modern world and leave us hungry for more. I am very impressed and very grateful for The Essential Edwards Collection.- Joshua Harris, Senior Pastor of Covenant Life Church
Why hasn't this been done before? The Essential Edwards Collection is now essential reading for the serious-minded Christian. Doug Sweeney and Owen Strachan have written five excellent and accessible introductions to America's towering theological genius - Jonathan Edwards. They combine serious scholarship with the ability to make Edwards and his theology come alive for a new generation. The Essential Edwards Collection is a great achievement and a tremendous resource. I can't think of a better way to gain a foundational knowledge of Edwards and his lasting significance.- R. Albert Mohler Jr., President of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary.
You hold in your hands a unique resource: a window into the life and thought of Jonathan Edwards, a man whose life was captured by God for the gospel of Jesus Christ. In these pages you'll not only learn about Edwards, but you'll be able to hear him speak in his own words. This winsome and accessible introduction is now the first thing I'd recommend for those who want to know more about America's greatest pastor-theologian.- Justin Taylor, Managing Editor, ESV Study Bible.
I am deeply impressed with the vision that has brought together this splendid library of volumes to introduce Jonathan Edwards to a new generation. Owen Strachan and Douglas Sweeney have provided an incredible service by making the often challenging writings of America's greatest theologian accessible for seasoned theologians, pastors, and students alike with their five-volume Essential Edwards Collection. This series is properly titled the "essential collection."- David S. Dockery, President, Union University
Jonathan Edwards was a preacher of the Word, a pastor of souls, a philosopher of first rank, and the greatest theologian America has ever produced. In this wonderful new anthology of Edwards's writings, the great Puritan saint lives again. I can think of no better tonic for our transcendence-starved age than the writings of Edwards. But beware: reading this stuff can change your life forever!- Timothy George, Founding Dean of Besson Divinity School of Samford University
From a course he taught at Yale and in personal friendship, Doug Sweeney has tought me much about Edwards. Possessing a command of the academic field, he and Owen Strachan nevertheless write this collection with pastoral concern, showing the relevance of Edwards for our Christian faith and practice today. It's a rare combination of gifts and insights that Sweeney and Strachan bring to this task.- Michael Horton, J. Gresham Machen Professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics, Westminister Theological Seminary California
Jonathan Edwards is surely one of the most influential theologians of the eighteenth century. Now, at last, we have a wide-ranging and respresntative sample of his work published in an attractive, accessible and, most important of all, readable form. The authors are to be commended for the work they have put into this set and I hope it will become an important feature of the library of many pastors and students of the Christian faith.- Carl R. Trueman, Academic Dean, Westminster Theological Seminary