Jonathan Edwards, the foremost thinker and theologian of the Puritan era, believed wholeheartedly in the power of the sermon to communicate truth and instill within his listeners both a hunger for worship and a consistent practice of the Spiritual disciplines as part of the improvement of the Spiritual life. This essay seeks to explain that interest and further our understanding for the disciplines themselves.

The Sermon as a Tool... Vol. 2

In the seventeenth century, Puritan ministers, charged with leading and training their congregations, embraced  the sermon as the normal means for communicating the best fruits of their thought. Wilson Kimnach argues,

that "the sermon in Edwards' day was at the height of its formal development and combined intellectual substance, artistic form, and popular currency in a distinctive amalgam rarely equaled by a single literary form in the subsequent history of American literature. (Kimnach, Edwards, Sermons and discourses, 1720-1723) 

The minister, as the master of the sermon, commanded the voice of authority that ruled over the Connecticut Valley before and during much of Edwards' ministerial career. As such, he recognized Christianity's need for teachers of men and women and furthermore, that men are called by God and sent by Christ to become the authority of God in their church's lives. 

There was a certain aristocracy to the calling;  the man who was born undistinguished becomes the vicar who is distinguished in his holy calling, and by virtue of this, worthy to be held in high esteem. I would add that because of a declining respect of the profession by those outside of it and as a result of the professions' lazy view of its own behavior, much of that esteem has been lost. By the time that Edwards entered the ministry, he had, no doubt, encountered one or more of the standard preaching primers of his day: The Arte of Prophesying, by William Perkins, William Chappell's The Preacher, Richard Bernard's The Faithful Shepherd, or John Wilkins' Ecclesiastes. With this knowledge in hand and with the mentoring of two prominent heroes in his world firmly embedded in his mind, Edwards entered the pulpit prepared to offer a needed gospel to the lost and in like manner, the necessary practice of holiness to his flock. 

Edwards saw his ministry as transformational-- that of a chosen servant, called by God and empowered by the Holy Spirit to rule over his people. He noted in the "Miscellanies" that, " he is invested  with a capacity and right to instruct, lead, and judge his people; he has no pretension to civil authority, but in all-important  moral and spiritual realms, he is of all human beings, supremely authoritative. That as a publicized belief might be a hard sell in the modern world.  Furthermore, according to Edwards, a minister is to teach people what to do, how to live, how to think, and how to exercise his life as directed toward godliness. He adds:

Without doubt, ministers are to teach men what Christ would have them to do, and to teach who doth these things, and who doth teach them not, that is, who are Christians and who are not, and the people are to hear them as much as this is in other things, and that so far forth as the people are obliged to hear what I teach them, so great is my pastoral, or ministerial or teaching power. (Edwards, The Miscellanies, a-500)

 I'll leave you to ponder that...

To be continued...

MJC