Jonathan Edwards & John Piper: Sour Stomach

We were all still recovering from a sermon by Charles Finney at the beginning of Wisdom Booklet #4, when we moved on to the subject of history. Where we were assaulted by another sermon.

"Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" is one of the most famous sermons in American history. But if there were such a sin as blasphemy, this sermon would be a fine example. From a Massachusetts pulpit in 1741, Puritan preacher Jonathan Edwards described the Almighty as an arbitrary monster and his creation as loathsome.

Here are some excerpts:

...Whatever some have imagined and pretended about promises made to natural men's earnest seeking and knocking, it is plain and manifest, that whatever pains a natural man takes in religion, whatever prayers he makes, till he believes in Christ, God is under no manner of obligation to keep him a moment from eternal destruction.

There are the black clouds of God's wrath now hanging directly over your heads, full of the dreadful storm, and big with thunder; and were it not for the restraining hand of God, it would immediately burst forth upon you.

 The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes, than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours. You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince; and yet it is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment. It is to be ascribed to nothing else, that you did not go to hell the last night; that you was suffered to awake again in this world, after you closed your eyes to sleep.

But when once the day of mercy is past, your most lamentable and dolorous cries and shrieks will be in vain; you will be wholly lost and thrown away of God, as to any regard to your welfare. God will have no other use to put you to, but to suffer misery; you shall be continued in being to no other end; for you will be a vessel of wrath fitted to destruction; and there will be no other use of this vessel, but to be filled full of wrath. God will be so far from pitying you when you cry to him, that it is said he will only "laugh and mock"…

Though horrified by Edwards' God, I was transfixed by the vivid imagery. Our family also had a dramatized biography of Jonathan Edwards ("Puritan Preacher and Philosopher") on cassette from Moody Bible Institute. Not only did the story cover the theological controversies of Edwards' time, it did not shy away from describing the aftermath of the Great Awakening--including a man in Edwards' congregation who committed suicide in despair after too many similar "revival" sermons. Between the audio version and the traumatizing Wisdom Booklet, spiders and hellfire became forever associated in my brain.

When Walt Disney needed lines for this over-the-top "hellfire & brimstone" sermon in the film Pollyanna (1960), writers tapped "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God". In the movie, the preacher uses his pulpit to manipulate the town with fear and guilt. No one commits suicide (it's a children's movie, after all), but one character declares with passionate resentment, "Sundays around here give folks sour stomach for the whole rest of the week!" Though not delivered in Edwards' characteristic monotone, many of the lines are lifted directly from Jonathan Edwards famous message.

Jonathan Edwards has been John Piper's hero for decades, ever since Piper encountered Edwards' essays as a seminarian. Piper told a conference in 1988: "Alongside the Bible, Edwards became the compass of my theological studies." In 2006, Piper reprinted one of Edwards' books in a volume of his own: God's Passion for His Glory: Living the Vision of Jonathan Edwards. In the preface, Piper writes, "Jonathan Edwards is in a class by himself in American history, perhaps in the history of Christendom....I take my stand on his shoulders... It is an honor to be associated with an Institute devoted to exalting the God of Jonathan Edwards..." And so on.

This is the same John Piper who pastors a church in Minneapolis. The same Piper who posted these thoughts on the evening following the 2007 highway bridge collapse that killed thirteen people in his city and injured or traumatized hundreds of others:

The meaning of the collapse of this bridge is that John Piper is a sinner and should repent or forfeit his life forever. That means I should turn from the silly preoccupations of my life and focus my mind’s attention and my heart’s affection on God and embrace Jesus Christ as my only hope for the forgiveness of my sins and for the hope of eternal life. That is God’s message in the collapse of this bridge. That is his most merciful message: there is still time to turn from sin and unbelief and destruction for those of us who live. If we could see the eternal calamity from which he is offering escape we would hear this as the most precious message in the world.

...During our family devotions...Talitha prayed “Please don’t let anyone blame God for this but give thanks that they were saved.” When I sat on her bed and tucked her in and blessed her and sang over her a few minutes ago, I said, “You know, Talitha, that was a good prayer, because when people ‘blame’ God for something, they are angry with him, and they are saying that he has done something wrong. That’s what “blame” means: accuse somebody of wrongdoing. But you and I know that God did not do anything wrong. God always does what is wise. And you and I know that God could have held up that bridge with one hand.” Talitha said, “With his pinky.” “Yes,” I said, “with his pinky. Which means that God had a purpose for not holding up that bridge, knowing all that would happen, and he is infinitely wise in all that he wills.”

Talitha said, “Maybe he let it fall because he wanted all the people of Minneapolis to fear him.” “Yes, Talitha,” I said, “I am sure that is one of the reasons God let the bridge fall.”

I wonder how Jonathan Edwards would react to Piper's post today. I think it would give him "sour stomach". But I also like to think that the melancholic Edwards would preach quite differently if he could return to Northampton today.

Edwards was a thoughtful man, after all--trapped in the 18th-century, yet daring to test innovation. He was unafraid of change, of shaking up the status quo by implementing new ideas, of attempting to reconcile old ways of thinking with new understanding. He kept up with scientific advances, even submitting to smallpox inoculation as an example to the Princeton student body to risk the experimental new procedure. He died of complications, a sacrifice to the cause of science as well as to "the will of God".

The Jonathan Edwards of the 1700's would never make it as a preacher of the gospel today. For one thing, he purchased and owned Negro slaves, including a man and his wife who were sold by the executors of Edwards' will. I wonder what they thought of their master's god? But Edwards gave his sermon long before David Livingstone explored the African continent. Before William Wilberforce campaigned to bring down the slave trade. Before ex-slaver John Newton wrote "Amazing Grace". Before the Founding Fathers revolted against England. Even before the first performance of Handel's Messiah, which opened in Europe the following year (1742) with the words of a very different God:

Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God.Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned.

Little wonder I developed anxiety issues after growing up with Jonathan Edwards' voice in my ear. Little wonder I was so relieved to find other theological viewpoints and to discover that others, as uncomfortable as I was, were asking the same questions!

Somehow, in my combined fright and abhorrence of a god who holds people over hell and lets bridges collapse, I had never considered (though Mark Twain had) the possibility of humans choosing hell for humanity's sake, or of turning down the invitation of heaven (as Desmond Tutu suggests) in solidarity with the world God is said to have loved. If hell is a place of hate, but one can choose it out of a heart of love, then is fear truly vanquished. Sour stomach must surrender!

History, Our Story

If knowledge is power, then discovering that you been misled is disheartening at best.  History, according to my old school texts, was really "His Story", as if God himself had come up with the plot. What if he hadn't? Or what if we'd messed up the ending? Realizing that my understanding of science and history was both inadequate and faulty, I kept my mouth shut a lot more. My babies kept growing and I planned to teach them myself, so correcting my ignorance was imperative. At the same time, I was wary of "teachers" who showed too much eagerness.  How could I ascertain that a guide esteemed accuracy as much as I did, and wasn't merely pushing an agenda?

I first got acquainted with Garry Wills through his theological writing, but I soon discovered his books on American history--specifically, Head and Heart: American Christianities and Under God: Religion and American Politics. Compared to the filtered texts I had read as a teen, Wills offered a much deeper, broader view of the religious forces that continue to shape our nation and our government. And, unlike David Barton, Wills is an acclaimed historian. I could not get enough, carrying these hefty tomes along on my summer vacation and gasping over all the facts I had somehow missed.

Finally, someone else who had written about Mary Dyer's miscarriage! That story had bothered and mystified me since reading Winthrop's report of the exhumation in The Light and the Glory--a strangely covenantal twist on history with ties to a New England cult. Along with its sequels, also co-authored by Peter Marshall and David Manuel, this version of American history is prominent in some homeschooling curricula and has received accolades from prominent politicians like John Ashcroft and Sam Brownback. But The Light and the Glory was saturated with assumptions about supernatural involvement in human affairs. The Devil was just another character in the story, albeit an invisible one. Now here at last was a genuine professor of history pulling back the veil of mystery and presenting the facts simply, without spooky undertones. I felt as if I was privileged to be one of Wills' students, feverishly taking notes and hanging on every word.

Later on I discovered Sarah Vowell. I had heard her book The Wordy Shipmates discussed on NPR numerous times before I finally checked it out. Sarah's inimitable style suited me exactly. I loved her crisscrossing rabbit trails, her personal commentaries that made the history come alive, the stranger-than-fiction tales that made the facts so believable. The characters--John Cotton, John Winthrop, Anne Hutchinson, Roger Williams--were familiar names to me, but Vowell's analysis was fresh and honest. Between her and Wills, I finally found a way to understand and relate to the Puritans without feeling bound to defend them.

Replica of a missionary's house, Maui

Vowell's Unfamiliar Fishes, about the intertwined history of the USA and the Hawaiian Islands, was so good that I read it twice. When I visited the harbor at Lahaina on Maui, I saw for myself the dual influence of New England on that little Pacific island and pondered how it must have confused the locals to have English-speaking sailors and missionaries fighting over foreign moral codes. The heritage left by agrarian New England Calvinists lingers in the pungent air near the sugar mill, and is commemorated by this replica of a clapboard house nestled in the Kepaniwai Heritage Gardens in the Iao Valley.

On another cross-country trip, we listened to eminent historian David McCullough read his history of the American Revolution, 1776. The issues were so much less clear-cut than my old textbooks suggested, the colonists and the British all such colorful characters, the war so horribly cruel. My children wrestle with the complexities of that period every time they watch "Liberty's Kids", a engaging and invaluable series that dramatizes conflicting points of view during the birth of the American nation. Unlike the "homespun" versions, I find that straight history doesn't leave me feeling proud.  

It takes more courage to face history this way, more honesty, more stamina. I find that humanity's past, rather like its present, is anything but clean, anything but black and white. History is not a neat museum placard. The heroes aren't quite pure and the villains aren't quite vile. Every chapter has to be examined through the lenses of its place in time, its place on various maps, its cultural perspectives. And my judgments will change with my understanding. What once looked like moral courage may appear differently when the light shifts. 

I still love history, though, messy as it is. 

Because it is our story.

In Memory of Thomas Granger

The first juvenile executed in the North American colonies was a young servant of "about 16 or 17" named Thomas Granger, who was hung in 1642 for having sex with a turkey.

According to Governor William Bradford's well-known history Of Plymouth Plantation*:

"He [Thomas Granger] was this year detected of buggery, and indicted for the same, with a mare, a cow, two goats, five sheep, two calves and a turkey. Horrible it is to mention, but the truth of the history requires it. He was first discovered by one that accidentally saw his lewd practice towards the mare. (I forbear particulars.) Being upon it examined and committed, in the end he not only confessed the fact with that beast at that time, but sundry times before and at several times with all the rest of the forenamed in his indictment. And this his free confession was not only in private to the magistrates (though at first he strived to deny it) but to sundry, both ministers and others; and afterwards, upon his indictment, to the whole Court and jury; and confirmed it at his execution. And whereas some of the sheep could not so well be known by his description of them, others with them were brought before him and he declared which were they and which were not. And accordingly he was cast by the jury and condemned, and after executed about the 8th of September, 1642. A very sad spectacle it was. For first the mare and then the cow and the rest of the lesser cattle were killed before his face, according to the law, Leviticus xx.15; and then he himself was executed. The cattle were all cast into a great and large pit that was digged of purpose for them, and no use made of any part of them." 

The curious can read more here.

The late Rousas J. Rushdoony (1916-2001) would have been right at home in Plymouth. Rushdoony was a racist minister who strongly influenced American fundamentalism and the religious right. Today he is remembered as the "father of the homeschool movement". Rushdoony repeatedly called for a return to the Old Testament legal code, including the death penalty for homosexual acts as well as for bestiality.

Rushdoony's ideological progeny Pat Robertson (whose law school teaches from Rushdoony's books) And Senator Rand Paul (with ties to Rushdoony's son-in-law Gary North) have each expressed concern that legalizing same-sex marriage is merely a slippery slope to bestiality.

Rand Paul's office now says he was merely joking. So he ought to appreciate this sunny response to Robertson that would have scandalized Governor Bradford:

*Strangely, I do not recall this story coming up when my dad read to us from Bradford's journal on Sunday afternoons, nor when it was read aloud to the staff at IBLP's Oklahoma Training Center. Does anyone know whether it was excised from Vision Forum's unabridged edition?