James Jordan on the Lord's Supper

In James Jordan's article, 'Doing the Lord's Supper', he writes

"Paul says that Jesus took bread and gave thanks. He does not say to "set apart the elements from common use." He does not say to "invoke the Holy Spirit upon the elements." He knows nothing of any "consecration of the elements." There is no act of consecration of bread and wine. This means that there is no change in the status of the bread and wine. Just as God gives us life when we eat dead meat and vegetables — food that will rot if we don’t eat it — so He gives us New Kingdom Life when we eat bread and wine in the liturgy. By refusing to consecrate the bread and wine, we affirm that the grace of the sacrament comes from the Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life."

It is an interesting move to suggest that refusal to consecrate the bread and wine affirms that the grace of the sacrament comes from the Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life. Matthew and Mark explicitly say that Christ blessed the bread. Did he bless it with something other than the Spirit?

Jordan goes on to say, 

"Asking the blessing before we eat at church is no different from asking the blessing before we eat at home. There is no other 'setting apart' involved."

I haven't read enough of Jordan's theology to situate his remarks in a larger doctrinal framework, but taken on the surface it seems indicative of a deeply unsacramental mentality which has much in common with modern evangelicalism but little resonance with the historic understanding of the church.

I wonder whether this is just another example of the zero-sum type of thinking that I identified in the article I wrote last December, 'A Critical Absence of the Divine: How a ‘Zero-Sum’ Theology Destroys Sacred Space.' I recalled how

Earlier in the month I asked a young theological student if he thought that asking God to bless our meal made any actual difference to the food. He said that it couldn’t possibly make a difference because then a human work would be achieving something. His words echoed Arthur Pink’s discussion of prayer in The Sovereignty of God, in which he took violent exception to an article on prayer where the author had declared that “prayer changes things, meaning that God changes things when men pray.” This also echoes Jeffrey Meyers‘ approach to prayer in his lecture on the Eucharist in the 2010 Auburn Avenue Pastors Conference: “The Necessity of the Reformation”. Significantly almost Meyers’ entire argument against the Roman Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist rested on the fact that it involved manipulating God through a human work. If carried to its logical extension, this approach comes very close to Jonathan Edwards’ complete elimination of secondary causality. If human work cannot achieve anything, if human work cannot be the instrumental means of causing God to do certain things (‘manipulation’ is simply a pejorative way of talking about secondary causality), then I am left wondering what the purpose of supplicatory prayers even is. Even though the reformed tradition has the categories for a robust theology of secondary causation (how many times have you heard that if God wills an end, He also wills the means to that end?), we tend to be uncomfortable with God working through means. Our default modus operandi is to think we are giving more to God by granting less to creation. The notion that God can be manipulated by human works is deeply problematic, even though the doctrine of God’s sovereign decrees ought to immediately situate such works in a context that renders them compatible with, rather than in competition to, our understanding of Providence.

Further Reading

• From Eucharist to Pulpit
• The Holy Spirit and the Animated Cosmos

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Longsuffering in the Christian Life

In his book Charity and Its Fruits, Jonathan Edwards wrote as follows about meekness and longsuffering in the Christian's life:

And meekness, as it respects injuries received from men, is called longsuffering in the Scriptures, and is often mentioned as an exercise, or fruit of the Christian spirit (Gal. v 22). . . He, therefore, that exercises a Christian long-suffering towards his neighbor, will bear the injuries received from him without revenging or retaliating, either by injurious deeds or bitter words. He will bear it without doing anything against his neighbor that shall manifest the spirit of resentment, without speaking to him, or of him, with revengeful words, and without allowing a revengeful spirit in his heart, or manifesting it in his behavior. . . .

"Not that all endeavours in men to defend and right themselves, when they are injured by others, are censurable, or that they should suffer all the injuries that their enemies please to bring upon them, rather than improve an opportunity they have to defend and vindicate themselves, even though it be to the damage of him that injures them. But in many, and probably in most cases, men ought to suffer long first, in the spirit of the long-suffering charity of the text. And the case may often be such, that they may be called to suffer considerably, as charity and prudence shall direct, for the sake of peace, and from a sincere Christian love to the one that injures them, rather than deliver themselves in the way they may have opportunity for.”

I've used Edwards words as a springboard for a week's worth of Bible readings on the topic of longsuffering in the Christians life. You can download the Bible study and the reflection questions that go with it at a pdf at the Charles Colson Center by clicking here.

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Jonathan Edwards and the Power of Positive Thinking

“Tis a most evil and pernicious practice in meditations on afflictions," wrote Jonathan Edwards, "to sit ruminating on the aggravations of the affliction, and reckoning up the evil, dark circumstances thereof, and dwelling long on the dark side; it doubles and trebles the affliction. If we dwelt on the light side of things in our thoughts, and extenuated them all the possibly we could, when speaking of them, we should think little of them ourselves; and the affliction would really, in a great measure, vanish away.”

Thus wrote Jonathan Edwards who was by nature a melancholy person. Edwards did not always succeed in dwelling on the lighter side of things (see my article ‘Jonathan Edwards: God’s Melancholy Saint’) and was often subject to depression and mood swings. He wrote the above words in a 1723 diary entry because he knew from painful experience that dwelling long on the dark side of things doubles and trebles the affliction. He learned to vanquish dark thoughts by extenuating the light side of things and by the time he married and had a family, he was a great source of stability to them.

I was inspired by Edwards' words to study the scripture's teaching on the power of positive thinking, leading me to publish a week's worth of Bible readings and reflection questions for the Colson Center. Click on the link below to be taken to it:

Dwelling on the Lighter Side

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Short biography of Jonathan Edwards

At the Alfred the Great Society I recently published a short biography of Jonathan Edwards. To read it, click on the following link:

Jonathan Edwards: God's Melancholy Saint

Jonathan Edwards: God’s Melancholy Saint

On the night of 29th October 1727, the people of New England lay fast asleep. At 10:40 pm, the colonists were wakened by a terrific series of noises. The clamour built in volume until it sounded like canon fire was tearing the heavens apart.

 

While these dreadful clamours were heard overhead, the ground beneath began to shake so violently that people dashed out into the streets fearful that their houses would collapse on them. Standing outside in their night clothes, men and women found they could not keep their balance. Even when the earthquake subsided, there were continuous recurrences that kept the people in a state of terror throughout the night.

 

The event was immediately interpreted in apocalyptic terms. Even before the sun rose, folk were seeking out their ministers and making supplications to God.

  

18th century New Englanders had good reason to want to make things right with their Maker. Though only a hundred years had elapsed since the Pilgrim Fathers established their settlement in Plymouth, New England faith was but a shadow of its previous lustre. Historian Frank Lambert noted that many of the ministers “saw men and women attending worship services, but they witnessed little practice of genuine piety. They feared that, for many, faith had been reduced to an intellectual acceptance of certain propositions rather than a life-changing conversion experience.”

 

The Puritan minister, Cotton Mather (1663 – 1728), had seen the handwriting on the wall when he cited the old Latin saying, “Religion brought forth Prosperity, and the daughter destroyed the mother.”

 

Jonathan Edwards

The town of Northampton Massachusetts was like many others on the morning of 30th October. Though townsfolk were concerned about the broken walls and chimneys that lay about them, they were even more concerned with the question, “what shall I do to be saved?” Their pastor, the great theologian and revivalist Solomon Stoddard (1643-1729), was always ready with the answer, and pointed people towards a personal experience of Christ.

 

During nearly half a century of ministry in the town, Solomon had been involved in four other periods of revival. The fifth and final revival, triggered by the earthquake, was witnessed by his grandson, Jonathan Edwards, who was then assisting his maternal grandfather in the ministry. Two years later Solomon would pass away, leaving Jonathan to fill his place.

Keep reading...

Jonathan Edwards on Resurrection

“Redemption is not complete till the resurrection, not only with respect to the positive good and happiness that is obtained, but also with respect to what they are redeemed and delivered from. So long as the separation between soul and body remains, one of those evils remains that is part of the penalty of the law; one of our enemies remains. The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. Death and hades, or a state of separation, are two evils that shall be at the last day cast into the lake of fire (Revelation 20:14). To be without the body is in itself an evil, because 'tis a want of that which the soul of man naturally inclines to and desires. And though it causes no uneasiness in the departed spirits of the saints, it is not because they don't want it, but because their certain hope and clear prospect of it, and apprehension how much it will be best for them, and most for their happiness to receive it in the time that God's wisdom determines, satisfies them till that time and is a full remedy against all uneasiness; and they perfectly rest in the hope and prospect and trust in God that they have. There is something that they still want, and their rest and satisfaction is not a rest of enjoyment, but a rest of perfect and glorious trust and hope.”

Thus wrote Jonathan Edwards, when reflecting on the wonderful Christian hope. He suggests that because being without a body is in itself an evil, our salvation will only be complete when the Lord gives us a new body. Contemporary Christians sometimes overlook this important aspect, focusing exclusively on the salvation of the soul. Some Christian writers have even gone so far as to suggest that our spirits will never be reunited with our body, but that we will be non-corporeal throughout all of eternity.

Keep reading...

Is Jonathan Edwards also among the Gnostics?

This post has moved to the website of the Jonathan Edwards Society. Please visit the Society's website to join in the lively debate on whether or not Jonathan Edwards was a gnostic.

 

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Jonathan Edwards at his best

As there will be various members of different degrees in the body of Christ in heaven, so it seems to me probable, that there will be members of various kinds and different offices, as it is in the church on earth (1 Corinthians 12). That is, there will be some especially distinguished for one grace, others for another; some of one manner of the exercise of grace, others of another; some more fitted for this work, others for that. Everyone will have their distinguishing gift, one after this manner and another after that, the perfection of the saints in glory nothing hindering; for that perfection will not be of such a kind, that one saint may not be more eminent than another in grace, or that they shall not be capable of increasing, and so attaining to higher degrees, nor that one grace in the same saint shall not have a more remarkable and eminent exercise than others. And 'tis most probable, if it be so, that they shall excell most in the same graces, and the same kind of works, by which they were most distinguished on earth, God rewarding their graces and works by giving of them grace more abundantly of the same kind; as Christ has promised, that to him that hath shall be given. This difference will be for the beauty and the profit of the whole: they will profit one another by their distinguishing grace; with respect to those graces, they will not be beyond being profited by one another, as well as delighted; they will still be employing and improving themselves.

See also: Jonathan Edwards on Resurrection


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The Problem of Mediation in the First Great Awakening

In my post “Gnosticism, Marriage, Singleness, Matchmaking and Martin Luther “ I suggested that the Eucharist, and indeed both the sacraments (I was going to say “all the sacraments”, but I am a good Protestant and only recognize two, although it really remains a matter of definition), have become especially troubling among evangelicals for whom the matter/spirit dichotomy is the uber-presupposition. Since modern evangelicals find it offensive that God’s grace would be mediated through physical means or instruments (even as classical Gnosticism found it offensive that God would be incarnated in flesh), so the sacraments are reduced to mere symbols for what goes on inside the individual. As Ollif points out, the “physical manifestations” are simply epiphenomena of a relationship that can be fully defined apart from those physical manifestations. The Protestant tendency to separate spirit from matter means that the Eucharist can become merely an appendix to the Word, a disguised sermon or an approximation for our own spiritual interiority but certainly not a rite that objectively conveys grace.

Jonathan Edwards on Resurrection

I recently posted some shocking statistics about the denial of future bodily resurrection among professing Christians. One of the best resources for understanding why this denial is so radically unbiblical is Tom Wright’s refreshing book Surprised by Hope. For those who don’t have time to read Wright’s book, however, the following words from Jonathan Edwards serve as a timely reminder of just how wrong-headed this crypto-gnosticism is:

Jonathan Edwards and Conversion Experiences

I just came across a quote from Jonathan Edwards which confirms a point I made in my earlier post Conversion Experiences. 

Conversion" wrote Edwards, "is a great and glorious work of God's power, at once changing the heart, and infusing life into the dead soul...But as to fixing the precise time when they put forth the very first act of grace, there is a great deal of difference in different persons; in some it seems to be very discernible when the very time was; but others are more at a loss." From 'A narrative of surprising conversions', in Select Works, Vol. 1, p. 40.

See also:

Conversion Experiences

Are Roman Catholics Christians?