Understanding Affections in the Theology of Jonathan Edwards

“The High Exercises of Divine Love”

Ryan J. Martin

• Publisher: T&T Clark
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9780567694867
• eBook ISBN:
  9780567682291
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

This volume argues that the notion of "affections" discussed by Jonathan Edwards (and Christian theologians before him) means something very different from what contemporary English speakers now call "emotions." and that Edwards's notions of affections came almost entirely from traditional Christian theology in general and the Reformed tradition in particular.
Ryan J. Martin demonstrates that Christian theologians for centuries emphasized affection for God, associated affections with the will, and distinguished affections from passions; generally explaining affections and passions to be inclinations and aversions of the soul. This was Edwards's own view, and he held it throughout his entire ministry. Martin further argues that Edwards's view came not as a result of his reading of John Locke, or the pressures of the Great Awakening (as many Edwardsean scholars argue), but from his own biblical interpretation and theological education. By analysing patristic, medieval and post-medieval thought and the journey of Edwards's psychology, Martin shows how, on their own terms, pre-modern Christians historically defined and described human psychology.

Chapter 1

Lost in Translation: The Problem of Edwards, Affections, and Emotions

Come down, O Love divine,

Seek Thou this soul of mine,

And visit it with Thine own ardor glowing;

O Comforter, draw near,

Within my heart appear,

And kindle it, Thy holy flame bestowing.

O let it freely burn,

Till earthly passions turn

To dust and ashes in its heat consuming;

And let Thy glorious light

Shine ever on my sight,

And clothe me round, the while my path illuming.

— Bianco da Siena, tr. Richard Frederick Littledale

Jonathan Edwards’s theology has been compared to a symphony and to the sacred masterpieces of Johann Sebastian Bach. He has been called “the greatest philosopher yet to grace the American scene,” at least among those living before the twentieth century. Christians the world over study his preaching, politics, rhetoric, and revivals.¹

For many historians, Jonathan Edwards represents the headwaters of American religious thought. Near the heart of this man’s deep and contoured theology lies the importance of the affections. Edwards’s protégé Samuel Hopkins pointed to Edwards’s work in separating true and false religion as his most important legacy. Referencing Hopkins’s observation nearly two centuries later, John Smith suggests that the “whole of [Edwards’s] thought” is “one magnificent answer to the question, What is true religion?” In their magisterial summary of Edwards’s theology, Michael McClymond and Gerald McDermott, citing Smith’s remark, add that the affections are a crucial aspect of the nature of true religion in Edwards’s thought.²

This leads to an important question. When Jonathan Edwards wrote of affections, what was he talking about? If Edwards is important, and if the nature of true religion and (thereby) the affections are important to Edwards, determining what affections are is a significant inquiry. It becomes more important still when one sees the different ways the question has been answered.

The Problem of Jonathan Edwards and Affections

The problem of interpreting Edwards’s understanding of affections is illustrated by numerous explanations of his thought, both in the scholarly and popular literature. Consider the appropriations of Edwards’s emphasis on religious affections by his evangelical heirs. Some evangelicals use Edwards’s psychology to stress that religion should be emotional. Others use affections to defend a version of Charismatic theology.

In more scholarly settings, many historians attribute Edwards’s psychology to the influence of the Enlightenment empiricist John Locke. Besides this, numerous scholars and popular practitioners assume that affections in Edwards’s thought are synonymous with emotions.

The Affections of Jonathan Edwards in Defense of Emotional Evangelicalism

Since 1980 American evangelicals—who have been using Edwards’s thought for a long time—have cited Edwards as a proponent of an emotional Christianity and worship. John Piper, “America’s most famous Edwardsean minister,” arguably began this trend. Those evangelicals influenced by Piper stress with him that Edwards said true religion must have high emotions.³

In Desiring God, Piper argues that Jonathan Edwards advocates that true Christianity binds emotion with intellect. This union means that Christian worship must be emotional: “Without the engagement of the heart, we do not really worship. The engagement of the heart in worship is the coming alive of the feelings and emotions and affections of the heart.”⁴ By the terms emotion and feeling, Piper says he means the same thing Edwards does by affections. He agrees with Edwards that affections are seated in the soul, working with the body in a complex way.⁵

Citing Edwards, Piper says that true Christianity fuses “emotion and thought, affection and reflection, doxology and theology.”⁶ For Piper, Edwards’s goal was to raise the affections to the highest degree possible, leading Piper to conclude that Edwards “was utterly convinced of the crucial importance of powerful affections in worship.” He echoes Edwards’s warning to avoid “light without heat.”⁷ The “heat” of affections should come from the “light” of biblical truth. Thereby Christians avoid dividing “deep thought and deep feeling.”⁸ For Piper, Edwards’s notion of affections is synonymous to that of emotions.

In his careful and influential interpretation of Edwards, Gerald McDermott presents Edwards in contrast to the both Great Awakening extremists and Old Light clergy. According to McDermott, Great Awakening supporters emphasized religious feelings to the exclusion of beliefs and actions. The Old Light clergy emphasized the importance of doctrine in religion.⁹ Edwards refused to stress either mind or heart. He understands Edwards’s idea of affections to “lie at a deeper level of the human person than either thoughts or feelings, and in fact are the source and motivating power of thoughts and feelings.”¹⁰

McDermott defines affections as “strong inclinations of the soul that are manifested in thinking, feeling and acting.”¹¹ Holy affections incline the person toward God, unholy affections away from God. According to McDermott, true affections go further than mere belief in doctrine; they are “a passionate affair of the soul—one’s innermost being—that is reflected in every part of one’s life.”¹² Affections are more than emotions; emotions are often a part of affections, but they are not the same. Sometimes emotions conflict with affections, and emotions are often “more fleeting and superficial.” Affections also differ from passions, which are “sudden, violent emotions that overpower the mind.”¹³

McDermott differs from Piper in distinguishing affections from emotions and acknowledging Edwards’s distinction between passions and affections. In later studies McDermott adds: “These [affections] are not emotions, as many scholars have erroneously reported, but something akin to what earlier traditions called the ‘soul,’ from which emotions arise.”¹⁴ Still, his dictum that affections are not emotions—yet more than emotions—would influence other interpreters, such as Talbot and Storms.

Mark Talbot also cites Edwards as a defender of emotional Christianity. McDermott’s influence on Talbot is evident in the latter’s definition of affections:

Modern dictionaries often take [affections] to refer merely to what we call the emotions—and perhaps only to the more moderate emotions at that. But for Edwards our affections involve a lot more than just our emotions. They have to do with the whole side of us that values and desires and chooses and wills as well as feels.¹⁵

Talbot contrasts affections with cognition. When desires are stronger, the soul acts strongly and sensibly, and in this, Talbot explains: “We feel our inclinations as emotions. Our affections, Edwards tells us, are these ‘more vigorous and sensible exercises of the inclination and will of the soul.’” Talbot stresses that inclinations must be strong to be genuine. When “Godly desires and emotions” continue it is a sign of genuine faith.¹⁶

More recently, Sam Storms’s paraphrase of Edwards’s Religious Affections closely follows Edwards’s classic.¹⁷ Yet in his chapter summarizing Edwards’s definition of affections, he offers a lengthy paragraph that has no corresponding part in Affections. He explains (in the voice of Edwards):

We should also distinguish affections from “emotions” or “feelings.” Certainly there is what may rightly be called an emotional dimension to affections. Affections, after all, are sensible and intense longings or aversions of the will. Perhaps it would be best to say that whereas affections are not less than emotions, they are surely more. Emotions can often be no more than physiologically heightened states of either euphoria or fear that are unrelated to what the mind perceives as true. Affections, on the other hand, are always the fruit or effect of what the mind understands or knows.

One can experience an emotion or feeling without it properly being an affection, but one can rarely if ever experience an affection without it being emotional and involving intense feelings that awaken and move and stir the body.¹⁸

Thus the affections are always emotional, but not all emotions are affections, especially when emotions are “physiological” feelings unrelated to the cognitive powers.

Brian Borgman also uses Jonathan Edwards in his defense of “godly emotions” in his book Feelings and Faith.¹⁹ He writes: “To have a theologically robust perspective on the proper use of the emotions is to enter into the greenhouse of spiritual growth, for, as Jonathan Edwards argued in his classic, Religious Affections, ‘The nature of true religion consists in holy affections.’”²⁰ Borgman’s definition of emotions will be explained later, but the point here is that he equates affections with emotions. Borgman sprinkles lengthy quotations by Edwards throughout his monograph to defend his view of emotions.²¹

The influence of Piper’s reading of Edwards should not be underestimated. In his defense of “Contemporary Music-Driven Worship” in Exploring the Worship Spectrum, Joe Horness refers to John Piper’s emphasis o n emotions in worship, which is, as Don Williams noted, built on Piper’s reading of Edwards.²²

That affections and emotions are the same is easily found in popular literature, as the following six examples will illustrate. Gerrit Immink and Reinder Bruisnma say of Edwards’s idea of affections: “Affections have an intense emotional component that we experience as something coming over us: we are being moved.”²³ Andrew Lester makes a similar point.²⁴ Elsewhere Dale and Sandy Larsen quip that “Jonathan Edwards, the supreme rationalist, found emotion inseparable from true religion.”²⁵ Roger Olson argues to the same effect.²⁶ Although Robert Crapps is careful to note some of Edwards’s distinctions (i.e., between affections and passions), he nevertheless says Edwards “believed that emotion was a necessary ingredient of genuine religion.”²⁷ Lastly, Dane Ortlund, while offering some helpful distinctions between popular notions of emotions and Edwards’s “affections,” nevertheless suggests that affections are what “today we would probably call the ‘emotions.’”²⁸ The tendency among popular literature to equate affections and emotions is noteworthy.

This trend is also seen in paraphrases of Edwards’s works on a popular level besides Storms’s Signs of the Spirit. At times, James Houston’s 1984 paraphrase of Religious Affections appears to distinguish affections from emotions, but at other times treats them as synonyms.²⁹ In the introduction to his 1991 abridgment of Affections, Nicholas Needham argues that “emotions,” “seems the best modern eq...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Dedication
• Title
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Note on Text
• The Yale University Press Edition of The Works of Jonathan Edwards
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Lost in Translation: The Problem of Edwards, Affections, and Emotions
• Chapter 2 Human Affections in Patristic and Medieval Theology
• Chapter 3 Human Affections in Post-Medieval Thought
• Chapter 4 Young Jonathan Edwards’s Education in Affections
• Chapter 5 Jonathan Edwards’s Early Psychology
• Chapter 6 Enthusiasm, Passions, and the Great Awakening Disputes over the Role of Affections in Religion
• Chapter 7 Affections and Christian Apology: The Later Psychology of Jonathan Edwards
• Chapter 8 Toward a Theology of Affections
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright