Tag Archives: Jonathan Edwards

Resolutions Worth Keeping: The origins of New Years’ resolutions, and one famous list

Posted on December 28, 2009 | Leave a comment

Resolutions Worth Keeping
The origins of New Years’ resolutions, and one famous list
Chris Armstrong

Like other Christian festivals, the celebration of New Years Day in the West started before the church came into existence.

At first, the Romans celebrated the beginning of the new year on March 1, not January 1. Julius Caesar instituted New Year’s Day on January 1 to honor Janus, the two-faced god who looks backwards into the old year and forwards into the new. The custom of “New Years resolutions” began in this earliest period, as the Romans made resolutions with a moral flavor: mostly to be good to others. Continue reading →

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Do Non-Charismatics ‘Do’ Holy Spirit Baptism? Ask D. L. Moody, Charles G. Finney, Jonathan Edwards, or Cotton Mather

Posted on December 20, 2009 | Leave a comment

As a Christian “of Pentecostal extraction” working at Christianity Today International, I was often asked by friends from that movement to see whether I couldn’t get some more coverage of the Wesleyan-holiness-Pentecostal-charismatic stream in CTI publications. I agree that Christianity Today itself had not always done a great job of covering that significant (to put it mildly) stream within American and world evangelicalism–though I think that’s starting to change. So early on, I posted a couple of short items pointing to the affinities between Pentecostals and other evangelicals. Here is one of those:

Do Non-Charismatics ‘Do’ Holy Spirit Baptism?
Ask D. L. Moody, Charles G. Finney, Jonathan Edwards, or Cotton Mather
Chris Armstrong

Recently we’ve heard a lot about the rapid worldwide growth of Pentecostal and charismatic groups. Researcher David Barrett and his team have been reminding us for years that these groups have passed all others in their global spread. Polls here at home have showed similarly high domestic growth rates in such groups.

Some secular commentators have found this growth menacing—the burgeoning of yet another potentially violent, reactionary religious group. Some evangelicals, too, are discomfited, finding the charismatics’ emphasis on Spirit-bestowed gifts such as tongues and prophecy exotic, if not downright alien. Continue reading →

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Jonathan Edwards: The original “ancient-future” evangelical

Posted on December 9, 2009 | 2 comments

Really. Jonathan Edwards was the original “ancient-future” evangelical. This was just one of the surprising things I discovered while working on the Christian History issue on this great theologian-pastor-revivalist:

[For a few reflections on what Edwards could still mean to the church today, see this post. For his claim to the title “father of evangelicalism,” see this one. On his ouster from his own church, this one.]

A Modern Puritan
Edwards bestowed the riches of Puritanism on a world shaped by the Enlightenment.
Chris Armstrong

“Modern Puritan.” That’s an oxymoron, right? Puritans, with their ultra-serious obsession with getting every detail of the Christian life just right, seem an anachronism in today’s free-and-easy America. In this world, religion has become, for many, an accessory—like the frontier town that supposedly distributed the advertisement for a new minister: “Wanted: A man who takes his religion like his drink—in moderation.” Continue reading →

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Jonathan Edwards: Father of evangelicalism

Posted on December 9, 2009 | Leave a comment

It didn’t really come into focus for me until I was working on the Christian History issue on him: the Puritan theologian and revivalist Jonathan Edwards really was one of the two fathers of modern evangelicalism (interestingly, the other was the Arminian John Wesley). With some help from the work of historian Mark Noll, I explored Edwards’s influence in the editor’s note of that issue.

[For a few reflections on what Edwards could still mean to the church today, see this post. On Edwards as the original “ancient-future” evangelical, see here. On his ouster from his own church, this one.]

Jonathan Edwards: From the Editor – Papa Edwards
Chris Armstrong

Conversion. Revival. Biblical authority. A warm-hearted faith touching all areas of personal and social life. Billy Graham believes in these things. So did Billy Sunday, D. L. Moody, and Charles Finney. And so do countless others today who would place themselves in the Protestant family tree most often termed “evangelical.”

If you had to put someone at the very root of this tree, who would it be? Continue reading →

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To Jonathan Edwards: We’re sorry we threw you out–could you please come back?

Posted on December 8, 2009 | 2 comments

As mentioned in the last post, Jonathan Edwards got thrown out of his own church. Nonetheless, he remains an important pastor-figure for today. Why? 2003 was the 300th anniversary of Edwards’s birth (he was born the same year as his co-conspirator in the birth of evangelicalism, John Wesley), and I reflected on the impact of Edwards on my own life, and his importance to the church. (What is Edwards’s claim on the title “father of evangelicalism”? See here. Why did he get kicked out of his own church? Here. How was he the original “ancient-future” evangelical? Here.)

300-Year-Old Man Returns to Lead His Church
Evangelicals need this grandfather figure more than ever.
By Chris Armstrong | posted 12/05/2003

A recent article by Jay Tolson in U.S. News has reminded me of one of the strangest and most rewarding friendships I have ever enjoyed—one that continues today.

He was a Puritan theologian who had been dead for several centuries and was still known more for his subtle and extensive work in academic philosophy than for his connection with America’s first “revival”—the so-called Great Awakening.

I was a young, newly minted, twentieth century Christian in a Pentecostal church, who had spent much of the previous year basking in a sequence of Spirit-led encounters with the living God. Continue reading →

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Preacher in the hands of an angry church: the fall of Jonathan Edwards

Posted on December 7, 2009 | 16 comments

Minister. Thinker. Revivalist. America’s greatest theologian. “Homeboy” to today’s Young Reformed. Hero. Icon.

Failed pastor.

Why exactly was Jonathan Edwards, godfather of American evangelicalism, ejected from his own congregation–the church he had served faithfully for over twenty years? And what happened next? How did he respond? I explored these questions in an article for Leadership Journal:

[For a few reflections on what Edwards could still mean to the church today, see this post. For his claim to the title “father of evangelicalism,” see this one. On Edwards as the original “ancient-future” evangelical, see here.]

Preacher in the Hands of an Angry Church
by Chris Armstrong

As messy dismissals of ministers go, the 1750 ejection of Jonathan Edwards by his Northampton congregation was among the messiest. The fact that it involved the greatest theologian in American history—the central figure of the Great Awakening—is almost beside the point. The fact that it took place in a New England fast moving from theocratic “city on a hill” to democratic home of liberty is more relevant. Continue reading →

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Whose shoulders are you standing on?

Posted on October 26, 2009 | Leave a comment

I’ve been privileged to teach at Bethel Seminary, St. Paul, MN since early in 2005. In January 2006, a “presentation service” was held to welcome me as a faculty member. As is the custom, I gave a talk. Here it is:

Standing before you today, I feel 1,000 feet tall.

Why?

Is it because of the joy and honor it is to teach these wonderful students and work with these wonderful colleagues? Well, this has certainly had me walking a little taller ever since I got here a year ago. But that’s not it.

No, I’m standing so tall today because I know . . . that I am standing on the shoulders of countless others who have come before me in the church. And I am reminded of this every day as I prepare to think, teach, write, counsel, and learn in this Bethel community.

I didn’t always know this. In fact, I’d guess that the majority of American Christians don’t really know it. Finding out about those whose shoulders I am standing on has been a long journey of discovery for me. Continue reading →

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