Circles of Sanctification

The Church can never hold on to its humility or sincerity. It is not ours. It is the righteousness of Jesus. In the moment that the Church realizes its own humility it is condemned. But in its condemnation it is faced with its end, with its death in baptism with Christ, and thus given the prospect of resurrection with Christ, whose resurrection is the firstfruits. These patterns of humility and false-humility are the cycles or circles of sanctification that make up the very fabric and reality of the history of the Church. These circles of salvation are the weaving and working of the Holy Spirit, and must be received with thankfulness. "Is anyone among you sick? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praise." Because it is the Spirit who sovereignly shapes the Church in the highs and the lows; he is sovereign to bring us face to face with our shortcoming and also the face of Jesus, who is true humility and sincerity.

Probability, motion, and faith

This world offers no stability. We are governed by the reality of probability, tension, and faith. Nothing is sure, nothing is sound. We drive to work and school knowing that nothing guarantees the safety of our commute. We are perpetually out on a limb, so to speak. In every motion, decision, advance, commitment, investment, we are governed by faith, by trust, by counting on something outside of ourselves. Metaphysics is drama. Watching musicians and actors perform puts us on the edge of our seats; there is always great potential for failure and disappointment, but this is precisely what excites us; it is the thrill of motion and relationship. Indeed, it is the thrill of this universe. And as we dramatize this tension we testify and bear witness to a Triune God who is both tension and faithfulness. The eternal rest of God is motion, and the torment and agony of hell is stagnancy.

Presuppositions about Nature in Edwards and the Transcendentalists

One of the most interesting subjects this semester has been our discussion on the transcendentalists in American Literature with Dr. Shaak. What made an impression on me was the similarities and contrasts between the transcendentalists and the Puritans. Transcendentalists assured their readers that human beings are best off trusting their own intuition: "Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string" (from Emerson's "Nature"). And yet both groups hold to a fundamental presupposition that life, nature, history, have inherit meaning within them. For anyone interested, I wrote a paper on the topic comparing Edwards and Emerson particularly. Herewith.

Presuppositions about Nature in Edwards and the Transcendentalists

Jonathan Edwards was convinced of his wickedness, expressing in his “Personal Narrative” that its appearance was “an abyss, infinitely deeper than hell” (“Personal Narrative” 395). He believed in the Puritan understanding of total depravity and was determined to look away from self to Christ. In contrast, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay “Self-reliance” has played a key role in shaping the thought of many transcendentalists who have followed in his footsteps such as Henry David Thoreau and Walt Whitman. These two perspectives represent opposite ends of the spectrum in regards to personal identity. Robert Milder, in his essay “From Emerson to Edwards,” refers to the distance from “quasi-omnipotence to a Calvinist sense of dependence and limitation” (Milder 100) to illustrate the difference between these two views.

However, both Edwards and the transcendentalists rejected the notion that life was arbitrary and random; both assumed a metaphysical order rich with meaning. Observing Edward’s notes in “Images of Divine Things” and his various other typological writings in comparison with Emerson’s “Nature” as well as other transcendentalist writings will reveal these similarities. In spite of their often drastically different conclusions, Edwards and the transcendentalists operated with nearly an identical presupposition regarding inherit meaning and spiritual significance in metaphysics, that is, the entire natural world.

Towards the end of his life, Edwards’ planned to write a work on “the Harmony of the Old and New Testaments,” which he never finished. However, many of his personal notes on the subject were left behind. Understanding his method of linking OT types to a universal meaning and ultimately to Christ is the key to grasping his view on the meaning of the natural world and history. His note in “Miscellanies” on types offers a summary: “Very much of the wisdom of God in the creation appears in his so ordering things natural, that they lively represent things divine and spiritual, [such as] sun, fountain, vine” (“Miscellanies” 284) Here Edwards is intentionally using examples that the Bible has used to represent Christ. For Edwards, the OT witness did not simply use historically constrained images that the NT authors then applied to Christ without warrant, but rather he saw these images as eternally representative of Christ, and therefore felt entitled to the same freedom that the NT authors did as he applied the imagery to Christ.

Edwards’ typological methods were not restricted to the OT; this method obviously implied a universal truth regarding the fundamental nature of things both inside and outside the textual world of the Bible. Edwards “believed that the various departments of learning were mutually supportive, and it never occurred to him that when unified by the theological intellect, they would fail to confirm biblical verities” (Cherry 263). In other words, Edwards saw no need for a forceful application of doctrine to real life; in his view doctrine and real life were absolutely consistent. He proceeds smoothly from biblical images to real life: “much of the wisdom of God in his providence, in that the state of mankind is so ordered, that there are innumerable things in human affairs that are lively pictures of the things of the gospel, such as shield, tower, and marriage, family[1]” (“Miscellanies” 284). In his “Personal Narrative” he describes an increase in sensitivity towards divine things as he grew in his knowledge of Scripture, doctrine, and God: “There seemed to be, as it were, a calm, sweet cast, or appearance of divine glory, in almost every thing” (“Personal Narrative” 389).

Edwards made the spiritual interpretation of nature a regular discipline. His work “Images of Divine Things” is a collection of 212 notes in which he interprets various events in life, some of which are intertwined with biblical imagery such as marriage being representative of Christ and the church, others being entirely his own interpretation of the real world: “When we first get up in the morning, we rake open and kindle up the fire. So Christians, when they awake out of a spiritual sleep, re-enkindle their graces” (“Images of Divine Things” 99).[2] The typological illustrations of Christ were fitting in view of “man’s natural delight in the imitative arts” (“Types of Messiah” 191).

There is much parallel to Edwards in Emerson’s section on “Language” in his essay “Nature”: “The use of natural history is to give us aid in supernatural history” (“Nature” 1118). Emerson sees a great significance in details, namely, that nothing is mere detail, nothing is mere chance, and that “it is easily seen that there is nothing lucky or capricious in these analogies but that they are constant, and pervade nature” (“Nature” 1119). In great similarity to Edwards, Emerson viewed the nature of the way things work - the rules which govern nature - to “have a much more extensive and universal sense when applied to human life than when confined to technical use” (“Nature” 1121). Both Edwards and Emerson would denounce those who view life as a collection of arbitrary, random events that humanity must begrudgingly deal with: working, sleeping, sitting in traffic, brushing teeth, showering, studying, etc. Rather, they would both agree that “Space, time, society, labor, climate, food, locomotion, the animals, the mechanical forces, give us sincerest lessons, day by day, whose meaning is unlimited” (“Nature” 1122).

Notice the similarity between Edwards and Emerson as they both discuss the meaningfulness of rivers; Edwards says that as rivers “empty vast quantities of water every day and yet there is never the less to come,” so is the “goodness of God”; the reason rivers exist is because of the goodness of God (“Images of Divine Things” 54). [3] Emerson asks, “Who looks upon a river in a meditative hour, and is not reminded of the flux of all things” (“Nature” 1118)? Although they find different conclusions, both operate with precisely the same notion of significance and inherit meaning.

Thoreau, in his book “Walden,” describes men who “are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them” (“Walden” 1874). And clearly Walt Whitman’s poem “Song of Myself” teaches the reader to find and savor meaning in “the blab of the pave, tires of carts, sluff of boot-soles, talk of the promenaders” (Song of Myself 2215) and a plethora of other perhaps overlooked scenarios in everyday life. This pattern of listing everyday events and themes of nature is quite similar to Edwards’ method of gathering notes in “Images of Divine Things.” Edwards, Whitman, and Thoreau demand that human beings observe those things that might became mundane in routine and reconsider their meaning. It is not difficult to imagine Edwards applauding the transcendentalists were he not aware of the self-reliant backbone supporting their work. As Conrad Cherry points out, Edwards “sought to live in the typical or literal meaning in such a way that he was carried to its antitypical or symbolic meaning” (Cherry 266) Both Edwards and the transcendentalists were not content to push through the routine of life without examining its deeper, spiritual meaning.

However, Edwards would be appalled at Emerson’s conclusion that “no man touches these divine natures, without becoming, in some degree, himself divine” (“Nature” 1130) and that “the use of the outer creation is to give us language for the beings and changes of the inward creation” (“Nature” 1118). For Edwards, the meaning, or the end for which God created the world, was “So that the whole is of God, and in God, and to God, and God is the beginning, middle and end of this affair. (“The End for Which God Created the World” 255)” Edwards “believed that creation’s symbolic structure was grounded in history’s central symbol, the Christ” (Cherry 270).

While Edwards and the transcendentalists have drastically different motivations and conclusions, both presuppose nature to have inherit meaning and significance; both seek to savor this meaning and to not become lost in a mindless routine, to not be “so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked,” (“Walden 1874) as Thoreau puts it.

Works Cited

Cherry, Conrad. "Symbols of Spiritual Truth." Interpretation 39.3 (1985): 263-271. Print.

Edwards, Jonathan. The "miscellanies": entry nos. a-z, aa-zz, 1-500. New Haven: Yale

University Press, 1994. Print.

Edwards, Jonathan. Typological writings. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993. Print.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. "Nature." The Norton anthology of American literature. 7th ed. New

York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2007. 1110-1138. Print.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo. "Self-reliance." The Norton anthology of American literature. 7th ed.

New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2007. 1163-1180. Print.

Milder, Robert. "From Emerson to Edwards." New England Quarterly (2007): 96-133. Print.

Thoreau, Henry David. "Waldo” The Norton anthology of American literature. 7th ed. New

York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2007. 1872-1914. Print.

Whitman, Walt. "Song of Myself." The Norton anthology of American literature. 7th ed. New

York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2007. 2210-2254. Print.

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[1] Miscellanies #119: Types.

[2] Images of Divine Things #137

[3] Images of Divine Things #15