Puritans and Revival V: Knowing and Loving | Behold Your God Podcast

Knowledge of Christ as Head and Heart Together

Welcome back to another episode of the Behold Your God podcast. I'm Teddy James, content producer for Media Grazie. Joined with Dr. John Snyder, pastor of Christ Church New Albany and author of the Behold Your God Studies.

John, we ran out of time on the last podcast. We had so much more to say. We're continuing on with Puritans and Revivals. Basically what this is is your dissertation, what you have your doctorate in. And so if you notice that I have very little to say in these podcasts, there's a good reason for that.

The man who knows about it is literally sitting right here. And so John, we really want to hear from you. Now, we were talking last time about the differences in knowledge. John Newton was his three elements of knowledge.

And we want to go now right into Jonathan Edwards and just jump right into that. Jonathan Edwards had two types of.

Knowledge, and what are those? Right, now Newton was talking about three elements that are needed for a true Christian knowledge. What Jonathan Edwards helps us with, of course he wrote a lot on this topic, but for our podcast I just want to mention that he gives a much more careful description of the difference between what we tend to call head knowledge versus heart knowledge.

You know, that's just book knowledge or that's heart knowledge. So Edwards is going to give us a bit more helpful description of head and heart knowledge and how to distinguish those. He divides them under two categories, speculative knowledge and sentient knowledge.

Now, we don't have to use those terms when we're talking with people. You know, we don't have to come to someone in evangelism and we say to them, you know, do you know the Lord? They go, oh no, no, I already know Jesus.

And you say, ah, do you have speculative or sentient knowledge of Jesus? And so what do we mean? Well, Edwards defines the words for us. Speculative knowledge, he says, is merely a conjecture of things that one does not really grasp, and therefore those truths do not impact the life of the individual.

We would tend to call that kind of bare learning. It's ineffective. It's not possessed by the person in a way that influences the conscience, the affections, the will. Sentient knowledge, well, Edwards describes it like this, it is an exciting sense of things which have to do with our good, the sense of the heart.

Now, already we see Edwards is joining not just intellect but heart here in this knowledge, and I think that this is a good, healthy description. The kind of knowledge that we want is head and heart together.

The dichotomy, the idea that if you can have head knowledge without heart knowledge, really it's a false dichotomy. In the regenerate person, all of us is impacted. The mind is enlightened so that we can now understand what before made no sense to us.

The heart has changed. The cold, stony heart is removed, and a soft, warm, receptive heart is placed there. Spiritually, now we love what once we hated, and the will is affected. The chain of sin's nature is broken, and we are now free to choose to follow Christ.

Now, this is really the root of the evangelical view of why head and heart both have to be impacted if it's to be true Christian knowledge, because all of you was impacted in regeneration. All of you was made new in Christ, so when we come to the Scriptures, in a sense, all of you is affected.

Now, we're not talking about perfect understanding, or perfect love, or perfect obedience, but understanding and the affections, the desires, the heart, and the will, the choices, all of them will be brought under the truth, and that's when the evangelical says, that's when you know you really know it, the way Edwards is talking about.

Experience That Catechizes the Heart

Now, we've got a couple of really great quotes by some Puritans on this, so why don't you read those?

Yeah, so the first is by Bishop Hall, who says, There is nothing more easy than to say divinity by rote, but to hear God speak it to the soul, and to feel the power of religion in ourselves, and to express it out of the truth of experience within, is both rare and hard.

It will never be well with me till sound experience has really catechized my heart, and made me know God and my Savior otherwise than by words.

That is such a penetrating quote, that he can say, it will never be well with me until, and really we need to, I mean, I would suggest that every Christian write this in the interior flap of their Bible.

Bishop Hall, quote, it will never be well with me dot, dot, dot, till, dot, dot, dot, end quote. Till what? Until I feel the power of religion within me as I'm studying these truths.

Yes, and this is not a feeling that we muster up. You know, I remember the story of A .W. Tozer, you know, when they were, he was preaching, and these two women were trying to muster up something, you know, and it's not about that.

It's not just a feeling that you try to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, and this is what it's going to be. No, it is an experience, and it is the experience that's born by the Holy Spirit. Yes, so we could say the experience and the.

Feelings flow from the Scriptures, you know, from us taking in the Scriptures, and the Holy Spirit teaching us these things, as, you know, as we're meditating and looking at them, and then he says, like, I won't be satisfied until experience, until these truths, gotten hold of, possessed, till these truths, by the experience of them, catechize my heart.

I mean, it's one thing to study the doctrine of justification. It's another thing to know, in your experience, what it is to be able to live with the daily benefits of God's mercies in justification. It's one thing to talk about prayer.

It's another thing to be a man that draws near to God in prayer. My heart needs to be catechized, needs to be instructed, like a child. How? By experiencing the things I'm studying in the Scriptures, and that's not a charismatic that's saying that.

That's a Puritan bishop. Now, we have another one by the Welshman.

Vavasor Powell. Yeah, he says, the Christian believes strongest that hath experience to back his faith. Experience seasons brain knowledge. It settles a shaking unsettled soul. Heart knowledge is both necessary and precious to sincere.

Souls. Right now, let's make sure we get what Powell's saying. Experience is not the source of the doctrine. It's not, you know, I experience it, therefore it must be true. The Scriptures are the source, but what does experience do?

He says, well, it's like seasoning on brain knowledge. So, okay, I got it. I got the truth in my head, but as I apply that to the life and I experience those things, it's like seasoning. You know, it's not bland words anymore.

He says, it settles a shaking unsettled soul. Like, I'm just not so sure, you know, and then you take the truths of Scripture and you live on them, and the experience of those truths helps to settle the, you know, the shaking unsettled, the questioning.

Soul. It's necessary. It's precious. I think those two things, necessary and precious. I mean, when we, you know, if you were diagnosed with a terminal illness and the doctor comes to you and says, okay, this disease will kill you.

However, there is a medication that you can take every day for the rest of your life and it will prolong your life and it will hold the disease at bay so that it will not kill you. It will not be the cause of your death.

You would see that medication, not just as a necessity, but you would see it as a precious necessity. And I think when we come to the Scriptures, sometimes we can have that view of the necessity, and sometimes we can have the view of the preciousness.

But I know for me, sometimes it's hard to have both of those things. In the experience of the knowledge as necessary and precious. I think that is something that we should really strive and pray for. And by the way, you know, like you had said earlier about the Bishop Hall quote, you know, write it inside the flap of your Bible.

We need to have these things before us. And so one of the things that we'll do, because we don't expect anybody to listen to the podcast with a pen and paper in hand, we're gonna write out these quotes and have them ready for you at Mediagratia .org so that you can see them and read them and pore over them yourself.

Knowledge Without the Spirit, Affection, Humility, or Transformation

Yeah, let's try to kind of bring this.

All together though. By looking at the four types of religious knowledge that the early evangelicals were concerned about, that they felt were really kind of a counterfeit knowledge. And if you want to know what kind of knowledge that they were happy with, you just flip these.

So let me give you the four things they were concerned about. Knowledge without the Spirit. Knowledge without affection. Knowledge without humility. And knowledge without transformation. So, well, what did you think real biblical knowledge was?

Well, in the evangelical mind, if a Christian says, I know these things, if he's really learning these truths from the Scripture, then he will have, it'll be a knowledge that comes by the help of the Spirit, a knowledge that affects the heart, the affections, a knowledge that produces humility instead of pride, and a knowledge that transforms.

We'll take these one at a time and kind of look at them from that negative perspective. What kind of knowledge should we not be satisfied with? And the first is knowledge without the Spirit. An unaided knowledge.

Coming to the Bible saying, okay, well, I understand it, and I don't need the Spirit of God to be my.

Instructor. So John Berridge, in a hymn book that he put together for his church, Zion Songs, one of the hymns there says this, It raiseth no man from the dead while seated only in the head. It maketh matter for some talk, but cannot give him legs to walk, nor make a man a saint.

Now, let's, I.

Want to say something about the hymns and then about Berridge's hymns. When we, when we quote hymns as an expression of their doctrine, you might think, well, that's not a very doctrinal, that's not a good source for getting a person's doctrine, but actually hymns really are a very good place to look for a man's practical day-to-day doctrine.

When John Wesley and Charles Wesley were doing a lot of writing in the early days for their kind of new group, Wesley, Charles, it was reported to say to John, you can write the sermons, let me write the hymns, and in a hundred years, it won't be you that taught our people theology, it will be me.

Because really, oftentimes, it's through songs that the average man comes to his doctrinal views. We're not saying that's the best way, but it is a good reflection of what they think, and it's also a very formative thing.

So, John Berridge is talking about a certain type of knowledge that only lives in the head, leaves a guy dry, faint, lets him talk, but gives him no low legs to walk, and so that's not the kind of knowledge we need.

That's orthodoxy, right doctrines, but without the Holy Spirit taking them and instructing us or helping to apply that.

To our lives. Yeah, and as we go on, the next one is knowledge without affection, which for that we look to Whitfield, and he says, I like orthodoxy very well, but what signifies an orthodox head with a heterodox heart?

I tell thee, O man, I tell thee, O woman, whoever thou art, thou art a dead man, thou art a dead woman, nay, a damned man, a damned woman without a new heart. Yeah, pretty strong words from.

Whitfield. It's the kind of thing that made his church superior so angry. How can you say to people who agree with the truths that we put in front of them that they might be damned? And Whitfield's answer is, if all they have is in a mental agreement with what you just told them, and their heart does not love that truth, then why do you tell them they're Christian?

And we have a hymn by the.

Welshman, William Williams, translated into English. Yeah. But, oh, it profits nothing to know truth in the head. Mere knowing may not influence. The heart is still not fed. To feel it, ah, that's different.

A taste of pardoning grace would make my life most blessed, my home the happiest place. So, Williams, again,.

Looking for a heart that's fed by truth. The truth enters through the intellect. It impacts the affections, the desires, and leads to a transformed life. But my favorite quote in this section that you've got is the one from John Owen when he.

Talks about affections and religion. Yeah, this is great. When the heart is cast indeed into the mold of the doctrine that the mind embraces, when not the sense of the words only is in our heads, but the sense of things abides in our hearts, when we have communion with God in the doctrine we contend for, then shall we be garrisoned by the grace of God against all the assaults of men.

And without this, our contending is as to ourselves of no value. Let us then not think that we are anything the better for our conviction of the truths of the great doctrines of the gospel, unless we find the power of the truths abiding in our own hearts and have a continual experience of their necessity and excellency in our standing before God and our communion with Him.

Yeah, so it's a good time to just stop and ask ourselves. Regardless of what Puritans thought or early evangelicals or those that disagreed with them, is my mind being cast into the mold of the truths that I'm reading daily in the Scriptures or the truths that I'm hearing from the pulpit from God's Word?

Am I being fashioned? Is my life being poured into those verses and reshaped by those realities? And am I satisfied to call myself a Christian or to say I understood that verse without that occurring?

Humility, Books, and the Goal of Holiness

A third type of knowledge that they were concerned with is knowledge without humility. The young leaders feared that the increase of academic or intellectual head knowledge with regard to certain doctrines, as they had to kind of come to more precision on these doctrines, you know, particularly when groups were disagreeing with each other, so they had to kind of stop and say, well, why do I believe what I believe?

Why do I think that guy's wrong? That in reading good theological books and thinking about doctrines in that way, that they would be led away from that simplicity and humility in the way that they, you know, gave themselves to the Scriptures.

And instead that they would kind of become puffed up and that reading good theological books for the purpose of arguing with the guy over here would replace in the common man's life that simple study of the Scriptures.

And we have to understand that in the 18th century, they didn't all have books. They didn't have, we have to understand that in the 18th century, leisure time was pretty limited. So they didn't all have, you know, limitless light that you had to light candles at night.

You get home late. To read anything required a candle. Candles were expensive. You had very little time before you had to be back up and work again. You work six days, not five each week. And so the early leaders were concerned.

We want you to read good books, but don't let them replace that simple childlike reading of the Bible. And we see that. Let me give you an example. We see that in the life of John Berridge. John Wesley wanted John Berridge to kind of promote his Christian library that we mentioned before, those 40 plus volumes and to sell those.

And now Wesley was not trying to make a big chunk of money. He probably made very little off those sets. They just wanted to get those books into the hands of people that could be benefited. But Berridge wouldn't let his, Wesley's traveling preachers sell the books in his area.

And Wesley called him on it and said, what's your problem? You know, you don't believe in books? And later, John Wesley made a comment about Berridge. When someone said to Wesley, oh, you're a Methodist.

You don't believe in academics. You don't believe in reading good books. And Wesley's answer was, well, men like Berridge don't, but I don't answer for him. I know that I believe in that. The truth was that Berridge did believe in the right use of books.

He, he read the Puritans often. He wrote books himself. He published books. He, he had 1000 copies of Joseph Alain's book, A Sure Guide to Heaven or Alarm to the Unconverted, which we mentioned led George Whitefield to conversion.

He had 1000 of those published and gave them away as he traveled. But he knew that his simple people, hard working blue collar people had very limited time in their week. And he was jealous that no time that should have been devoted to scripture would be given.

To another book in scripture's place. Yeah. And, and I think that there is a, a really massive temptation sometimes. We live in an era where we have an embarrassment of riches. Really we do. Between, you know, the Banner of Truth, their Puritan paperbacks and Free Grace Press and Soledad Gloria, Reformation Heritage Books, all of these guys printing out the best of Christian literature over the last 500 years plus.

And there is a temptation that we read, we want to read all of these books and that's a, it's a good desire, right? We want to read these things, but we have to fight the temptation to let them replace scripture.

And we have to fight the temptation of even feeling guilt or shame. There's all of these great things and I haven't read, but just a tiny fraction of them. Well, as Spurgeon would say, visit other books often, but live in the Bible.

And come back, like you were saying, to that simple childlike reading.

Of scripture. The last type of knowledge that they were concerned with is a knowledge that didn't lead to the transformation. For the, for the revival men, holiness was always the goal, Christ-likeness.

John Wesley said that's the reason that God raised up the Methodists, was for the one purpose of re-emphasizing holiness. So, and the Calvinistic side was just as concerned about holiness. J. I. Packer writes about this idea of transformation and knowledge when he speaks of the Puritan view.

He said, for the Puritans, true Christianity consisted in knowing, feeling, and obeying the truth. And then he gives these things, these counterfeit versions. Knowledge without obedience, feeling without acting, or feeling and acting, but without real knowledge.

We're all condemned by Puritans as false religion and we're ruinous to men's souls. George Whitefield, a century later, never tires of reminding his people of the same kind of things. He, he said this, all truth, unless productive of holiness and love, is of no avail.

It may float upon the surface of the understanding, but this is to no purpose unless it transforms the heart. In a letter to an anxious friend, he wrote this, good dear sir, never leave off watching, reading, praying, striving, till you experimentally, or experientially, find Christ Jesus formed within you.

Now, again, these men weren't saying that study wasn't important, the intellect wasn't important, that logic had no part in Christianity. They were saying this, that the truth entering through the intellect had not run its full course until by the help of the spirit, it altered the heart and led to the transformation of our choices.

False Gospel Language Versus Dying to Self

There's an ideology today that uses the name gospel, but has none of the good news in it, and yet many of its ideas and doctrines are finding their way into more and more churches across America. That is why we believe the film American Gospel, Christ Alone, is an important film for every church, family, and Christian in America to view.

The Bible is explicit. False teachers must be called out by name. I mean, Paul called out Peter, you know, the top dog. He called him out when he was acting in such a way that was out of line with the gospel.

We are exporting the very worst of what Christianity has to offer. I'm strong,.

I'm healthy, I'm blessed, I'm favored, I am a victor, not a victim. I'm gonna live a long,.

Productive, faith-filled life. In terms of biblical Christianity, Christianity is about.

How to Pursue the Right Kind of Knowledge

Dying. To learn more about American Gospel, Christ Alone, visit Mediagratia .org or click the link in the description below. So, John, these last two episodes really have had one theme, and that has been knowledge.

And there's a difference between a good, healthy knowledge that is from the scriptures, and then there's another knowledge that, well, it doesn't lead to life. As John Newton was saying, it's not an illumined reason.

And it's, we don't, we're not dependent on the scripture, and we use our own reason. But as a pastor, what counsel would you give us on what type of knowledge to pursue, what type of knowledge to pray for, and what do we need to be looking for in the knowledge that we do pursue?

I think that, you know, ultimately, we have to.

Long for the kind of knowledge the Bible says we should have, or we can have. And otherwise, our praying and things, you know, it's kind of a dead end. You know, God is not going to give us something that we try to twist His arm and say, now, God, I want this kind of knowledge.

Well, is that what the Bible says is for you? Because if it's not, why are you asking for it? So ultimately, we need to be asking for the kind of knowledge that the Bible points toward. But I do think if we take that list that we've been talking about, it does match that.

It's a knowledge that comes by the spirits aiding our study of scripture, our meditating on it, our memorizing it. At Christ Church in New Albany, we've been going through the book on the spiritual disciplines.

And last week, we were in the early chapter on meditation and memorization of scripture. And just very simple things. The author gives 17 things you can do to meditate. And so we've all been scrambling to say, let's try to apply some that we don't normally do.

And I have found that so helpful. And I think that the whole church has, you know, normally, we read old dead writers. So this is kind of, this is a modern book. And the people have been so encouraged by just the practical guidance and opportunity to put it into practice.

So we take the scriptures. We want to work it like a woodworker works the wood. It's going to require some sweat, but it is by the Holy Spirit that that becomes lastingly effective. But also a knowledge with affection.

That is, as the Holy Spirit is teaching us and aiding our study of that, then the heart ought to be captured by those truths, you know, changed by those truths, altered, fashioned by those truths. My heart has been fashioned all along by what the world says.

Now it needs to be fashioned by scripture. Hating what God hates, loving what God loves, seeing as infinitely beautiful what God finds beautiful. Then there's humility. When knowledge puffs up, it's because, as Paul warned it does, it's because it's devoid of love.

Add love to knowledge. So I'm learning, but I'm loving the King I'm learning about. I'm loving the people that I'm learning to serve through the scriptural principles. I'm loving the truths of my King.

Love weighs us down. Love keeps us humble and makes us glad to choose the low place. So if your learning doctrine is making you arrogant, it's because your love to Christ and Christ's people is not keeping pace with your learning.

And the final thing is knowledge that leads to transformation. The ultimate goal of our instruction, Paul talks about, you know, is a clear conscience and a transformed life. We want experience to catechize us.

We want to take these truths, make room for them in our life, no matter what the cost, and then live them out throughout the week so that all week long we're enjoying the realities that God has put for us in scripture, and our heart is being catechized or taught by the daily application of those things.