September 12, 2022 Show with Brian Borgman on “Jonathan Edwards on Genesis”

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Live from the historic parsonage of the 19th century Gospel Minister George Norcross in downtown

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Carwile, Pennsylvania, it's Iron Sharpens Iron. This is a radio platform in which pastors,

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Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the Church and the world today.

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Proverbs 27, verse 17 tells us, Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.

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Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have a view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet

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Earth who are listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is

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Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Monday on this 12th day of September 2022.

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Before I introduce my next guest today, I just have an exciting announcement to make.

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We have scheduled now definitely chiseled in stone on the calendar.

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Of course, God can erase whatever we put on our calendar whenever he chooses. But as far as all parties are concerned, we have an agreement and a chosen date from Pete Hegseth of Fox News to be our guest for the very first time on Monday, the 26th of September, two weeks from today.

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And for those of you who are not aware of this already, Pete Hegseth is a very passionate advocate for the classical

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Christian school movement. And Pete is the keynote speaker for the classical

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Christian school associated with my former church's school.

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Before I moved from New York to Pennsylvania, I was a member of Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Long Island, located in Merrick, New York.

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And that was the church where I had been a member for a long time.

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I was actually technically saved at that church in the 80s, but it was at one time

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Calvary Baptist Church of Amityville that merged with First Baptist Church of Merrick and became

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Grace Reformed Baptist Church of Long Island in Merrick. And many precious memories at that church.

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And a number of pastors who are still friends to this day. And they have a

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Christian school, as I just mentioned, Grace Christian Academy, and they're doing a fundraiser in October. Pete Hegseth is the keynote speaker.

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And we are not only going to be talking about classical Christian education in general and Grace Christian Academy of Long Island specifically, but we're also going to be talking about Pete Hegseth's latest book,

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Battle for the American Mind, Uprooting a Century of Miseducation. So please mark your calendars for two weeks from today,

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Monday, the 26th of September, and we look forward to receiving your questions for Pete during the broadcast.

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But today I'm also very excited to have as a returning guest Brian Borgman. He is founding pastor of Grace Community Church in Minden, Nevada.

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And today we're going to be addressing his new book, Jonathan Edwards on Genesis, Hermeneutics, Homolytics, and Theology.

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And we're also going to be announcing the 2022 Northwest Fire Regional Fellowship in Prineville, Oregon.

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And it's my honor and privilege to welcome you back to Iron Troupe and Zion Radio, Pastor Brian Borgman. Well, thanks,

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Chris. I appreciate being back on. Great. Well, tell our listeners, especially for the sake of our listeners who do not yet know who you are, they may have missed our last interview on Iron Troupe and Zion Radio, tell our listeners about Grace Community Church of Minden, Nevada.

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Yeah, so in 1993, my wife, two tiny kids at that time, and I, we moved from Portland, Oregon where I had finished seminary and moved to Minden, Nevada and planted

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Grace Community Church. It's a confessional Baptist church.

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We hold the Second Lenten Baptist Confession. And over the years, God has really blessed the work in just wonderful ways.

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We also have a classical Christian school that is, by the way, also Grace Christian Academy.

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And so we've just been really amazed at God's kindness to us over the years.

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And he's blessed our congregation. And we're just happy to serve here.

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Terrific. Well, if anybody wants more details on Grace Community Church of Minden, Nevada, go to gracenevada .com,

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gracenevada .com. And tell us about who was

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Jonathan Edwards. Jonathan Edwards is, for those who have been, most of those, actually,

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I'm assuming, most of those who have been a Christian for any reasonable length of time have at least heard of Jonathan Edwards.

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It doesn't even matter if you are theologically Reformed. You might even despise those teachings.

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But you've heard of Jonathan Edwards, the likelihood is, actually.

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But many people may not know the important details of Jonathan Edwards' life.

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In fact, it is interesting that I know at least one man who's a friend of mine,

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Pastor Ed Moore of North Shore Baptist Church in Bayside, Queens, sovereign grace -believing pastor there, really gifted, powerful preacher, highly sought -after conference speaker.

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But Ed, he was raised in an Arminian home and did not come to embrace the doctrines of sovereign grace until,

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I believe it was at Georgia Tech. He was in an

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American history class. And an atheist professor said something to the effect, you cannot rightly understand

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American history without knowing who Jonathan Edwards is. And this atheist professor explained in detail the theology of Jonathan Edwards.

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And God turned on the light switch in Ed's mind and heart, and he received those teachings as truth and embraced them and has been preaching them ever since.

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But tell our listeners about Jonathan Edwards, when and where he lived, and why he has come to a position of most learned

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Christians, especially those who are theologically reformed, insisting that we know much about and learn much from Jonathan Edwards.

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Not that he was a perfect man, not that everyone who is reformed agrees with everything he taught and believed, but obviously one of the giants of the faith that we would be foolish to ignore.

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Yeah, for sure. Yeah, Chris, well, I think most people's exposure to Edwards ends up being in a high school

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English class when they have an American lit anthology and they have to read

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Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. And I think that's about the extent that most people know of Edwards outside of, of course, the

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Christian community and the reformed community in particular. But Edwards is just a really important figure in early

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American, actually colonial history. He died before the War for Independence, so he's technically a

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British citizen his entire life. But he was born in 1703 in Connecticut, Windsor, Connecticut.

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And his father, Timothy Edwards, was quite a fine preacher and pastor as well.

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So he grew up in a pastor's home. He had ten sisters.

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He was the only boy. And he was doted on as a kid, as you could imagine.

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And he is actually a prodigy.

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He's considered one of America's greatest geniuses. I mean, he's doing things like reading

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Locke at age 14 and things like that. He ends up marrying a wonderful woman named

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Sarah Pierpont, and he is 23, she's 17.

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They end up having 11 kids altogether, all of whom survived childhood, which was really sort of an amazing thing back in the day.

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And out of Jonathan and Sarah's marriage, they end up producing some pretty incredible people, senators and university presidents and things like that.

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And so Edwards goes to the Northampton Congregational Church in 1726.

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He's a very young man at this time. And his maternal grandfather is

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Solomon Stoddard, and Stoddard is pastor of the Northampton Congregational Church.

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And, of course, at that time, you had two towering figures in New England.

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You had Cotton Mather and Solomon Stoddard. And Edwards sort of becomes his assistant.

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Stoddard dies about two and a half years after Edwards joined the church, and then he becomes basically what we might call today the senior pastor.

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Edwards actually sees—probably one of the things, if people know anything about Edwards beyond Sinners in the

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Hands of an Angry God, it's that he was involved in two incredible seasons of revival in his ministry.

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The first was 1734 to 1735, and then probably the most famous was the

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Great Awakening in 17— And Edwards really lived sort of a—

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I like to say he lived an ordinary and an extraordinary life as a pastor. You know, he went through all the stuff, church crises, building programs, excommunications, church discipline, suicides.

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I mean, all the stuff that pastors deal with. But he also was the most famous pastor theologian of his era, and he ends up being hugely influential in his—through his writings, mostly.

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He was dismissed from his congregation after 23 years of pastoral service.

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It's hard to believe that a church could actually fire Jonathan Edwards, but they did. And he goes from there to—he goes there to Massachusetts to a mission in Stockbridge, where he actually is pastoring a

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Caucasian congregation and a Native American congregation. And it's during that period of time he actually—some of his greatest literary works come into being.

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And then he has a son -in -law, Aaron Burr, who ends up being the father of the famous Aaron Burr, Jr.,

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who had the duel with Alexander Hamilton. And Aaron Burr is the president of a college called

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Princeton. And Aaron Burr dies, and they call

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Edwards, and Edwards really, really does not want to go. And then he is really sort of pressed upon.

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He's only there for a very short period of time. In fact, he assumes the presidency, and within five weeks of that, he ends up dying from complications from a smallpox.

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And so his literary output, his sermons, his philosophical works, his works on revival, all of these things have really gone to—have contributed to making him probably one of the most profound theologians that has ever been produced on American soil.

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Just as a bit of trivia, I have eaten in a restaurant at least twice in Manhattan that was formerly the

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Carriage House owned by Aaron Burr. The restaurant is called

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One If By Land, Two If By Sea. And excellent restaurant from my memories, so I recommend that to anyone who is visiting

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Manhattan. But actually, with all the tyrannical mandates and shutdowns that have occurred in Manhattan, I don't even know if the restaurant still exists, but just thought

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I'd throw that in there. Now, you have addressed an issue about Jonathan Edwards' theology that I have not encountered before your book.

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I've read a number of books about and by Jonathan Edwards, and I have not read anything that targeted the book of Genesis.

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Tell us about why you are so intrigued by Edwards' exegesis of Genesis that you said to yourself,

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I've got to write a book on this. Yeah, well, I love

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Edwards. I was introduced to Edwards in college. We had a history prof that made us read original sources, and we read

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Religious Affections, and it really gripped me. I became sort of an

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Edwards nut. I'd read anything I could about him. I'd read whatever books that were collections of his sermons that I could.

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And over the years, that interest has just grown, in part fueled by some of John Piper's stuff on Edwards.

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So there are so many dips on Edwards that people have taken.

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There's been really a resurgence of Edwards studies since about the middle of the 20th century with Perry Miller.

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And there have been so many different aspects and angles on Edwards, but one of the areas that really has been neglected is

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Edwards as an exegete and Edwards as a Bible expositor.

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And, of course, those two things are directly connected. And so there's been a little bit of work done.

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Doug Sweeney did Edwards the exegete, and Dave Barshinger did a book on Edwards on the

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Psalms. But you end up having this massive output of sermons, this massive output of theological writings, and yet very, very little attention is being given to Edwards as an exegete and expositor.

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And so since Barshinger had done the book on the

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Psalms, which I really enjoyed, I thought I would do some work on Edwards in Genesis.

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And a few reasons. One is the number of times that Edwards either quotes or alludes to Genesis in his writings is pretty stunning, considering that it's narrative.

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And so I also thought, you know, the image of God and other things that we have in Genesis, my question was, how did

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Edwards use Genesis in his preaching? And so that was sort of the impetus.

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I ended up doing the research and the writing as a fulfillment of a

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Master's in Theology from Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary, where Joel Beattie is, and really had the privilege of studying under one of the finest

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Edwards scholars alive today, Adrian Neely. And so it was,

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Chris, it was just an absolute delight just to dig into what Edwards had to say, how he treated the book of Genesis.

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Well, I'm going to give our listeners our e -mail address if you'd like to ask a question of Brian Borgman on Jonathan Edwards, his life, ministry, legacy, and specifically on his take on Genesis in regard to hermeneutics, homiletics, and theology.

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Our e -mail address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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Give us your first name at least, your city and state, and your country of residence. Also, for our newer

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Christians, younger Christians in the faith, can you please define hermeneutics and homiletics?

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Sure, sure. So hermeneutics is basically the big fancy word that we use to describe what would often be called the art and the science of biblical interpretation.

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You know, what are the, in a sense, what are the ground rules for going to a passage to interpret it properly?

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So that would be hermeneutics, and then homiletics is just the other fancy word for the discipline of preaching.

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And so those two things, obviously, if somebody's preaching the word, they're practicing homiletics, but they're employing hermeneutics.

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So I'm assuming if you got, if you were able to glean what

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Edwards' views of homiletics were, he must have, since we have no audio of Jonathan Edwards, obviously, he must have been explaining in detail how he believed the scriptures should be properly preached, even the manner.

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Yeah, so Edwards most certainly inherits the

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Puritan form and method of preaching, and so his sermons almost always had sort of the same structure, and so his emphasis in preaching would be that first there was basically an explanation of the text, and that explanation could be somewhat lengthy or it could actually be somewhat concise, and oftentimes the historical background of the text would be unfolded and things like that, and then he would move to what would be called the doctrines, and the doctrines would, the doctrines are the principles that are derived from the text, and so in his preaching he would then develop those things, and oftentimes in great detail, and then the third part of his homiletical structure would have been what were commonly called uses, or that would be points of application.

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And so even though Edwards deals with the scriptures differently in different sermons,

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I'm sure we'll probably talk about that in a little bit, his form of preaching was very, very consistent.

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And we are going to our first commercial break right now. If anybody would like to join us with a question of your own, as I said earlier, our e -mail address is chrisarnsen at gmail .com,

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C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. As always, give us your first name, your city and state, and your country of residence if you live outside the

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USA. Don't go away, we're going to be right back with Brian Borgman and Jonathan Edwards on Genesis right after these messages from our sponsors.

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Hi, I'm Pete Hegseth, co -host of Fox and Friends Weekend. Now, I don't have to tell you, but American education, it's in a free fall, crumbling under the weight of a century of damage inflicted upon America's academic system.

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The answer? It's called classical Christian education, a form of K -12 ed that's very distinct from the type of education most

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Americans have received, myself included. And that's why I'm so excited to have been invited by my friends at Long Island's Grace Christian Academy to talk about this wonderful, growing movement and new approach rediscovered to education.

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It's at 7 p .m. October 15th at the Marriott Hotel and Conference Center in Melville, New York. I'll also be signing copies of my

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New York Times bestselling book, Battle for the American Mind, for the first 50 guests, starting at 6 p .m.

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Now, this is a fundraising event designed to raise money to help grow this type of education at a time when it is so desperately needed.

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So please come ready to give and to learn about a way to stimulate academic revival in our great country.

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You can purchase tickets for the event by visiting GCALI, G -C -A -L -I dot com, and following the link to the gala event.

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I hope to see you there. James White of Alpha and Omega Ministries here, excited to announce that my longtime friend,

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Chris Arnzen of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and I are heading to Washington, D .C. for the

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Thursday, September 15th through Saturday, September 17th. I'll be speaking along with Stephen Lawson, Josh Weiss, founder of G3 Ministries, and Daryl Bernard Harrison and Virgil Walker, co -hosts of the

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So join me and Chris Arnzen September 15th through the 17th in Washington, D .C.

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for the G3 Ministries regional conference. Register now before they run out of seats at G3Min .org,

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It seems like it is nearly impossible to find good curriculum out there today that is true to the

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Our ministry is dedicated to providing local churches with sound Bible study resources.

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Our quarterly curriculum is titled the Baptist Expositor. And for good reason, we are

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We are now back with Brian Borgman, founding pastor of Grace Community Church of Minden, Nevada.

38:27

We are talking about his latest book, Jonathan Edwards on Genesis, hermeneutics, homiletics, and theology.

38:34

And if you have a question, send in your question to Chris Arnzen at gmail .com,

38:40

C -H -R -I -S -A -R -N -Z -E -N at gmail .com. Give us the first name at least, city and state and country of residence.

38:47

We already have several people waiting for their questions to be asked and answered by you,

38:53

Pastor Brian. But before we do that, let's delve into a little bit about the 2022

39:01

Northwest Fire Regional Fellowship in Prineville, Oregon. We discussed this the last time you were on the show and also when

39:12

Bruce Ray was on the show. But if you could explain this regional fellowship, fire regional fellowship to our listeners.

39:22

Yeah, so fire is a fellowship of independent Reformed evangelicals. We do regional meetings, conferences, and most of the time when we have the

39:36

Pacific Northwest region, it's up in near Seattle or Kirkland. But this year it's going to be in Prineville, which is outside of Bend, Oregon, if you're familiar with that area.

39:47

And it's going to be hosted by a very dear friend and mutual friend of ours,

39:53

Chris Cookston, and Prineville Community Church. And it is for pastors and elders and lay people.

40:02

And Bruce Ray and I will be expounding the, in a sense, the pastoral theology of Paul in 1

40:11

Thessalonians. And so I'm really looking forward to that. Bruce is a dear brother. And just looking forward to the fellowship and being able to pray with each other and hear the word together.

40:24

Anybody want any more details on this conference? Let's go to events .entrustedword

40:31

.org, events .entrustedword .org. And then you could add forward slash 2022

40:40

Northwest Fire Regional Fellowship. That's 2022

40:45

Northwest Fire Regional Fellowship. And we will be hopefully remembering to repeat that towards the end of the program.

40:56

Let's go to a couple of our listener questions that have already come in.

41:04

First of all, we have Ted in Moundville, Alabama. Your guest mentioned in passing that Edwards had to deal with suicides as a pastor.

41:13

And I was reminded of that rash of suicides that included an older man, a parishioner of Edwards, who killed himself in his bed on a

41:25

Sunday morning. I wonder what he thinks of the common interpretation of those suicides as a result of an oppressive and toxic

41:37

Puritan theology, a view often put forward by secular historians. Yeah, I mean,

41:46

I would disagree with that.

41:52

The two suicides that I mentioned, one actually was a relative of Edwards.

41:59

You know, the thing is, is that we sometimes think that the

42:07

Puritan culture of New England was this really oppressive, repressive kind of environment.

42:17

And, you know, the fact is, is that there are certainly many other factors, you know, that contribute to somebody taking their life other than a

42:32

Puritan context. And, you know, I would just I would point out that that Edwards preached on heaven twice as much as he ever preached on hell.

42:44

And there was, you know, there was a lot of a lot of joy, a lot of emphasis on close communion with God in his preaching.

42:56

So I really would I would be just utterly reluctant to to try to make that kind of connection with with two people taking their lives.

43:08

Well, thank you, Ted. And give us your full mailing address in Moundville, Alabama, because you have won a free copy of this book by our guest,

43:18

Brian Borgman, Jonathan Edwards on Genesis. And we thank Wipf and Stock publishers for giving us a limited number of copies to give to our listeners who submit questions.

43:30

And we also thank Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, CVBBS .com, for shipping out the books to our winners, as always, at no cost to our listeners or to Iron Trump and Zion Radio.

43:46

And I also want to let our listeners know that there is a book in print, a booklet would be probably a more proper way of describing it called

44:05

Heaven, A World of Love. Since Brian mentioned Jonathan Edwards voluminous writing on heaven much more than he wrote on hell or anything that was more frightening in its in its emphasis.

44:27

And you could get that that booklet by Jonathan Edwards in from multiple different publishers now, since it's public domain, the first person that I know of, who ever brought that booklet into print.

44:49

As an excerpt from a larger work of Edwards was my former pastor,

44:57

Mike Adosh, formerly the director, founder and director of Calvary Press, now running a sponsor of this program,

45:06

Solid Ground Christian Books. Solid -Ground -Books .com, Solid -Ground -Books .com

45:13

is the website for Solid Ground Christian Books. And I hope that you investigate everything that they have available.

45:22

We also have a listener, a very faithful and loyal and financially generous listener in Asheboro, North Carolina.

45:36

We have Grady, who says, greetings, brothers, how many books of the

45:41

Bible do we have that Jonathan Edwards preached through? I'm assuming he means that Jonathan Edwards wrote about or that his sermons were transcribed and available to us.

45:56

I'm assuming that's what he means. Yeah, so Edwards never preached through a book of the

46:05

Bible. He actually followed the

46:11

Puritan style of textual preaching. Probably the most lengthy series that he ever did was probably the

46:22

Redemption or Redemptive Discourse that ends up, he never finishes it, but it ends up being the history of redemption.

46:32

But he would, you know, you can actually go to edwards .yale

46:38

.edu and Jonathan Edwards Center, and there is a sermon index.

46:47

And so Edwards ends up preaching sermons from most of the books of the

46:53

Bible. There are some that he never preached a sermon from, but he didn't do consecutive exposition.

47:07

His style would have been pretty similar to what we know of Spurgeon, where Spurgeon didn't do consecutive exposition either.

47:15

He would take a different text almost every week. Grady, if you could please send us your full mailing address, we will make sure that Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service ships you out a free copy of Jonathan Edwards on Genesis.

47:32

And thanks for submitting your question. Let me see here.

47:37

What would be the primary things that somebody picking up your book and reading it from cover to cover, what would they come away with about the primary teachings and elements of the book of Genesis as far as how

47:57

Jonathan Edwards executed? Yeah. So, I mean,

48:02

I think you could you could summarize that in a few different ways.

48:08

One is Edwards. His sermons are often not always, but often very typological.

48:16

And what I mean by that is he will take character of the

48:22

Bible, for instance, Jacob or Joseph or Abraham, and he will look at them typologically and oftentimes typological as a believer and then typological as Christ.

48:36

And so there's a lot of that in Edwards preaching. But there's also a tremendous amount of moral exhortation and application in his in his sermons.

48:51

There are certain passages that Edwards actually preached multiple times in his ministry.

48:59

So, for instance, Jacob wrestling with the angel of the

49:04

Lord in Genesis 28. He ends up or Genesis 32.

49:11

Sorry. He ends up actually preaching that three different times in his ministry.

49:19

And in fact, on one occasion, he preached that same sermon. He developed it within a span of just four years.

49:27

So he preached it and then four years later preached it again. And so there's a tremendous amount of application.

49:33

The way in which the passage would give instruction and exhortation.

49:41

So, for instance, in the Jacob wrestling with the angel passage, he is very interesting.

49:50

He preaches that during a revival season. So the second time he preaches it, there's revival going on and he really applies it hard to those who had yet been converted and the importance of them laying hold of God until they were sure that God had saved them.

50:09

And so, I mean, I was very edified. The number of sermons that we actually have that are full manuscripts is actually pretty limited.

50:21

I think it's at about seven. There's 22 sermons altogether from Edwards in Genesis.

50:30

And so part of the process, Chris, was actually looking at Edwards' sermon notes, and then which also the

50:43

Yale Center, that's where they're available, actually trying to decipher and work through sermons that had yet to be fully transcripted.

50:55

Now, we know how Genesis was among the primary books of the scriptures that were under attack in the 19th century of Christianity.

51:14

Higher criticism and so forth. Did any of that begin in Edwards' day prior to that?

51:23

Yeah, so Edwards is in some ways a transitional figure. You know, there is

51:30

Enlightenment thought very clearly going on in New England. And so Edwards, in fact, does use

51:39

Genesis. I'll say this. There's two things that's pretty clear that he does with Genesis in terms of apologetics, especially in reference to the higher criticism stuff.

51:53

One is that he really emphasizes the historical nature of Genesis.

52:01

And he does that repeatedly. But the other thing that he does is he uses

52:06

Genesis very, very heavily in his work on the freedom of the will.

52:12

And so the importance of that, by the way, is that Edwards is engaging with quite a bit of Enlightenment thought on what he called the prevailing notions of the freedom of the will.

52:27

And so Genesis ends up playing a big part in that apologetically as well. In fact, can we pick up where you left off there?

52:33

We have to go to our midway break right now. Absolutely. And just pick up right on the freedom of the will,

52:39

Edwards' understanding of that in defense of his theology regarding that.

52:45

Our midway break is always a bit longer, folks. So please be patient with us and don't go away.

52:52

We are going to be right back right after these messages from our sponsors. Hi, I'm Pete Hegseth, co -host of Fox and Friends Weekend.

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When Iron Sharpens Iron Radio first launched in 2005, the publishers of the

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This is Pastor Bill Sousa wishing you all the richest blessings of our

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What Chris Hansen is doing is Daniel P. Buttafuoco, serious injury lawyer and Christian apologist.

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Thanks for helping to keep Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio on the air. I'm Dr.

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James White of Alpha Omega Ministries here. If you've watched my Dividing Line webcast often enough, you know

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has in print available books that highlight the life and ministry and legacy of Jonathan Edwards, in addition to other great men of God from history.

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01:08:26

Before we return to our guest today, Pastor Brian Borgman, we have some other announcements that we have to make.

01:08:34

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Last but not least, if you are not a member of a Christ -honoring, biblically faithful church, no matter where you live on the planet

01:10:31

Earth, I may be able to help you find a church, as I have done with many people all over the world in our audience, sometimes even within just a few minutes from where they live, including such churches as Grace Community Church in Minden, Nevada.

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So, if you are in that predicament of not being in a biblically faithful church home, give me an email, chrisarnson at gmail .com,

01:10:58

and put, I need a church in the subject line. That's also the email address where you could send in a question to our guest today,

01:11:04

Pastor Brian Borgman, chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com,

01:11:11

and put your question with your city, state, and country of residence.

01:11:19

By the way, I just want to read at least one of the very profound commendations for this book, written by my friend

01:11:28

Michael Haken, who is one of the greatest living historians in regard to the

01:11:38

Christian faith. And Michael Haken says of this book, it has been rightly said that the history of the church is the story of the church's interaction with the

01:11:50

Bible, and one of the most influential figures in this story was the New England Divine, Jonathan Edwards.

01:11:57

In recent years, his role in the reception history of the scriptures has proven to be an especially fruitful subject of historical inquiry.

01:12:11

This new monograph on his reflections on the book of Genesis continues and sharpens this inquiry and reveals the way that Edwards was both a faithful transmitter of previous exegesis and a pioneer in new paths of thinking.

01:12:30

That endorsement alone should compel you to want to get a hold of this book with the caliber that Dr.

01:12:41

Michael Haken has achieved, who wrote that endorsement. We have a listener in, let's see,

01:12:54

Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, Susan Margaret. And Susan Margaret says, what can women learn from the teaching and life and legacy of Jonathan Edwards?

01:13:08

I know that the scriptures teach men and women and children all vital truths that we need to know, but I was wondering if there was anything specific that women can glean from Edwards' writings and perhaps even from your own book.

01:13:27

Yeah, I don't really know exactly how to answer that.

01:13:34

I mean, Edwards, it's very interesting when you look at the way that Edwards preached.

01:13:41

His application often focused on the young and then the old.

01:13:48

And it's sort of a unique aspect of the way that he applied the scriptures. But to me,

01:13:54

I mean, I think that just in a sense more broadly, I think Edwards actually does so much for us, whether men or women, in giving us really an exalted view of God and God as the source of our eternal joy.

01:14:13

And so there really are so many excellent resources for Edwards.

01:14:22

And so to me, I think that I don't think of anything that comes off the top of my head for women, but I will say that I think of a particular interest for Christian women should be

01:14:36

Sarah Edwards. And Sarah Edwards was just an incredibly remarkable woman.

01:14:44

And there is absolute truth. If there was no Sarah Edwards, there never would have been a

01:14:50

Jonathan Edwards. And there are actually two very, very fine books on Sarah Edwards.

01:14:57

One is by Elizabeth Dodds called Marriage to a Difficult Man. And the other is by Edna Gerstner, the wife of the late

01:15:06

John Gerstner, Jonathan and Sarah, An Uncommon Union.

01:15:13

And that's written in a sense more like a novel. But Edwards was a family man.

01:15:20

He was a loving husband, a loving father. And his wife was an extraordinary person.

01:15:28

Well, thank you, Susan Margaret. And make sure we have your full mailing address in Dauphin County, Pennsylvania.

01:15:38

And you will receive a free copy of Jonathan Edwards on Genesis by our guest

01:15:44

Brian Borgman. Thanks to Wippenstock, who provided us a limited number of copies.

01:15:50

And we also thank Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service again, cvbbs .com, who will be shipping that book out to you.

01:15:59

I also would like to highly recommend, since Brian brought up Sarah Edwards, our sponsors, solid -ground -books .com,

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have a book in print called Mothers of the

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Christian mothers from history. This book is written by Jabez Burns, by the way.

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And included among the mothers from history that we have in this book are

01:16:37

Jonathan Edwards and his mother as one of the portions of this scripture.

01:16:45

So we hope that you get that from solid -ground -books .com. And obviously one of the central themes that we can learn from Jonathan Edwards involves anthropology and basically the study of man.

01:17:10

Jonathan, what specifically do you address in regard to Edwards' theology of man and the image of God, the

01:17:17

Imago Dei? Yeah, so it's interesting because Edwards obviously had a very highly developed biblical anthropology.

01:17:30

And yet there's actually very, very little that has been done on his understanding of the image of God.

01:17:40

There's a few interesting things about that. And one is that Edwards only preached on Genesis 1, 26 -28, one time in his ministry.

01:17:53

And that was actually to the Indians at Stockbridge. And the sermon itself is pretty fascinating because he doesn't go into great theological depth because he's preaching to Native Americans who are unlearned in scripture and things like that.

01:18:16

But what he does in that particular sermon is that he brings out the fact that they were made in the image of God and that gave them dignity.

01:18:28

And so such behavior as drunkenness and immorality, actually that behavior makes them more like beasts than those that bear

01:18:39

God's image. But that's the only sermon that Edwards preaches directly, but there's actually a tremendous amount of data on Edwards in terms of the way that he deals with image of God.

01:18:54

He doesn't explicitly expound that text in relation to that. But Edwards would have seen, first of all, there was a development in Edwards' thinking on the image of God, and you can see this through his writings.

01:19:08

But he would basically define the image of God, what we would say as in terms of what we are in our being, not just in terms of function.

01:19:20

So he would say that the image is intellect and will and affection. But the interesting thing, and this is sort of Edwards' more developed thought, is that he saw the image of God as existing in a sense in two aspects or two dimensions.

01:19:40

And the first is what he would have called the natural aspect to the image of God, which is your ability to reason.

01:19:51

And then there was what he would have called either the moral or the spiritual aspect, and that was the love and holiness.

01:20:02

And so he would have argued that on the basis of the fall, the natural image remains intact, although tainted by sin, and the spiritual aspect of the image is altogether lost.

01:20:17

So that's why natural man doesn't have affection for God or desire for holiness, is because that part was completely destroyed.

01:20:29

But man still has, although corrupted by sin, still maintains the ability to reason.

01:20:35

And, of course, that very aspect of his anthropology ends up playing into his understanding of how the will works and how the affections work and so forth.

01:20:48

We have a listener from, let's see,

01:20:56

Worcester County, New York, Robert. Robert says, unless I heard you incorrectly,

01:21:04

I believe Sarah Edwards was Jonathan's wife, not his mother, and Esther Stoddard was his mother.

01:21:16

Yes, that's correct. Sarah was his wife. Esther was his mother, and he named one of his daughters after his mother,

01:21:25

Esther, who married Aaron Burr. Yeah, when you referenced Sarah, I guess our listener thought you were referring to his mother.

01:21:37

But perhaps it was a mistake, I don't know. We would have to go back and listen to that.

01:21:43

Well, thank you for the correction, brother, and if you give us your full mailing address in Worcester County, you have also received a free copy of the book we are addressing,

01:21:56

Jonathan Edwards on Genesis. Charles Haddon Spurgeon wants...

01:22:04

That was just a mistake, folks. Sorry about that. People, Christians may wrongly think that although anthropology, a right biblical understanding of it, is important, they may not think of it as seriously as theology and Christology and pneumatology, for that matter.

01:22:34

But isn't an incorrect anthropology very often the root to all kinds of heresies that even wind up distorting one's own theology?

01:22:47

Oh, for sure. I mean, I think that really should go without saying, but I could see why people would jump to that conclusion.

01:22:57

But the fact is that if we don't understand, you know, what we are by nature, by constitution, then that,

01:23:07

I mean, if we have misunderstanding of that, that's going to radically affect the way that we view, for instance, the doctrine of salvation.

01:23:15

There's no doubt about it. And we have Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, who wants to know, is there anything that you disagreed with Edwards on?

01:23:29

I know that you're a Baptist and he was a paedo -Baptist, but other than that, can you think of anything?

01:23:35

Yeah, so Edwards was post -millennial. Now, he was post -millennial in sort of a way that I find attractive.

01:23:46

I am actually amillennial, but Edwards believed that through revival and awakening that the kingdom of God was going to be ushered in.

01:23:58

That's relatively minor. I would say that probably a bigger issue is

01:24:04

Edwards sort of had a peculiar view of, and to tell you the truth,

01:24:10

I can't even wrap my head around it. He had a view of continuous creation, so that God is continually creating, and some of this has to do with the way that he views original sin and things like that.

01:24:28

And so there is a very, very heavy philosophical emphasis in Edwards' work, especially later.

01:24:39

So, for instance, even his treatise, Inquiry, concerning the prevailing notions of the freedom of the will, it is heavily philosophical.

01:24:51

And although Edwards was, in the best sense, a biblicist, he also was just also heavily philosophical.

01:25:02

And so I think those are maybe a couple things that I would have taken issue with, but Jonathan Edwards is

01:25:13

Jonathan Edwards. Right. We must never claim our extra -biblical heroes of the faith to be infallible and inherent as those that have written our

01:25:30

God -breathed scriptures. Right. And that reminds me of two things.

01:25:37

Isn't it amazing that among some folks the term biblicist has become a pejorative and an insult?

01:25:45

I mean, my mind is boggled over that. Absolutely. I agree with you,

01:25:52

Chris. And as far as what you just said about the freedom of the will,

01:26:00

I know that Edwards was a thoroughgoing Calvinist, but was there something about his understanding of the freedom of the will that may have been in some way at odds with his predecessors in the

01:26:13

Reformed faith and even his contemporaries? Something about the understanding of the freedom versus the bondage of the will that Edwards may have had, even if it was subtle, a different spin on that?

01:26:29

Yeah, I think you've had quite a few people that have kind of taken up the issue, and it's actually incredibly debated as to whether Edwards is out of step with his

01:26:44

Reformed heritage or not. In fact, Richard Mueller and Paul Helm, both just incredibly outstanding theologians, kind of went back and forth in a series of journal articles about this.

01:26:59

I think that the thing about Edwards that sometimes gets him in a little bit of trouble is that he was innovative in a sense.

01:27:10

He was both a traditionalist, but also he was innovative.

01:27:15

And so he's always thinking, right? And so, for instance, he had what he called his blank

01:27:23

Bible. He took a Bible, took the binding apart, and actually interleaved it with blank pieces of paper.

01:27:31

And he just took assiduous notes over the years, right? So he's constantly thinking, he's building on his thought, and by the time he writes

01:27:41

Freedom of the Will, he's in Stockbridge, it's 1753 -54, and as I try to read it, it is pretty complex.

01:27:55

But there does seem to be sort of an emphasis on man having, in a sense, maintaining some sort of natural ability, but that the real hindrance in man is, in a sense, the fact that he doesn't have that spiritual or moral sense.

01:28:21

And so the way that I heard the great John Gerstner illustrate it one time was that you have a lion in a cage, and he has teeth, he has a jaw, he has a tongue, he has an esophagus, and you put a bale of hay in front of him, and he's hungry, and he says,

01:28:42

I won't eat that. And he has the natural ability to eat it, because he has all of the physical faculties required to actually eat and digest, but it is actually his affections that have such a distaste for that, because he's a meat -eater, that actually makes him say,

01:29:07

I won't. And so for Edwards, there was probably a distinction that was not really present in his predecessors in terms of the idea of natural ability.

01:29:20

And I think that that ends up being, in a sense, sort of the crux of the criticism, if I understand it correctly.

01:29:27

Well, we're going to be going to our final break right now. I'd rather go to the final break right now early so I don't have to interrupt you mid -sentence.

01:29:37

And it's going to be shorter than the other breaks. If anybody has a question, if you want to get in line, there are a few people waiting to have their questions asked and answered.

01:29:46

But if you'd like to get in line and try to get in line before we run out of time, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com.

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01:30:04

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We'll be right back with Brian Borgman and more of our discussion on Jonathan Edwards right after these messages from our sponsors.

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That's liyfc .org. Brother Borgman, we have a listener in Lyndonhurst, Long Island, New York, CJ, who wants to know, what do you think it is about Edwards and his writings that on occasion makes him so highly appealing and valuable to even those that are anti -Calvinists?

01:43:47

There are some independent fundamentalist Baptists, for instance, who seem to highly regard

01:43:53

Edwards, and others that are not in our camp of Reformed theology. Yeah, that actually is a really good question, because Edwards is so thoroughly

01:44:07

Calvinistic in his writings, even his writings on revival.

01:44:14

But I think that there is a sense where Edwards appeals to Christians that are outside, or more broadly, outside of the

01:44:27

Reformed perspective, because really of two things. One is his emphasis on what would be called experimental or experiential

01:44:38

Christianity. And this really comes through, I think, in Religious Affections, for instance.

01:44:46

In fact, just as a case in point, John Wesley was so taken with the

01:44:54

Religious Affections that he actually produced a volume of it and printed it in England, and he went through and he edited out all of the highly

01:45:04

Calvinistic sections. But he was so taken with Edwards in Religious Affections that he republished it himself in England.

01:45:16

And so I do think that that aspect of Edwards is very appealing. I think also the

01:45:22

Revival or the Awakening aspect of Edwards is a great appeal to people as well.

01:45:30

I mean, he is the leading theologian of the First Great Awakening, and he does write narrative of surprising conversions and other works that deal with Revival.

01:45:44

And so I think that there's quite a bit of appeal that even people that wouldn't share our

01:45:51

Reformed convictions, they look at Edwards and find him to be just incredibly appealing on those fronts.

01:46:03

And could a part of it be, as I have found with many

01:46:10

Reformed men from the past who are lauded as heroes by vehement anti -Calvinists,

01:46:20

Charles Haddon Spurgeon would probably be the most frequently cited person, favorably cited and lauded historic figure even by anti -Calvinists.

01:46:34

Could a part of that be, as I have witnessed myself, this is really largely coming from the fact that these men don't fit the false character and stereotype of Calvinists, and therefore they think they're wonderful, because they are reading them through a historically inaccurate understanding of what a

01:47:03

Calvinist is. So like, for instance, they read Spurgeon and they say, well, of course

01:47:08

Spurgeon could not have been a very strong Calvinist since he was so passionate about evangelizing the lost, as if those two things are mutually exclusive.

01:47:20

I just had a phone conversation recently with a vehement anti -Calvinist, independent, fundamentalist,

01:47:30

King James only minister. And the man, before he knew

01:47:35

I was a Calvinist, that he was speaking with on the phone, was extremely cordial.

01:47:42

And he said to me, where are you from, brother? I said, Pennsylvania. And he said, one of my greatest heroes of the faith,

01:47:50

George Whitefield, loved Pennsylvania. And he gave me a quote by Whitefield, which

01:47:57

I can't remember, basically targeting the thought that Whitefield loved

01:48:07

Pennsylvania. And later on, when he said, so what church do you go to, and what is your theological camp?

01:48:17

And I said, I go to Grace Baptist Church of Carlisle, and I'm a Reformed Baptist. The temperature dropped down about 100 degrees, and he said,

01:48:27

I don't even want to talk with you anymore on the phone, it's making me sick, because I hate

01:48:33

Calvinism so much, I can't even speak with you. And I said to him, brother, you just said that George Whitefield was one of your greatest heroes.

01:48:44

And he yelled back at me, you think I'm stupid? I know that Whitefield was a

01:48:49

Calvinist, but he lived 250 years ago and did great things for God. This is the 21st century.

01:48:55

And I said, and that makes sense how? How on earth does that make sense at all?

01:49:02

But anyway, but do you think that could be a part of it? People just don't know, really, what

01:49:09

Calvinism is, so therefore these great heroes of the faith, they determine, well, they can't really be

01:49:15

Calvinists, because they don't fit the description, I understand or know. Yeah, I think that's a part of it, because Edward's preaching is often very evangelistic.

01:49:28

Even in Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, you have this incredibly evangelistic, for sure, hellfire sermon.

01:49:36

And so I do think that those things may appeal to the people that may not completely understand, you know, they have a caricature of Calvinism.

01:49:46

And so how in the world could you preach such a great sermon on hell and appeal to people to believe in Jesus?

01:49:53

That's not Calvinism. And of course, we know better, so. Well, brother,

01:49:59

I want you to have some uninterrupted time before I go to any more listener questions. I want you to have several minutes at least, uninterrupted, to summarize what you most want etched in the hearts and minds of our listeners today about Jonathan Edwards, perhaps even about Jonathan Edwards on Genesis in particular.

01:50:20

Yeah, well, I think that, you know, the end result of my research on Edwards was that Edwards, as a preacher, was preeminently a pastoral preacher.

01:50:38

What I tried to do in each one of these sermons from Genesis, all 22 of them, and then

01:50:43

History of Redemption and so forth, is I tried to historically locate where those sermons fit in in the life of his ministry.

01:50:53

And there was something that just stood out to me about Edwards' preaching, and that was his sermons were not all the same by any stretch.

01:51:07

And if I could just give an example of what I mean. So there was a situation that arose in his congregation with the young people, and there was a

01:51:19

New England practice called bundling, which was pretty amazing. You would take a young teenage couple and actually sew them together.

01:51:31

In fact, there's a scene in Mel Gibson's The Patriot where this happens. They're sewed together with a line between them, and of course it ended up leading to all kinds of immorality, and there was quite a bit of carousing.

01:51:47

And so what Edwards did is Edwards specifically addressed that and in fact he designed a sermon for it, from Joseph fleeing from temptation.

01:51:59

And the sermon itself was not theologically profound or anything like that, but what he was doing is out of a care and concern for the souls of the young people in the congregation, he preaches the story of Joseph to them and applies it to their current situation of engaging in immoral behavior.

01:52:24

He does the same thing with a sermon from Genesis 12 where God says that those who bless

01:52:37

Abraham would be blessed, and he actually uses it. They had just built a new sanctuary, and of course there was a lot of politicking as to who got the best seats, so people putting down money, and of course the poor always ended up having to sit in the back.

01:52:56

And Edwards takes that, the story of Abraham, and that those who bless

01:53:03

Abraham will be blessed, and actually just drives it home on the importance of actually actively seeking to be a blessing to other people.

01:53:13

And that's how you're blessed, and it's not by prestige and prominence and wealth, and so the thing that really stood out to me is that Edwards was profoundly a pastoral preacher, and his primary concern was not to be a brilliant theologian or even a brilliant expositor.

01:53:34

His primary burden was to actually bring the Word of God to bear on the life of his congregation for their salvation and their sanctification.

01:53:44

And so I would say that in all the research and hours and hours of reading

01:53:49

Edwards' sermons and all of that, that's the thing that impressed me most, and I think,

01:53:56

Chris, that that's the thing that ends up being missed in a lot of Edwards' studies today, because everybody wants to kind of pigeonhole

01:54:05

Edwards as what kind of preacher, how did he handle the scriptures, what were his hermeneutics, you know, and I think that until we see

01:54:15

Edwards primarily as a pastoral preacher, we don't understand the man.

01:54:22

We have Thomas from West Islet, Long Island, New York, and he asks,

01:54:30

I have heard that a long -held belief I had was incorrect about Edwards.

01:54:38

I have heard many times throughout my Christian life that Edwards purposely preached sinners in the hands of an angry

01:54:47

God in a very quiet and emotionless manner, and that that was to prove that the power of God was what led to the conversions of so many and the outbreak of a revival, not the manipulation of emotions.

01:55:04

But later I have heard that that is not really true in regard to the manner with which

01:55:10

Jonathan Edwards preached that sermon, that he preached it powerfully, not to say that that lessens for any moment the fact that God's sovereign control over the word preached was the reason for the conversions and the revival, just that the preaching manner had come to be a folklore story.

01:55:35

Yeah, there's, that's partially true. Edwards preached that sermon twice.

01:55:41

He preached it in his own congregation in Northampton to really no effect. And then he was asked to be a guest preacher in another congregation where he preached that.

01:55:56

And that's where the famous events happened, where Edwards actually had to stop because people were shrieking and holding onto the pillars and afraid that they were going to fall into hell.

01:56:10

Edwards was not dynamic by any stretch. He sometimes wrote out his sermons in full, but most of it, for most of his ministry, he preached from an outline that he basically just held in his hand on paper that was probably no bigger than post -it notes.

01:56:34

And, but he was not animated, but that's not to say either that he was monotone.

01:56:40

I think that's, that's sort of the myth is that Edwards was just this, this incredibly boring, monotonous preacher.

01:56:50

And that is not true. The thing that I would say about what made

01:56:55

Edwards' preaching dynamic was not its style as much as its content, because Edwards used such vivid imagery in his preaching all the time.

01:57:09

He really, he really labored to try to give in the preaching a vividness of the truths that he was unfolding.

01:57:20

And it was that that really, you could say, was the, was the dynamic aspect of his preaching.

01:57:28

And so I would say that the listener is partially right. He was not just, he's not just a statue who droned on, but neither was he, he certainly was not a

01:57:39

Whitefield in terms of delivery. Yeah, it was almost as if, because I've heard the same story.

01:57:47

It was almost as if Edwards deliberately just read

01:57:52

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God without emotion in order to prove that it was

01:57:59

God's sovereignty that brought the results. But I guess that may have either been partially or entirely a myth.

01:58:07

I don't know. Yeah, well, yeah, I don't think that that certainly would have been a motive in Edwards, because, you know, obviously he believed in the power of the word preached, but he had no idea what the, what the effect was going to be.

01:58:21

So for him to say that he intentionally went in to prove something, I think, is actually, that's,

01:58:28

I think that's a myth. In fact, I know, and I disagree with him vehemently, I know pastors in this day and age from our camp of Reformed theology who do believe that is appropriate to intentionally preach without emotion.

01:58:46

And I really vehemently disagree with that. Well, also most of our

01:58:52

Reformed forefathers would disagree with that, too. Amen. Amen.

01:58:57

In fact, I strongly recommend, if you haven't read it, a book by Gabriel Grossi called

01:59:05

Preaching with Biblical Passion. It's a phenomenal book on homiletics that gleans from all of the great streams of Protestantism, whether it be from the particular

01:59:17

Baptists or the Presbyterians, the Lutherans, the

01:59:23

Anglicans, the Methodists, and so on. It's a really phenomenal book.

01:59:29

In fact, I'll send you a copy as soon as I can, because I think Brother Grossi... That'd be great. ...has done such a superb job today.

01:59:38

I want to thank everybody who listened today. And I want you all to always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater