March 10, 2023 Show with Jake Griesel on “Retaining the Old Episcopal Divinity”

Live from historic downtown Carlisle, Pennsylvania, home of founding father James Wilson,

19th century hymn writer George Duffield, 19th century gospel minister George Norcross, and sports

legend Jim Thorpe, it's Iron Sharpens Iron.

This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning

issues facing the church and the world today.

Proverbs, chapter 27, verse 17, tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens

another.

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have in view in conversation to make one another wiser and better.

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.

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

Good afternoon, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and those listening

internationally over the internet at ironsharpensironradio .com.

This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Friday on this

10th day of March, 2023, and I want our listeners to know this is one of those

very rare instances on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio where our program today is

prerecorded.

We have already made advance announcements for our listeners to submit questions

for my guest, and those questions have come in, and they are continuing to come in, and

as long as they come in while I am still recording this interview with my guest, as long as we have time,

we will read them all and have Jake answer them all to the best of his

ability.

But I'm absolutely thrilled to have a first -time guest on today.

I just slipped there and gave you his first name.

His name is Jake Griesel, and I will find out in a moment if I'm mispronouncing that.

He is a South African historian of Christian theology living in Cape Town, where he serves at

George Whitfield College as lecturer in church history and Anglican studies, and is also a

fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a research associate at Northwest

University's Faculty of Theology.

Today we are going to be addressing his latest book, Retaining the Old Episcopal Divinity,

John Edwards of Cambridge and Reformed Orthodoxy in the Later Stuart Church.

It's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Sherpa's Iron Radio, Jake Griesel.

Thank you very much, Chris.

It's a pleasure to be with you.

And was that a correct pronunciation of your last name?

Perfectly. On the money.

Oh, really?

Great.

Well, you have come to us by the popular demand of a number of

Anglicans who listen to this program.

I am a Reformed Baptist, a confessional Reformed Baptist, adhering to the 1689 London Baptist

Confession of Faith, but have, over the years, have made a number

of good, solid friends who happen to be confessional Anglicans,

historically faithful Anglicans, Reformed Anglicans, Anglicans that are also confessional, adhering to the 39

Articles of Religion.

And the audience of Anglicans who listen to this program

has been steadily growing, as is reflected by the kinds of emails I get from listeners.

And I am always happy to address this issue.

And one of the reasons that I love the whole

study of Anglicanism, especially that which is biblically faithful and Reformed, is that

I was raised Roman Catholic before coming to Christ.

My father's side of the family is Episcopalian.

My dad, before his passing, was Episcopalian until

I was in my mid -teens.

He converted to Roman Catholicism.

And I got to know some of his family, and

one of his brothers, my Uncle Don, in the state of Washington, Duval,

Washington, he was becoming increasingly disturbed by the

encroachment of increasing liberalism and leftism and

apostasy in the Episcopal Church.

And he was dabbling with the idea of converting to Roman Catholicism.

And I was trying to prevent that as best I could by doing some research

in his area, trying to find a faithful Reformed Anglican church where he might find

a home.

But unfortunately that did not happen, and he converted to Roman Catholicism.

And so, therefore, I have had a special place in my heart for seeking out,

discovering, and promoting those Anglicans that are biblically faithful.

And Jake, if you could, we have a custom here, a tradition on Iron Trip and Zion Radio, whenever

we have a first -time guest, we have that guest give a summary of their salvation

testimony by explaining what kind of religious atmosphere, if any,

in which they were raised, what kind of providential circumstances our Lord raised up in their lives that

drew them to himself and saved them.

And so I'm not even sure if you were raised in Anglicanism or the specific form of

Anglicanism you now embrace, but tell us your story.

Yeah, thanks, Chris.

So I was born in the city of Durban on the east coast of South Africa in

a Christian family.

I grew up in a Dutch Reformed church, so I haven't come up in an Anglican context.

I was only exposed to that later in life in my university years.

So I grew up in a Dutch Reformed household with godly, faithful parents,

but during my teenage years I became rebellious.

I went to boarding school, so I was a bit away from my parents' oversight, you might say,

and got involved with the wrong friends during high school.

I suppose I myself was the wrong kind of friend.

There were others dragging me away.

I was also dragging others away into, let's say, less than wholesome activities.

And that continued throughout my high school years.

I was a metalhead.

I loved heavy metal music.

So did I.

And punk rock as well.

At the end of my high school years I went to university.

This was at the city of Bloemfontein, which is in the Free State Province in central South Africa.

I suppose it's the equivalent of what you in America would call flyover country.

But I went to university to study commerce initially.

I didn't do well at school, not because of a lack of ability, but because of just a lack of desire, lack of

ambition and general rebelliousness.

And I went to university more out of a sense of duty to do something, I suppose, an expectation for my parents

than anything else.

But while I was at university studying commerce, or I would rather say enrolled for commerce because I

didn't really study, I was partying away my life, I was involved in a

car accident towards the end of my first year studying a Bachelor's of Commerce.

And that car accident, the Lord used to change my life.

I was never an atheist, even though I rebelled and didn't want to have anything to do with the church during my

teenage and early university times.

I was never an atheist.

I believe that God existed.

I believe that the Christian faith was true.

I just didn't want it to be true for me right then and there.

I first wanted to live my life and enjoy my sin.

And one day on my deathbed, take out my Bible, say the sinner's prayer and receive

fire insurance.

But of course, that's not how it works, right?

What is our life?

Our life is like a vapor that's here for a little while and then vanishes away.

And that car accident, that potentially fatal car accident in which I was involved towards the end of my first year

at university, the Lord used to just shake that notion out of me that I would one day

have time to repent on my deathbed.

There might not be time, right?

We might not be given decades of life on this earth.

We could be taken away at any second.

And that realization just shocked, well, figuratively, the hell out of me.

And all the seedlings of the gospel that my parents had sown into me as a young child, as

all the sermons I had heard, all the Bible stories I had heard,

those seedlings that were sowed into my heart as a young boy now became germinated.

So after the car accident, I didn't have a blank slate, you might say.

Many years of gospel witness were lying there dormant, you might say, in my heart, but now became

germinated by the Spirit.

And so I became a Christian at the age of 19 in my first year at university.

What next?

Well, one day as I came back into my dormitory, because I was living at a men's

residence on campus, my roommate was a Christian, and he had a Bible

that was lying on his desk as I entered our room.

And it's almost like a magnetic pull overcame me to, I don't want to say it was like Augustine hearing take up

and read, but it was something like that, where I just felt like, take that Bible and start reading.

That same Bible, I've always had a Bible since childhood.

But all of a sudden, there was a desire to go and read this book.

And as I read it, it gradually started transforming me.

And that old, seemingly dusty and boring book all of a sudden became alive, because I

now read it as someone who's regenerate.

It's not a dull and dead book, it's a lively and transformative book.

And so within a few months after my conversion, from having, you might say,

an adverse disposition to the Bible and to Christianity, all of a sudden, I actually wanted to

explore theology and the prospect of becoming a pastor.

And that all happened within six months after my conversion.

I spoke to my parents about it and said, listen, yeah, I want to change disciplines.

I want to leave behind my Bachelor of Commerce and to

explore theology and the possible calling of entering the ministry.

But because I was doing very poorly at my commerce degree, my parents were reluctant.

Even though they are Christians and supportive in many respects, they were reluctant of allowing me to study

theology.

And they were also under the impression, of course, that many young people

come to faith and they have a zeal for the Lord, like an early zeal that often passes over.

And they come to their senses, as it were, and go do something else with their lives instead of going into ministry or pursuing

theology.

But long story short, my father said, okay, we'll give you six months, a semester,

to pursue theology.

And I was able to pursue that, and I never looked back after that.

And I've been studying theology and involved in that ever since.

Well, praise God.

And by the way, you are speaking to us right now from Cape Town, are you not?

South Africa?

That's correct, yes.

Yes, the connection is excellent, thank God.

And well, I am going to now delve

into the very topic at hand, your book, Retaining the Old Episcopal

Divinity, John Edwards of Cambridge and Reformed Orthodoxy in the Later Stuart.

Church.

Now, if you could explain, keeping in mind that our

audience is not predominantly comprised of scholarly Anglicans,

there would be a broad spectrum of theological mindsets

that listen to this program, although, as I said earlier, there are scholarly Anglicans

that do listen to this broadcast as well.

But if you could explain what you mean by the Old Episcopal Divinity,

and I'm assuming you may be referring to the polity,

the Episcopalian polity, as for the reason that you have not chosen to use the term

Anglican, but if you could explain.

Sure.

So, the title of my book, Retaining the Old Episcopal Divinity, is taken

directly from one of the works of John Edwards himself.

As he was explaining to some of his Armenian contemporaries, or reminding them

that there were still many conforming churchmen, you might call them Anglicans,

I prefer in this particular period to speak of conformists rather than Anglicans, which we might, the reasons

for that we might touch on later, but he was using this term to remind

his contemporaries that there were still many churchmen in the Church

of England at the time, this is talking about the late 17th and early 18th centuries, who retained

what he referred to as the Old Episcopal Divinity.

And by Episcopal here, he's not so much referring to the polity necessarily

as to refer to those in the Church of England throughout the

17th century who were Episcopalian in their polity, yes, but who adhered to

what most Episcopalians or conforming churchmen in the 16th and 17th centuries would have regarded

as their orthodoxy, which was reformed in character.

So basically referring to the reformed theology that as enshrined in the Thirteen and Articles

and in the homilies of the Church of England, which Edwards, this John Edwards, considered to

be essentially the same as articulated in other reformed confessions, such

as the Belgic Confession, the Scots Confession, the Gallic or French Confession, and so on.

So essentially, by referring to the Old Episcopal Divinity, he's really saying the old reformed

theology that Episcopalians, or you might say Anglicans, used to

embrace.

But in his particular time, in the later 17th and early 18th century, not everyone did so anymore.

So the phrase Episcopalian is, when

you are describing a group of Christians that have its roots in Anglicanism,

is not a uniquely American phenomenon then.

I was under the impression that Anglicans began calling themselves

Episcopalian after the beginning of the Revolutionary War here in the United States.

Yes, of course, in the American context, there's a specific reason why they preferred Episcopalian

to Anglican or Church of England, right?

Because of the war, as you rightly say.

But in the English context, because of the internal battles in the

Church of England during the 17th century concerning Church polity,

the phrase or the term Episcopal, Episcopalian, came to be used to refer to

those who held onto an Episcopal polity or Episcopal government, in other words,

Church government by bishops, rather than by presbyters

or even independency, or you might call it congregationalism.

So yes, in the 17th century, even in the English context, the term Episcopalian is used to refer to those who

held an Episcopal polity.

And, well, it would be obviously, perhaps I should have asked you this first, it would be

a good idea to set some background as to who John Edwards of Cambridge

was, the specific era in which he lived and ministered, and what kind of legacy

he has left for us.

Sure, so one of the big troubles I've had ever since I chose to work on John Edwards

was to constantly remind people who I speak to that I'm not referring to Jonathan Edwards, the famous

American, yes, I'm referring to, well, who's today a lesser

known Edwards, but in his own time, he was quite well known, at least in the English context, but also the broader

British context and in the American colonies, which we'll touch on in a second.

So to give a brief biographical sketch of John Edwards, he was born in the

town of Hertford, or city of Hertford in England, in 1637.

Hertford is a little bit north of London.

He was the son of the well -known Presbyterian polemicist Thomas Edwards, who

was quite a notorious heresiographer who wrote

against various heresies during the Civil War period.

That means the 1640s in England.

His father died, however, when he was 10, but his mother inherited a large fortune,

which enabled her to provide her son with a first -class education.

So John Edwards then attended Merchant Taylor School in London before going to St John's College in

Cambridge, where he matriculated in 1653 at the age of 16, matriculated

meaning he began his studies at Cambridge at St John's College in 1653.

And there at St John's College in Cambridge, he took his BA and MA.

This was all during the interregnum, by the way.

For those listeners who might not be familiar with the English

history of the 17th century, this is the decade or so, just over a decade, in

between the death of King Charles I, when he was put to death during the

English Civil War, and the restoration of the English monarchy in 1660.

So this is the period under Oliver Cromwell, under the rule of Oliver

Cromwell, when there was no king in England.

And this is the period in which Edwards was studying at Cambridge and receiving his education.

The master of St John's College at Cambridge at this time was a man named Anthony Tuckney,

who was a prominent member of the Westminster Assembly of Divines in the 1640s.

And he was impressed with Edwards' academic abilities.

In 1659, the year before Charles II was restored to the English monarchy,

Edwards became a fellow of St John's College, meaning he joined the academic staff of the college.

And then after the restoration of 1660, in 1662, Edwards was

made a deacon and then ordained priest by Robert Sanderson, the Bishop of Lincoln.

And it's quite remarkable that he was made a deacon and then became a priest within only 10

days.

Normally you would have to be, at least in the Anglican or Church of England setup, you would have to be a deacon at

least a year before you could become ordained as a priest.

But he was made a deacon and then ordained priest within the span of only 10 days.

And on top of that, he was given the honour of preaching the sermon at his own ordination.

Now, part of it, this was probably the reason why he was a priest or ordained in such a short span of

time, was probably because of 1662, this was just after the so -called Black

Bartholomew's Day, or the Great Ejection, when numerous Puritans were

ejected from the Church of England for refusing to conform to the Act of

Uniformity of 1662, which required them to receive episcopal ordination

and conform to the 1662 Book of Common Prayer.

So there might have been reasons for his quick succession of ordination,

because the Church of England suddenly lost well over a thousand ministers

at that point in time.

Well, after the Restoration and after his ordination, his first incumbency as

a minister of the Gospel was to serve as director of Holy Trinity Church in Cambridge

during the 1660s.

And so he was preaching regularly to an audience, or you might say

congregation, consisting of both town and gown, both regular folks in Cambridge, as well as university

students and lecturers, professors, and so on.

And there he became well regarded as a so -called practical preacher, someone who

not only preached up in the air and ivory tower kind of preaching, but was

what you might call a heart surgeon, someone who preached to the conscience and hearts of his congregation in

order to evoke them to good works and faithful Christian living.

There's actually a juicy anecdote about Edwards at this point in time,.

Where—yeah, sure.

I definitely want to hear some juicy anecdotes.

Well, he, as you might recall, he was a fellow of St. John's College.

Now, at another college in Cambridge was—Clare Hall, or

Clare College as it is now known, had a fellow named John Tillotson, who later actually in

the 1690s would become the Archbishop of Canterbury.

But there's this juicy anecdote about how Tillotson, who was an Armenian divine, how his audience,

how his students would sometimes leave him behind to go and listen to Edwards' preaching and teaching

instead at St. John's College.

Yeah, yes, and that legend kind of endured into the—well into the

18th—actually into the early 19th century.

So, yeah, so that's just a sign or a symbol, you might say, a token of Edwards' popularity in Cambridge at this point

in time.

Well, in 1688 to 1669, he spent a year ministering at St. James Church in

Bury St. Edmunds—that's in Suffolk, east of Cambridge—and ultimately he had

to leave his position at St. John's College in Cambridge because of personal differences with

the masters of the college, firstly with Peter Gunning and with Francis Turner.

Some scholars surmise that it was due to reformed and Armenian differences, but

there's no clear evidence.

It might just have been temperamental differences between him and the masters of the college,

and eventually he decided to leave St. John's College or resign his fellowship, and he moved to another Cambridge college

called Trinity Hall to take up the study of civil law.

Yes, so he left theology for a few years to pursue a potential

career in civil law, but ultimately, in 1676, he returned to the ministry as

the rector of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Cambridge, more commonly known

as the Round Church in Cambridge.

And it was quite an honor for me, while doing my PhD and writing this book, to

write much of it while sitting in that church, the Round Church in Cambridge, which now no

longer has a congregation.

It's now kind of used as a study center.

And so I actually wrote much of this book while sitting in the church where Edwards

ministered for seven years in the 1670s and early 1680s.

The final three years of his career, of his clerical career at least, was spent in Colchester

at St. Peter's Church in Colchester, which is in Essex in the east of England.

And then he retired in 1686 at the age of 49, being able to do so

because of his personal wealth.

He inherited a very large estate.

In fact, he possessed five different estates in Cambridgeshire, so he was quite a wealthy

man.

And the rest of his life, he would spend in Cambridge writing

and occasionally preaching, but mostly writing.

And in fact, he published more than 40 works.

From the age of 49 to his death, I think he died, if I remember correctly, when he was 76, he spent

that whole time writing and publishing 40 works, which was amazing.

So that's Edwards.

He died in 1714 at the age of 76.

Well, we are going to our first commercial break right now.

And I am so glad that our audience heard about the

pre -recording of this interview and responded early with questions, very

impressed by the audience questions that they've already submitted in advance of the airing of this

program.

And we will get to those questions as soon as possible.

And we will get to as many of them as time will allow.

But we are going to our first commercial break.

And I am looking forward to resuming this discussion when we return after this

break.

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We are now back with Jake Griesel, author of Retaining the Old Episcopal Divinity, John

Edwards of Cambridge, and Reformed Orthodoxy in the Later Stuart Church.

And before I go to our listener questions, Jake, I just wanted to ask you, how

has your study of John Edwards changed or impacted

or blessed your own walk with Christ and your understanding of the Scriptures?

That's a good question, Chris.

I came to this study as someone who was not that familiar with the English

context and was interested in historical theology in general and

in early modern Reformed theology more particular, but I grew in my appreciation

not only for Reformed theology in general, but specifically its expression as found in the Church of England, or

you might say in the long term in Anglicanism more specifically.

From Edwards, I learned to appreciate the Reformed heritage when it comes to doctrines

of grace and pre -estimation, justification, and various other doctrines.

I saw in this person someone who deeply loved the Lord and

wanted to defend the Christian faith to the best of his ability in a difficult time.

He lived in a time, late 17th and early 18th century, where he perceived

the Christian faith to be being undermined by new

developments in philosophy.

This was the time of the early Enlightenment, with the rise of rationalism and things like deism

that reject the idea of the revelation, the possibility of divine revelation,

and various other things like the rise of Arminianism in the Church of England, and he sought

to defend what he perceived to be the Reformed faith of the Church of England in

his own time.

So in these many respects, I learned from him and grew in my appreciation for this.

Particular tradition.

Yeah.

Now obviously your book would be one way where our listeners could discover more

about John Edwards and be blessed by his theological insights as you were,

but has he written other things that are available in print for our audience that you are aware of?

I wish Chris had someone who would be willing to take up some of his books and reprint them

through modern publications, for example.

In our times, many people are familiar with the works of people like John Owen or Thomas Goodwin

or Richard Baxter and other Puritans, for example, but none of Edwards's works have been

republished in the last few centuries.

So most of his works are freely available on Google Books, but they are all

published in the late 17th and early 18th centuries and haven't been

republished since.

Well, I'm going to have to approach my friend who.

Actually is or was my very first pastor after my rebirth,

Mike Gaydosh, the founder and CEO of Solid Ground Christian Books.

I have to approach him about that possibility because he does,

he is a Reformed Baptist as I am, but he has a number of Anglican works that he has brought back into print

and even a couple of new ones by contemporary Anglican authors.

So I will definitely approach him.

And let's see here, I'm going to go to our listener questions or at least begin to.

I am so thrilled that a listener who is one of Iron Sharpens Iron

Radio's biggest cheerleaders has submitted a question.

I hope he doesn't mind being referred to as a cheerleader, but he is

a biblically faithful Anglican who always promotes this program not

only when I'm interviewing an Anglican, but even when I am interviewing another

Reformed individual of different denominational backgrounds.

He is just a blessing to me and to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

His name is Donald Philip Veatch, and he runs the

Facebook page known as Twiss House Reformed Theology, Reformed Prayer Book

Churchmanship.

And of course, Twiss House is named after William Twiss,

who was both a 16th century and 17th century prominent

English theologian.

And he has a couple of things to say, and I'm looking for those questions right

now, here it is.

Dr. Griesel, can you sketch an outline, I have to expand this email,

can you sketch an outline and outline the strength of Reformed theology

in the late Stuart period?

Was it eclipsed by Laudian Arminianism?

How strong were the convictions of Dortrechtian Calvinism in the Church of

England?

Also, as an aside, we're sending a young doctrinal student

to Cape Town to labor with Frontline Fellowship.

He's definitely a Reformed Anglican or Reformed Prayer Book Churchman, Dortrechtian,

best regards from East North Carolina.

And if you could, answer to the best of your ability, Donald's question.

Sure, so my whole book really speaks to this question about the relative strength

of Reformed orthodoxy in the later Stuart Church of England.

Now, for listeners who might not be familiar with that terminology, when I speak of the later Stuart Church, I'm referring

to the line of monarchs, the House of Stuart, as they were called.

So when Elizabeth I died in 1603, she was the last of the

Tudor dynasty.

And once James I of England came to the throne in 1603, he began, well, the

line of Stuart Kings of England.

He was from Scotland, of course, but the Royal House of England was now the Stuarts.

And so the later Stuart period really refers to the time of the restoration of the

monarchy in 1660 to the Hanoverian succession in

1714, when George I became King of England and started a new house, the so -called

House of Hanover.

So basically what we're referring to, later Stuart Church of England, we're referring to the Church of England between 1660 at the

restoration of the monarchy and 1714 with the Hanoverian succession.

Now, the scholarship traditionally or conventionally in the last, you might say, century or so,

has generally thought of this period as marking a decline in reformed

orthodoxy or so -called Calvinism, if you will.

Once the restoration of the monarchy happened in 1660, and especially in 1662,

when the Puritans were ejected from the Church of England with the Great Ejection,

the idea was that most of those who were reformed or Calvinistic in the Church of England were now

outside the church, became dissenters, whether Presbyterians, Independents or Baptists, and

that as a result the Church of England became dominated by Arminians, those who rejected

reformed doctrines of grace and election and justification, for example.

And as the questioner asked, he used the phrase Laudians.

Now those who preferred, these are referred, the term Laudian refers to those who preferred

high ceremonies, elaborate ceremonies in the church liturgy, and who also had

an Arminian understanding of grace and election.

And the idea was that these people, these kind of churchmen, became dominant in the Church of England after 1660.

Now my research builds onto, actually, my doctoral supervisor's research.

My doctoral supervisor is a man named Stephen Hampton, and in 2008 he published a

book titled Anti -Arminians, in which he traced the relative strength

of Reformed Orthodoxy in the Church of England during this later 17th and early 18th century period.

And he came to the conclusion, based on thorough historical research, based on the

primary sources, that in fact there actually was a substantial minority

presence of Reformed Orthodoxy in the Church of England during this time.

Even though Arminians were in the majority, yet there was a very substantial, large and

substantial minority of Reformed theologians remaining within the Church of England.

And this raised the question for me concerning Edwards, because the scholarship on

Edwards has by and large dismissed him, basically, as a lone Calvinist

crying in the wilderness, in a, you might say, an Arminian wilderness in the Church of England in the later

17th and early 18th centuries.

And my question really was, how does this square with Hampton's work,

which revealed a strong Reformed presence in the Church of England during this period, when the scholarship by and large

rejects, or not rejects, at least downplays Edwards as this kind of lone

Calvinist in the Church at that point in time?

And that's where I investigated Edwards.

I looked at his theology as polemics, writing against Arminian contemporaries,

in which he basically accused them of departing from the articles and homilies of

the Church of England.

He thought that the articles and homilies of the Church of England were in essential agreement with

other Reformed confessions, and he cited earlier Church of England theologians to back him up on this, that

he basically said, well, and this reverts back to the title of the book, he said that all the old

Episcopalians, all the old Anglicans, if you will, agreed with this Reformed

theology and were not Arminians, and yet many of his contemporaries in the Church of England

were veering away from this.

And my research basically shows, among other things, that Edwards was well supported

by a large caste of contemporaries that agreed with him in upholding

Reformed orthodoxy, and not only that, but equating it with the orthodoxy, the

established orthodoxy of the Church of England.

That's a long way of answering the question of basically saying that, yes, there was a large substantial minority

presence in the Church of England at this point in time of Reformed theologians, even though,

yes, they were still outnumbered by those who we would call Arminians.

And I'm going to read Donald's.

Second comment when we return from our midway break.

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pastors luncheon and conference in the subject line.

And we are now back with our guest Jake Griesel, and

we have been discussing, if you just tuned in, retaining the old Episcopal divinity, John

Edwards of Cambridge, and reformed orthodoxy in the later Stuart Church.

And I just wanted to read the final statement by our previous questioner before the

break, Donald Philip Veitch of the Twist House Facebook page.

Jake, we are developing plans for a real reformed Calvinist biblical prayer

book community, that is the Free Church of England Evangelical Connection,

an extension of the English and South American Brothers.

No guitars and drum kits.

Well, thanks for alienating half of my audience there, brother.

Cranmerian Calvinist with Cranmer's Book of Common Prayer.

Jake, it's been a long time in the Anglican exile and desert, but the old fella is seeing

his majesty moving.

Hallelujah.

That's the final comment from our listener, Donald.

Do you have any comments on anything that he has said there?

Not in particular, no, but of course, there's a broad global community

of Anglicans who still value the formularies that came out of the Reformation,

such as the 39 Articles, not so much the Book of Homilies nowadays, but certainly the Book of Common Prayer,

often adapted to local circumstances.

So he's certainly not alone in that regard.

We have another question, and normally I only read the first name

of a questioner from the audience, but since this is a pastor of a very

biblically solid church that I would highly recommend anybody living in his area

to visit and even join, Christ Reformed Church of

Alexandria, Pennsylvania.

His name is Pastor Angelo Valley, and Pastor Angelo

asks, who are some other post -Restoration conforming figures

sympathetic with Edwards Reformed theological sympathies who need to be studied as

well?

Can you name such contemporary figures who need to be examined?

And then I'll read what he has to say after that, after you answer those questions.

Yes, there were certainly many contemporaries that are still neglected in the scholarship,

really, because so far it's only really my work and the work of Hampton that has

listed the names and at least underlined that there are numerous Reformed

conformists, or Anglicans if you will, active at the time.

Some of Edward's contemporaries in the late 17th and early 18th centuries include

people like William Beveridge, who was the Bishop of St. Asaph in Wales, or he ministered in London

before that, but he left a number of works that have been utterly neglected in the

scholarship.

There was the Bishop of London, Henry Compton, who was Reformed even though he didn't really leave

much writings behind.

Robert South, he was one of the most popular preachers in the later 17th century Church of England.

He left numerous sermons behind and published, but neglected.

There were a number of others.

If you look at the earlier period in the discussion, after the 1660s and 1670s,

there's another man I'm working on currently on a second book, a second monograph, a guy called John Pearson,

who was the Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Cambridge in the 1660s

and early 1670s before becoming Bishop of Chester, and he actually wrote what would

become the standard Anglican Manual of Theology, his so

-called Exposition of the Creed, which was first published in 1659, and ended up

becoming standard reading material for all ordinance, all candidates for the ministry,

not only in the Church of England, but globally across Anglicanism up to the late 19th century.

There were a number of others.

Edward Reynolds, who was the Bishop of Norwich after the Restoration, initially a Presbyterian and then

conformed after the Restoration, but various others.

For a longer list of names, you can.

Read my book, there are plenty.

And Pastor Angelo concludes his email by saying, I've

wanted this volume, speaking of retaining the old Episcopal divinity, I've wanted this volume for

some time, but as you can imagine, the typical costs of such volumes can make them difficult to

come by.

Well, I've got some fantastic news for you, Angelo.

You have just won a free copy of Retaining the Old Episcopal Divinity,

compliments of our friends at Oxford University Press.

I'm so delighted that they were generous enough to give us a limited number of copies to give away to listeners who

submitted questions, because I don't know if you're aware of this, Angelo, this book retails

for $100, and I believe the cheapest you could get it is on Amazon for $50.

So that's a pretty pricey book, and we thank Oxford

University Press for blessing a certain number of our listeners who write in with this

wonderful volume.

And by the way, I think I forgot to tell that also, that great news, to Donald Philip

Veitch of Twist House.

And Donald, if you already have this book, since it is so expensive, I'm asking you to

please obviously give it to someone who you think will receive the most benefit from it,

or if you want to just tell me later off the air by submitting another email to us

that you want me to pass it on to someone else, that's fine, but just keep in mind that it is obviously such an

expensive book.

We want this to be in the hands of people who will actually read it and benefit from it, not just use it

as a bookshelf decoration.

So we thank you, both of you men, for submitting excellent questions.

Let's see here, we have another question from Alex

in Birmingham, Alabama.

Can John Wesley justifiably be called an Anglican?

And in fact, I'm going to add my own question to Alex's question.

Can George Whitfield, who is on the opposite side of the Armenian -Calvinist

divide, Wesley being Armenian and Whitfield being Calvinist, can George Whitfield

be justifiably called an Anglican as well?

If I may shy away from that question in determining whether either of those

might be regarded as Anglicans, I think that, of course, they came out of the Church of England.

Whitfield remained in the Church of England.

So in that sense, yes, I would say he's an Anglican.

He never dissented and left the Church of England.

But if I may use that as an avenue to actually speak about the

reception of Edwards's works, because Whitfield was one of the greatest fans, you

might say, of Edwards.

But I'm going to go through a little bit of a detour here, because in order for us to speak about the reception of

Edwards's works, we at least mention some of them.

I mentioned that they have never been republished, unlike many of his contemporaries.

But I think it's worth just quickly touching on some of his works.

What did he publish?

Why are they significant?

So Edwards was writing at the end of the 17th and early 18th centuries, and he was looking

around at the ecclesiastical landscape of his time and perceiving the undermining of

Orthodox Christianity at various points.

Not only the rise of rationalism and deism that I mentioned earlier, also Arminianism,

even things like what many perceive to be the rise of Arianism, a rejection of the divinity of Christ,

even among some clergy in the Church of England.

And he set out to defend the faith on all these fronts, really.

He was a polemicist par excellence.

He wrote not only against, for example,

the undermining of the authority of Scripture, he wrote polemical works against

Sasynianism, which is basically a sect that grew out of Poland that

denied the doctrine of the Trinity, the divinity of the Son, and various other

Orthodox Christian doctrines.

And he spent much of the 1690s writing against these developments.

But ultimately, Edwards is famous primarily as a staunch Calvinist, to put it that way,

as a defender of Reformed Orthodoxy against Arminianism.

And in this regard, he wrote three significant works in the early 18th

century that are worth quickly noting before we get to Whitefield and the reception of Edwards.

So the first of these works was titled The Preacher, a

discourse showing what are the particular offices and employments of those of that

character in the Church.

So The Preacher, which was published in three volumes from 1705 to

1709.

And essentially, The Preacher is a homiletical manual, a manual describing what are the

duties of a preacher, how he should preach, what he should preach, basically.

But as soon as you start reading The Preacher, you can quickly realize that it actually

doubles up as a polemical text in which he goes after

many of his own contemporaries in the Church of England, especially because he doesn't only speak about

how to preach, but what to preach.

And when touching on what to preach, he covers Orthodox doctrine and then

criticizes his fellow clergy by name for departing from what

he perceived to be the Orthodox faith of the Church of England, as articulated in its 39 articles, homilies, and

Book of Common Prayer.

So he names names of prominent Arminian divines of his time, such as John Tillerton, the Archbishop of

Canterbury, William Sherlock, the Dean of St. Paul's Cathedral in London, Edward

Fowler, the Bishop of Gloucester, and Daniel Whitby, among others.

And this is really what made him controversial, is that he wasn't hesitant

to name living contemporaries by name in criticizing the

Arminianism and other forms of departure from Scripture as he saw it, and

basically showing that they are departing from established formularies of the Church of England.

There was a second book, also an anti -Arminian book, called Veritas Redax, which is Latin

for Truth Restored or Truth Returned, and the subtitle is Evangelical Truths

Restored, namely those concerning God's eternal decrees, the liberty of man's

will, grace and conversion, the extent and efficacy of Christ's redemption,

and perseverance in grace.

And that was published in 1707.

Basically a book of what some people might call the Five Points of Calvinism,

or the Five Issues or Five Points of Doctrine in Dispute with the Remonstrants.

And this book, Veritas Redax, was a very comprehensive treatise,

basically counteracting Arminianism in the Church of England at the time.

And there's one final work that I'd like to mention.

It's basically Edward's Systematic Theology, which was published in three volumes from

1713 to 1726.

It's called Theologia Reformata, meaning Reform Theology, or

The Body and Substance of the Christian Religion, a comprehensive treatment of systematic theology

based on the format of the Apostles' Creed.

Now, having mentioned those three major works, and now I can get to Whitefield and others, is that

what made Edward's and his anti -Arminian works such a

welcome resource for evangelicals such as Whitefield is that it

enabled Whitefield and others of his time, other evangelicals, especially in the Church of England, to back

up their doctrinal positions, to basically say, listen here, against Arminian

contemporaries, listen, we're not departing from the faith of the Church of England.

Please read John Edwards.

He has already demonstrated that Reformed doctrines are

synonymous with Church of England orthodoxy.

And so many evangelicals of the 18th century, but Whitefield in

particular, would call upon and resort to Edwards to back up their own

doctrinal positions.

In fact, Whitefield wrote in his diary that it was through Edwards,

it was actually on the way to sailing to America, while on ship to America to go preach in America, that

Whitefield read Edwards on the ship and became convinced of the Reformed position on

grace and election.

Wow, I did not know about that connection.

That's amazing.

Yes, so Whitefield is much more famous than John Edwards, but he himself, at

least in retrospect, is more famous.

But he actually directly drew on Edwards.

But he was not the only one.

There were a number of others.

Hal Harris, the Welsh evangelist and revivalist, read

Edwards.

Augustus Toplady, whose name you mentioned earlier, the famous hymnist, he

actually wrote a number of works, basically with the same agenda as Edwards, just like half a century

later, or 60 -70 years later, in which he tried to defend

Calvinism, you might say, or Reformed orthodoxy as the orthodoxy of the Church of England as

established, because he was contending with Arminians in his own day, in the mid to later 18th

century.

And where could he go to find similar arguments and resources?

Well, he went to Edwards for that.

Well, not only within the Church of England, there were English dissenters who appreciated what Edwards had to say,

including Isaac Watts, another hymnist, and Philip Doddridge,

both of them independents.

But here's the thing, not only in England, in New England, on the other side of the Atlantic,

Edwards actually made a pen pal, as it were.

Remember, there was no internet back in those days.

But he actually started a correspondence through letters, with none other than Cotton Mather,

in Boston.

And he had a back and forth with Mather, who really appreciated what Edwards had to say.

And Mather actually was instrumental in promoting Edwards' works in New

England.

He had copies that are published in Boston.

He distributed his copies to ministers, not only in Boston, but throughout Massachusetts

and further abroad.

And he really went out of his way to promote the works of John

Edwards in New England, as a kind of a bastion against rising Arminianism,

not only among the Episcopalians, but among the Congregationalists also in

New England.

So even Jonathan Edwards, the more famous Edwards, I have to say, drew on

and benefited from reading the earlier John Edwards.

By the way, I cannot resist plugging a very faithful Anglican church in

Birmingham, Alabama, because our listener who just submitted that last question

about John Wesley, Alex, he is the son of a

very dear friend of mine, Roger Salter, who is the rector of St. Matthew's Anglican

Church in Birmingham, Alabama, which is a very,

very Calvinistic, theologically reformed, confessional

congregation there in Birmingham.

And I've had Roger as a guest on my program many times.

And if anybody wants to listen to any of his interviews later on, just go to

lionsharpandzionradio .com and type in the search engine Salter, S -A -L -T -E -R.

You can also find out more about St. Matthew's at rogersalter .com, Roger,

S -A -L -T -E -R .com.

And Alex, I hope that after you're finished reading the brand new book that you've won,

Retaining the Old Episcopal Divinity, that you will pass it on to your dad, because I'm sure he would

love to read this book as well.

Let's see.

Oh, by the way, I thought I'd share something with you, Jake, you might find interesting.

As you just stated, John Edwards, his writing

was used of God to draw George Whitefield into embracing the doctrines of sovereign grace.

Well, the writing of George Whitefield was used of God to draw me into the

doctrines of grace as a very young, newly born or newly reborn Christian and

anti -Calvinist at the time.

I didn't know anything about John Calvin or George Whitefield, for that matter, but I read the wonderful

booklet, George Whitefield's Letter to John Wesley on Election, that is

available from Chapel Library.

And I urge everybody listening to get a hold of that

excellent booklet written with such grace and humility

by Whitefield to John Wesley.

And that website is chapellibrary .org, chapellibrary .org.

I can never promote that enough,.

Especially because of the impact it had on my own life.

Go ahead.

Just quickly about that very letter from Whitefield to Wesley, you'll see there that it

refers Wesley to Edwards and says, read Edwards if you want to be

fully persuaded.

So yes, you'll see it with that very letter.

I've got to read that again, because maybe when I first read it, I thought he was talking about Jonathan Edwards.

But actually, even back then, I didn't even know who Jonathan Edwards was.

I was such a new Christian.

But that's fascinating.

Do you have anything else to say?

I'm sorry,.

Sounded like I interrupted you.

No, not at all.

No, I just wanted to add that yes, even in that letter, this was before Jonathan Edwards

really came on the scene and made a name internationally.

The Edwards referred to by Whitefield to Wesley was the lesser known.

Edwards, John Edwards.

And we have Jeff from East Norriton, Pennsylvania, who

says, please ask Jake about the Calvinism of Anglicans who remained in the

established church.

After the Westminster Assembly.

Yes, so I think I touched on that a bit saying earlier that, well, after the Westminster Assembly, directly after

that, there was, of course, still the interregnum, in which there was

no Episcopal established church in England.

That was only brought back after the Restoration.

So the book that I, the names I mentioned earlier, when answering

Angela's question, those are some of the major significant, well, I

hesitate to call them Calvinists, because they would have preferred the name Reformed.

And simply because they didn't perceive themselves as beholding, being beholden to Calvin specifically,

they saw themselves as belonging to a broader Reformed tradition.

And especially in their case, to a Reformed tradition within the English context, that had some

peculiarities not shared by Reformed churches elsewhere, as in Switzerland, or Scotland, or

the Netherlands, or whatever, or France.

So yes, these are, the names I mentioned earlier include some of the

Reformed, or if you will, Calvinistic theologians in the Church of England who remained.

Well, we're going to our final break.

It's going to be a lot more brief than the other breaks.

I ask of you to please remember that this is a pre -recorded

program, if you're listening at 4 p .m. to 6 p .m. Eastern Time on

March 10th.

We are not taking live listener questions because the program has already been

completed early in the afternoon because of the time difference in South Africa.

And our guest, Jake Griesel, requested that we record a pre -recorded

program earlier in the day.

So please don't send in questions.

And we're going to be right back after these messages, so please don't go away.

James White of Alfenbega Ministries here.

I'm.

Very excited to announce that my longtime friend Chris Arnson of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio and I

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It's such a blessing to hear from Iron Sharpen's Iron Radio listeners from all over the world.

Here's Joe Reilly, a listener in Ireland who wants you to know about a guest on the show

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I'm Joe Reilly, a faithful Iron.

Sharpen's Iron Radio listener here in Atai in County Kildare, Ireland.

Going back to 2005, one of my very favorite guests on Iron Sharpen's Iron is Dr. Joe

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Welcome back.

We have a listener, Jake, who is remaining anonymous, and the anonymous

listener says, I'm remaining anonymous because I am having a theological battle with an

Armenian Anglican friend, and one of the issues of contention between

us is the fact that we disagree over the theology of a major

Christian Anglican from history, Richard Hooker.

He is claiming that Hooker was an Arminian, and from what I understand about Hooker, he was thoroughly

Reformed.

Can you settle this dispute?

Yes, so Richard Hooker, as he rightly observes, there's been differences in

interpreting his theology, but I think it's fairly clear that he was

Reformed.

Yes, he had his peculiarities, and he was certainly a conformist, but

I think it's abundantly clear that he was well situated within the Reformed tradition, including on his

doctrine of election and his doctrine of justification.

Of course, oftentimes we want to, especially when there are competing

parties, people want to claim earlier theologians for their side, as it were, but I

think historically it's going to be difficult to argue that that Hooker was

Arminian, even anachronistic, because Arminianism was not even a thing yet, even

though in the 1590s they were so -called proto -Arminians in England.

Richard Hooker was certainly on the Reformed side.

I've even heard Anglo -Catholics trying to claim Thomas Cranmer.

Have you heard that?

I mean, much of the Anglo -Catholic movement in the 19th century was about trying to find, or at

least part of their polemic was to find earlier examples of people in the Church of England who held

similar positions, which of course was difficult to do, even among the so -called Caroline divines of

the 17th century, never held quite the positions that the Oxford movement

advocated.

So yeah, but there's always the desire to find earlier precedent for your own movement, and you

can see that throughout the history of Anglicanism in different sides.

By the way, Anonymous, you have won our final copy of Retaining the Old Episcopal Divinity,

John Edwards of Cambridge and Reform Orthodoxy in the Ladder of Stuart Church, and I hope

that you make use of this very expensive but also very rich book

filled with the kinds of theology that every Christian should know and learn and

embrace.

Please give us, obviously, your full name and your full mailing address off the air so that Cumberland

Valley Bible Book Service can ship this book out to you, and if you are a first -time questioner, you'll

also receive a new New American Standard Bible.

And by the way, that goes for you too, Alex, Birmingham, Alabama.

I believe that's the first time you ever sent in a question, even though I've known your dad for many years and

have grown to know you.

So you will also receive a free New American Standard Bible on top of this wonderful book, and we thank

Oxford University Press again for donating a number of these very

expensive books so that we could give them to our audience who submitted questions today, and I want to thank Cumberland

Valley Bible Book Service, CVBBS .com, for shipping them out to those winners at no charge to us.

Well, I want you, brother, in about two minutes to summarize what you most want etched in the

hearts and minds of our listeners today.

Thank you, Chris.

So one final thing I'd like to mention and just comment on quickly is that I

mentioned that the main thesis of the book is that Edwards was not a lone Calvinist in the Church of

England in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, but that he was part of a substantial and influential

minority contingent within the established Church.

Now, that thesis poses questions to a number of things, and I'd just like to close with a few

historiographical takeaways, if you will.

Much of the older scholarship suggested that the evangelical revivals

entailed, at least among other things, the revival of Calvinistic doctrines.

Think of Whitefield and others who were supposed to have revived these doctrines.

But my thesis questions that because it demonstrates that these doctrines had a substantial presence

within the established Church all along.

Whatever the evangelical revivals were, they were not a revival of specifically Calvinistic

doctrines, because they were already there in the Church of England.

Another thing that I'd like to touch on with that regard is the idea that Calvinism was supposed

to have been superseded at this point in time because of the Enlightenment, and

the Church of England was supposed to have moved on, as it were, from the Civil War period with Calvinism

kind of now dismissed.

But my thesis challenges that particular kind of so -called Whig historiography in which

Calvinism was no longer welcome in the early Enlightenment period.

And the final comment that I'd like to make is, especially for those thinking of further research or doing research in the

future, is that this period really remains severely understudied.

There's much to be done in this period, especially in the English context.

The contemporaries of Edwards, the dissenting contemporaries like Baxter, John Owen, and others have received

quite a lot of attention, but those within the Church of England remain to be studied.

And that's one thing I'd like people to take note of, is that to spend some time studying

the Church of England divines in this period.

Amen.

If you want to find out more about this book that we've been discussing, Retaining the Old Episcopal Divinity,

go to academic .oup .com and type in GRIESEL in

the search engine.

G -R -I -E -S -E -L.

I want to thank you so much for being such an absolutely superb guest today, brother.

I want to thank everybody who listened today, especially those who took the time to write in questions.

And I hope you have a safe and joyful and blessed and Christ -honoring weekend and Lord's Day.

I hope you all always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater Savior

than you are a sinner.