Graduate of Yale College, pastor, missionary and former President of the College of New Jersey (a.k.a. Princeton University), Jonathan Edwards was one of the most influential church leaders in early America. His sermons are credited with fueling the fire of revival during the First Great Awakening in the colonies. In his sermon “A Divine and Supernatural Light,” he describes a deeply important feature of Evangelical Christianity:
“He that is spiritually enlightened truly apprehends and sees the excellency of God and Jesus Christ, or has a sense of it. He does not merely rationally believe that God is glorious, but he has a sense of the gloriousness of God in his heart. There is not only a rational belief that God is holy, and that holiness is a good thing, but there is a sense of the loveliness of God’s holiness. There is not only a speculatively judging that God is gracious, but a sense how amiable God is upon that account, or a sense of the beauty of this divine attribute.
Thus there is a difference between having an opinion, that God is holy and gracious, and having a sense of the loveliness and beauty of that holiness and grace. There is a difference between having a rational judgment that honey is sweet, and having a sense of its sweetness. A man may have the former, that knows not how honey tastes; but a man cannot have the latter unless he has an idea of the taste of honey in his mind. So there is a difference between believing that a person is beautiful, and having a sense of his beauty. The former may be obtained by hearsay, but the latter only by seeing the countenance. There is a wide difference between mere speculative rational judging anything to be excellent, and having a sense of its sweetness and beauty. The former rests only in the head, speculation only is concerned in it; but the heart is concerned in the latter. When the heart is sensible of the beauty and amiableness of a thing, it necessarily feels pleasure in the apprehension.”
In essence, what he described is Christianity that is both intellectual and experiential. We know God because of the information we acquire about Him from scripture but also because we experience Him personally in our lives. Information is theoretical. Experience is practical. The receptacle of theory is the human mind while experiences are perceived by the senses. The mind is the seat for abstraction, ideas, philosophy, and propositions. The senses apprehend the concrete, practical events that occur in the world around us and categorize them into feelings, emotions, or sensations. The Evangelical church seems to struggle with uniting theory (rationalism) with practice (experientialism). Either our ministries are Word-based or works-based but not both. When we are Word-based we are motivated by the acquisition of theological information and are passionate about Bible study. Our ministry efforts are exhausted by formal and informal educational models that include Sunday School classes, heady preaching, and small group studies. When we are works-based, we are passionate about passion itself. Our ministries emphasize events, activity, and programs, those things that provide us with a sensation that something is happening.
I have seen it over and over again. Christians who are more intellectual struggle with service and benevolence. In fact, they tend to carry a critical spirit, arrogant because they know all the right answers and are legalistic against those who are not so enlightened. Conversely, Christians who are more experiential are passionate worshippers, socially active, and relational but lack theological sophistication. These are people who can be idealistic and see spiritual maturity based on accomplishment. If one is not emotionally moved by a church event, something went wrong; perhaps God was missing.
Evangelicalism marries the activities of the mind and the senses. There is no gap between the two. God’s will for a Christian is that we love Him with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our strength, and with all our mind (Luke 10:27). I seek to promote a holistic Christianity, that is, a faith for people who will be both passionate and intellectual, lovers of God with their heart and their mind. Is it possible for the ideas of the John McCarthurs and the Henry Blackabys of the church to comingle? There are both objective and subjective qualities to our knowledge of God due to the fact that He is both transcendent and immanent. God will be glorified in a church where the members study and search the scripture until their brains hurt and at the same time are proactive in organizing all church activities to advance the mission of Christ. The church should be theologically sophisticated and benevolent.
The gap between the heart and the mind is visible in many activities of the church. For example, there is a resurgence of the Social Gospel today where the primary goal of missionary effort is to cure social injustice, thus diminishing renewal of the mind by the truth of Scripture. The good news is that God saves man from poverty rather than his own sin. Another gap that has developed is being referred to as “Moral Therapeutic Deism.” Many Christians are deists, believing that God exists but is uninvolved in human affairs and the day to day activities of life. God is a theory or idea and is not tangible. When He is needed because of crisis, trauma, or simple assistance, we consult Him like a therapist to get clarity for our own decision making process, not expecting Him to take an active role in a resolution. There are other gaps that exist because of the mind-heart gap. One of my goals in ministry is to close this divide in order that we all may obtain greater understanding of God and live the words of Luke 10:27. For Advent this year, I will be contemplating the truth of the incarnation of Christ and how it answers the problem of this divide.
Daniel Flores Jr. 