I don’t really drink tea, so if I say that rap music isn’t really my cup of coffee you can get the point. But when the artist known as Propaganda shared his song “Precious Puritans” it caught my attention. In the song Propaganda discusses the difficulty that the and many other African-Americans have in learning from and listening to their pastors celebrate the Puritans. He writes honestly about his difficulty with the Puritans but towards the end of the song he steps back and expresses something profound. In many ways the Puritans are men just like him. “And, it bothers me when you quote puritans, if I’m honest, for the same reason it bothers me when people quote me–they precious Propaganda,” he says. He concludes then with a beautiful quote and good reminder to us all, saying:
So, I guess it’s true. God really does use crooked sticks to make straight lines. Just like your precious puritans.
As I wrap up this short series on the failures and frustrations of Jonathan Edwards I want to conclude by considering the question “Can we still learn from Jonathan Edwards.” The answer, as you can probably deduce, is yes. God uses crooked sticks to make straight lines.
The place to begin in answering this post’s question is the Fall. It’s where we began the whole series and it is where we will begin this discussion. After all, Edwards had a robust theology of sin. He believed all men were sinners and that sin so infected men that even their minds were impacted by the Fall. One of the major points of this series has been to stress that Jonathan Edwards was a man, a sinner, like all other men. He was not perfect. He struggled with doubt and legalism, and he didn’t struggle with racism – he merely indulged in it. But in the grand scheme of things Edwards sin is no different from any one else’s, as Propaganda reminds himself and us in his song. If your standard for learning from different theologians is perfection I fear you will find no one to read, save Jesus. All men are sinners.
It’s important to note here as well that it is not Edwards’ theology per se that brought about his sin. His heart was corrupt, but where he was solidly Biblical he was right. As Sherard Burns has written, “Yet if Edwards were wrong, it is not his God or his theology that is to blame – only his sin. Reformed theology did not produce a heart to own slavery” (“Trusting the theology of a Slave Owner,” in A God Entranced Vision of All Things, 156). We may, of course, point out ways in which Edwards abused his theology, as many New Engalnders abused the Scriptures. But the point is to stress that sin comes from the heart not from truth. We can still find great value in Jonathan Edwards’ theology because all truth is God’s truth, even when spoken by another sinner.
We should also read Jonathan Edwards within his historical context. We cannot pull him out of the times in which he wrote, and that’s important because it can help us to be some what careful and fair in our reading of the theologian. There are no excuses or justifications for Edwards’ slavery, yet we must acknowledge that he grew up in a time where he known no other reality than slavery. George Marsden reminds us that Jonathan Edwards was an eighteenth-century figure and “that context should shape our understanding of him.” He writes:
It would be a failure of imagination if we were to start out by simply judging people of the past for having outlooks that are not like our own. Rather, we must first try to enter sympathetically into an earlier world and to understand its people. Once we do that we will be in a far better position both to learn from them and to evaluate their outlooks critically. (Jonathan Edwards: A Life, 2)
The same things can be said of Edwards’ tendency towards legalism as can be said of his slave-owning. He grew up an heir of the Puritans and the Puritans were nothing if not thorough in their self-examination. We have explored how Jonathan’s father had explained the “process of conversion” and how Jonathan’s own experience didn’t match that process. HIs doubt too, then, is a product of his time. Edwards was a man influenced by his context, like we all are. We may be asking too much of him to look and think like us on so many of these issues which were never challenged in his own day.
I immediately recognize, of course, that there is some limitation to the aforementioned point. After all, it is easy for me as a white male to chalk up Edwards slave-owning to an error of his cultural context. For many of my friends it’s more deeply personal and not so easily dismissed. Furthermore, as mentioned above, there are no excuses for sin. The point is not to dismiss them, sweep them under the rug, or excuse them. Rather it’s to acknowledge them as gross moral failings and learn from these errors. These failings are part of an overall package of things that we can learn from Jonathan Edwards. Like all theologians we can learn from him both good and bad. Like all theologians Jonathan Edwards was sometimes right, sometimes wrong, and sometimes extremely immoral. Sometimes he was prideful and unkind. Often he was impatient. He owned other people as slaves, and he tended to promote works over grace in his own thought-life. But at other times he was compassionate, gospel-focused, and earnestly seeking the glory of God in all things. His failures are not excused, but they don’t have to wash out all his other values.
I believe that Jonathan Edwards was a great theologian in many respects. I have learned a great deal about God, about glory, about worship, and about creation from Jonathan Edwards. I trust him to be a reliable guide in many areas of theology, but not all. Edwards, like all the Puritans, was a man. I often worry that many of us have too much of an obsession with the Puritans. We tend towards hero-worship. But there is only one hero worthy of our worship, his name is Jesus. Everyone else is a sinner just like me. In saying that, however, I don’t want to completely dismiss Jonathan Edwards. There is value in learning from other sinners. God has laced the path of history with crooked sticks. Jonathan Edwards is one of those valuable crooked sticks we can still learn from.
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