Dig Deeper

My friend Nick Nowalk passed on a great reminder from Jonathan Edwards, who warns us not to discourage those who suspect that there's always more light to be seen. Apparently some believed that it was arrogant for the New England Puritans to be thinking so hard about Christian spirituality. Thankfully they didn't fall for it (cf. Ps 1:2; Col 1:9-10).

“They…who bring any addition of light to this great subject, The nature of true religion, and its distinction from all counterfeits, should be accepted as doing the greatest possible service to the Church of God. And attempts to this end ought not to be despised and discouraged, under a notion that it is but vanity and arrogance in such as are lately sprung up in an obscure part of the world, to pretend to add anything on this subject, to the informations we have long since received from their fathers, who have lived in former times, in New England, and more noted countries. We cannot suppose that the Church of God is already possessed of all that light, in things of this nature, that ever God intends to give it; nor that all Satan’s lurking-places have already been found out.” (Jonathan Edwards, in the preface to Joseph Bellamy’s True Religion Delineated; cited in Conrad Cherry, The Theology of Jonathan Edwards: A Reappraisal, p. 4).