{"id":4949,"date":"2015-01-12T17:29:00","date_gmt":"2015-01-12T21:29:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/northamptonseminar\/?p=4949"},"modified":"2015-01-14T17:05:06","modified_gmt":"2015-01-14T21:05:06","slug":"is-it-possible-for-an-evangelical-to-have-a-high-view-of-the-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/northamptonseminar\/2015\/01\/12\/is-it-possible-for-an-evangelical-to-have-a-high-view-of-the-church\/","title":{"rendered":"Is it possible for an evangelical to have a high view of the church?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Rhys S. Bezzant thinks so.<\/p>\n

Bezzant is an Anglican priest and scholar whose recent book Jonathan Edwards and the Church (Oxford University Press) <\/em>is a superb analysis of Edwards\u2019s eccesiology.<\/p>\n

Some scholars have charged that Jonathan Edwards (1703-58) had no doctrine of the church, evidenced by his failed pastorate (Patricia Tracy), his alleged sectarianism (Roland Bainton), or pietistic individualism stemming from his revivalism (D.G. Hart). But Edwards specialists from Thomas Schafer to Amy Plantinga Pauw, Douglas Sweeney, and Michael McClymond have made article-length arguments for an Edwardsean ecclesiology.<\/p>\n

This is the first book-length case for the notion that America\u2019s theologian had a \u201chigh view of the church\u201d (4).\u00a0 Bezzant, director of the Edwards Centre Australia at Ridley College in Melbourne, argues that in fact Edwards\u2019s ecclesiology represented a \u201cnew stage\u201d (156) in thinking about the society of the saints. \u201cThe traditional marks of the church in the Apostles\u2019 Creed as catholic and holy are given new experiential loading\u201d (157), which also went beyond the sixteenth century reformers\u2019 \u201cclerical definition\u201d (156) built on faithful preaching and due administration of the sacraments. Because this was the first time in a millennium that Christians had unbelievers (Native Americans, to whom Edwards was a missionary for almost seven years) for neighbors, Edwards \u201crelativized\u201d Christendom\u2019s model for church. No longer was the church to attend to civil affairs, and now the church was to have a \u201cmissionary edge\u201d (168). This also relativized \u201cossified\u201d Puritan ecclesiology by Edwards\u2019s advocacy of revivals, itinerancy, Concerts of Prayer, missionary initiatives outside the local congregation, and doctrinal clarification (xi).<\/p>\n

How did Edwards manage this? Bezzant explains that he tried to \u201chold together both objective (ministry and means of grace) and subjective (affections and godliness) elements,\u201d thus connecting \u201cthe objective nature of God\u2019s consistent and regular offers of grace in the church with the subjective vicissitudes of an individual\u2019s regenerate life\u201d (182). To shape the synthesis, Edwards used the language of \u201ccommunion\u201d because it suggested \u201csubjective participation in God without allowing for objective absorption into God\u201d (182). Therefore Edwards was not among the radical New Lights who opposed traditional authority for the sake of individual freedom (240). Instead, Edwards argued in his Religious Affections <\/em>that Christian experience is \u201caccountable\u201d to the church, for it is the church that must judge whether acts of love crown testimonies of spiritual experience. Hence Edwards wanted to unite \u201cardor\u201d with \u201corder\u201d (124).<\/p>\n

But at the same time Edwards\u2019s revival theology provided a source of \u201cinnovation\u201d and disruption that was necessary to \u201cdestabilize\u201d calcified church orders. Here Bezzant has New England Puritanism of the early eighteenth century in mind. Edwards\u2019s \u201cavowed voluntarism,\u201d when combined with itinerancy and revival, ensured that God would \u201creserve the right to break into this world apart from regularly constituted means\u201d (210).<\/p>\n

Bezzant insists that for Edwards the church is central to Christian experience. In his Miscellanies <\/em>Edwards wrote that \u201cthe church is said to be the completeness of Christ (Eph. 1:23), as if Christ were not complete without the church\u201d (Works of Jonathan Edwards <\/em>[Yale edn.] 13:272). Furthermore, the New England theologian believed that \u201cthe end of the creation was to provide a spouse for his Son\u201d (Works of Jonathan Edwards <\/em>[Yale edn.] 8:708). Bezzant adds that the progress of the church in its experience of redemption is the main story line of Edwards\u2019s History of the Work of Redemption<\/em>. Not that progress is \u201csteady\u201d (107), but ever-increasing union is the larger graph of the church\u2019s relation to its Head, and each member\u2019s relation to the Trinity. In fact, Bezzant compares Edwards\u2019s trinitarianism to his ecclesiology, and says the two are related. Just as the Trinity is what Edwards calls a \u201csociety\u201d of equals but whose Father \u201cacts as the head\u201d (61), so the church is a fellowship of priests who submit to an ordained ministry. It is hierarchical but not sacerdotal (188).<\/p>\n

Bezzant suggests that Edwards evolved in his view of the church. After an early trust in congregationalism, his experience of the revivals moved him toward a Presbyterian polity: \u201c[H]is model could be understood to shift radically the locus of power from the assembled congregation to its agents, who are investing in a common interest beyond the boundaries of the local congregation for which they are demanding increased trust and perversely thereby generating a culture of suspicion\u201d (250-51).<\/p>\n

Edwards ran into a buzzsaw of suspicion that caused his eventual ouster from his Northampton pulpit after twenty-three years of ministry there. Bezzant rightly explains that while the formal cause was his policy for admission to communion, this has been often misunderstood as dictatorial presumption that he could read an applicant\u2019s heart. The reality was that Edwards exercised \u201ccharity\u201d (180), accepting the testimony of those who believed grace was at work in them.<\/p>\n

There are some surprises in Edwards\u2019s ecclesiology. Edwards believed it was the \u201cresponsibility\u201d of clergy to conduct \u201cliturgies,\u201d and the \u201cduty\u201d to all believers to attend \u201cexternal worship\u201d weekly (122-23). Like Calvin, Edwards wished for weekly communion but was not able to persuade his congregation to do so (215). He conceived of infant baptism as a work of the Spirit in the children of the elect, and of the eucharist as Christ giving to believers the real presence of his body and blood, but in a spiritual manner. He was ecumenical enough to praise the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Russian Orthodox Church (252), and taught the dominical offices of bishop and deacon, although he typically interpreted the former to be an elder.<\/p>\n

My only complaint is that Bezzant does not reflect on the disconnect between his portrayal of Edwards\u2019s high view of the church and his conclusion that polity for Edwards was the bene esse <\/em>of the local congregation, but not the esse <\/em>of the church generally (242). Perhaps there is more tension between Edwards\u2019s evangelical emphasis on conversion and experience, on the one hand, and his insistence on visible union among the saints, on the other, than can be sustained.<\/p>\n

That is a quibble, however, about a beautifully-written and elegantly executed study. It is a major achievement for not only Edwards studies but for historical studies of Protestant and evangelical ecclesiology more generally. It will be the standard work in the field for many years to come.<\/p>\n

Jonathan Edwards and the Church<\/em><\/strong>. By Rhys S. Bezzant<\/strong>. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014. xii + 314 pp. $49.95 cloth.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rhys S. Bezzant thinks so. Bezzant is an Anglican priest and scholar whose recent book Jonathan Edwards and the Church (Oxford University Press) is a superb analysis of Edwards\u2019s eccesiology.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2043,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nIs it possible for an evangelical to have a high view of the church?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Rhys S. Bezzant thinks so. 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McDermott holds the Anglican Chair of Divinity at Beeson Divinity School, and is Distinguished Senior Fellow, Baylor Institute for Studies of Religion; and Fellow, Institute for Theological Inquiry, Jerusalem, Israel. An Anglican priest, he has written, co-authored, or edited nineteen books. His most recent are Famous Stutterers and Israel Matters. You can follow him on Twitter @DrGRMcDermott\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/northamptonseminar\/author\/gmcdermott\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Is it possible for an evangelical to have a high view of the church?","description":"Rhys S. Bezzant thinks so. 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