Personal Narrative By Jonathan Edwards

Last twelvemonth, I wrote most presenting students with a different view of Jonathan Edwards. Rather than just showing him every bit a religious figure, it is important to highlight the varied places where religion and science overlap in his writing. This semester, I taught Edwards' Personal Narrative (1739) again, and while I stressed the intersections between scientific discipline and organized religion, I besides discussed Edwards apply of linguistic communication throughout his conversion narrative, which, in many ways, recalls the metaphysical poets, specifically John Donne. Today, I want to look at Edwards' linguistic communication as he describes his conversion and relate it back to Donne's "Holy Sonnet fourteen" and to the biblical representation of Christians and the church equally the Bride of Christ.

19315-004-b934b7c8 When reading Edwards' narrative, his sexually symbolic and descriptive language stands out. Writing nearly 1 Timothy ane:7 and about the "sweet delight" that he feels in God, Edwards intones that he wants to "be wrapped up to God in heaven, and be equally it were swallowed upward in him" (emphasis added). Subsequently, he writes that another poesy provided him with an "inwards sugariness" and he felt like "sweetly conversing with Christ, and wrapped and swallowed up in God" (accent added). Within these examples, Edwards paints God as both a sweet companion simply also as an all consuming entity.

Edwards presents his relationship with God as ane between lovers; he has "vehement longings" to be with God and pants after the divine. These phrases conjure up the epitome of Edwards not solely as a convert just also as a lover longing for reciprocal amore from the object of his affection. Edwards seeks to "spend [his] eternity in divine love and holy communion with Christ." When he ponders this "divine dear" and holiness, Edwards recalls it equally something "ravishingly lovely" that could clear abroad the "filth and defilement" of the fallen earth.

At numerous places in the narrative, Edwards deploys some class of the verb "ravish" when describing his relation with God and the divine. This verb carries with it, of form, connotations of passionate love and even forceful love. Describing holiness, Edwards precedes to annotate that information technology brings peace and "ravishment to the soul" before launching into a sexualized metaphor describing how God'southward holiness is like the sun "vivifying" flowers.

In other words, that it made the soul like a field or garden of God, with all mode of pleasant flowers; all pleasant, delightful, and undisturbed: enjoying a sweet calm. and the gently vivifying beams of the lord's day. The soul of a true Christian, as I then wrote my meditations, appeared like such a picayune white bloom as we see in the spring of the years; low and humble on the basis, opening its bosom to receive the pleasant beams of the sun's glory; rejoicing as it were in a at-home rapture; diffusing around a sweet fragrancy; standing peacefully and lovingly, in the midst of other flowers round near; all in similar fashion opening their bosoms, to drinkable in the light of the dominicus. There was no role of brute holiness, that I had and so groovy a sense of its loveliness, equally humility, brokenness of center and poverty of spirit; and there was nothing that I and so earnestly longed for. My middle panted after this, to lie low before God, as in the dust; that I might be nothing, and that God might be all, that I might become as a little child.

Fifty-fifty though Edwards compares the holiness of God upon him every bit the sun falling upon a garden of flowers, he constructs the metaphor is such a way that resembles sexual intercourse equally the "vivifying beams of the dominicus" shine down while the flower opens "its bosom to receive the pleasant beam'southward of the lord's day's glory." Edwards' "heart panted after this," once more conjuring up Edwards as a lover seeking a paramour.

johndonne Recently, I've been thinking virtually Edwards' pick of linguistic communication throughout the narrative, and while sexually charged, it does not announced totally out of character or the ordinary. I say this for a few reasons. Starting time, Edwards appears to straight draw from the line of metaphysical poets, specifically John Donne. Nosotros know that Puritans such equally Edward Taylor too drew from this lineage, so it is not far of stretch, in my mind, to make this connection.

The continual re-occurrence of "ravishment" in Edwards' narrative draws me back to Donne's "Holy Sonnet 14" which describes God equally a lover taking and "ravishing" the speaker. The poem ends with the speaker asking God to separate him from the grasps of the Devil and wrap him up within the holiness of God.

Take me to y'all, imprison me, for I,

Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,

Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.

Important hither is the fact that the speaker wants God to "imprison" him which signals a lack of freedom and that the speaker will not exist "chaste" (i.e. pure, holy) until God "ravishes" (i.due east. rapes) him. Taken in relation to Donne, Edwards' descriptions and linguistic communication do not seem out of the ordinary.

Coupled with this, we must also consider the Biblical symbolism of God/Jesus equally the Bridegroom and the Church building (i.e. Edwards, Christians) as the Helpmate. In this manner, the formulation of Edwards and God as lovers does not seem that far fetched. The image of the Church every bit the Helpmate of Christ appears all throughout the New Attestation, and one passage in detail relates back to Edwards' narrative. Writing in Ephesians, Paul directly compares the wedlock relationship to Christ and the Church. In Ephesians 5:22-33, Paul says,

²² Wives, be subject area to your husbands as you are to the Lord. ²³ For the husband is the head of the wife but as Christ is the caput of the church, the body of which he is the Savior. ²⁴ Just as the church is subject to Christ, then also wives ought to be, in everything, to their husbands.

²⁵ Husbands, love your wives, just every bit Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, ²⁶ in lodge to make her holy by cleansing her with the washing of water by the give-and-take, ²⁷ so as to nowadays the church to himself in splendor, without a spot or wrinkle or annihilation of the kind—yes, so that she may exist holy and without blotch. ²⁸ In the same way, husbands should love their wives as they do their ain bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. ²⁹ For no one ever hates his own body, but he nourishes and tenderly cares for it, just as Christ does for the church, ³⁰ because we are members of his body. ^[a] ³¹ "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his married woman, and the 2 will become i mankind." ³² This is a great mystery, and I am applying it to Christ and the church. ³³ Each of y'all, however, should honey his wife as himself, and a wife should respect her hubby.

Edwards directly draws upon this prototype when he writes, "Information technology has often appeared to me delightful, to be united to Christ; to have him for my head, and to exist a member of his torso; likewise to take Christ for my teacher and prophet." Ephesians 5:23 about reads word for word along with Edwards. Afterward, in verses 26-27, the images of husbands (i.e. Christ) cleansing wives (i.due east. the Church) sounds like to the ways that Edwards describes his interactions with God. In 1737, Edwards writes nearly alighting from his horse and encountering Christ in the woods. He falls on the footing and becomes "perfectly sanctified and made pure, with a divine and heavenly purity." Christ cleanses him as He does the Church in verses 26-27.

This, of course, is far from all that can be said on these connections. Truthfully, I am even so thinking through them right now. Hopefully, though, this discussion provides you with yet some other way to think nearly Jonathan Edwards and his writing.