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"What's the Mind Got to Do with It?": Love, Reason, and Emotion in Jonathan Edwards

October 26th, 2006 | 2 min read

By Matthew Lee Anderson

Holy affections are not heat without light; but evermore arise from some information of the understanding, or some spiritual instruction that the mind receives, some light or actual knowledge.

From the Religious Affections by Jonathan Edwards, Part III, chapter IV.

Edwards has had the misfortune to be known almost exclusively for his sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," which the public schools use to show what nut jobs the Puritans were. As with so many of the false teaching of our government schools, the case is quite different. Edwards is actually one of the more equitable and even-keeled thinkers in American history - besides being the best one.

Perhaps no where is his precise and unbiased thought better demonstrated than in the Religious Affections. He strives to find a middle way between the excessive, outlandish emotional outbursts of those caught up in the throes of the Great Awakening and the reactionaries who insisted that Christian practice go along without any religious zeal at all.

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Matthew Lee Anderson

Matthew Lee Anderson is an Associate Professor of Ethics and Theology in Baylor University's Honors College. He has a D.Phil. in Christian Ethics from Oxford University, and is a Perpetual Member of Biola University's Torrey Honors College. In 2005, he founded Mere Orthodoxy.