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Jonathan Edwards and Slavery May 20, 2007

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Edwards

The following is an excellent (am I over using this word?) sermon from the “A God Enhanced Vision of all things” conference in 2003. The sermon is by Burns. In it he asks ” Why should we listen to Edwards? Edwards owned slaves and died owning slaves and justified owning slaves, African and even Native Americans as well, why should we read Edwards? I want my black brothers and other people of color to really hone in on this. The over-arching reason to me that we should read Edwards is because Edward’s Calvinism formed the basis of early American abolitionism. Those who were staunch opposers to slavery were staunch defenders of Edwards and his theology. Edwards main pupil Samuel Hopkins and others like him, Edwards Jr. and Lemuel Haynes were agitators of the same. These men took their queues from Edwards understanding of what he called disinterested benevolence. Which to him was love “toward being in general, God and His creatures. In essence this love toward God and then toward creatures was the very basis of our expression of love toward our neighbor. Not a love full of self interest, but one than is inclined toward the good and happiness of others.” Hopkins and Jr. and Haynes heard that and they said this is the context by which we can fight against slavery, because slavery does not, it mitigates against ones true happiness. Whereas Edwards is saying in disinterested benevolence, the goal is love toward God and love toward being, but the goal is ones happiness in God of which slavery in and of itself kills…. Whose happiness do you need to seek the most? Is it not those who are the most oppressed? Don’t they need the most liberation, both physically and spiritually? Those are the ones you ought to seek…. It is amazing thing how man can “love God” who they don’t see and hate their brother who they do see. Hopkins said that God makes the sin the occasion of his own glory. God overruled sin in the sense that deeds that individuals intended as evil were used by God as the occasion for good.

Blacks were not saying that slavery was not prompted by God. That is were we need to get. I get in trouble when I say this, and that’s OK. You have to understand slavery in the context of sovereignty to make any sense out of it at all. So the abolitionist didn’t run away from that, they ran to it. They said yes God intended it, but he intended it for your destruction and their elevation and for the advancement of His glory in the succeeding generations of Africans who would came to know and love him….

How do we listen to Edwards? This is to me most crucial. That we should listen to Edwards is true. We should be skilled in Edwards as much as we can. For the African American, or any for that matter, how do we listen to Edwards? How do we listen to a slave owner? There is really only one answer to this question, which has manifold implications. If you want to listen to Edwards, you must embrace the sovereignty of God. The call to this conference is not a call to love Edwards first; it is a call to love the God of Edwards first. The God he preached was the God of the Bible, who is sovereign over all things and events in the universe, even the sin of humanity including the holocaust and slavery. The embracing of this reality does not call for an intellectual and emotional abandoning of history. I don’t want my black brothers to hear me saying that I’m saying forget slavery. That is not what I am saying. What I’m saying is that if you want to understand Edwards, if you want to “get” Edwards you have to read him in the context, and read his life in the context of the sovereignty of God…..

Sovereignty helps you to understand your existence and your history in light of what God has been doing. God is the God of history, God is the God of slavery, and God produced slavery for the goal of his own Glory. The very difficult thing that black have to do, and here is a great quote by Ken Jones pastor of Greater Missionary Union Baptist Church “The challenge of African Americans within the Reformed context, the challenge is that it is a call to embrace the theology of our oppressors and to reject the theology of our liberators.” Think about that. Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and I say with much trepidation Martin Luther King. Great as he was socially, theologically he was liberal. Reformed theology, says to the African American, see that man who owned slaves, read him! And you see the man who was fighting for your civil rights, appreciate what he has done, by all means, but theologically don’t hear him. That’s hard, that’s hard! I long for the day when we will have something that is both hand in hand. Reformed thinkers with a true social activism!

Lemuel Haynes