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Why Preserved David Brainerd’s Story | Jonathan Edwards · Reformed Thinking

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  Welcome to Reformed Thinking. Today we are doing a deep dive
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  into a really fascinating text, Jonathan Edwards's preface to
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  The Life and Diary of David Brainard, and our mission for
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  you today is very specific. We're not just looking at
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  Brainerd's life story, as incredible as it is.
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  We're zeroing in on Edwards argument right at the beginning,
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  how he believes true religion should be presented, and maybe
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  more pointedly, why Brainerd's imperfections were actually a
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  key part of his spiritual demonstration.
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  That's a great way to put it. It's an argument, not just an
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  introduction. And for context, Brainard was a
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  minister, a missionary to the American Indians, and he was
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  working under the authority of a society in Scotland.
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  Edwards felt he had to frame Brainerd's account, which
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  details his unusual services and some remarkable events,
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  including a pretty significant spiritual awakening among the
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  people he ministered to, because he saw it as a piece of powerful
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  evidence that needed a proper intellectual setup.
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  He starts with the philosophy before he even gets to the
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  person. OK, let's unpack that because he
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  lays out this whole system right from the get go.
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  He talks about two different ways. 2 methods for
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  communicating religious truth to the world.
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  Yes, and he says both are abundantly used in the Holy
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  Scriptures. He sees, he says, God's own
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  methods. And if you don't grasp these
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  two, you kind of miss the whole point of why he's publishing
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  Brainerd's diary at all. So the first method he calls
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  doctrine and precept. This is basically the
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  instruction manual. It's about teaching, about
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  laying out the rules. The whole point is intellectual
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  clarity. It shows you the you know the
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  grounds, nature, design of religion.
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  So it's the what and the why, the blueprint.
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  Exactly. It maps out how you're supposed
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  to live, and it backs it up with clear commands and counsels from
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  Scripture. It's the objective truth laid
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  bare. And God does this, according to
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  Edwards, by raising up eminent teachers.
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  You know, prophets, apostles, pastors.
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  Their job is to teach the truth and just as critically, to stand
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  against the errors, darkness and wickedness out there.
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  People need that clear objective standard.
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  Absolutely. It's the cognitive side of
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  faith. It requires you to use your
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  mind, your judgement, to weigh what's being said and to accept
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  the rules. It's the foundation.
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  Without it, everything else is just subjective feeling.
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  But, and this is a big but for Edwards, just giving people the
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  rules often isn't enough, is it? Doctrine on its own can feel,
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  well, abstract, theoretical, especially when it's telling you
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  to do hard things. Right.
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  And that brings us to a second method which is instance an
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  example. So if Doctrine is the blueprint.
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  Then example is the finished building.
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  That's a perfect analogy. This method is all about putting
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  bright examples of religion in its power and practice out there
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  for people to see. It's showing the rules being
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  lived out in a real human life, and Edwards thinks this has a
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  great tendency to grab people's attention.
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  When you see someone actually living this way.
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  It concerns a few things. First, it's truth that the
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  claims are real. Second, it's efficacy that it
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  actually works. It can change a person.
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  And 3rd, it's amiable miss, which is a bit of an old
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  fashioned word, but he means it's attractiveness, right?
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  You see the character it produces, the humility, the
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  love, the zeal, and you find it desirable.
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  You find it beautiful. It draws you in.
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  The example makes the doctrine not just true, but compelling.
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  OK, so this is where Edwards makes a really critical move,
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  because if our examples are just other flawed human beings, the
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  whole system could get a bit wobbly.
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  So he has to point to the one perfect standard, the one that
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  perfectly combined both methods. He has to, and that, of course,
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  is Jesus Christ. He is the ultimate example.
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  Edwards calls him the great prophet of God who used both
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  methods. Florida State.
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  On the one hand, the doctrine. Yes, Christ declared the mind
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  and will of God more clearly and fully than anyone before him.
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  He laid out the moral law, the nature of true virtue.
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  He gave the perfect unassailable teaching the standard.
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  And on the other hand, the example, he lived it out
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  perfectly. Edwards lists them.
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  Humility, divine love, a zeal that was discreet and wise.
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  Total holiness, Self denial, a life of perfect obedience.
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  He calls it an illustrious pattern that no one, not men or
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  angels, had ever seen in a human before.
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  And this is the key theological point Edwards has to make.
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  Christ's life is the only example that ever existed in
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  human nature as altogether perfect.
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  So he is the rule. Everyone else is just a
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  demonstration of the rule. Precisely.
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  And that allows Edwards to present Brainerd not as a new
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  rule, but as a genuine, though flawed, confirmation of the
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  rule. It sets the stage for why
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  Brainerd's imperfections are actually part of the evidence,
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  not something to be hidden. Yes, and the most powerful case
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  for Christianity, Edwards argues, happens when you get a
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  person who does both. When an eminent teacher is also
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  a bright example. When the messenger's life backs
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  up the message. The world sees the doctrines
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  confirmed in the practice of the same persons who have most
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  clearly and forcibly taught it. And for Edwards, Brainerd's
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  entire life was meant to be that kind of confirmation.
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  It was remarkable instance of it.
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  His life showed the truth, efficacy and amiableness of the
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  doctrines he was preaching. But Edwards really focuses on
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  the context, doesn't he? He does.
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  This wasn't a comfortable academic piety.
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  Brainerd was living this out under unusual circumstances of
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  remarkable trial. Right.
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  I mean, his mission involved great fatigues and hardships,
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  constant travel, isolation, sickness, living in rough
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  conditions. So for an observer to see him
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  maintain his devotion, his prayer life, his self denial
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  through all of that physical suffering, it makes the
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  spiritual source of it all seem much more credible.
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  It's not a religion for easy times, it's a power for hard.
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  Times and This is why the diary is so crucial, because most of
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  the time all we see is someone's external behavior they might
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  look godly on the outside, but. You don't know what's going on
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  inside. Exactly.
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  Brainerd's diary opens up the secret exercises of his mind.
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  You see the wonderful change he experienced.
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  You see the internal struggle, the repentance, the fight
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  against sin. He's providing really written
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  evidence of what Edwards would call vital religion in the
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  heart. He makes concepts like
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  regeneration and sanctification, which are just doctrines on a
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  page, look like a real lived process.
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  This. Transparency is really where the
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  deep dive begins. You're getting a look into the
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  the laboratory of a man's soul. But that raises a huge question,
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  especially for that time period, how do we know these inward
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  frames aren't just what they called enthusiasm?
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  You know, pure emotionalism, the kind of thing that gave parts of
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  The Great Awakening a bad name. That is the $1,000,000 question,
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  and it's 1 Edwards was deeply concerned with.
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  He answers it by vouching for Brainerd's intellectual and
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  theological sobriety. He says Brainerd had clear
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  thought and exact judgement about his own spiritual
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  affections. So he wasn't just being carried
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  away by feelings. No, Edwards is making the case
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  that Brainerd's experiences were rational and scriptural.
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  He was constantly testing his own feelings against the
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  standard of the word. They weren't based on whimsical
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  conceits are just a strong impression.
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  His piety was self aware and self critical.
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  And having a man with that kind of clear mind documenting his
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  own spiritual life makes the evidence much harder to just
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  write off as some kind of delusion.
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  It does, and that sets the stage perfectly for the core paradox
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  Edwards wants to build his case on.
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  If Brainerd was so rational, then what he struggled with most
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  becomes the most powerful piece of evidence.
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  OK, so let's get into the flaws. Edwards is completely open about
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  Brainerd's biggest natural imperfection, which he calls a
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  constitutional tendency to melancholy and dejection of
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  spirit. And he's very precise in his
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  language there. He calls it a natural
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  imperfection, something from Brainerd's Constitution and
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  natural temper. So it's not a moral failure in
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  his view, it's more like a a physical or psychological
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  disposition he was born with. That's right.
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  It was a physical cross he had to bear, and it led to this
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  inclination to despondency, to dark thoughts about himself.
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  He often felt, you know, ignorant, wicked, wholly unfit
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  for the work of the ministry. He was just prone to gloom.
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  And this is the genius of Edwards's argument.
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  He takes what looks like a massive liability, this chronic
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  gloominess, and he turns it into the best proof for the
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  supernatural source of Brainerd's faith.
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  He does. He argues it strengthens the
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  testimony against enthusiasm. Now for Edwards enthusiasm.
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  Was this over the top subjective religion based on private
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  feelings and impressions, things that bypass reason and
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  scripture? And he had a very specific idea
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  about the kind of person who is most likely to fall into that.
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  Trap Yes. He observed that enthusiasts
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  usually have a gay and sanguine natural temper.
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  Sanguine people are naturally optimistic, cheerful and very
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  open to strong impressions on their imagination.
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  So for them, a powerful religious experience could just
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  be an extension of their already exuberant personality.
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  Right. It could be psychologically
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  explained away. But Brainerd was the complete
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  opposite. He was melancholic.
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  He was naturally inclined to despair.
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  So Edward's argument is Brainerd's intense, sustained
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  zeal for God couldn't possibly be the fruit of a warm
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  imagination. He didn't have one He.
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  Didn't have one. His piety existed in spite of
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  his natural temperament, not because of it.
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  It had to constantly fight upstream against his own
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  constitutional gloom. You can say his melancholy acted
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  like a filter. If his faith was just natural
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  excitement, his gloom would have extinguished it.
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  The fact that real zeal and love for God kept breaking through
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  proves that its source had to be something outside of him.
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  Supernatural Grace. It makes his example more
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  reliable in a strange way than the example of someone who is
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  naturally happy all the time. It.
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  Really does. And look at the effects next.
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  Enthusiasm, Edwards says, puffs men up with a high conceit of
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  their own wisdom. It makes them arrogant.
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  But Brainerd's faith interacting with his melancholy kept him in
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  a state of an abasing sense of his own exceeding sinfulness.
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  His weakness just reinforced his humility.
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  And this constant internal battle forced him to develop a
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  skill that Edwards really admired discernment.
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  He had to figure out what was causing his dark moods.
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  Yes, he got very good at telling the difference between the
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  disease of melancholy, which was physical and genuine spiritual
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  desertion, or godly sorrow, which was theological.
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  He had to learn to ask, is this my body failing me or is God
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  convicting me of sin and. He talked about this with other
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  people. He did.
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  He warned them about the great danger of mistaking the one for
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  the other. He learned through his own pain
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  how to separate the workings of his body from the workings of
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  God's Spirit. And Edwards points to this as a
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  sign of peculiar strength in his judgement because, as he notes,
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  melancholy people are usually terrible judges of their own
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  condition. Their feelings cloud everything.
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  But Brainerd could step back and analyze his own gloom
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  rationally. That, for Edwards, was a clear
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  sign of grace at work. OK, so his disposition was one
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  thing, but Edwards doesn't stop there.
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  He also points out some of Brainerd's actual mistakes, his
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  errors in judgement. That's right, he includes them
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  because they serve as lessons, especially for others in
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  ministry. He talks about two other main
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  areas of imperfection. The first one being excessive
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  labor. Yes, he says, Brainerd was
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  excessive in his laborers. He just didn't proportion his
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  fatigues to his strength. His passion and his zeal just
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  constantly overrode the physical limits of his body.
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  And you can kind of see how that would happen.
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  I mean, the work was so demanding, the conditions were
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  so harsh, it would be hard not to overwork.
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  It would, but Edwards presents it as a failure and prudence.
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  This constant excess damaged his already weak health and, you
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  know, likely shortened his life. Did Brainerd himself recognize
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  this? He did.
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  Later in life, he admitted he should have been more resolute
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  to withstand temptations to such degrees of Labor, and he even
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  warned his own brother, who was his successor, telling him
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  specifically to avoid this error.
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  So the lesson there is that true holiness needs wisdom.
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  Zeal isn't enough. You have to steward your body.
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  That's the lesson, and the second major imperfection
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  Edwards addresses is Brainerd's struggle with imprudent zeal
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  when he was a young Christian. He's very honest about this.
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  Very. He admits that early on Brainerd
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  was dazzled and deceived by a kind of fierce zeal and got
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  involved with some people Edwards would have considered
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  enthusiasts. So Brainerd himself fell into
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  the very trap he later warned against.
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  For a time, yes, Brainerd later told Edwards.
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  He felt completely out of his element during that period, that
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  he did violence to himself to fit in, mostly because he had
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  such great veneration for some of the people involved.
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  He trusted them more than his own judgement at that point.
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  But again, Edwards turns this failure into a strength.
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  He does. He says that this mistake gave
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  Brainerd a full and intimate acquaintance with the
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  counterfeits of religion. He had seen it from the inside.
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  That made him an incredibly competent judge of it later on.
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  So when he spoke against enthusiasm later, he wasn't just
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  criticizing something he didn't understand.
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  Exactly. His testimony against it was
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  based on impartial conviction that came from painful personal
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  experience, not just prejudice, and his repentance over it
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  showed his humility. This allowed him to draw a
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  really sharp contrast between the real thing and the fake.
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  A very sharp contrast in terms of the source he saw.
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  The true piety is rational and scriptural.
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  It comes from light and judgement.
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  Enthusiasm, on the other hand, comes from whimsical conceits
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  and strong impressions on the imagination.
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  And the effects were polar opposites.
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  Polar opposites, enthusiasm, he said.
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  Puffs men up. It makes them arrogant, bold,
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  forward assuming. But true.
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  Piety did the opposite to Brainerd.
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  It gave him a mean thought of himself, a deep sense of his own
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  sinfulness and need for grace. So.
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  It produced humility and universal benevolence and
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  meekness. Right.
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  It made him kind. The fruit was humility, not
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  arrogance. And that whole pattern, the
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  constitutional struggle, the admitted mistakes, it all builds
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  a case for Brainerd as a credible because he was self
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  critical witness to genuine grace.
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  So after building that case for Brainerd's credibility, Edwards
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  has to address the source material itself, the diary.
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  And it's so interesting that the final piece of evidence is
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  Brainerd's own resistance to it ever being published.
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  It's a powerful point. He had an intense desire to
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  avoid honor and applause in the world.
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  Edwards makes it very clear that the diary was written only for
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  his own private use. A spiritual journal, basically.
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  That's all it was for self examination.
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  He had no design that the world should ever see it, and was
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  almost invincibly averse to the whole idea of publishing it.
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  Which is such a stark contrast to the self promoting nature of
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  the enthusiasts he was critiquing.
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  They wanted an audience. Brainerd was running from 1:00.
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  He was, and Edwards recounts these strict prohibitions.
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  Brainerd put in place places he was dying when he thought the
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  end was here in Boston he gave strict peremptory orders that
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  his private writings were not to be published ever.
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  And he even destroyed some of it didn't.
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  He he did just before he died he had some parts of the diary
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  destroyed, which is why the account we have is incomplete.
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  He was dead serious about keeping his inner life private.
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  So how did Edwards get him to change his mind?
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  With great difficulty, Edwards says he was only prevailed upon
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  to withdraw the ban after a lot of persuasion, and even then
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  Brainerd only agreed on one condition, that Edwards could
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  use the papers only if he was convinced it would be for God's
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  glory and the interest of religion.
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  The decision was Edwards, not Brainerd's.
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  Entirely It wasn't Brainerd's ambition, it was Edwards
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  conviction that the church needed this authentic example,
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  especially in that confusing time.
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  And what we're left with is this incredible record access to his
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  inward frames, thoughts, affections over 8 years of his
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  life. And it even includes his
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  thoughts and behavior during the gradual and sensible approach of
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  death. You see the faith hold up under
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  the ultimate pressure. You see the whole arc, and
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  Edwards also mentions that he deliberately left out a lot of
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  material about the wonderful successes among the Indians.
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  Why would he? Do that.
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  Because Brainerd's public journal, the one he wrote for
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  the Society in Scotland, already covered all that.
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  Edwards wasn't interested in repeating the missions public
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  successes. He was interested in revealing
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  the private struggle. The unveiling of the soul was a
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  greater service to the Church than just recounting the
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  numbers. So the true value is seeing this
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  bright example function under the pressure of his own
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  melancholy, his own failures, and his own mortality.
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  Yes, it's the honesty of the flawed example that Edwards uses
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  to prove the truth of the doctrine.
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  Hashtag #outro. So it all comes back to the
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  central idea that Edwards wants us to see.
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  Brainerd's legacy is this remarkable instance of true and
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  eminent Christian piety, a bright example precisely because
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  it includes the struggle, because it shows the fight with
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  his natural temper and his acknowledged mistakes.
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  And Edwards's conclusion is that this mixture of what was natural
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  with that which was spiritual is just, well, it's the normal
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  Christian life on this side of heaven.
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  We don't get a picture of a perfect effortless St.
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  We get an honest account of a discerning struggle.
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  And that's actually more helpful.
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  It is, and that leads to a very practical question that comes
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  right out of this. Edwards praised Brainerd for
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  that peculiar strengths in his judgement, his ability to tell
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  the difference between the disease of melancholy and a
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  genuine spiritual cause. He had to learn to ask himself,
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  is this just my body, my constitution, or is this the
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  conviction of the Holy Spirit? So since Brainerd learned that
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  skill through painful, constant self examination against the
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  standard of Scripture, the question for us, I think is what
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  practices can you and I adopt to get that same kind of
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  discernment? How do we learn to distinguish
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  between our own natural dispositions, our moods, our
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  energy levels, our habits of thought, and the actual,
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  verifiable work of grace in our lives?
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  That process of sorting out the natural from the spiritual,
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  that's the hard work Edwards is pointing us toward.
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  It is. It's the mental exercise that
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  this whole preface is really about.
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  We hope this deep dive into Edwards preface has given you a
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  clearer picture of what it means to present true piety to the
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  world, not as an ideal, but as a genuine, discerning and
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  ultimately validating struggle.