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Introduction: Spiritually Discerned

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Cotton Mather, Jonathan Edwards, and the Quest for Evangelical Enlightenment

Part of the book series: Christianities in the Trans-Atlantic World ((CTAW))

Abstract

This book explores the early evangelical quest for spiritual enlightenment by the Spirit and the Word. The pursuit originated in the Protestant Reformation, but it assumed new forms in the long eighteenth-century context of the early Enlightenment and transatlantic awakened Protestant reform movements. The sixteenth-century Protestant Reformers rejected Roman Catholicism’s notions of authority as arbitrary, and they dismissed its rituals as idolatrous fabrications of sinful human nature with no inherent spiritual basis. They contended that religious authority must derive from the divinely inspired, infallible, and self-authenticating Holy Scriptures. To attain true spiritual knowledge, the Spirit must enlighten the soul by the Word and enable one to experience Scripture’s divine truths personally.

But the naturall man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishnesse unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

—1 Corinthians 2:14

All Bible quotations are from the King James Version unless otherwise noted. Abbreviations of biblical books follow the SBL Handbook of Style.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The following works reflect this lacuna: Henning Graf Reventlow, Epochen der Bibelauslegung, 4 vols. (München: C.H. Beck, 1990−2001); Gerald L. Bray, Biblical Interpretation: Past & Present (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2000); Alan J. Hauser, Duane F. Watson, eds., A History of Biblical Interpretation, 4 vols. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003−); William Yarchin, History of Biblical Interpretation: A Reader (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2011); and Darren Sarinski, Theology, History, and Biblical Interpretation: Modern Readings (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015). A few recent works have attempted to remedy this gap in the literature: see Timothy Larsen, ed., Every Leaf, Line, and Letter: Evangelicals and the Bible from the 1730s to the Present (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2021); and Ryan P. Hoselton, Jan Stievermann, Douglas A. Sweeney, and Michael A. G. Haykin, eds., The Bible in Early Transatlantic Pietism and Evangelicalism (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2022).

  2. 2.

    See, among others, Paul C. Gutjahr, An American Bible: History of the Good Book in the United States, 1777−1880 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999); Gutjahr, ed., The Oxford Handbook of the Bible in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017); Lisa Gordis, Opening Scripture: Bible Reading and Interpretive Authority in Puritan New England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003); David Holland, Sacred Borders: Continuing Revelation and Canonical Restraint in Early America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); Mark A. Noll, In the Beginning Was the Word: The Bible in American Public Life, 1492–1783 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015); Noll, America’s Book: The Rise and Decline of a Bible Civilization, 1794−1911 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2022); John Fea, The Bible Cause: A History of the American Bible Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016); Philip Goff, Arthur E. Farnsley II, and Peter J. Thuesen, eds., The Bible in American Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017); and Seth Perry, Bible Culture and Authority in the Early United States (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018).

  3. 3.

    BA, 1−5, 9−10. The final three volumes are still in process, and the editors have generously shared drafts of their transcriptions for my research: Ava Chamberlain (Vol. 6: Daniel−Malachi), Ryan P. Hoselton and Douglas A. Sweeney (Vol. 7: Matthew−Luke), Rick Kennedy, Clark Maddux, and Rebecca Stephens Falcasantos (Vol. 8: John−Acts, forthcoming). I use quotation marks when referring to the “Biblia” more generally and when citing the manuscript, and italics, BA, for the published editions. For more on the exegetical sources Mather used, see the editorial introductions and bibliographies to the edited volumes, as well as a notebook Mather started in 1720 titled “Note Book of Authors and Texts Throughout the Bible” (1720), American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, The Papers of Cotton Mather, Part I, Reel 2, Item B.

    Edwards, WJE, 5 (Apocalyptic Writings), 15 (Notes on Scripture), and 24 (The Blank Bible), all edited by Stephen J. Stein.

  4. 4.

    See especially the essays in Reiner Smolinski and Jan Stievermann, eds., Cotton Mather and Biblia Americana—America’s First Bible Commentary: Essays in Reappraisal (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2011); and David P. Barshinger and Douglas A. Sweeney, eds., Jonathan Edwards and Scripture: Biblical Exegesis in British North America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018).

  5. 5.

    Reiner Smolinski, “Editor’s Introduction,” BA, 1:3–210; Jan Stievermann, Prophecy, Piety, and the Problem of Historicity: Interpreting the Hebrew Scriptures in Cotton Mather’s Biblia Americana (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016). See also the editorial introductions to the edited volumes and the studies cited in Chaps. 3 and 4 of this book.

  6. 6.

    Robert E. Brown, Jonathan Edwards and the Bible (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2002); Douglas A. Sweeney, Edwards the Exegete: Biblical Interpretation and Anglo-Protestant Culture on the Edge of the Enlightenment (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015). The literature on Edwards is extensive. See especially Stephen J. Stein, “Jonathan Edwards and the Rainbow: Biblical Exegesis and Poetic Imagination,” New England Quarterly 47 (1974): 440–56; Stephen R. C. Nichols, Jonathan Edwards’s Bible: The Relationship of the Old and New Testaments (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2013); David P. Barshinger, Jonathan Edwards and the Psalms: A Redemptive-Historical Vision of Scripture (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014). For a more extensive list of secondary literature on Edwards’ exegesis, see the endnotes to Chap. 1 of Sweeney, Edwards the Exegete, 226–37, esp. notes 1–30, and the citations in Chaps. 5 and 6 of this book.

  7. 7.

    See Stephen J. Stein, “Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards on the Epistle of James: A Comparative Study,” in Mather and Biblia Americana, Smolinski and Stievermann, eds., 363−82; Michael P. Clark, “The Eschatology of Signs in Cotton Mather’s ‘Biblia Americana’ and Jonathan Edwards’s Case for the Legibility of Providence,” in ibid., 413−38; Ryan P. Hoselton, “‘Flesh and Blood Hath Not Revealed It’: Reformation Exegetical Legacies in Pietism and Early Evangelicalism,” in Multiple Reformations? The Many Faces and Legacies of the Reformation, Jan Stievermann and Randall C. Zachmann, eds. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018), 325–42; Jan Stievermann and Ryan P. Hoselton, “Spiritual Meaning and Experimental Piety in the Exegesis of Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards,” in Edwards and Scripture, Barshinger and Sweeney, eds., 86−105; Ava Chamberlain, “A Fish Tale: Jonathan Edwards and Cotton Mather on Jonah’s Whale,” in ibid., 144−62; Douglas A. Sweeney, “The Evangelical Supernatural in Early Modern British Protestantism: Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards on the Miracles of Jesus,” in Bible in Pietism and Evangelicalism, ed. Hoselton et al., 131−47; Kenneth P. Minkema, “Cotton Mather, Jonathan Edwards, and the Relationship Between Historical and Spiritual Exegesis in Early Evangelicalism,” in ibid., 182−99.

  8. 8.

    Throughout this book, I use the terms experiential and experimental interchangeably—as many did in the early modern period. The term experimental connoted various meanings related to experience, such as knowledge based on firsthand observation, experimental trial, experimental divinity or the science of the soul’s inner spiritual motions, and of course experimental philosophy as an empirical-based acquisition of knowledge. See the Oxford English Dictionary for more on the various usages of “experiential” and “experimental” in the eighteenth century.

  9. 9.

    John Locke, A Paraphrase and Notes on the First Epistle of St. Paul to the Corinthians (London, 1706), 12, 16.

  10. 10.

    WJE, 14:89, 76–78.

  11. 11.

    Michael J. Lee, The Erosion of Biblical Certainty: Battles Over Authority and Interpretation in America (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). Lee’s approach closely imitates the historiography of Brad Gregory, who charges the Protestant Reformers with unintentionally laying the groundwork for modern secularism and individualism. See Brad S. Gregory, The Unintended Reformation: How a Religious Revolution Secularized Society (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2012). Their tragic narratives mourning the unintended consequences of Protestantism are quintessential examples of Hayden White’s argument that historians imbue their narratives with various modes of emplotment—in this case the mode of tragedy and the trope of irony. Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973), 1−42.

  12. 12.

    See, among others, William M. Shea and Peter A. Huff, eds., Knowledge and Belief in America: Enlightenment Traditions and Modern Religious Thought (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995); J. G. A. Pocock, Barbarism and Religion: The Enlightenment of Edwards Gibbon, 1737−1764 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Jonathan Sheehan, “Enlightenment, Religion, and the Enigma of Secularization: A Review Essay,” American Historical Review 108 (October 2003): 1061−80; S. J. Barnett, The Enlightenment and Religion: The Myths of Modernity (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2003); Helena Rosenblatt, “The Christian Enlightenment,” in The Cambridge History of Christianity, Vol. 7: Enlightenment, Reawakening and Revolution, 1660−1815, Stewart J. Brown and Timothy Tackett, eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 283−301; Catherine A. Brekus, “Sarah Osborn’s Enlightenment: Reimagining Eighteenth-Century Intellectual History,” in The Religious History of American Women: Reimagining the Past, ed. Catherine A. Brekus (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2007): 108−41; David Sorkin, The Religious Enlightenment: Protestants, Jews, and Catholics from London to Vienna (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008); Michael Hofmann and Carsten Zelle, eds., Aufklärung und Religion: Neue Perspektiven (Erlangen: Wehrhahn, 2010); Jonathan Yeager: Enlightened Evangelicalism: The Life and Thought of John Erskine (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); Sarah Rivett, The Science of the Soul in Colonial New England (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2011), 271−335; Simon Grote, “Review-Essay: Religion and Enlightenment,” Journal of the History of Ideas 75:1 (January 2014): 137−60; Mark Chapman, “A Reasonable Faith: Anglicans and the English Enlightenment,” in Religion und Aufklärung, Albrecht Beutel and Martha Nooke, eds. (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), 43−60; William J. Bulman and Robert G. Ingram, eds., God in the Enlightenment (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016); and Jason Ā. Josephson-Storm, The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017).

    Among the most influential proponents of the anti-religious secularization paradigm are Paul Hazard, Peter Gay, and Jonathan Israel. See, among others, Paul Hazard, The European Mind: The Critical Years, 1680−1715 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1953); Peter Gay, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation. The Rise of Modern Paganism (New York: Knopf, 1966); Gay, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation. The Science of Freedom (New York: Knopf, 1969); Jonathan I. Israel, Philosophy and the Making of Modernity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002); Israel, Enlightenment Contested: Philosophy, Modernity, and the Emancipation of Man, 1670−1752 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009); Israel, A Revolution of the Mind: Radical Enlightenment and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Democracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011).

  13. 13.

    Jonathan Sheehan, The Enlightenment Bible (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), xiv. See also Hans W. Frei, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative: A Study in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Biblical Hermeneutics (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1974); Peter Harrison, The Bible, Protestantism, and the Rise of Natural Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); and Michael C. Legaspi, The Death of Scripture and the Rise of Biblical Studies (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).

  14. 14.

    See Mark A. Noll, ed., The Princeton Theology, 1821–1921: Science, Scripture, and Theological Method from Archibald Alexander to Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1983); Brett M. Grainger, Church in the Wild: Evangelicals in Antebellum America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019).

  15. 15.

    Sarah Rivett, “Early American Religion in a Postsecular Age,” PMLA 128.4 (2013): 993. For instance, David Bebbington’s authoritative survey of evangelicalism claims that the “Evangelical version of Protestantism was created by the Enlightenment.” Bebbington is right that evangelicalism was largely “a product of the confidence of the new age about the validity of experience.” However, the shapers of the movement exploited traditions of experimental piety just as creatively as they did the experimental philosophy of Boyle, Locke, and Newton to advance their programs of reform. D. W. Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the 1980s (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1989), 74.

  16. 16.

    W. R. Ward, Early Evangelicalism: A Global Intellectual History, 1670−1789 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 2.

  17. 17.

    Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007).

  18. 18.

    Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, 2−17.

  19. 19.

    Thomas S. Kidd, The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), xiv; Mark A. Noll, “What is ‘Evangelical’?,” in The Oxford Handbook of Evangelical Theology, ed. Gerald R. McDermott (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 19−33; Stuart Piggin, Evangelical Christianity in Australia: Spirit, Word and World (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1996), vii. See also George Marsden, ed., Evangelicalism and Modern America (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1984), ix; Timothy Larsen, “Defining and locating evangelicalism,” in The Cambridge Companion to Evangelical Theology, Timothy Larsen and Daniel J. Treier, eds. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 1−14; Michael A. G. Haykin and Kenneth J. Stewart, eds., The Emergence of Evangelicalism: Exploring Historical Continuities (Nottingham: Inter-Varsity Press, 2008); and Mark Hutchinson and John Wolffe, A Short History of Global Evangelicalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 1−24.

  20. 20.

    Linford D. Fisher, “Evangelicals and Unevangelicals: The Contested History of a Word, 1500−1950,” Religion and Culture: A Journal of Interpretation 26:2 (2016): 185; Douglas L. Winiarski, Darkness Falls on the Land of Light: Experiencing Religious Awakenings in Eighteenth-Century New England (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2017), 16. These debates were the focus of a recent conference at Notre Dame, and the revised papers were published in Mark A. Noll, David W. Bebbington, and George M. Marsden, eds., Evangelicals: Who They Have Been, Are Now, and Could Be (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2019).

  21. 21.

    See especially W. R. Ward, The Protestant Evangelical Awakening (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), Ward, Early Evangelicalism; and Jonathan M. Yeager, “Introduction,” in The Oxford Handbook of Early Evangelicalism, ed. Jonathan M. Yeager (New York: Oxford University Press, 2022), 1–2.

  22. 22.

    See Mark A. Peterson, “Theopolis Americana: The City-State of Boston, the Republic of Letters, and the Protestant International, 1689–1739,” in Soundings in Atlantic History: Latent Structures and Intellectual Currents, 1500–1830, Bernard Bailyn and Patricia L. Denault, eds. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009), 329–70; A. G. Roeber, “The Waters of Rebirth: The Eighteenth Century and Transoceanic Protestant Christianity,” Church History 79, no. 1 (2010): 40−76; Edward E. Andrews, “Tranquebar: Charting the Protestant International in the British Atlantic and Beyond,” WMQ, 74:1 (January 2017): 3−34; and Jan Stievermann, “A ‘Syncretism of Piety’: Imagining Global Protestantism in Early Eighteenth-Century Boston, Tranquebar, and Halle,” Church History 89 (2020): 829−56; Jan Stievermann, “German Lutheran and Reformed Protestants,” in Oxford Handbook of Early Evangelicalism, ed. Yeager, 95–116; Ryan P. Hoselton, “Introduction,” in Bible in Pietism and Evangelicalism, 1−5.

  23. 23.

    Ward has advocated influentially for dating evangelicalism’s origins to the late 1600s. Ward, Early Evangelicalism, 1.

  24. 24.

    Richard Lovelace, The American Pietism of Cotton Mather: Origins of American Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids, MI: Christian University Press, 1979); Rick Kennedy, The First American Evangelical: A Short Life of Cotton Mather (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2015).

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    Ryan P. Hoselton

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Hoselton, R.P. (2023). Introduction: Spiritually Discerned. In: Cotton Mather, Jonathan Edwards, and the Quest for Evangelical Enlightenment. Christianities in the Trans-Atlantic World. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-44935-2_1

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