Jonathan Edwards: Reconsidering Closed Communion and the Internal Condition

It's my hobby-horse, and I can ride it as long as I like!

This is a paper that was written for my Jonathan Edwards course at Trinity.  It's fairly lengthy...but i'm not as thoughtful as Charlie, so the whole thing is here.  It deals with the issue of Edwards' firing from his first (and really only) church.  I take for granted some awareness of historical events (both of the times and of his life), so if something confuses you, please feel free to ask.  Also, I am not a church historian, nor an historian in general, so it is possible that i'm wrong about details...let me know if you see this as well (i don't have the grade yet, but i imagine that i'll make some adjustments to this post when i get his feedback).

Finally, i hope you find this edifying...and i highly recommend reading some Edwards for yourself.

                                                                                                            - Sam

There is great encouragement to be found in Edwards.  Due to recent spirited discussions in my historically closed communion church, I turned to Edwards’ life in the hopes of gaining some clarity in my thinking regarding the Lord’s Supper.  Thanks to his intellect and careful writing, the modern reader has been granted a vast trove of his works.  It seems that he wrote or thought about nearly any topic one might hope to research, and his writings seem always to shed light on that endeavor.  That was the experience of this author.  I believe that nothing has been a greater stimulus to my thoughts on the topic, save scripture alone.

This brief paper will move through key historical events leading up to Edwards’ arrival on the New England scene and then explore the events surrounding his crisis over communion, which highlight the core problem, namely poor heart religion.  I would suggest that a confluence of three major historical events, namely the Puritan migration to America, the acceptance of the Half-Way Covenant, and the general acceptance of Stoddardeanism, created an environment in which a rejection of Jonathan Edwards’ insistence upon a professed inward conversion testified to by external piety was nearly inevitable.  Further, I would suggest that the story of Edwards’ apparent failure in 1750 has meaningful application to Evangelical leaders of congregations today.

Pre-Edwards

Our story begins in the early 1600s, when Puritans first began coming over from England and were forming their own churches.  At this point, there began a shift away from the rules and authority of the Anglican Church.  As this student’s professor noted in a lecture, “The Puritans considered themselves Anglicans with the benefit of the Atlantic.”  The spirit of individuality and freedom that would eventually sweep the colonies was at home also in the Puritan soul.  The vast separation provided by the Atlantic Ocean gave them the sense that they could begin over again, setting things right as they went.  With the tyranny they left behind fresh in their mind, they formed congregational churches/communities and began thinking quite independently of their European brothers.

The communities founded by Puritans were church states.  Members of the community were governed by essentially biblical principles and were theoretically required to attend church services.  Most significant for the purpose of this discussion was the fact that the capacity to hold elected civic offices and the right to vote was granted only to members of the church.  Membership was gained by baptism (typically paedo-baptism) and a confession of faith.  By the 1640s, slightly over a generation after the migration to America, a crisis was developing.  The Puritan church was not producing enough members to fill all the civic vacancies.  For some reason, the covenant was not functioning as they intended, children were not following their baptism with a confirmation of salvation.  The visible result was a sort of political labor shortage.  The spiritual result was a church state with a growing number of externally moral, internally unconverted residents.  This combination of civic and moral shortcomings threatened not only individual towns but the whole of the Puritan way of life. 

The response to this condition came in stages.  It began when the Cambridge Synod put forth the Cambridge Platform, a sort of declaration and defense of their position to the Church in England.  A softening of religious rigors might be heard in the third section from the twelfth chapter of that document:

The weakest measure of faith is to be accepted in those that desire to be admitted into the church, because weak Christians, if sincere, have the substance of that faith, repentance and holiness, which is required in church members; and such have most need of the ordinances for their confirmation and growth in grace. The Lord Jesus would not quench the smoking flax, nor break the bruised reed, but gather the tender lambs in his arms, and carry them gently in his bosom. Such charity and tenderness is to be used, as the weakest Christian, if sincere, may not be excluded nor discouraged. Severity of examination is to be avoided.[1]

If there were any great hope that the Cambridge Platform might somehow assist in revitalizing the general effectiveness of the Puritan’s covenant lifestyle, those hopes were soon quashed.  The crisis kept building until, in 1662, a group of Massachusetts clergy, put forth a compromise which “contemporary accounts frequently pointed out…confronted a laity hostile to religious innovation.”[2]  Pope goes on to observe a major cause of the resistance among members, “For two generations ministers had taught them that the New England Way perfectly imitated the Biblical model for Christian churches, and the limitation of membership to visible saints was an integral part of that way.”[3]  The innovators did not want to throw the doors to the church wide open, but something obviously had to change.  Their solution was the Halfway Covenant.  In this scheme, membership was achieved simply by baptism.  Adults who could not make a profession of faith were considered members, assuming that there was not some gross lifestyle inconsistency and that they acknowledged the truth of Scripture’s claims.  The only privilege denied to these new “members” was participation in the Lord’s Supper.  At first, this concession was made willingly.  However, before Stoddard was finished, those who had previously been shut out from the political and spiritual benefits of the church would take communion for granted.

Solomon Stoddard stepped into the pulpit of the church at Northampton in turbulent times.  “The 1648 Cambridge Platform did not achieve stability, as it was followed by controversies over the Halfway Covenant…”[4]  One of his first acts after becoming the pastor in 1672 was to formally accept the Halfway Covenant.  In only two months he saw 105 new halfway members added to the church.  He seems to have genuinely believed that this was healthy for the church.  However, he seemed to become disillusioned when five years of ministry yielded only 19 full communicant members, a statistical nightmare.   His solution was to suggest that communion was actually a means of conversion.  He came to this conclusion in 1677, and was able to enact it, despite opposition, in 1679.  In all, it took Solomon Stoddard only seven years to move a congregation from hostility toward “religious innovation” to an open embrace of it.

The Significance of the Pre-Edwards Era

The migration from Europe to New England and the subsequent establishment of communities based on their own interpretation of Scripture had three major ramifications.  First, there was an inherent conflict between power and spirituality.  The pathway to power marched through membership.  Second, authority was given to the laity to call and reject ministers over them.  Third, doctrinal battles could now be fought at key churches with public opinion, rather than clear exegesis, playing a major role in policy changes.

The Halfway covenant, though it had a slow start would eventually steamroll the opposition on the way to its (not necessarily logical) end in the person of Stoddard.  Regarding the folly of the Synod of 1662, Ola Winslow upbraids:

The Synod of 1662 had forgotten history.  In the church of the founders the main source of strength had been the absence of nominal Christians.  There had been no division between those who were of the fellowship and those who merely conformed to the ordinances outwardly.  Now every congregation had to carry its dead weight of halfway members who had not “owned the covenant” and whose hearts were not in the Lord’s work.[5]

Though her imagery is vivid, one pictures the regenerate members lugging around the halfway members on their shoulders, I believe her assessment is accurate.  This was the beginning of a major problem in the church that would eventually engulf Edwards himself.

Solomon Stoddard is the example of one man’s charisma and gravitas altering the practices, not only of his own church, but of a vast number of those around him.  Given the opposition, he rather quickly reaches his desired goal of banishing the designation “halfway member,” and bringing all together in communion.  Though Stoddard thought that he was serving the church well with his progress, Crampton’s evaluation is, “What resulted from this, however, was a general laxity in matters of the Christian faith, and somewhat of a faction between two groups within the congregation.”[6]

A Brief Introduction to Jonathan Edwards

Edwards may have been Plato’s ideal Puritan.  He had an unparalleled intellect, and yet did not live in abstractions.  He dealt with real problems of his day.  His sermons had earthy illustrations, practical application, and he took great interest in the hearts of his people.  The power of his logic sometimes overshadows his introspection, but the fault at this point may lie with the reader, rather than with Edwards himself.  His education was excellent and he made the most of his familial advantages.  From a worldly perspective, he achieved much in his lifetime.  He waged war against Arminianism, defended the revivals, of which he was arguably the human agent God used to prompt them, and established himself as a prominent and powerful individual.  He stood as a towering leviathan, or at least it seemed that he did for a time.  For the purpose of this discussion the specifics of the years leading up to 1740 may be left behind.  The critical years came at the end of his ministry at Northampton.

Edwards’ Later Ministry (1740-1750)

The children in Lemony Snicket’s, A Series of Unfortunate Events, have nothing on Jonathan Edwards during this last tumultuous decade at Northampton.  During these years he was to experience the deaths of his daughter, Jerusha, and David Brainerd.  In addition to the personal pain he experienced there was ministerial pain and strife.  He continued to field criticism about the revivals of the early 40’s.  In 1742 he was able to get the church to agree to a new congregational covenant, but not without a fight.  A year later he was finally able to get the community to take up a collection for the poor, but again, at the expense of a fight.  The next year, the bad book controversy, and particularly his handling of it, damaged his relationship with the church.  In 1745 a dispute about his salary flared up (a delicate and reoccurring issue). In 1747 and 1748, Edwards was seen as meddlesome for taking on cases of fornication, most notably for the excommunication of Elisha Hawley, a member of a prominent family.  During this same time one halfway member declined to proceed with full membership after seeing the profession that was expected of him, while Mary Hulbert was declined for membership by the church because of Edwards’ rejection of Stoddardeanism.  By 1750 the church is in chaos, and Edwards does not look so tall. 

It was about that time that Joseph Hawley stepped forward with a grievance against Edwards.  The ostensible cause for the complaint brought by Joseph Hawley (Edwards’ cousin), was his change of the regulations of the Lord’s Supper.  Edwards had announced and later published his position that one had to make a visible profession of a converting work of God in order to take communion.  Hawley’s real complaint was probably a combination of many of the events mentioned above, including the excommunication of his brother, Elisha.  One other grievance he had against his cousin, namely that his father had committed suicide in the midst of the revivals.  In some ill-thought-out way, he blamed Edwards for his death.

            With Hawley at their head, the congregation called a council to determine Edwards’ fate.  Through political maneuvering, the rebels were assured a victory before the council even met.  Five of the nine members held personal or family grudges against Edwards.  Though he did his best to match his opponents’ politics, and despite his work, A Humble Inquiry into the Rules of the Word of God, Concerning the Qualifications Requisite to a Complete Standing and Full Communion in the Visible Christian Church, the council handed down their 5-4 decision in favor of removing Edwards.  The church quickly moved to follow the will of the council.

It would have been very easy for Edwards to lash out at his enemies.  He could

have written gratuitous, polemical masterpieces had he so desired[7].  Certainly he would have had few rivals in his mastery of the written word, and most of his followers and later readers probably would have found it understandable.  Yet Edwards was the model of a minister rejected.  His farewell sermon reveals his hurt and feelings of betrayal, but a sensitive reading sees a pastor’s heart concerned for his flock, with especial care directed toward the youth of the congregation.

            When the church was unable to find a minister, he was invited back to fill the pulpit at Northampton on a week by week basis.  A lesser man might have rejected them out of spite, but Edwards returned.  This frustrated his enemies, as Edwards did not mince words when preaching.  Having fired him, they very much desired to be rid of him, and were taking “much pains to get somebody else to preach to ’em.”[8]   It also offered a not-to-be-realized hope to his followers who approached him with the idea of starting a new church.  Edwards wisely declined.  Doing so would have thrown a great new bundle of fuel on the fire.

Why Was Edwards Unsuccessful?

A key question at this point is, why was Edwards unsuccessful?  How is it that this brilliant philosopher, theologian, and pastor could fail when his opponents were so much his lessers?  Why did 1750 end so ignobly for Edwards?

Conrad Cherry suggests that events of the decade leading up to his dismissal “certainly contributed to the way in which Edwards’ ideas…were received.”[9]  One wonders what might have happened had he taken time to build a more consolidated base of supporters before announcing his views.  No doubt, timing may be seen as a significant component of Edwards’ failure.

A second reason, though only God could reveal this for certain, may be expressed in the words of Senator George Norris:

It happens very often that one tries to do something and fails.  He feels discouraged, and yet he may discover years afterward that the very effort he made was the reason why somebody else took it up and succeeded.  I really believe that whatever use I have been to progressive civilization has been accomplished in the things I failed to do [more] than in the things I actually did do.[10]

Yes, Edwards was to fail, but others were going to pick up where he had left off.  Winslow suggests that “he did more for the cause of ‘heart religion’ than any other minister of the mid-century.”[11]  Temporarily defeated, Edwards’ impact was going to be felt for generations to come.

Edwards himself offers several reasons for his dismissal at Northampton in his correspondence with the Reverend Thomas Gillespie.  Not all will be addressed here, but a few are worth special notation.

Edward cites spiritual pride among the people as one reason for the trouble.  To his friend he says that they “had God extraordinarily among them; which has insensibly engendered and nourished spiritual pride, that grand inlet of the devil into the hearts of men,” and that, “Spiritual pride is a most monstrous thing….it very often soon raises persons above their teachers, and supposed spiritual fathers, and sets ’em out of the reach of all rule and instruction, as I have seen in innumerable instances.”[12]

Another culprit in Edwards’ mind was Stoddard himself.  He does not come out and blast his grandfather by name, but notes that his teaching was in err and that he found that was unable to persuade them out of it.[13]  Connected to this was his analysis of the officers of the church as being imitators of Stoddard, who, “Though an eminently holy man, was naturally of a dogmatical temper.”[14]

Edwards notes the sad reality that for four or five decades the congregation had been in a sort of silent schism, divided into two primary groups.  In the 1751 letter, he likens them to the Court and Country Party in England, “There have been some of the chief men in the town, of chief authority and wealth, that have been great proprietors of their lands, who have had one party with them.  And the other party, which commonly has been the greatest, have been of those who have been jealous of them, apt to envy ’em, and afraid of their having too much power and influence in town and church.”[15]  If this assessment is accurate, the chaos seen in the proceedings of 1750 is not so incredible or even unexpected.  In fact, it may be surprising that such a meltdown did not occur much earlier.

Finally, from Edwards, is his self-blame.  Being communicated in a personal letter, its sincerity may be readily accepted.  He had made some errors in administration, but more than that, he found his own heart suspect.  Here in length is that introspection:

And here I desire it may be observed that I would be far from so laying all the blame of the sorrowful things that have come to pass to the people, as to suppose that I have no cause of self-reflection and humiliation before God on this occasion.  I am sensible that it becomes me to look on what has lately happened, as an awful frown of heaven on me, as well as on the people.  God knows the wickedness of my heart and the great and sinful deficiencies and offenses which I have been guilty of in the course of my ministry at Northampton.  I desire that God would discover them to me more and more, and that now he would effectually humble me and mortify my pride and self-confidence, and empty me entirely of myself, and make me to know how that I deserve to be cast away as an abominable branch, and as a vessel wherein is no pleasure; and, if it may consist with his holy will, sanctify me and make me a vessel more meet for my Master’s use, and yet improve me as an instrument of his glory and the good of the souls of mankind.[16]

There are many contributing factors to Edwards’ apparent failure in Northampton, but it seems that all may be reduced to the issue of heart-religion, or as Edwards lamented, they were relying almost completely on a sense of God’s having done something in them at some point in the distant past, and were looking “but little at the abiding sense and temper of their hearts, and the course of their exercises and fruits of grace, for evidences of their good estate.”[17]  This is quite obvious in the likes of Hawley and Williams.  For those who were unwilling to make a profession of conversion we may assume the failure of their heart, but what about those who had made such a profession?  Where was their failure of heart?  Edwards found himself practically alone before his Sanhedrin.  He was abandoned in his time of crisis.  At the point that he needed his supporters to synchronize their conscience and their actions, they had failed.  This may have been due to fear, embitterment, or any number of reasons, but the fact remains that it was not until he had been dismissed that any great number vocalized much faith in him.  The Puritan’s move across the Atlantic had made congregationalism, with all of its pros and cons, possible.  Then their pragmatic concessions along the way (namely the Half-Way Covenant and Stoddardeanism) had allowed for many non-believers to work their way into power and prominence in the Puritan community.  It should come as no surprise that as the Church gave its authority over to those contrary to Christ’s commands of love to one another and purity in themselves, it failed from the inside out.  In the end, Jonathan Edwards’ failure does not read so much like his own, his self-deprecating words not withstanding, but as the failure of the Puritan church, and the Northampton congregation in particular.

Modern Application

            Many assessments and applications may be made, but for the sake of this work, let us make an application of this study to the Lord’s Supper.  Communion today, especially in the Anabaptist or Zwinglian tradition, does not seem to be regarded as highly as it was by the Puritans.  This is probably due in large part to the fact that such churches do not view the Lord’s Supper as a means of grace so much as a remembrance of a grace act.  To determine who is correct in their understanding of the Lord’s Supper is not the object of this paper.  Rather, I would suggest that all Evangelicals ought to reconsider the practice of closed communion.  Edwards was willing to lose his ministry and livelihood over this issue.  It is important to note, at this point, that Edwards did not lose his job over closed communion.  That question was never raised.  Everyone agreed that communion was only for members.  The issue was, what constitutes a member?  For Edwards, the answer to that question was a visible, personal conversion and a corresponding lifestyle.  Today the argument has been turned around.  With some exceptions, it seems generally agreed that membership is for those who have experienced conversion and baptism.  The discussion now, or at least it should be, is over who participates in the Lord’s Supper. 

Today, ministers hold open communion as practically a matter of fact.  In circles where the Lord’s Supper is viewed as an ordinance as opposed to a sacrament, the suggestion of closed communion is dismissed out of hand.  There are at least three reasons that such is the case.

            The first reason is that closed communion requires confrontation.  With our convenient mobility it is not at all surprising when a church has visitors.  If non-members are present when a congregation is going to take communion, they must be asked to leave or excuse themselves to the back of the sanctuary.  No one wants to exclude those who might walk in on a communion Sunday.  A desire to not offend non-members is understandable, but this mobility allows for fleeing church discipline.  All teeth are removed from discipline if the minister of a church will not risk offense by asking visitors about their previous church, if he will not show a deep interest in the hearts of those to whom he ministers.  This unwillingness to ask hard questions may belie an unwillingness to pursue church discipline.  Excommunication has become all but extinct in our churches.  If the church is not practicing discipline with a willingness to employ excommunication, the church will grow weaker.  We will fall into the same sort of spiritual pitfalls that befell the Puritans when the Half-Way Covenant and Stoddard’s views were accepted.

            A second reason that closed communion is often summarily dismissed is that in our individualist culture, we seem to have placed the universal church ahead of the local expression of that body.  Edwards recognized the invisible church, but when dealing with the practice of the church, seems to give more immediate weight to the visible.  The very first sentence of Part II of A Humble Inquiry involves the visible church, and references to the same are throughout the whole of his argument.  Perhaps we have too much tilted the other way.

            The final reason is a matter of pragmatism.  Large churches find it impractical to practice closed communion.  It is easy to be overlooked in a crowd of a thousand, much less multiple thousands.  If an involvement of a minister in the lives of his flock is part of leading them in communion, modern pastors are faced with difficult questions, which space and ignorance will not allow to be resolved here.

Each of these is a significant reason to observe an open communion.  My concern is that they might be hiding the same sort of problem Edwards was facing.  I fear that our desire to keep everyone happy and ourselves well-liked prevents us from saying that only those who visibly belong to Christ are to partake of the Lord’s Supper, and that we know nothing of the faith of those we do not know.  My concern is that in our rightful appreciation of the universal church we might forget that God has ordained us to live in community with believers who profess him, and that these communities are called local churches.  I am afraid that we will sacrifice a careful study of Scripture to guide us, for the pragmatic need to “get communion over with.”  If in any way we compromise truth for expediency, our light view of communion might indicate a disregard for the purity of the church.  I believe Edwards would call us to fight for the holiness of our people, and of our institutions.  I believe he would tell us that it is better to lose our worldly position than to forfeit a heart devoted to Christ and his precepts.  And if he would not tell us so, he would do so.

Works Consulted

Brauer, Jerald C., ed.  The Westminster Dictionary of Church History.  Philadelphia:

Westminster Press, 1971.

Cherry, Conrad.  The Theology of Jonathan Edwards: A Reappraisal.  Garden City:

Anchor Books, 1966

Crampton, W. Gary.  Meet Jonathan Edwards.  Ed. Don Kistler.  USA: Soli Deo Gloria

Publications, 2004.

Edwards, Jonathan.  Works of Jonathan Edwards.  22 vols.  New Haven: Yale University

Press, 1966-2003.

Hall, David D.  Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment.  New York: Knopf, 1989.

Hart, D. G., Sean Michael Lucas, and Stephen J. Nichols, eds.  The Legacy of Jonathan

Edwards: American Religion and the Evangelical Tradition.  Grand Rapids:

Baker Academic, 2003.

Kennedy, John F.  Profiles in Courage.  New York: Harper & Row, 1964.

Lee, Sang Hyun, ed.  The Princeton Companion to Jonathan Edwards.  Princeton:

Princeton University Press, 2005.

Miller, Perry.  Jonathan Edwards.  USA: William Sloane Associates, 1949

Pope, Robert G.  The Half-Way Covenant: Church Membership in Puritan New England. 

Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969.

Shook, John.  Pragmatism. http://www.pragmatism.org/american/

cambridge_platform.htm.

Winslow, Ola Elizabeth.  Jonathan Edwards.  New York: Macmillian Company, 1940.

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