The issues are different for us today from what Jonathan Edwards was addressing in the shortcomings or faulty views of the Great Awakening in his writings on the subject. So in quoting Edwards here, and in thinking of the need for more heat today, I'm thinking mainly not of how we have so much light (we don't), but of how we have so many other things in which we trust (e.g., programs, new initiatives, church expansion projects, committee work, etc.) that are ineffectual for bringing about the revival and reform needed in the church in America. Yes, and even those parts that we think healthiest. See if you can map Edwards' insight onto our current situation.
Here is Edwards on the need for
heat more than light:
Though as I said before, clearness of distinction and illustration, and strength of reason, and a good method, in the doctrinal handling of the truths of religion, is many ways needful and profitable, and not to be neglected, yet an increase in speculative knowledge in divinity is not what is so much needed by our people, as something else. Men may abound in this sort of light and have no heat: how much has there been of this sort of knowledge, in the Christian world, in this age? Was there ever an age wherein strength and penetration of reason, extent of learning, exactness of distinction, correctness of style, and clearness of expression, did so abound? And yet was there ever an age wherein there has been so little sense of the evil of sin, so little love to God, heavenly-mindedness, and holiness of life, among the professors of the true religion? Our people don't so much need to have their heads stored, as to have their hearts touched; and they stand in the greatest need of that sort of preaching that has the greatest tendency to do this (Works of Jonathan Edwards, Vol. 4, Yale University Press, 387–388).
