I told you there was going to be more on this.
And this time, not a quote from Edwards, but a lecture that JT posted a few weeks ago from Edwards super-expert, George Marsden (author of both a long
Dr. Marsden spends 45 minutes talking about Edwards’ relevance for today, situating Edwards in the midst of the rise of the Enlightenment’s emphasis on “instrumental reason” and the emergence of all kinds of new technologies. The result of this was a world in which for every problem, the solution was better reasoning and techniques.
I started watching/listening to this lecture (put on by The Carl F. H. Henry Center for Theological Understanding) with only semi-interest, since Marsden on Edwards is just the kind of thing worth paying attention to. “Sure,” I thought, “I’ll give it a few minutes and see if I care.”
But reliance on reason and technique is not just a hallmark of 18th century New England, obviously. This kind of thinking is part of the fabric of our world, perhaps even more so now. And this certainly includes the Church: our leadership books, conferences, and blogs (including this one) are often trying to, like Edwards, embrace the good of technique and reason. The trouble is that, as I’ve mentioned before, I quickly become outright addicted to them.
For those reasons and more, I found both Marsden’s lecture and Smith’s pastoral application extraordinarily helpful for me as a youth pastor in forcing me to reconsider how much I rely on God Himself instead of my own instrumental reason. This is well worth the hour or so it takes to watch or listen to (oh, and skip the Q & A at the end: it’s less helpful).
God-Centered Youth Ministry 