Some Notes Concerning Affections and the Sublime in the Work of Jonathan Edward

The Sacred Romance Drawing Closer to the Heart of God by Brent Curtis and John Eldredge is an interesting book that’s supposedly filled with useful information about how to live like a Christian and become more like Christ. However, this book has many issues. Brent Curtis and John Eldredge attempt to get us as readers to understand how to live and be more like Christ by comparing the pains and sufferings we all go through in our everyday lives to that of arrows piercing our hearts. As Curtis and Eldredge talked about arrows piercing our hearts I realized there have been times in my life that happened to me. Finally, after reading the book I realized that this book has the potential of being an interesting read but, it’s many errors leave us as readers confused.

In the 1800s a Market Revolution began, changing the way in which America operated and in the midst of all that was a Second Great Awakening, causing people to once again, question their religious beliefs and practices. Paul Johnson and Sean Wilentz tell the story of Robert Matthews, or the Prophet Matthias and his followers. Matthias had an unconventional childhood, he became an orphan at a young age and was raised by church elders. He worked under one of the elders to learn the carpenter’s craft. He easily found work but had trouble keeping it because he was always preaching at his fellow workers about their sinful ways. Matthias was eager to make good but continually fell into misfortunes, “which led him on a prolonged and erratic religious journey” (49). The Kingdom of Matthias gained and lost members, had changes in beliefs, and was full of ever changing marriages. Although looking back on it now, Matthias’s messages and beliefs seem almost laughable, but at they time his followers found his message, ministry, and lifestyle very compelling.

Anne Lamott’s “Overture: Lily Pads”, presents a chain of stumbled steps throughout her life by showing that each stagger has made her stronger and demonstrated that every misfortune and tribulation of her existence has allowed her to become one step closer to God. My objective is to obtain an enhanced understanding of the nature and function of Anne Lamott’s journey into her selected religion, which ends with her choosing Christianity by accepting Jesus’ everlasting love into her life. I will explain her journey as well as how I think she understands the concept of being “born again”. I wish to present how her definition, perspective and understanding resembles or possibly even differs from that of my own, enabling me to examine and

To Stoddard, the idea of “fostering conversions was more important than discovering a perfect church order, and in that attitude he blazed the way for the most influential practice in American religious history: he was the first American to make periodic revivals a centerpiece of his ministry” . Every decade his congregation would experience an “awakening” in which many people were moved spiritually and often lead to conversion. Some of these revivals even made it past Northampton and into the neighboring communities, directly impacting young Edwards and his family, for Edwards’s father rejected the half-way covenant but endorsed revival. These disagreements divided his family and remained unresolved for decades .

In Book II, chapter 12, of Bede’s History, King Edwin of Northumbria converts to Christianity after being persuaded to believe in a heavenly vision from God.

“Love Poem” by John Frederick Nims is an excellent of example of an author using many types of literary terms to emphasize his theme of a love that is imperfect yet filled with acceptance. In, this poem Nims uses assonance, metaphor, and imagery to support his theme of “Imperfect, yet realistic love”.

“But when certain visitors came, we were as if driven by an inward, secret panic

This surge of spiritual awakening brought some to question religion, specifically Christianity. In the years before the “Kingdom”, Robert Matthews “began putting it about that he was no Christian at all…He was in actuality, a prophesying Hebrew.”(Johnson, 64). This marked the beginning of his decent into the cult he called ‘The Kingdom of Matthias’. The Second Great Awakening marked a constitutional conversion of American religion. Many early groups put emphasis on the corruption of human beings, believing they could be saved only through the grace of God. These groups formed as instruments of reform, in reaction to urban growth and industrialization. However, it also put emphasis on the human ability to better their positions, thus creating amore optimistic view of humans and the human condition. Robert Matthews, now called Matthias, delivered a number of sermons regarding the path to forgiveness and just how he, being Matthias, would cast judgment upon all. “In short, Matthias would damn the enemies of the Jews – above all, the meek Christian devils and their disobedient women.” (Johnson,

The most important shift that Edwards created was served to be towards the ending of his sermon, he introduces Christ, “And now you have an extra ordinary opportunity, a day wherein

Spirituality, at its best, resembles a river, both dependable and mysterious. The Reverend, with his respect for tradition, embodies the steady timelessness that rivers and God share, while Paul?s stubborn wild streak represents the entities? indefinite, uncontainable quality. Through his spare yet lyrical prose, Maclean manages to both explicate and illustrate a balance between a prudent, rational Protestant existence and an unrestrained, whimsical one. This elusive equilibrium is Maclean?s path to faith. Religious belief should strive to be unshakeably firm while also flexible and ever-evolving; in this way, human convictions can serve the same unifying capability which Maclean claims for rivers. ?Eventually,? he says, ?all things merge into one, and a river runs through it? (104). Faith, along with rivers, leads to this universal understanding and harmony.

“The Moment,” as some authors call it, is characterized by a turning point of revelation and insight. The technical term for this element is called epiphany. Although it can be approached by many methods, an epiphany usually builds on a series of ordinary events or thoughts, ultimately resulting in a significant realization towards the end. In Raymond Carver’s “Cathedral,” the narrator begins buried in his inability to connect and lack of self confidence. The reader can quickly observe the narrator’s limited capacity to express emotion.

There is a scholarly consensus that the normative starting point of the movement is the revival movement of the 1730s and 1790s associated with Jonathan Edward in North American and John Wesley in England (Hutchison & Wolffe 25). The Faithful Narrative by Jonathan Edwards published in 1737 is noteworthy because it became the normative description of the revivalism of the later evangelical movements. John Wesley and George Whitefield’s revival campaigns were attempts to emulate what happened in Northampton. The characteristics of revivalism from the 1730s to 1790s continue on to be the identity markers of the evangelicals that Bebbington lays out. For example, Jonathan Edwards allocates a great space in his short book to describe the sample individual conversion experiences; the stories emphasize the immediacy of their personal experience of salvation, and those who experienced salvation were compelled to share the Gospel with others.

Religious experiences can be defined as intense emotions or subjective experiences that an individual endures upon sensing or participating in religious functions and activities. Nonetheless, even though these feelings are shared amongst individuals from the same faith, they can be interpreted in a plethora of ways depending on each individual’s experiences. Put differently, members within a religious group elucidate these phenomena through their religious framework, whilst external scholars rely on their own understandings. Consequently, in some situations, it becomes difficult for scholars to comprehend the religious experiences of religious participants, which eventually leads them to explore reasons behind the participation of individuals in religious functions and the significance this imposes on their lives. In “The Varieties of Religious Experience: Religion and Neurology, lecture 1” by William James, religious experiences are examined from a psychological perspective. Mainly, James asserts that experiences are caused by an objective or measurable phenomenon, such as neurochemical signals, which causes extreme emotions whilst participating in religious functions. On the other hand, in Critical Terms for Religious Studies, Robert Sharf criticizes religious experiences as rhetorically to thwart the authority of the objective or the empirical and instead to valorize the subjective,

In reading, “Acts 8” and “Called to be Church.” There are so many patterns of conversion that can be gleaned in the understanding of “being saved.” As we compare the conversion with Simon of Samaria and the anonymous eunuch from Ethiopia, in learning how God requires us to become Christians. This is their story of conversions.

    The book Of Love and Other Demons (1994), written by the Columbian Gabriel Garcia Marquez, has more characteristics of sublime literature than of magical realist literature. Magical Realism and the sublime are so closely related that distinguishing between the two is hard. They are more closely related than magical realism and the fantastic.