Chapter 7: Conclusion
7
Conclusion
This book began by asking, “in what ways and to what extent did Adoniram Judson’s spirituality affect the endurance and effect of his missionary labor?” In order to answer this inquiry, additional questions sought answers to (1) how the Scriptures influenced Judson’s missionary spirituality, (2) how his self-denying submission to the will of God reinforced his spiritual life, (3) the extent to which the promises of eternity focused Judson’s vision of reality, (4) and how Judson’s affectionate desire to know Christ and his consecration to Christ’s final command in order to please him controlled Judson’s missionary spirituality.
This book has demonstrated that Adoniram Judson was not only an historic figurehead in the first wave of foreign missionaries from the United States, a “Christian Hero of the Nineteenth Century”739 whose name became a “household word throughout the length and breadth of Christendom,”740 but furthermore, Judson’s renowned fortitude emerged out of a peculiar missionary spirituality, which was bibliocentric, ascetic, heavenly-minded, and Christocentric. The center of Adoniram Judson’s spirituality was a heavenly-minded, self-denying submission to the sovereign will of God, motivated by an affectionate desire to please Christ through obedience to his final command revealed in the Scriptures.741 Moreover, Judson’s ascetic spirituality went beyond the traditional expressions of classic evangelical piety. Unveiling the heart of his missionary spirituality, Judson himself asked, “What, then, is the prominent, all-constraining impulse that should urge us to make sacrifices in this cause?” And he answered thus: “A supreme desire to please him is the grand motive that should animate Christians in their missionary efforts.”742
The introductory chapter grounded the significance of this study. It established the research question, thesis, methodology of research, and it outlined the significance of studying Judson’s spirituality for contemporary theology and ministry.
The second chapter explored Judson’s historical context of the eighteenth century, especially in relation to the modern missionary movement, New Divinity theology, and the religious zeal of Andover Seminary. These all stamped their religious impress on his spirituality, theology, and missionary activism. This chapter also surveyed his life and ministry.
The third chapter demonstrated that the foundation for Judson’s missionary activism was the supreme and sufficient Scripture. He earnestly sought to obey, translate, preach, and build up the church of Burma with the Bible. He bound together his activistic piety and bibliocentrism.
The fourth chapter revealed that Judson submitted himself to God’s divine authority. Judson undoubtedly employed asceticism as a dominant feature of his God-centered piety. Judson’s spirituality drew chiefly from his admiration for the devotion of Roman Catholic asceticism and his formational training in New Divinity theology. His spirituality was one of quiet submission to the infinitely wise and loving will of God. Judson’s consecrated self-denial sought the good of God’s glory and the salvation of sinners above his own pleasure.
The fifth chapter illustrated how Judson’s heavenly-mindedness saturated his spirituality. His fixation on heaven was useful for his hopeful endurance through tremendous adversity. Judson’s optimism in the coming millennial reign of Christ proved indomitable in the face of much discouragement. Because of his heavenly preoccupation and postmillennial confidence, he could persevere through the most arduous labor and sorrow.
The sixth chapter established the unifying feature of Judson’s piety as an affectionate desire to please his Savior and Lord. Christ’s Great Commission held supreme import in Judson’s missionary spirituality. Because of Christ’s self-denying love on the cross, Judson sought to please him by imitating him through doing good and obeying Christ’s final command. His love for Christ was evident in his desire to commune with Christ and pray fervently for the salvation of sinners and for the triumph of Christ’s glorious gospel throughout the earth. Themes from the previous chapters coalesce in this unifying theme of Judson’s affection for Christ. This chapter makes sense of all the unique strands of Judson’s piety.
Analysis
Having considered Judson’s life and thought, and his ministry and inspiration, this study underscores several factors. David W. Bebbington’s authoritative description of evangelicalism in Britain included four features: biblicism, crucicentrism, conversionism, and activism.743 The spirituality of Adoniram Judson definitely included this fourfold synthesis of evangelicalism. Judson’s Baptistic theology affected his conversion-oriented evangelism and discipleship. His confidence in the supremacy and sufficiency of the proclaimed Scripture incited his indefatigable preaching and translation activism. Affectionately responding to Christ’s dying love for sinners, Judson sought to imitate Christ’s example through self-denial and to proclaim the gospel of Christ for the conversion of the heathen. Nevertheless, acknowledging that the Bebbington quadrilateral is not an exhaustive description of evangelical spirituality,744 Judson’s spirituality contained its own distinctions. Judson’s piety must speak for itself in its own terms, in its own way. Considering the whole Judson corpus, his vision of spirituality and religion certainly included degrees of the quadrilateral of evangelical piety, but his spirituality was fundamentally rooted in and ruled by a mixture of New Divinity theology and Roman Catholic asceticism. Some unique features of New Divinity theology that directed Judson’s spiritual life and missionary piety were: disinterested benevolence, postmillennial optimism, true religion, and the infinitely wise and loving sovereignty of God. The combination of Roman Catholic asceticism, rule-keeping, disinterested benevolence, and Judson’s own eccentric personality demonstrated a unique expression of spirituality that only he could withstand. Indeed, his contemporaries and fellow missionaries even acknowledged that his piety was exclusively his own, which was over and above typical evangelical piety. Few evangelicals today would likely find all the expressions of his spirituality to be instructive and imitable, yet for those missionaries who have chosen fields that require incredible degrees of self-denial and sacrifice, Judson’s own example might prove helpful. Judson’s ascetic spirituality may have proven useful for his context where the uncertainty of life and the nearness of death were cause of great concern; if he had to take a ship back to America to get well or if he died of sickness, the whole translation project would have likely faded with him. But for those contemporary Christians who do not labor in an isolated pre-modern Asian context, who have families, who did not train in a staunch Hopkinsian school, and who are beneficiaries of modern medicine, vaccinations, jet-travel, and instant communication, Judson’s ascetic missionary spirituality might seem as foreign as nineteenth-century Burma.
Judson was a Great-Commission activist, a devout man of prayer, a Christ-loving laborer, a self-sacrificing family man and friend, and a self-denying servant submitted to the sovereign rule of God. That very little remains of his sermons can be credited to the fact that he predominantly preached extemporaneously in Burmese, which limits access to the content of his regular preaching ministry. The fact that he never wrote a massive systematic theology or any volumes of doctrine restricts the study of his theological developments. However, he committed himself to mastering a very difficult language745 and to producing a Bible translation still used and admired today, which demonstrates that his knowledge of the Bible was robust.746 Though unable to research formal volumes of Judson’s unique theological formulations, his uncommon spirituality scattered throughout his letters, journals, tracts, and sermons warrants exploration. Because the synthesis of his spirituality is limited predominantly to his letters and journals that survived multiple occasions of loss and destruction, it is necessary to note the frequency of his dominant spiritual themes throughout his life. Due to the insufficiency of highlighting an occasional theme that occurred once in a single letter or journal, this book has synthesized and analyzed those themes that were pervasive in his letters, journals, tracts, and sermons throughout his whole Christian life.
The numerous references he made to Mark 16:15747 from the beginning of his missionary venture to the end of his life demonstrate that Christ’s commission to preach the gospel to the whole world dominated his missionary religion. What is more, his prayerful meditation on and frequent use of ideas from Bible verses such as Acts 10:38,748 Romans 12:10,749 1 Corinthians 11:1,750 Revelation 14:13,751 John 13:34 and 15:12,752 and John 14:15 and 15:14753 reveal those biblical passages that deeply affected him.754 And as F. W. Boreham well observed, the language Judson used throughout his corpus illustrated his devotion to the theme of the Christ-enamored prayer of Ephesians 3:18–19.755
No single volume can exhaust its object of study. While the scope of this book is limited primarily to an overall synthesis of Judson’s spirituality, many aspects of Judson’s life, thought, and influence remain unexamined. For instance, much more work needs to be done in tracing the dominant themes and influences of Hopkinsianism and Roman Catholic mysticism. There needs to be much more research to identify Judson’s expressions of theology and spirituality that he borrowed from his New Divinity training, especially from the writings of Samuel Hopkins. Judson’s early training in ascetic spiritual formation practices at Andover needs much more analysis. Moreover, his collegiate bonds and the theological and spiritual influences of professors, Moses Stuart, Leonard Woods, and Edward Dorr Griffin need greater study. Throughout his letters and journals, there is no indication as to why and when exactly he first started reading the mystics. Among all his letters in which he requested books, he always asked for critical commentaries and other theological works to assist him in his translation.756 Whether he first began reading the writings of Roman Catholic mystics at Andover or later in Burma is open for speculation; but it is clear that once he finished formal language study in 1819, he first started writing his ascetic rules of life as he commenced his preaching ministry. Much more study needs to be given to the historical events, influences, and persons that might correspond to when he started applying more ascetic practices. Also, the legacy of Judson’s spiritual influence, both positively and negatively, on his children deserves more attention.757 The widespread and profound religious influence of the Judson drama for young Christians deserves significant treatment.758 Moreover, the impact of Judson’s legendary piety propounded by his sons, Edward and George Dana, needs further consideration, and the life and thought of Judson’s Congregationalist father needs thorough analysis.759 Because Judson was not alone and had religious colleagues, the like-minded spirituality expressed by his fellow missionaries in records such as The Baptist Missionary Magazine760 is worthy of greater analysis.
The life and labor of Adoniram Judson has been eminently influential from his own era to the present. His spirituality was peculiar because of his historical, educational, familial, and theological contexts. Furthermore, his own personality and God-given abilities predisposed his spiritual formation. It is unnecessary to try retrofitting his spirituality into contemporary evangelicalism; he was remarkable even in his own day and context. Nevertheless, Judson served the God of the Bible, and his self-denying passion of knowing and pleasing Christ as a missionary can serve as an excellent example to which contemporary evangelicals, especially missionaries and ministers, should aspire. His Bible-saturated, God-honoring, self-denying, heavenly-minded, Christ-enamored piety, expressed in his fervent-praying, Bible-translating, and gospel-proclaiming missionary activity, remain distinct still today. Yet, Judson would not wish to distract his admirers from the glory of his great God and Savior. He insisted that his name should “live in oblivion or disgrace till the great day.”761 Hence, Judson would assert that all study and admiration of his missionary spirituality should look finally to the glory of Christ himself, whose redeeming love is “a beautiful study for eternity!”762 Though dead, the missionary still speaks, making his appeal:
Brethren, look to Jesus. This sight will fill you with the greatest consolation and delight. Look to Him on the cross; so great is His love that, if He had a thousand lives, He would lay them all down for your redemption. Look to Him on the throne; His blessed countenance fills all heaven with delight and felicity. Look to Him in affliction; He will succor you. Look to Him in death; He will sustain you. Look to Him in the judgment; He will save you.763
739. Gray, The Christian Hero of the Nineteenth Century, 2.
740. Richards, The Apostle of Burma, vi.
741. For some prominent examples of Judson’s own words that capture the essence of his missionary spirituality, see his address to the Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention in Richmond on February 8, 1846, in Middleditch, Burmah’s Great Missionary, 384–85. See also his sermon before the Boardman Missionary Society at Waterville College, in 1846, in Edward Judson, The Life of Adoniram Judson, 473–74; and Wayland, Memoir, 2:234–35. Consider also his address to the American and Foreign Bible Society on May 15, 1846 about preaching and translating; see Adoniram Judson to the American and Foreign Bible Society, address, May 15, 1846, Papers, 1811–1888, Trask Library Special Collections, Newton Centre, Massachusetts. See also Wayland, Memoir, 2:235–38, and Middleditch, Burmah’s Great Missionary, 388–91. And see his only English sermon in Burma, on May 10, 1836, for the ordination of S. M. Osgood in Wayland, Memoir,2:490–93.
742. This was from an address to the Foreign Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention in Richmond on February 8, 1846. See Middleditch, Burmah’s Great Missionary, 384–85.
743. Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, 20.
744. For example, see Gillett, Trust and Obey, 34–39; Sheldrake, Spirituality and History, 52; Randall, What a Friend, 20; and McGrath, Christian Spirituality, 4.
745. See Adoniram Judson to Rev Lucius Bolles, letter, January 16, 1816, Box No. AJ 1, Folder 2 and Microfilm Roll 1, Judson Letters, ABHS. See also Wayland, Memoir, 1:176–78.
746. See Brown, “The Life and Work of Adoniram Judson,” 24. See also Hunt, Bless God and Take Courage, 254–55.
747. For examples, see Wayland, Memoir, 1:51–52; ibid., 2:234–35, 519–21; Middleditch, Burmah’s Great Missionary, 22, 398–400; Edward Judson, The Life of Adoniram Judson, 473–74; and Conant, The Earnest Man, 42–44.
748. For examples, see Middleditch, Burmah’s Great Missionary, 374–76; Edward Judson, The Life of Adoniram Judson, 469–70, 475; and Wayland, Memoir, 2:486–94.
749. For example, see Emily Chubbuck Judson, “Closing Scenes in Dr. Judson’s Life,” 36.
750. For examples, see Edward Judson, The Life of Adoniram Judson, 469–70; and Middleditch, Burmah’s Great Missionary, 374–76.
751. For examples, see Adoniram Judson, “Parting Address of Mr. Judson,” 31–33; Adoniram Judson, “Address of Dr. Judson,” 267–68; Dowling, The Judson Offering, 279–83; Wayland, Memoir, 2:254–58; and Middleditch, Burmah’s Great Missionary, 396–98.
752. For examples, see Wayland, Memoir, 2:338; and Emily Chubbuck Judson, “Closing Scenes in Dr. Judson’s Life,” 36.
753. For example, see Adoniram Judson, Christian Baptism, 93.
754. Judson also preached from the proceeding passages, but their themes and references do not appear as often as the aforementioned verses: Colossians 1:27; Hebrews 12:14; and John 10:1–18. For examples, see Wayland, Memoir, 2:486–94, 98–99.
755. Boreham, A Temple of Topaz, 134.
756. For examples, see Adoniram Judson to Lucius Bolles, letter, December 20, 1830, Box No. AJ 2, Folder 2 and Microfilm Roll 1, ABHS; Adoniram Judson to Lucius Bolles, correspondence, February 5, 1831, Box No. AJ 2, Folder 2 and Microfilm Roll 1, ABHS; Adoniram Judson, “Mission Books,” correspondence, January 31, 1835, Box No. AJ 2, Folder 1 and Microfilm Roll 1, ABHS; Adoniram Judson to Lucius Bolles, letter, August 29, 1836, Box No. AJ 2, Folder 1 and Microfilm Roll 1, ABHS; Adoniram Judson to Solomon Peck, letter, January 21, 1839, Box No. AJ 3, Folder 1 and Microfilm Roll 1, ABHS; and Adoniram Judson to Solomon Peck, correspondence, December 22, 1839, Box No. AJ 3, Folder 2 and Microfilm Roll 1, ABHS.
757. Rosalie Hall Hunt has masterfully chronicled Judson’s familial lineage, but the connection between the life, thought, and ministry of each of Judson’s adult children remains unexplored in depth. See Hunt, Bless God and Take Courage, 241–348.
758. For a scholarly resource to begin understanding Judson’s broad impact on youth voluntarism in the nineteenth century, see Brumberg, Mission for Life.
759. The Director of Acadia Centre for Baptist and Anabaptist Studies, William H. Brackney, suggested this in an email to the author; see Brackney, “Re: Questions about Archives and Adoniram Judson Research,” October 16, 2013.
760. The Baptist Missionary Magazine 1–89 (1817–1909).
761. Adoniram Judson, “Letter from the Rev. Adoniram Judson, Jun. to Dr. Baldwin, Dated Rangoon, December 9, 1819,” 380. See also Middleditch, Burmah’s Great Missionary, 97–98.
762. Emily Chubbuck Judson, “Closing Scenes in Dr. Judson’s Life,” 36.
763. Judson was speaking to students at Madison University in Hamilton, New York, in 1846. Edward Judson, The Life of Adoniram Judson, 474. See also Middleditch, Burmah’s Great Missionary, 373.