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Scripture focus
Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.
Matthew 22:37 KJV
At a glance
Where did Jonathan Edwards locate the essence of true religious experience?
In the affections — the strong, settled inclinations of heart and will, not mere head-knowledge or passing emotional excitement — which must then be tested by their lasting practical fruit.
Summary of the chapter
Writing in the anxious aftermath of the Great Awakening, Edwards faced critics on two sides: rationalists who distrusted any strong feeling in religion, and enthusiasts who equated the loudest emotional outbursts with the surest evidence of grace. In Religious Affections he cut between them by arguing, in his famous opening claim, that “true religion, in great part, consists in holy affections” — but affections are not synonymous with mere passion.
For Edwards the soul has two faculties, understanding and will (or “inclination”), and the affections are simply “the more vigorous and sensible exercises” of the will, the whole soul's active bent toward or away from an object. A person can know true doctrine and feel nothing; genuine religion requires that the heart itself be moved — drawn to delight in God for what he is, not merely for benefits received.
Because both true grace and its counterfeits can produce intense feeling, Edwards spent the rest of the treatise sorting reliable “signs” of gracious affections from unreliable ones, insisting that the decisive test is not how affections begin but whether they issue in humility, love, and a transformed, practical, life-long obedience.
Key points
- Edwards wrote Religious Affections to navigate between cold rationalist religion and unchecked revivalist emotionalism during the Great Awakening's aftermath.
- His famous opening thesis holds that “true religion, in great part, consists in holy affections,” not bare doctrinal knowledge.
- Edwards's psychology divides the soul into understanding and will/inclination; affections are the will's “more vigorous and sensible exercises.”
- Strong feeling alone proves nothing, since both saving grace and its counterfeits can produce intense religious emotion.
- The decisive test of gracious affections, for Edwards, is not their intensity but whether they produce lasting humility, Christlike love, and practical obedience.
A line worth remembering
True religion, in great part, consists in holy affections.
McClymond & McDermott The Theology of Jonathan Edwards, ch. 20
Related Scripture
- Deuteronomy 6:5
- Psalm 42:1-2
- Romans 12:11
- Philippians 1:9
For reflection and discussion
- What is the difference, as Edwards saw it, between knowing true doctrine and having your affections genuinely moved by it?
- Why is intensity of feeling, by itself, an unreliable test of whether an affection is truly gracious?
- Edwards insisted that lasting practice, not a dramatic beginning, is the surest sign of grace — where do you see that principle tested in your own life?
These notes are an original UECF.NET study companion and are not a reproduction of the book. Read the full chapter — chapter 20, “The Affections and the Human Person” — in The Theology of Jonathan Edwards by Michael J. McClymond and Gerald R. McDermott (Oxford University Press, 2012).