reformed blogging.

Here is a passage from Marsden’s biography of Edwards regarding new interpretations of Scripture during the Enlightenment. Edwards’ words seem especially important today:

“How wonderful is it, he mocked, that these ‘new writers‘ have discovered in the Apostle Paul meanings so deep that they escaped the view of all previous interpreters for fifteen or sixteen hundred years. ‘No wonder then, if the superficial discerning and observation of vulgar Christians, or indeed of the herd of common divines, such as the Westminster Assembly, etc. falls vastly short of the Apostles reach.’ We have to realize, Edwards continued his irony, that the Reformers and all interpreters before and since ‘dwelt in a cave of bigotry and superstition, too gloomy to allow ‘em to use their own understandings with freedom, in reading the Scripture.’ Now, though, moderns have left the cave and ascended to the light. ‘It must be understood, that there is risen up, now at ength in this happy age of light and liberty, a set of men, of a more free and generous turn of mind, a more inquisitive genius, an better discernment.’” - Jonathan Edwards, quoted from George Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Life, 457