Over the past few days, quite the event has developed at Asbury University down in Wilmore, Kentucky. University students have appeared at the Hughes Auditorium to worship and sing praises to God, which has continued for over 90 hours at the time of this writing. There is recent reporting that students from surrounding universities have shown up too. Photos and videos of the phenomenon paint an emotional scene. At first, the event started out as a routine chapel service. After the service a few students stayed behind to continue to worship. Apparently, this caught ablaze, and whole crowds of students began to flood the chapel to join in. None of it was planned. Many eventually began to kneel at the foot of the stage with their palms facing the sky, crying, and joyfully singing. Allegedly there have been many conversions. From the outside looking in, it makes sense then that this phenomenon has been called a revival by some.
Students of the Protestant tradition are familiar with another revival. The First Great Awakening of the 1730s: a mass conversion event in colonialist New England. From what we know about Asbury so far, it’s likely a microcosm of what this past revival looked like. In The First Great Awakening there was much emotion, many conversions, and large gatherings of people aggregating to praise the triune God. It seems, then, we can say it was a true revival—in so far as the definition goes—because we saw the results of it. Over 300 churches were built, and this revival set the beginning stage of a nation that would become distinctively Protestant.
Though concerning Asbury, there is a camp quick to dismiss the possibility of a true revival. Others see the masses flooding into the auditorium and are convinced the phenomenon is, indeed, a true revival. Both camps have their arguments and concerns that I think have merit in ways. But thankfully we have the wisdom of past ministers who have witnessed a true revival that was much greater in size. In The Religious Affections, Jonathan Edwards lays out a comprehensive method to discern holy affections vs. natural affections. His work is in response to those skeptical of high affections—of which there were many—during the days of The First Great Awakening. Edwards notes the skeptics do have a point, though they are in error by swinging the pendulum too far in the other direction. However, sympathetic to the skeptics’ concerns, Edwards writes,
It is by the mixture of counterfeit religion with true, not discerned and distinguished, that the devil has had his greatest advantage against the cause and kingdom of Christ, all along hitherto. It is by this means, principally, that he has prevailed against all revivings of religion, that ever have been sheen the first founding of the Christian church. By this, he hurt the cause of Christianity…
But Edwards is sure to follow in the affirmative, that true religion is not without holy affections, “That religion which God requires, and will accept, does not consist in weak, dull, and lifeless wishes, raising us but a little above a state of indifference: God, in his word, greatly insists upon it, that we be good in earnest, “fervent in spirit,” and our hearts vigorously engaged in religion…” I’ve argued similarly in Kuyperian Commentary that many of us in the Reformed tradition are far too weary of emotions, a point that Edwards also seems to press here. In summation Edwards argues that the affections, in so far as we can perceive them, whether they are high or low, excited or subtle, or seemingly pious or genuine that they are not indicative of sincerity or not. The first thesis of Part II is a decent boilerplate, “It is no sign one way or the other, that religious affections are very great, or raised very high.”
Although, Edwards goes to great length to establish that one (and, himself!) should have a certain epistemological humility here. There is a knowledge gap in the final analysis when it comes to discerning the source of the affections,
I am far from undertaking to give such signs of gracious affections, as shall be sufficient to enable any certainly to distinguish true affection from false in others; or to determine positively which of their neighbors are true professors, and which are hypocrites. In so doing, I should be guilty of that arrogance which I have been condemning. Though it be plain that Christ has given rules to all Christians, to enable them to judge of professors of religion … yet it is also evident, that it was never God’s design to give us any rules, by which we may certainly know, who of our fellow professors are his, and to make a full and clear separation between sheep and goats; but that, on the contrary, it was God’s design to reserve this to himself, as his prerogative.
If God is the only one who has infallible knowledge about one’s faith, then God is the only one who has this same knowledge of the human affections.
While he does note that “passions” are not spiritual, describing them as “The affections and passions are frequently spoken of as the same … but passion for those that are more sudden, and whose effects on the animal spirits are more violent, and the mind more overpowered, and less in its own command.”, the Edwardsian view is we can know little of the source of affections by only their outward expression. It is only if the affections are accompanied by a practice of the true religion that they are holy. That practice of true religion includes a genuine interest in divine things, a strive for moral excellency, and understanding of divine concepts, conviction of sin, tenderness of spirit, and finally, a longing after spiritual growth in so far as those affections are highly raised. Edwards lays out 12 tenets to determine holy affections but to list them here is redundant. A great sense of one’s own humility and knowledge ought be taken into account, too. This is highly applicable to what we are witnessing in Asbury.
You can say affections are holy if they are accompanied by fruit. But it takes time to see fruit. Time itself is the very reason we are able to look back at the revivals of the past and accurately discern them as true revivals. Because we have the medium of time between us and the past, and we can see the fruit (or not), we are only then equipped to make claims of higher confidence. Time has not come to pass with Asbury. It seems then that making high confident claims about its revival is misplaced, if I can say that humbly.
If one makes a definitive claim about past revivals with the advantage of those revivals being in the past, one ought to also let a reasonable amount of time pass for Asbury. We should not resort to special pleading.
I think the Edwardsian view on the affections and revival is wise here. A cautious optimism is appropriate, for The Lord has poured his Spirit out and brought mass conversion before. But a cautious skepticism is not without reason either, because Evangelicalism has suffered much from certain subjectivist movements. Though if we aren’t going to give allegedly true revival events the chance of time without quickly discerning them, when are we going to get behind a revival that is actually true if it ever comes? Or, one day it’s possible we call a revival that looks holy on the outside, but is really not (think Pharisees). There is error on both sides.
In conclusion, we should pray that after all of the zeal, emotion, singing, praying, crying, and things of the like cease at Asbury, that the people who experienced those things continue with a similar zeal for the true religion. However, an appetite for the true religion will only be observable with time.
Charles Jacobi is a writer and Ph.D. student at Texas Tech University. His writing has appeared in Providence Magazine, Kuyperian Commentary, and American Pigeon. He is husband to his loving wife, Kayla, and is a member at Lubbock Reformed Church.
Photo: Ryan Worthen / via Twitter