Jonathan Edwards on Pride

Jonathan Edwards is a well-known preacher/theologian from colonial America in the 1700's. He was a missionary to Native Americans and also served as one of the early presidents of Princeton university.

Edwards taught that pride was one of the worst causes of error and that Satan uses it to fight against revival. He also taught that nothing puts a Christian so out of reach of the devil as humility. In one of his writings, he writes the following under the heading "Pride: a Secret Enemy":

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Pride is much more difficult to be discerned than any other corruption because of its very nature. That is, pride is a person having too high an opinion of himself. Is it any surprise, then, that a person who has too high an opinion of himself is unaware of it? His thinking is that he thinks that the opinion he has of himself has just grounds and therefore is not too high. If the grounds of the opinion of himself crumbled, he would cease to have such an opinion.

But, because of the nature of spiritual pride, it is the most secret of all sins. There is no other matter in which the heart is more deceitful and unsearchable and there is no other sin in the world that men are so confident in. The very nature of it is to work self-confidence and drive away any suspicion of any evil of that kind. There is no sin so much like the devil as this for secrecy and subtlety, and appearing in great many shapes that are undetected and unsuspected.

Spiritual pride takes many forms and shapes, one under another, and encompasses the heart like the layers of an onion: when you pull off one, there is another underneath. Therefore, we have need to have the greatest watch imaginable over our hearts with respect to this matter and to cry most earnestly to the great Searcher of hearts for His help. He that trusts his own heart is a fool.

Since spiritual pride in its own nature is so secret, it cannot be so well discerned by immediate intuition on the thing itself. It is best identified by its fruits and effects, some of which I will make mention of below together with the contrary fruits of Christian humility.

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After that short excerpt, Edwards continues to speak of "Pride: the Great Fault-Finder", "Pride: Ministering in a Harsh Spirit", "Pride: Putting On Pretences", "Pride: Taking Offence Easily", "Pride: Presumption Before God and Man", "Pride: Hungry for Attention", and "Pride: Neglecting Others".


If you wish to read the entire writing (it isn't very long), you can find it here

A Devil's View of Human Nature and Religion

INTRODUCTION

I'm currently reading Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky. I rarely read such classical literature, but a friend said good things about it and I had to check it out.

There is a compelling section toward the end of the book, where Ivan (the intellectual) has a nightmare and/or some sort of delerium. He begins to talk to a man who implicitly is understood to be a devil. The visitor doesn't necessarily identify himself outright, but there are many non-subtle clues as to his identity. At one point, the devil speaks on religion and his method within religion. Here I provide two excerpts that I found interesting.

ON THE FUTILITY OF ASCETECISM:

"Now, I lead you in turns between belief and disbelief and, in doing so, I'm pursuing a certain goal....I already know you well enough--that is how I'll achieve my goal..you will long to join 'the hermits in the wilderness and the immaculate virgins,' because that is what you are really secretly longing for: to wander in the desert, feed on the locusts and save your soul" [at this point Ivan makes fun of the devil, questioning whether the devil knows how hard it is to tempt someone who feeds on locusts and prays in the desert, to which the devil replies...] "I've done practically nothing but that, my friend. One can forget this and all the worlds when one works on such a person, because he is really a gold mine: in some cases his soul may be worth a whole constellation, that is, of course in our special accounting system. A victory in such a case is priceless! And some of those fellows, I assure you, are in no way less sophisticated than you are and, although you may not believe it, they're capable of visualizing such depths of belief and disbelief at the same time that there are moments when it looks as if the fellow is within a hair's breadth of plunging head over heals into the abyss."


ON THE CONFESSIONAL:

"As to the Jesuit confessional, it is, indeed, one of my sweetest distractions in the sad moments of my existence. Let me tell you of another instance that occurred only a few days ago. A blonde, twenty-year-old Norman girl comes to an old Jesuit father. A buxom, natural beauty...[I] was just about to leave when I heard the old Jesuit arranging, through that little grill of the confessional, to meet her later. Just think--that old man, hard as flint, and there he fell in the twinkling of an eye! The truth is, though, that nature took its due!"

CONCLUSION: WHAT WE CAN LEARN

These speeches given by the devil as portrayed in this fictional dialog point to some interesting truths.

1. Paul, in II Timothy 3:5, speaks of people who go about having "the appearance of godliness, but denying its power". And then Paul wraps up that statement in v9 with the following: "But they will not get very far, for their folly will be plain to all". There are many people who outwardly appear very godly but turn out to inwardly be very different and in due time it will be evident who they really are. This is a two-fold warning. First, we need to examine ourselves as to whether our religion is only skin deep. Second, we need to be careful about what we assume about others just because they do some impressive thing.

2. Self-made religion, asceticism, and extreme instances of self denial may cause others to be impressed with our spirituality, but God wants our heart to bow to Him not just our body. In Colossians 2:23, Paul makes this clear when he wraps up speaking of the danger of being hindered by human teachings by saying the following: "These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh."

3. The final part of Colossians 2:23 also speaks to the fact that great displays of self-made religion or asceticism do not impart to us any sort of power. The greatest display of asceticism will not make us more resistant to Satan's onslaught, and the strictest Jesuit traditions and priestly concecration did not make the priest in the quote from Brothers Karamazov any more able to resist his temptation to use confession as a vehicle for his sinful desires.

What if our supposed spirituality and self-denial sometimes only leaves us wide open to crafty attacks from Satan? The aforementioned quotes really brought that thought to my mind.