Faith: Head or Heart?

In making my way through "On Knowing Christ" by Jonathan Edwards, I have found one of the more explicit statements of Edwards' approach to the relation of head and heart in religious matters. Edwards is absolutely right that the head is first engaged to aprehend a truth about God and this is necessary. But then, the heart must be engaged to love that truth and move the affections. The rationalist approach to religion errs in making religion something merely of the mind. The enthusiast errs in believing religion can go directly to the heart without passing through the mind. Edwards stands in the middle and casts a pox on both their houses:

"THERE are two kinds of knowledge of divine truth, viz. speculative and practical, or in other terms, natural and spiritual. The former remains only in the head. No other faculty but the understanding is concerned in it. It consists in having a natural or rational knowledge of the things of religion, or such a knowledge as is to be obtained by the natural exercise of our own faculties, without any special illumination of the Spirit of God. The latter rests not entirely in the head, or in the speculative ideas of things; but the heart is concerned in it: it principally consists in the sense of the heart. The mere intellect, without the will or the inclination, is not the seat of it. And it may not only be called seeing, but feeling or tasting. Thus there is a difference between having a right speculative notion of the doctrines contained in the word of God, and having a due sense of them in the heart. In the former consists the speculative or natural knowledge, in the latter consists the spiritual or practical knowledge of them.

Neither of these is intended in the doctrine exclusively of the other: but it is intended that we should seek the former in order to the latter. The latter, or the spiritual and practical, is of the greatest importance; for a speculative without a spiritual knowledge, is to no purpose, but to make our condemnation the greater. Yet a speculative knowledge is also of infinite importance in this respect, that without it we can have no spiritual or practical knowledge."

-Jonathan Edwards in the sermon Christian Knowledge in "On Knowing Christ"

Jonathan Edwards on Romans 11:36

“For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things.” - Romans 11:36

Jonathan Edwards in “God Glorified in Man’s Dependence”:

“The several ways wherein the dependence of one being may be upon another for its good, and wherein the redeemed of Jesus Christ depend on God for all their good, and these viz. That they have all their good of Him, and that they have all through Him and that they have all in Him.

That He is the cause and original whence all their good comes, therein it is of Him;

and that He is the medium by which it is obtained and conveyed, therein they have it through Him;

And that He is the good itself given and conveyed, therein it is in Him.”

Jonathan Edwards on Limited Atonement

"From these things it will inevitably follow, that however Christ in some sense may be said to die for all, and to redeem all visible Christians, yea, the whole world by his death; yet there must be something particular in the design of his death, with respect to such as he intended should actually be saved thereby. "

Edwards and Newton: Battling Doubt

So do we merely accept doubt and unbelief? I was interested in searching for Edwards’ prescription for doubt and found it in his thoughts on those who take communion but have doubts:

“And though the pastor is not to act as a searcher of the heart, or a lord of conscience in this affair, ...but... to be helpers of their joy, and promoters of their salvation.”
-Qualifications for communion

And his Resolution 25: "Resolved, to examine carefully, and constantly, what that one thing in me is, which causes me in the least to doubt of the love of God; and to direct all my forces against it."

But how? Jay Bennett probably knows better as he has made Edwards the focus of his studies, but I like hymns, so Newton fills in the gaps vividly for me in "Begone Unbelief": look to Christ, not to your faith or will, by Christ is faith strengthened:

1. Begone unbelief, My Savior is near,
And for my relief Will surely appear:
By faith let me wrestle, with God in the storm
And help me my Savior, the faith to adorn

2. Though dark be my way, Since he is my guide,
'Tis mine to obey, and His to provide;
Though cisterns be broken, And creatures all fail,
The word he has spoken will surely prevail.

3. Why should I complain, Of want or distress
Temptation or pain? He told me no less
The heirs of salvation, I know from his word
Through much tribulation Must follow their Lord

4. Since all that I meet will work for my good,
The bitter is sweet, The medicine food;
Though painful at present, will cease before long,
And then, O! how glorious, The conqueror's song!

Jonathan Edwards quote of the day.

"True liberty consists only in the power of doing what we ought to will, and in not being constrained to do what we ought not to will" -Jonathan Edwards