- Neu
E-Book, Englisch, 232 Seiten
Schwanda / Maddock / Taylor Whitefield on the Christian Life
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-4335-6607-3
Verlag: Crossway
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection
New Birth to Enjoy God
E-Book, Englisch, 232 Seiten
Reihe: Theologians on the Christian Life
ISBN: 978-1-4335-6607-3
Verlag: Crossway
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection
Tom Schwanda (PhD, Durham University) is associate professor of Christian formation and ministry emeritus at Wheaton College and senior fellow for Christian spirituality for the C. S. Lewis Institute discipleship ministry. He is the author of The Emergence of Evangelical Spirituality: The Age of Edwards, Newton, and Whitefield and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.
Autoren/Hrsg.
Weitere Infos & Material
Chapter 1
Central to George Whitefield’s life and ministry was the new birth. In 1769, one year before his death, he recounted a retrospective review of his conversion in which he narrated his struggle to find peace with God. His listeners were reminded that baptism alone does not assure anyone of entering heaven. He vulnerably rehearsed his misguided journey of excessive asceticism that almost killed him and the futility of seeking God solely by external human efforts. He joyfully credited Charles Wesley’s gift of The Life of God in the Soul of Man by the Scottish minister and professor Henry Scougal (1650–1678), which confronted him with his need to be born again. With a tinge of delight, he then added, “Whenever I go to Oxford, I cannot help running to that place where Jesus Christ first revealed himself to me, and gave the new birth.” His frequent return to this specific place illustrates how it served as an Ebenezer for him (1 Sam. 7:12) as he vividly remembered what Jesus Christ did for him, and could do for anyone else. When he concluded his sermon, Whitefield extended God’s gracious invitation to the unconverted.1
Twenty-nine years earlier, when he had completed his first journal, he expressed the same hope that his conversion narrative would inspire and guide others to discover their same need to be born again. Some readers, he observed, might experience less intense struggles, while others might face even greater obstacles. Regardless, his “hearty prayer” was that “whoever thou art, mayst experience the like and greater blessings.”2 Because of his own experience, he never grew tired of proclaiming the same joy and liberating news of the new birth. How Whitefield discovered this freedom that became the cornerstone of his new life in Christ is the story of this chapter.
Whitefield’s Early Life
Whitefield was born on December 16, 1714, in Gloucester, located about 105 miles northwest of London.3 The youngest of seven children, he was raised in the Bell Inn, owned and operated by his parents. Gloucester’s largest inn, it served as the social hub for city life. During his life, inns were the most reputable institutions for providing food, drink, and accommodations. Whitefield became fatherless when only two, and eight years later his mother remarried in what he later described as “an unhappy match.”4 It meant he had a dependable father for only the first two years of his life.
Early in his childhood, Whitefield recognized the corruption of his heart. He was addicted to vulgar language and often stole money from his mother. He recounted using this money to satisfy his “sensual appetite” by buying plays, playing cards, and romance novels. When he compared himself with the young man in the Gospel who claimed that he had kept all God’s commandments (Matt. 19:20), Whitefield confessed he had broken every one of them. Starkly aware of his immorality, he also recognized the occasional movements of God’s Spirit that reminded him that he was loved by God. Despite his rebellion and degeneracy, Whitefield considered becoming a minister and mimicked the way they prayed. By this time, he was convicted to give the stolen money to the poor or to purchase books of devotion. At twelve he was enrolled in St Mary de Crypt, the local grammar school, and demonstrated an aptitude for speaking and memorizing, and he was given key roles in school plays. Later he regretted, with a sense of embarrassment, being cast in plots that required him to wear girls’ clothing.
Before the age of fifteen, Whitefield discontinued his education to assist his mother in managing the Bell Inn. Increasingly his thoughts turned to God, as he read the Bible nightly and composed a few sermons. When he had the unexpected opportunity to attend Oxford University to become a minister, he declared that God had called him “from drawing wine for drunkards, to draw water out of the wells of salvation for the refreshment of His spiritual food.” This passionate desire to become a minister was later deleted from his Journals, which he revised in 1748, though they were not republished until 1756. Following the release of his first published journal in 1738, he was attacked by critics as well as friends for his perceived immaturity and frequent spiritual glosses.5 Statements in which he compared himself with biblical persons, including Jesus and Paul, and expressed an immodest sense of himself were eliminated. He also deleted or revised references to impressions of the Holy Spirit, ecstatic encounters with God, and battles with intense temptations from Satan. Additionally, rash judgments made against other Anglican ministers and bishops were purged.
Whitefield’s spiritual life continued to oscillate between valleys of spiritual anxiety and mountain peaks of peace with God. Yet his introspective efforts to draw closer to God were soon smothered by Satan’s temptations. New hope and encouragement arose when he dreamed that he would see God on Mount Sinai. When he reported this to a woman, she interpreted it as a “call from God.”6
Social and Spiritual Context
Whitefield’s inner anxiety mirrored a similar tension he observed in a society characterized by “drunkenness, debauchery, licentiousness, profanity, Sabbath-breaking, and heterodox beliefs.”7 Born into the Church of England, he was shaped early in life by worship that had lost much of its fervor and often was consumed by external forms devoid of heart engagement. Mark Noll observes that “confident religious life, persuasive preaching of the gospel and effective Christian pastoring were in relatively short supply during the first decades of the eighteenth century.”8
While many ministers sought to provide pastoral care to their congregations, some devoted more energy to their dinner menus than to their parishioners’ souls.9 For the average British churchgoer, this created a conventional faith, though some laypeople still desired deeper experiences of God.10 This accounts for the attractiveness of Whitefield’s preaching to many dissatisfied worshipers. Additionally, a hunger for devotional literature created a strong market for his Journals and sermons.11 But if some congregations found themselves led by spiritually lethargic ministers, it was equally true that some Anglican clergymen serious about their spiritual duties encountered congregations indifferent to living consistent Christian lives. For example, while some ministers “frequently lectured their parishioners against sin and vice,” elsewhere laypeople criticized their ministers as “incompetent” and “poor preachers,” whom they “accused of intemperance in drinking.”12
Deism and the excessive consumption of gin were two of the major challenges faced by the church during Whitefield’s time. Deism denied the supernatural nature of Christianity and challenged the integrity of the Bible. It also sought “to replace traditional Christianity with a religion of mere morality and a distant God.”13 Whitefield often warned of the danger of deists in his sermons. He countered their assaults by affirming a personal God revealed by the miracle of the virgin birth and Jesus’s resurrection from the dead. Furthermore, the dynamic power of the Holy Spirit—which was central to Whitefield’s ministry—assisted him in refuting the limitations of deism.
The gin epidemic—usually dated between 1720 and 1751—afflicted England both socially and morally. Drinking was especially problematic in London and affected every class of people, including ministers. Samuel Johnson (1709–1784), the well-known British biographer and lexicographer, confessed, “A man is never happy in the present, unless he is drunk.”14
When the popularity of gin subsided, it was due to the price of malt rather than to moral convictions.15 Sexual morality was at a low ebb, and erotic literature and “scatological satire” abounded in the press. A directory of local prostitutes provided a variety of resources for those seeking sexual pleasure.16 During Whitefield’s life, the increase of adultery and fornication disrupted family and public life, and created a greater financial burden to provide for illegitimate children.17 Isaac Watts (1674–1748), a British minister best known today as a hymn writer, challenged laypeople regarding this immorality: “’Tis time, my friends, when religion is sunk into such universal decay in the nation, to enquire whether we have not suffered it to decay amongst us also, and whether we are not sharers in the common degeneracy.”18
Whitefield was a keen observer of his surroundings, no doubt sharpened by his awareness of the destructive potential of alcoholic abuse from working in the Bell Inn. He grasped the power of the gospel to transform these social ills. During his initial voyage in 1738 to America, he witnessed the drinking habits of the crew, which prompted his sermon titled “The Heinous Sin of Drunkenness,” based on Ephesians 5:18, “Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess;...
