Pastor John, it appears that 18th century theologian Jonathan Edwards and his wife owned

household and farming slaves, perhaps as many as six total, and they seem to have owned

at least one slave at all times, even up until Jonathan's death.

How does his slave holding factor into your evaluation of Jonathan Edwards' theological

legacy?

Instead of trying to explain how it could be, I think the most helpful thing to do at

this point would be to just to answer the question, okay, what effect does that have on you,

you lover of Edwards, what differences does that make to you?

Does that affect you at all?

And here are four or five responses or effects that it has on me.

Number one, it warns me not to idolize or idealize any man except Jesus.

Something's going to show up and disillusion me.

If I pick out a dead man or a living man as somebody that I'm going to idealize, there

is no ideal man except Jesus.

So that's the first thing.

It's a warning to measure my admiration carefully.

Number two, it cautions me that if I had, if he had blind spots on that issue, he may

well have had blind spots on other issues, which means that I'm going to now read with

some more care.

I think our vigilance in reading is heightened when we know that a man has blown it in one

area, we say, well, we've got a fallible man on our hands here, therefore we will now

read with some special vigilance, lest we be sucked into approving everything that he says

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