There are Christian scholars, and then there are those who study and research because they really just want to know God in deeper ways. Scholarship might become a necessary by-product of the latter, as far as the apparent characteristic of their lives, but that’s not what drives them; what drives them, ultimately, is a love for Christ; a realization that without God in Christ in their lives that they would be vanquished and swallowed up by the cares and worries of daily life. The Apostle Paul in II Corinthians 3 writes this: “⁴ Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. ⁵ Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, ⁶ who has made us sufficient to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” Christians who study, primarily because they realize that their sufficiency or adequacy is from Christ alone, I would suggest, are distinct from what we normally think of in terms of a “scholar,” even a Christian scholar. A Christian scholar, in a primary way, is characterized by a drive to achieve heights in whatever their chosen discipline might be. They will achieve this through getting good reviews from their peers, by offering theses to the scholarly world that are original to them and their names, and potentially be elevated to chairs or noted positions of influence in their professorial, editorial, or administrative roles. Jonathan Edwards, while achieving many of the marks of what counts toward being a recognized “scholar” and “academic,” ultimately was driven by the higher less self-possessed purpose of seeking the glory of God in everything that he did. His scholarship was a by-product of a greater focus wherein self-consumption was not the motivating factor. Oliver Crisp and Kyle Strobel write about Edwards in this vein,

Although he was a voracious and eclectic reader, drawing upon as wide a range of materials as he could in order to fashion his own works, it would be a mistake t think of Edwards as a scholar in the modern, secular sense of the word. No doubt he was a fine metaphysician and surprisingly well read for someone living so far from the centers of high society. But, contrary to the Miller thesis about the character of Edwards’s outputs, his work was all bent to a single purpose, namely, the glory of God. To this end, he read and studied the Bible more than any other work. At first glance, it is rather surprising that modern secondary scholarship on Edwards has not made more of this fact. After all, Edwards was a minister almost all of his professional life, spending hours a day in prayer, in Bible study, in the writing of minute notebooks on Scripture and typology, and in the construction of sermons and midweek lectures for his congregation. One of his major projected works, which remained unfinished at the time of his death, was a Harmony of the Old and New Testaments, for which he had been gathering notebook materials over a protracted period.[1]

There is a proportion in Edwards’ life between his Christian spirituality and his drive to know God which produced the massive ‘scholarly’ output he generated. His scholarship was the outcome of his love of God in Christ; as he sought Christ and His Kingdom first all these other things were added.

I think Edwards models what Christian scholarship actually should be. Not one where career is of the upmost, but to know God and make Him known; both personally and corporately. A life driven by doxology.

[1] Oliver D. Crisp and Kyle C. Strobel, Jonathan Edwards: An Introduction to His Thought (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2018), 25.