Theology of Revival

by J. I. Packer

For 250 years pietistic evangelicalism both sides of the Atlantic has conceived revival as a characteristic work of God visiting communities of his people to deepen his work of grace in their lives and to extend his kingdom in this world. The Reformation, the Puritan era, the Evangelical Revival in Britain, the first and second Great Awakenings in America, the Welsh Revival of 1904–05, and the mid­twentieth­ century East African Revival are among examples cited. The theological claim is that the revival pattern is normatively seen in the Acts narrative and in the spiritual conditions that the apostolic letters to churches reflect or seek to promote: God’s holy presence, sovereignly mani fested and vividly realized, brings conviction of the ugliness, guilt, pollution and destructiveness of sin; exercises and gestures of *repentance (confession to God and others, restitution, public renouncing of vices) become vigorous and even violent; Christ and forgiveness through his *cross are joyfully cele brated; and there is an evangelistic overflow. The later, narrower, American usage (‘revival’ meaning a concentrated evangelistic campaign, and ‘revivalist’ meaning its leader) stems from the early ministry pattern of Charles *Finney, an innovative itinerant evangelist for over a decade following his conversion in 1821. His brilliant and still influential Lectures on Revivals of Religion (1835) delineated his methods and generalized from his experi ence.

The fountain­head theologian of revival was the latter­day Puritan Jonathan Edwards, who after seeing revival in his own church in 1735 and in the Great Awakening of 1740 gave the world his Narrative of Surprising Conversions (1735), The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God (1741), and Thoughts on the Revival of Religion in New England in 1740 (1742). In the latter work, as in his sermons of 1739, post hu mously published as A History of the Work of Redemption, Edwards adumbrates a cyclical view of revival as a recurring work of sovereign mercy, like successive waves breaking on the seashore, whereby God extends his kingdom till the largely converted world of postmillennial eschat ology becomes reality. God regularly initiates revival by stirring up prayer for it (see Edward’s Humble Attempt to Promote . . . Extraordinary Prayer, for the Revival of Religion, and the Advancement of Christ’s Kingdom on Earth, Pursuant to Scripture Promise and Prophecies Concerning the Last Time, 1748); Satan regularly seeks to counterfeit it and corrupt it into heretical and antinomian fanaticism; the church, however, is regularly enlarged and Christ is freshly glorified through it. Interpreting Revelation in his tori­ cist terms and believing that God’s plan had already reached the outpouring of the sixth vial (bowl) (Rev. 16:2), Edwards ventured the view that the work of God’s Spirit in the Great Awakening was the start of an era of world­ wide revival emanating from America (‘’Tis not unlikely . . . ’). Edward’s prognostication fuelled much religious and cultural optimism in America during the nineteenth century.

The Boston pastor Charles Chauncy saw the Great Awakening as unspiritual mass hysteria, expressed in manifold intel lec tual, emotional and behavioural excesses. Edward’s apologia was that below the acrid smoke of carnal and perverted excitement the fire of God’s Spirit was demonstrably burning, advancing faith, promoting holiness and exalting Christ in a way that only God could or would do. Chauncy argued that the excesses were overthrowing godliness rather than advancing it, and that the whole move ment boiled down to self­deceived ‘enthusiasm’ (fanatical reliance on eccentric inner impressions). Revivals, as Edwards allowed, are always disfigured by this, and have drawn similar criti cisms from churchmen of an intel lec tualist and formalist cast of mind, both Prot est ant and Roman Catholic.

The Pelagian streak in Finney’s anthropology led him to reconceive Edward’s morphology of revival as illustrating what he took to be the universal law that honest and urgent prayer and repenting by the church guarantees an outpouring of the Holy Spirit in revival blessing, just as under God’s kindly providence the farmer’s sowing and caring for his field guarantees a crop. The arguably simplistic thought that when the church is spiritually moribund Edwardsean revival is God’s immediate will if only his faithful servants will pay the price in passionate prayer and penitence has been widely influential in popular evangelical piety since Finney’s day, though the finding has rarely been commensurate with the seeking. Part of the difficulty has been the one­track­minded romanticizing and stereotyping of revival in Edwardsean terms, isolating it from the theological, liturgical, ethical and structural aspects of ongoing reformation and renewal in a changing world.

It has been proposed that revival, meaning trans form ation fellowship with personal righteousness and strong outreach, as seen in Acts, is a permanent norm for the church and will automatically be continuous where hindrances from unbelief, misbelief, apathy and sin do not intrude. The charismatic renewal, like original Pentecostalism, is sometimes seen as continuous revival in this sense. Edward’s theocentricity and acknowledgment of God’s wise yet often inscrutable sovereignty, which may make disciplined patience the prime calling of eager but baffled petitioners, does not however find its place in these assessments, so that disillusionment following triumphalism constantly threatens.

Today’s world church seeks renewal in many forms. The renewal quest among evangelical con ser va tives embraces doctrinal reformation in face of liberal unorthodoxy; charismatic revitalizing in worship and giftings; liturgical enrichments of various kinds; rehabilitation of expository preaching, and of pastoral mentoring and spiritual direction; establishing lay leadership of small groups and task forces within congregations, all on the principle of every-­member ministry in the body of Christ according to each person’s ability; restoring adult catechesis, and regaining all­round apologetic competence and interactive presentation of God’s truth to the wider secular world (John XXIII’s aggiornamento agenda for the Second Vatican Council). Some seek Edwardsean revival in its classic shape, with or without the above specifics. Sought in isolation, each of these goals appears partial and incomplete in relation to the fullness of the church’s present­day calling and mission. To make the profoundly spiritual Edwardsean understanding of revival the frame within which to set, and into which to integrate, all the goals mentioned would seem to be a healthful and perhaps overdue project.

Select Bibliography

J. Edwards, Works, 2 vols. (repr. London, 1974); idem, Works, 28 vols. (New Haven, 1957–); C. G. Finney, Lectures on Revivals of Religion, ed. W. G. McLaughlin (Cambridge, 1960); R. F. Lovelace, Dynamics of Spiritual Life (Downers Grove, 1979); I. H. Murray, Pentecost Today (Edinburgh, 1998); J. I. Packer, ‘The Glory of God and the Reviving of Religion’, in J. Piper and J. Taylor (eds.), A God-­Entranced Vision
of All Things (Wheaton, 2004); idem, Keep in Step with the Spirit (Grand Rapids, 2005).

J. I. Packer