Writing in the latest edition of Tabletalk Magazine, Owen Strachan, assistant professor of Christian theology and church history at Boyce College, offers some commentary on what Jonathan Edwards deemed the “religious affections.” Strachan writes:
In Religious Affections, Edwards lists twelve negative, or inconclusive, signs of conversion—including strong emotions, bodily reactions, and an outbreak of religious conversation—and twelve positive signs that show the Spirit has truly regenerated the heart unto faith in Christ. In his fourth positive sign, Edwards zeroes in on the way that affections “arise from the mind’s being enlightened, rightly and spiritually to understand or apprehend divine things” (2:266). In other words, thinking about salvation and the God who commissioned and initiated it fans the spiritual fire inside us to a flame.