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Originally Posted by KMK  If the Great Awakening was not a revival, then would someone please point me to one? (Besides the book of Acts) |
Would the happenings in Acts be considered "revival"? A lot of men converted. They were vivified, but not revived. Both words come from the latin
vivere, "to live," but the difference in meaning is obvious.
Just this evening I read a wonderful passage in D.G. Hart in which he argues that "revival" was not historically part of the Reformed vocabulary. Before the "revivalism" of the 18th century, the concern of the Reformed thinker was not whether a church was "alive" or "dead," rather "true" or "false." If the marks of a true church (preaching of the true gospel, administration of sacraments, and discipline) were evident, the church was true. In this way, the legitimacy of a church was determined by outward characteristics that could be measured against God's word (you shall know them by their fruits), not by the Spirit's invisible activity in the heart of a believer. This is consistent with our practice in other areas, such as examination for church membership. We cannot know how sincere the emotions of a person are; we know what he believes about God and salvation, and whether his profession is contradicted by gross immorality.
To leave aside the semantics of the question, then, a Confessional evaluation of the so-called Great Awakening would be based on the degree to which the marks of true churches were exhibited, not by an influx of personal zeal and enthusiastic piety in individuals, which, in my experience at least, is what people mean when they talk about revival.