Looking around at the church today, especially in the West, the needs feel many and great. While many Western nations, such as the U.S., have a long and deep heritage of Christianity in our past, the church often seems to be declining. Theological confusion, rampant immorality, and dwindling church attendance proliferate, all of which raise challenging questions: What ought we as church members and leaders do about it? How should we think about caring for and building the visible kingdom of God on earth in our day? These questions are especially important for those of us in Reformed, confessional contexts as we desire to see not just “souls saved,” but disciples gathered and grown into maturity of faith (Eph. 4:13; Heb. 5:14). How should we be seeking to always be “reformed according to God’s word” as we look out on the landscape of an often weak and wandering people of God?
One answer that has been somewhat neglected, but which deserves renewed consideration, is the one offered by John Thomson (1690?–1753). Confronting the crisis facing the American church during the period of the Great Awakening, he offered a different solution to the problem than his revivalist counterparts. They looked for emotional, often extravagant spiritual experiences and evidences of conversion. In contrast, Thomson offered confessional catechesis and called for deepened devotion to Christ through doctrinal instruction. I believe the church today could learn much from Thomson.
To properly understand Thomson, and the valuable voice he was within the church, one must read him in his context. His was a time that was quite formative in our nation’s history and the history of the American church—the period of the Great Awakening in the first half of the eighteenth century. As Europeans began to flood into the New World, churches in America were faced with a host of challenges, not least of which was a dearth of ministers and too few congregations to meet the spiritual needs of the growing population of newcomers, especially on the ever-expanding frontier. While settlers from the Old World brought with them some experience and form of Christianity, this often reflected a sort of “cultural Christianity.” It was nominal at best and resulted in an increasing immorality across the population. Faced with these challenges of formalism, nominalism, immorality, and lack of theological knowledge among the people in the pews, American ministers were motivated to seek reformation in the church and broader culture in the colonies.
New Light Ministers
Yet exactly how that reform ought to be sought became a matter of sharp debate. On the one side were those labeled “New Light” ministers, whose answer lay in revival. Influenced by the Methodism coming out of Britain and being popularized by the Wesleys—and to a degree George Whitfield—New Light ministers saw as the primary need in the church and nation that people have a deep, emotional experience of conversion. They diagnosed the nominalism and immorality proliferating around them as due to a lack of heart-level engagement with spiritual matters, and a cultural toleration of cold formality in religion. New Light ministers felt that people needed a deep experience—a profound sense of their need for salvation from sin, as well as a deep grasp of the lavish grace of God in the gospel of Jesus Christ. This led to what has come to be known as the First Great Awakening, usually dated from the 1730s to around 1740.
Closely related to the revivalists’ diagnosis of the problem was their proposed cure. New Light ministers, including those within the Presbyterian denomination who called themselves the “New Side,” saw the answer to the spiritual malaise of the early eighteenth century to be in revivalism. Revivalism was characterized by traveling preachers—generally with great skills of oration like the most famous George Whitefield (1714–1770)—who would draw large crowds to hear them powerfully proclaim the gospel, often in more engaging, emotive ways than much preaching of the day. Early on they would go into churches, but over time these revival meetings moved outside to accommodate larger audiences and sometimes less-welcoming local pastors.
The method of revivalist preaching was distinct. It first sought to preach the “terrors of the law,” using the power of oratory to bring people to a deep sense of their sin and guilt before a holy God and their desperate need for a savior. Although Jonathan Edwards’s own style was reportedly fairly subdued, the powerful effect of his illustrations in one of his most famous sermons, “Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God,” serves as a powerful example of such “terrors of the Law” preaching. Only after having sufficiently persuaded the audience of their desperate and dependent condition in their state of sin would these preachers then move to proclaim the wonder of the unmerited, free grace of God offered in the gospel of Jesus Christ, and call people to the “new birth” of conversion. The belief was that those who had had such radically emotional experiences of “conversion” could be confident of truly being elect and certain of their state of salvation as they continued to live a life of piety and devotion to the Lord. Although the revivalists had their excesses at times and were not without critics, the label “Great Awakening” became associated with this movement early on, as the American Colonies at the time did see clear evidence that the revivals had some lasting effect—churches grew and new ones were planted, the culture shifted from a tolerated looseness to a tenor of greater morality, and many of the more eccentric and excessive behaviors of the revival faded into the background.
Yet whether this should be fully attributed to the revivalists and their methods can be questioned, especially insofar as it leaves out another important and active group also involved in the Great Awakening—the Old Light / Old Side ministers.
Old Light / Old Side Ministers
Often given short-shrift if not outright vilified in historical discussions of the Great Awakening, these ministers labeled the “Old Light” were critics of the revivalists. Along with their “Old Side” counterparts within the Presbyterian denomination, they found themselves at times opposing the revivalism of their day due to its excesses and what they saw as errors in the New Light’s theology and practice. Historians have therefore often construed these Old Light / Old Side churchmen as coldhearted, “dead orthodox” ministers, guilty of opposing a genuine work of the Holy Spirit in reforming Christ’s church. A classic illustration of this is Charles Augustus Briggs (1841–1913), a Presbyterian Old Testament scholar and historian who was eventually defrocked and excommunicated from the church in 1893 for his liberal views about the Bible. In his 1885 history of the American Presbyterian church, he describes the difference between the New Light / New Side and the Old Light / Old Side as follows:
On the one side [i.e., the New Side] were Puritan vital piety and Methodist aggressive evangelization; on the other [i.e., the Old Side], the formalism of conformity to rigid types of doctrine and of inefficiency in traditional methods of work. On the one side, liberal subscription and considerate discipline; on the other, strict subscription and tyrannical discipline. (American Presbyterianism, 272)
It should be acknowledged that Briggs was not the first to portray the Old Side so negatively. In reality, he merely echoed the critical voices among the Old Side’s own contemporary critics at the time.
The most notorious example of such a critical voice can be found in Gilbert Tennent (1703–1764) and his sermon later published as a book, The Danger of an Unconverted Ministry (1740). This sermon—preached in the pulpit of a preacher whom Tennent criticizes in it—offers a sustained critique of the Old Side as being pharisaical and probably not even truly converted because they opposed the revivalists and their methods. To his credit, after the fallout of this sermon included the first denominational split in 1741 (the “Old Side / New Side split”), Tennent tempered his language and struck a strongly conciliatory note that lay the groundwork for the reunification of the denomination in 1758 (see for example his Irenicum Ecclesiasticum [1749], in which he shows how much shared theology and practice there truly was between him and some of his Old Side brothers). Nonetheless, Tennent’s strong language in his 1740 sermon illustrates the heat of the debate and the deep divide between the revivalists and their critics.
Despite the bad press they have long endured, the Old Side Presbyterians’ perspective on the problems of their time deserve renewed reflection and recovery, especially since the lasting benefits of the Great Awakening may be as much to their credit as to the revivalists. Though most attribute the positive effects of the Awakening to the activity of the revivalists, this may not properly take into account the parallel efforts at more ordinary-means ministry being made by the Old Side ministers during that period and beyond. Indeed, while the revivals took place over a five- to ten-year period, the work of more ordinary ministry—church planting, ministerial training, preaching, and teaching within the local church—was happening long before and continued long after the tents of the revivalist camp meetings were set up and broken down
John Thomson
One prominent Old Side minister who illustrates this point well is the Reverend John Thomson, who wrote the 1749 Explication of the Shorter Catechism (which I recently edited and introduced for republication by WSP). As I wrote in my introduction to that work, John Thomson “may be the most significant eighteenth-century American Presbyterian you have probably never heard of” (1). Although he was probably the most prominent leader of the American Presbyterian church in the early 1700s, as a staunchly Old Side minister he never garnered quite the fame and popularity of George Whitefield and Gilbert Tennent. Yet, upon closer examination of his life and ministry, he serves to show the valuable work of the Old Side ministers and their possibly underappreciated role in helping to cultivate some of the more lasting good fruit of the Great Awakening.
As a leader of the Old Side faction of the Presbyterian church, Thomson illustrates the broad consensus that actually did exist between both sides of the revival debates. The concerns that the New Light/New Side ministers were so vocal about—nominal Christianity and rampant immorality among those claiming to be “Christian”—were as much a concern to Thomson. In his writings he often bemoans the sad spiritual state of the Colonies in his day. For example, in his introduction to his Explication of the Shorter Catechism he writes:
It is matter of great and sorrowful lamentation to consider how many visible professors there are in this part of the world, who have been baptized in the name of the Holy Trinity, and so received as members of the visible church, who yet are absolute strangers, both to the doctrines of Christianity, and practice of serious piety; and who give themselves up to looseness and impious profanity in speech and behavior; as if they did not believe that there is a God who observes, and will call them to an account; . . . (2025: 53–54; emphasis added)
Note that Thomson wrote this almost a decade after the peak fervor of the Awakening had ebbed and faded. This was not, however, a new concern or sentiment for Thomson. In his very first published work, his 1729 Adopting Act, he warned that the church then was “surrounded with so many pernicious and dangerous Corruptions in Doctrine, and these grown so much in Vogue and Fashion . . . Arminianism, Socinianism, Deism, Freethinking, &c. do like a Deluge overflow even the Reformed Churches” (29–30). These quotes illustrate what is clear throughout Thomson’s writing—that he shared the revivalists’ concern over the spiritual state of America in his day. It was not with their diagnosis that he disagreed; it was with their proposed cure.
Rather than calling the church to a new fervor of emotional experience, he sought a renewed commitment to catechesis and biblical, doctrinal instruction.
A survey of the topics Thomson chose to write on shows his distinctive response to the needs of his day. Rather than calling the church to a new fervor of emotional experience, he sought a renewed commitment to catechesis and biblical, doctrinal instruction. Even in his first major contribution to the denomination—his leading the fledgling American Presbyterian church to subscribe to the Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms (i.e., the Adopting Act) in 1729—he was concerned with helping the churches’ leadership and laity clearly discern her doctrinal distinctives. His next publication in 1734 (The Poor Orphans Legacy) reads like a counterpoint to the revivalists’ call for a radically emotional “conversion experience.” In this book, written as an exhortation to his own children, he calls for those who may even have grown up under the auspices of the church to take care to “make sure of your Conversion or Regeneration” (11). The whole book goes on to serve as a sort of “catechumen’s manual” for how to profess one’s own faith and live a life growing in godliness.
Half a decade later, Thomson again found himself catechizing and teaching about issues raised by the revivalists’ preaching and practices. In An Essay upon the Faith of Assurance (1740), Thomson seeks to shore up the doubt and confusion sown within the flock under his care. The contents—initially preached as a number of sermons on 2 Peter 1:10—seek to teach the biblical basis of assurance of faith, including that it is attainable by the “right use of ordinary means” (WCF 18.3). This seems to have been intended to correct errors introduced by the revivalist preachers, who were implying—if not outright stating—that the only way to be assured of salvation is by a supernatural revelation (like William Tennent, Jr., Gilbert’s brother) or by a dramatic conversion experience. Instead, Thomson teaches that while conversion is necessary for assurance to be true, it can and often does come about by quieter applications of the ordinary means of grace, namely “without immediate Revelation or infallible Inspiration” (6). Thomson’s Old Side approach becomes so evident here as he addresses the crisis and concerns of his day through catechesis, articulating biblical doctrine from Scripture in light of its teaching summarized in the Westminster Confession of Faith.
A year later in 1741, Thomson published another sermon more directly addressing what he saw as doctrinal errors being introduced into the church by the New Side. In The Doctrine of Convictions Set in a Clear Light, Thomson preaches from 1 Corinthians 3:12–13, applying Paul’s teaching for the Corinthian context—fraught with divisions among ministers and their followers—to the Old Side / New Side divisions within the denomination in Thomson’s day. In the introduction to this work, he explains that it was prompted in part as a response to Tennent’s sermon The Danger of an Unconverted Ministry. Thomson notes there that he himself had been caught as one of the “Pharisee Preachers” in Tennent’s crosshairs. Yet rather than mounting a personal defense of his ministry, Thomson takes the opportunity to warn the church more broadly against a “wood, hay, straw” (1 Cor. 3:13) form of ministry, which he argues is one marked by a mixture of error with truth. He then spends the majority of the sermon addressing some of the doctrinal errors he sees being introduced into the church by the New Side preachers (11–80). Thomson concludes by bemoaning how, among other things, the New Siders “[p]ractically cast off all Presbyterial Order, and as it were say that neither Confession, Catechisms, nor Directory are any more to be regarded” (79). Instead, as Thomson illustrates throughout this work, he continuously sought to call the church back to the truth of Scripture as explicitly articulated in the Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms (vi., 56, 79), specifically with regard to conversion and assurance of faith. In short, where the revivalists encouraged an emotional experience in order for people to be assured of their salvation, Thomson sought to catechize and cultivate a confidence in Christ by applying the confession’s careful biblical instruction.
A final example from Thomson’s writing for how he answered the crisis of his day with catechesis can be found in his final publication, An Explication of the Shorter Catechism. Simply put, this Explication is a sort of commentary on the Westminster Shorter Catechism, “explicating” each of the Catechism’s questions and answers with a number of subordinate questions and answers. Initially published almost a decade after the peak fervor of the revival (around 1740), in it Thomson does not directly address his New Side opponents. Instead, this was a more positive project, seeking to put down in print for posterity a snapshot of his catechetical work over his previous three decades of ministry (An Explication of the Shorter Catechism, 55). Unsurprisingly, the concerns over revivalist errors are nonetheless evident in some of the topics he devotes most significant attention to: the nature of regeneration, conviction of sin, true conversion, and assurance of faith (122–30; 209–15). His pastoral concern for how the revivalists’ teaching had affected the assurance of the members under his care can be seen in his lengthy exposition of WSC 97 on worthy participation in the Lord’s Supper (226–42). Thomson carefully navigates a robust, Reformed doctrine of the means of grace in seeking to offer great assurance to those with sensitive consciences that they should boldly partake, without wrongly “lowering the bar” to welcome hypocritical “unworthy” participation. Yet what is so evident in this work is that while Thomson clearly addresses the concerns of his day, he does so within a broader framework of seeking to catechize the church. Finally, it should be noted that, although the Old Siders such as Thomson were deeply concerned with doctrinal fidelity within the church, the implication that they were ingrown and unconcerned with the saving of lost souls should also be challenged. Yes, Thomson was clearly devoted to the building up of the church through teaching and training in biblical, confessional orthodoxy; but to accuse him of a lack of concern for the evangelism of the lost would belie the actual details of his life. Thomson was deeply missional, devoting much of his ministry to extending the reach of the gospel into the ever-expanding frontier. In 1717, having just been ordained, Thomson was appointed to the overtures committee of the Presbyterian Synod (i.e., the General Assembly). As one of his first acts, he helped to establish a “fund for pious uses.” This denominational monetary fund served to support the sending of ministers and the establishment of churches throughout the colonies for decades to follow. Thomson served on the committee administrating the fund from 1721 to 1746, during which time the fund was used to supplement ministers’ compensation when they went to serve in small, frontier communities that could not yet support a full-time minister. In this way, the fund served to promote church planting and the spread of the gospel to the unreached parts of the Colonies. And Thomson should be credited with being part of the fund’s formation.
Yet Thomson’s missional efforts were not merely in coordinating financial support for missional works through the “fund for pious uses.” He also engaged in missions work on the frontier himself, especially later in life. In 1744, he resigned from his pastorship at Chestnut Level Presbyterian Church in Pennsylvania in order to move to the frontier parts of Virginia where there was a great need for Presbyterian ministers to serve the growing Scots-Irish Presbyterian population. Then, in 1751 he moved to the furthest parts of the frontier in North Carolina, planting a number of churches there before his death in 1753. Not only did Thomson engage in constant church planting and missions work himself, but everywhere he went he sought to train up young men for the gospel ministry. We see this legacy for missional catechesis in a number of institutions of higher learning that likely trace their origin to ministerial training schools begun by Thomson in the various places where he pastored, including the University of Delaware (DE), Hampden-Sydney College (VA), and Davidson College (An Explication of the Shorter Catechism, 18–22).
Thomson teaches that while conversion is necessary for assurance to be true, it can and often does come about by quieter applications of the ordinary means of grace.
To conclude, what lessons should we take away from this reexamination of the theological debates that took place around the Great Awakening, and especially the Old Side’s approach to the period’s problems as reflected in John Thomson? I would argue that Thomson’s response to the spiritual crisis faced in the early eighteenth century offers a more robust, biblical, confessional model for how we ought to seek revival and reformation for the church in our day. Many of the challenges facing the church in America and across the world resemble the ones faced by Thomson and his contemporaries—a growing nominalism and formalism within the church, a slide into moral looseness and decadence, and an ever-spreading secularism.
How do we labor for reformation and revival in our own time? Some would have us follow the model of the New Side revivalists and their overt efforts to excite spiritual fervor and emotional encounters with the gospel through powerfully persuasive preaching. Yet the Old Side offers us another option—an arguably more biblical and confessionally faithful one: conscious catechesis and instruction in deep, doctrinal devotion to Christ. Rather than calling people outside the church to an intense tent-meeting experience—while leaving ongoing discipleship to others—the Old Side challenge, reflected in Thomson’s writing, is different. It calls us to devote ourselves to the ordinary means of grace: the ministry of the word and sacrament, faithful discipleship in the whole counsel of God, and church discipline to correct doctrinal error. It also includes catechesis of the “young arising generation” (An Explication of the Shorter Catechism, 54, 57) and a steady pursuit of growth in piety among God’s people. Churches should be planted. The lost should be called to faith in Jesus Christ. And ministers should continue to be sent with the gospel to places that lack a faithful, Reformed presence and proclamation of the gospel of grace in Jesus Christ.
Instead of inventing new measures to build the church or looking to influencers to sway the masses by the power of their social media presence, Thomson would call the church to a renewed commitment to keep the charge laid on her by Christ and his apostles two thousand years ago: entrust the gospel to faithful men who are able to teach (2 Tim. 2:2) and send them into all the world (Matt. 28:19; Mark 16:15) to “preach the Word” (2 Tim. 4:2) and “teach what accords with sound doctrine” (Titus 2:1). In short, Thomson teaches us to answer our current crisis as he did his—with confessional catechesis.