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TOPIC: Edwards, Jonathan - Rational Biblical Theology (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: Chapt 28 cont 3
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4. After Edwards but not because of (in fact, in spite of) Edwards
After Edwards, Puritan, Calvinistic seeking and preparation have just about perished from the face of America. It has perished with barely a trace. In fact, less than a trace. Scholars, such as Perry Miller, cannot even find it in Edwards himself! Indeed, Miller thinks Edwards opposed it! So thoroughly have the historical tables been turned that that which Jonathan Edwards most cogently defended and ardently preached and practiced he is supposed to have extirpated as an unwelcome vestige of the incipient Arminianism of covenant theology. Even modern Calvinism can hardly remember the “time when.” Nothing brings more blinking stares than to lecture to American Calvinistic groups today on seeking as the cutting edge of Calvinistic evangelism. How did the change happen?
A. The Immediate Edwardsian School
Preparation barely survived in the immediate school of Edwards himself. Not in Bellamy, Hopkins, Edwards Jr., Dwight or Emmons is the doctrine opposed. However, it seems to play an important role in none of them. It seems almost artificial in Hopkins, seemingly incompatible with Emmons’ thought, like a demure, modest and inconspicuous presence in Dwight. Strange fate.
Edwards must have noticed its relative absence in Bellamy’s True Religion Delineated. This work, for which Edwards wrote a preface, was generally in accord with his own teaching even on preparation. But what a difference in the lack of emphasis on any significant role that seeking could play. About the only reference we noticed in this 400-page volume comes in almost reluctantly and leaves again in a paragraph which we quote:
It is undoubtedly the Duty of poor sinners to be deeply affected with all these wonderful Methods of divine Grace, and to Strive and Labour with the greatest Painfulness and Diligence to fall in with the Design of the Gospel, to be sensible of their sinful, guilty, undone Estate, and to look to the free Grace of God thro’ him, Luk_13:24. Strive to enter in at the strait Gate. Some are of the Opinion, that because the best Sinners can do, while Enemies to God in their Hearts, is, as to the Manner of it sinful and odious in the Eyes of the divine Holiness, that therefore their best Way is to do nothing, but to sit still and wait for the Spirit. But nothing is more contrary to Scripture or Reason. The Scripture says, Strive to enter. And Reason teaches that when the God of Heaven, the great Governour of the World, is thus coming out after guilty rebels in a Way of Mercy, it becomes them to be greatly affected thereat, and to exert all their rational powers in Opposition to their Sloth and Corruptions, labouring to be open to the Means of Conviction, avoiding every Thing that tends to promote Security, and to render ineffectual the Methods of divine Grace, and practicing every Thing that tends to farther Awakening. And O let this be remembered, that it is Sinners resisting the Methods of Grace, which causes God to give them over. *122*
The duty to respond to divine overtures is maintained, but without great urgency or any visible hope.
Clearly, Samuel Hopkins also continued the doctrine. “Means are necessary to be used in order to prepare persons for regeneration. . . . in order to persons being prepared to act properly when regenerated.” *123* Hopkins goes on to assert that by such preparation it is “merely likely that their hearts will be changed.” *124* Indeed, though there is little hope otherwise, there is hope for seekers “in proportion to their religious advantage. Together with the degrees of light and conviction of conscience . . . and engagedness of mind.” *125*
However, the doctrine is not emphasized. One reads many pages in Hopkins where Edwards would have made many seeking references and there is not even a hint. The citations above came in answer to an objection. One has the feeling that if the objections had not been made the doctrine might not have been heard. But it was heard. And there is some explanation for the relative silence in that Bellamy and Hopkins had to ward off those who tended to downgrade the absolute uniqueness and divinity of the new birth in which man was totally passive.
But the book that still remains the most extensive study of New England theology, Foster’s Genetic History, makes the astonishing statement that Hopkins removed the preparation barrier by his doctrine that regeneration is the instantaneous work of God and that the regenerated are able to repent and believe immediately! “Thus the last strand in the old doctrine of inability was broken. Immediate repentance became the distinguishing point urged by the New England revival preaching and was the source of great effectiveness.” *126* Surely Foster knew that Edwards had taught the same instantaneous doctrine. The difference is that Edwards stressed that it was unusual for God to bestow the instantaneous regeneration without seeking. In one of his sermons, as we have seen, Edwards represents Christ as at the door of the unbeliever’s heart pleading to be admitted. Just when we expect Edwards to say “Throw open the door in faith!” he cries: “Strive to enter in” (even reversing the metaphor from Christ’s entering to the sinner’s).
These are not, however, really substantial differences. Hopkins’ difference certainly cannot be described as breaking down a wall. When a man was ready to believe, Edwards urged him to do so and when a man was not ready, Hopkins advised seeking.
Essentially the same thing may be said about Hopkins’ warning of the danger in the use of means that an unregenerate becomes worse thereby. Edwards had said the same. Furthermore, both agreed that if the seeker earnestly and seriously used the means he would be “less evil” than without them or rather he would become worse less rapidly. Both agreed that probably he would be regenerated. It was a difference in the tone of voice and the way it has been heard, even by the historians.
Jonathan Edwards Jr. did not seem to stress the seeking theme. We read, for example, with expectation his election sermon on the necessity of the belief of Christianity by the citizens of the state in order to political prosperity. *127* A solid address, it closes conventionally by addressing each group of those present including and concluding with the citizenry not all of whom were professed Christians. How does Edwards address them? “Unless,” he preached, “you are the objects of the favour of God and the heirs of eternal life, you are truly in a miserable situation. You have not only the motive of eternal happiness to choose the Lord for your God; but the motivers of the peace, good order, and happiness of the people as a body politic, and the general prosperity of the state.” Hardly a warning to seek the Lord while he may be found and how to go about it. Still the motive for faith is there and perhaps young Edwards thought that if they tried to believe, they would soon come to know how strenuously they would have to seek for that gift of God.
Nathanael Emmons, the thorough-going Hopkinsian, followed his mentor and went ahead of him in departing from the preparation doctrine That is, just as Hopkins had said less, and apparently thought less, of the doctrine than his mentor, Edwards, so Emmons did with respect to his mentor, Hopkins. For example, Emmons preached: “It will be universally allowed, that the hearts of the damned grow worse and worse under convictions.” *128* Hopkins and even Edwards had said the same; but, Edwards, especially, explained the concept of less bad about which Hopkins says less and Emmons virtually nothing. Emmons explains that fear of danger and other items in the preparation preaching program have no tendency whatever to soften the hearts of sinners but the opposite. At the same time “means” may be used with the reprobates (he grants rather emptily) because divine reprobation does not destroy their freedom to choose. *129* The doctrine of seeking is still alive but clearly dying.
The grandson of Jonathan Edwards, Timothy Dwight (1752-1817), interestingly enough, shows a fully developed doctrine of preparation quite like his grandfather’s. He admits that though many seek not all find - many return as the dog to his vomit. In spite of these failures, seekers usually find and Dwight comes close, as did elder Edwards, to saying that true and persistent seekers will not ultimately fail but “perhaps” is on the bottomline. So the leader of the Second Great Awakening, as the leader of the First, was a Calvinistic champion of preparation for salvation. In his protege and successor, Nathanael Taylor, seeking went to Pelagian seed. To that we come next.
B. Taylorism: Preparation Pelagian-Style.
Nathanael Taylor was the protégé of Timothy Dwight. If Dwight was something of a pure but late-flowering Edwardsian in the preparation doctrine as elsewhere, Taylor was the early winter that blasted late bloomers. But what Taylor was up to can be seen better in Charles Grandison Finney than in Taylor himself.
Finney was to Taylor what Emmons was to Hopkins - the blunt version. Hopkins and Taylor thought profoundly and wrote in the same style. But when Emmons and Finney preached some understood for the first time [what] Hopkins and Taylor were “driving at.”
Taylor never did, and never could, write as Finney did that conversion is “a purely philosophical result of the right use of the constituted means.” Sow the seed and you will have the fruit. Nevertheless, Taylor laid the foundation for that characteristic Finneyan claim, which is the exact opposite of the Edwardsian conception of “Surprising Conversions.” Finney could have written a volume of “Not-So-Surprising Conversions.”
We cannot here explain Taylor’s theology but merely indicate his positions that, in the name of Edwards, represented an about-face from Edwards. First, Taylor denied any principial corruption called original sin that inclined a person to evil necessarily. Second, he denied that motives determine choices while maintaining, in seeming fidelity to Edwards, that choices were always as the motives though not determined so. Third, therefore, men will always choose in accord with motives presented. Charles Grandison Finney is the bottom-line of that syllogism.
Preparationism has gone to seed. The delicately balanced position of Edwards is in ruins while it seems to have reached perfection. That is, he had advocated a potent view of seeking without disturbing the balance with moral inability, divine decrees, passivity in regeneration and all related Calvinist doctrines. With Finney “preparation” is a sure thing and all Calvinistic doctrines such as inability, decrees and passivity in regeneration are no more. The anxious bench and other preparatory devices come in with a vengeance. In the day of Finney’s power the people were made willing.
C. Old Princeton Against Preparation
As Jonathan Edwards had moved from Yale to Princeton so in subsequent history Edwardsian Calvinism moved from Yale to Princeton. At the beginning of the nineteenth century with Timothy Dwight as the President of Yale and John Witherspoon finishing his administration at Princeton University as Archibald Alexander began his at Princeton Theological Seminary all was relatively quiet on the Calvinistic front. Then came Taylor to Yale with Hodge to match at Princeton and the old battle on new terrain broke out.
The standard joke about Charles Hodge was expressed by Park: “There is no ghost which so greatly disturbs Dr. Hodge as that of Pelagius - unless it be that of Semi-Pelagius!” *130* Like many good jokes it was not funny, unless one can find Pelagianism amusing. That Taylor represented the ghost of Pelagius rather than Semi-Pelagius was easy for Hodge to show as Bennet Tyler was doing in Taylor’s own backyard. If there is no bias in fallen man toward evil, as Taylor maintained, this is Pelagian. If fallen man can turn to good or evil “at will” as Taylor maintained, this is Pelagian. If when appealing motives are presented to fallen man, he will turn as Taylor maintained, this is Pelagian.
If Hodge was the nemesis of Taylor, the “fury” which pursued Finney was B. B. Warfield. Of course, Finney had other Princeton theologians opposing him in his own lifetime and many another Calvinist as well. His definitive Princetonian opponent, however, was Warfield, who traced perfectionism from the Arminian root in John Wesley to its full Pelagian fruit in Charles Grandison Finney. *131*
But what happened to preparationism at Princeton? Did the Princetonians throw out Edwards’ baby (preparation) with Finney’s wash (Pelagianism)? Not quite, they simply put it in an Arminian orphanage. They neither owned it nor disowned it. It became a “poor relation.” They did not know quite what to do with it so they put it up for quiet adoption. Of course, it grew up to be an Arminian and not a Calvinist. If one prays, goes to church, reads the Word, the assistance of the Holy Spirit will enable him to believe! This is Edwardsian seeking? No, but this is what it has become because the Princeton which gave a home for Edwards would not receive his child.
But why was Princeton so diffident toward preparationism? Why would they not adopt it? It is difficult to say but one may conjecture. First, they could not quite “see” it. It did not seem to be a kosher Calvinist baby. Wasn’t it an incipient Arminian? They don’t like to say that Edwards had a theological bastard. So the tendency is to ignore or deny this baby altogether except when forced to do so and then to keep it in the closet. In nineteenth-century Princeton literature there is relatively little said on this subject.
Second, the Princeton conception of the covenant and infant baptism tended to make seeking unnecessary for the children of the church. The same pattern which we noticed in Calvin and some other orthodox reformation theologians reappeared. Hodge illustrates this mentality perfectly. *132* Strictly speaking, there is no Reformed principle that teaches presumptive regeneration of the children of the elect (who, incidentally, cannot be known by church officers certainly to be elect).
Third, the Princetonian theologians tended not to be pastors but academicians. As such they could not miss, ignore, or forget the problem of persons in and around the church who could not “own” the covenant. They had to do something about them - say something to them - and that spelled seeking and preparation. The Princetonians were practical men too and vitally interested in the pastorate and ecclesiastical affairs. But they were one step removed and it was one-step easier to forget the problem. And the Presbyterian pastors studied under those one-step removed from the pastorate as by contrast original New England Puritans had pastors for their professors. However it came about, the great bastion of Reformed Orthodoxy in nineteenth century America became strangers at best, enemies at worst, to preparationism.
D. The Andover Reaction Without Regaining Preparation
If Taylorism or “The New Divinity” was a reversal of Edwards in the name of Edwards, the complete reaction to it and return to Edwards (without returning to preparation) was Princeton as we saw. What, on New England soil itself, was considered a reaction to Yale in favor of Edwards was Andover and its school. If Princeton can be considered a 180° turn away from Taylor and back to Edwards, Andover was a 90° turn - betwixt and between Taylor and Edwards. What complicates the narrating of this development is that Andover also claimed Edwards as a father.
One good thing about this confused situation in which conflicting theologies are claiming the same lineage is that it makes it obvious, even to casual observers, that at least two of the claimants must be false. Thus, for example, probably ninety-nine percent of the literate - and illiterate - public believes that the Roman Catholic church is the catholic church because it so claims. According to the labels, Taylorism, Andoverism, and Princetonianism are truly Edwardsian though it is obvious to many, and admitted by all, that if any one is, the other two cannot be. Since they all claim the same lineage and cannot possess it the casual observer who wants to have an opinion can no longer remain casual.
I have pointed out, when we considered Taylorism and Princeton, that Taylorism is the antithesis of Edwards. Now I will try briefly to indicate that Andover is simply consistent and therefore represents a 90° turn; half-way back to him and then swinging away; ever halting inconsistently between two opinions.
According to Frank Hugh Foster, Andover’s greatest and most representative scholar - “a greater mind than Edwards’” - was Edwards Amasa Park (1808-1900). Foster devotes more space to his system of theology than to the system of Edwards, *133* and we may fairly conclude that if it can be shown from Foster’s full sweep of Park’s theology that he is a hesitating Edwardsian, it will be shown here.
Foster himself at the outset of his chapter on Park remarks (concerning the permission of evil in the world) that “for both of these theologians (Taylor and Park) their disagreement was obscured by their supposed agreement with Edwards.” *134* Taylor had departed from Edwards by explaining evil’s being necessary because of the nature of free choice - his is a clean break. How is it with Park? A seemingly clean break with Taylor swinging back to Edwards and his view of choice that God controls men by “persuasives” and therefore could have prevented evil from ever occurring. Yet, as Foster observes, “even here he (Park) was not abandoning Taylor.” *135* How does he avoid abandoning Taylor? By adding the “perhaps.” Perhaps God cannot prevent sin in the best possible universe. “Perhaps” it is better for the development of moral strength etc. Here is the 90° turn: all the way back to Edwards but then a hypothetical return to Taylor coming to a midway position between the two - total sovereignty, but “perhaps” total “freedom.”
The same Parksean swing back to Edwards and then away from him is evident on the most fundamental of all Edwardsian doctrines - the infallibly inspired Bible. I have shown in chapter VIII of this study that though no one treatise presents this inerrancy view it is assumed and argued throughout the Edwards corpus. While Parks obviously tries to be faithful to Edwards in his view of the Bible, he totally abandons it. As Foster writes: Parks’ “inspiration is mostly a divine ‘superintendency’ so exercised over the writers that the Bible is perfectly according to the divine will, and thus perfect for the purpose for which it is intended. Inspiration, also, pertains to the writers of the Bible and not to their writings.” *136* That view may please Frank Hugh Foster and many Christian writers today but its inadequacy would have been anathema with Jonathan Edwards.
We need not follow all the items of Parks’ theology, many of which are very close to Edwards, but come now to regeneration and preparation. Parks “insisted that, whatever preparation for regeneration there might be and however long this might last, regeneration, as the final presentation of truth by the Holy Spirit and the consequent yielding of the soul to it in conversion, was all one indivisible and instantaneous event.” *137* Whatever the meaning of that paradoxical statement the crucial point is that Parks taught that “motives could be presented to the will in such a way that holiness would appear the greatest good and would be chosen.” *138* Foster calls this an “adhesion, real and imagined, to Edwards.” *139* We could see the “imagined” adhesion but the “real” one eludes us. We could see a real adhesion to Taylor and not imagined. Edwards no longer has to fight the Arminian Semi-Pelagius, but Pelagius himself.
Thus ends preparation in New England Theology with an “imagined adhesion” to Jonathan Edwards.
E. American Calvinism Today: Unprepared for Preparation
I think we may say without any hesitation or doubt that today one would have to seek for the doctrine of seeking with all the assiduity, denial and perseverance that Edwards required of the original seekers, without much hope or possibility, not to mention probability, of finding it in any well-known modern Calvinists. Most of them do not preach it - in fact, they do not believe it - indeed, they do not know what it is. If you try to tell them, they are sure that it must be an Arminian doctrine at best.
It is interesting that all of the well-known modern evangelists are Arminian at best. Graham, Bright, Robertson - all of them, Arminians at best. In the days of the Great Awakening consider the most famous evangelists: Freylinghuisen, Edwards, Whitefield, Tennent, Davies - Calvinists all and preparationists all (more or less).
Is this the explanation? Are Calvinists today not prepared for preparation because they are not doing the work of an evangelist? Those who are “doing” it conspicuously are Arminians who need no such doctrine. So the people who need preparation are not in the business of evangelism and those who are in the business of evangelism do not need it. If a Calvinist is going to preach for anything other than instantaneous conversion, he is going to need it. If an Arminian ever really needs preparation, he has ceased to be an Arminian. So in the present evangelistic job-market there are simply no openings for preparationists.
But is this good? I will not here prove that Arminianism is erroneous (Edwards did that definitively two and half centuries ago) but merely assume it. Those who are, as well as those who are not, Arminians will admit that on the assumption that Arminianism is false its opposition to seeking (being true to its system) is also false. They stand or fall together. Calvinists would grant that if Arminianism were true its opposition to preparation would also be true. Arminians should be willing to grant that if their system is false their opposition to seeking would also be false.
But is it good for Calvinism that preparation has disappeared? I will not prove here that Calvinism is biblically true (Edwards did that definitively also two and half centuries ago) but merely assume it. Is it then good for biblical Christianity, Calvinism, that one must seek for seeking today? I think the answer no, it is not good to have to seek for seeking for several reasons. It is not good for sinners, it is not good for the saints, and it is not good for the church in general.
First, it is not good for the sinners. I was speaking once with a Reformed pastor who thought he was opposed to preparation. Said I, “What do you say to a man under conviction?” He replied, “I tell him to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ to be saved.” I asked: “Suppose he says, ‘but I don’t believe in Christ,’ what then? His answer was a shrug of the shoulders. He shrugged his shoulders - that was bad enough, but he also shrugged off that poor sinner. That was far worse. Calvinists all know that though a man is regenerated instantaneously it very rarely happens when he first hears the gospel. It is well known, in fact, that often a long time elapses before instantaneous regeneration occurs - if it occurs. What is the poor wretch to do meanwhile? I say “poor wretch” advisedly because no one better qualifies for that description than the person who knows he needs conversion and does not possess it. Before conviction he is “poor” without being wretched; after conversion he knows he was and in a sense is a wretch but that he is no longer poor. But when under conviction a person knows he is a poor wretch. Does such a man ask for bread and the Calvinist preacher give him a shrug? Here in particular, I address the Reformed pastor.
Surely, you are not going to say that if God elected him God will bring him in. I say surely you are not going to say that for that is the way that non-Calvinists slanderously caricature us. You surely are not trying to prove a caricature true! You know, as a Calvinist, that God foreordains means as well as ends and those means he puts in your hands. Yes, you reply, but when I have preached the gospel and pointed this poor wretch to Christ I have given him the only means by which he or anyone ever can be saved. I am not neglecting means. It is granted that Christ is the means and only means - to salvation. But are there not means to the means? How do we know Christ except by the Word? Can you not, should you not, urge this convicted individual to continue studying the Word? Should you not say that “If ever you receive the gift of faith it will come by hearing, studying, reading”? Yes, you should warn him that a little learning of the Bible is a dangerous thing and much learning is an even more dangerous thing. Yet it is the only way to possible salvation. And however dangerous reading without faith is, not reading without faith is even more dangerous. Must you not tell the seeker: “One may, admittedly, perish with the Bible but you certainly will perish without the Bible. And suppose God does give you grace how well you may immediately forge ahead if you are prepared. All must grow in grace and knowledge. If you prepare now you will have so much knowledge, to which God would then add grace.”
But suppose the poor wretch, afraid to hope, says “Yes, but I may yet perish. I cannot be sure I will be saved.” You cannot deny this. You would be a false prophet if you did. You would be your own and not God’s messenger. It was said of the Puritans that they would not dilute the vinegar of life and you, if you be a Calvinist and true, you dare not. You cannot dilute the vinegar of eternal life - hell itself. You must admit that this convicted sinner on his knees with the Bible in his hand may perish in his sins. But by this time, if you have preached the whole counsel of God, he will know and be convicted that that is precisely what he deserves. He will give you no argument unless you offer him false assurances. And you can give him one true assurance. He will in studying the Bible be less sinful than in disdaining it and thus will not lay up wrath against the day of wrath as rapidly as he had been doing. Today that would sound gruesomely ludicrous because Calvinistic pastors are not preaching the whole counsel of God which does include the awful fact that every idle word shall be brought into judgment. That does mean an additional infinite measure of the anger of God for every sin committed.
More than this, you will be able to offer our poor wretch more than a diminution of hell, great as that is, but a real hope of heaven as well. Can anyone truly question the fact that most people who ever were saved did seek and that most of those who sought persistently and earnestly did find? More than that cannot be said; but, can less?
Is this not enough to keep a sinner studying hopefully but not presumptuously all his life? And that is without mentioning all the other ways in which he may and must seek - all of them gaining something and, often, everything.
Second, it is not good for the saints to neglect “seeking” seeking for glorification. Is it not true that many who have found Christ sadly sing:
Look how we grovel here below,
Fond of these trifling toys;
Our souls can neither fly nor go
To reach eternal joys.
In vain we tune our formal songs,
In vain we strive to rise;
Hosannas languish on our tongues,
And our devotion dies.
Does the Psalmist saint not often complain about the “drought of summer,” the “panting after the water brooks,” the “arrows” of the Almighty sticking in him? Are these not indications, ratified in the souls of each of us, that the “body of death” is still with us? “O wretched man that I am!” It is, as Paul says, Christ who rescues us and gives us the victory. But, is it not by the means of grace: the Word, prayer, meditation, resisting temptation, doing good deeds? Therefore, the believer does these things not as the unregenerate seeker must do them, as an act of the will against the inclination of the heart. The difference between the unbeliever and the believer is that Christ has promised to work in the believer to will and to do according to His good pleasure. But the believer cannot wait until then. He must unfurl his sail whether the wind blows or not. Only, the saint knows - as the unregenerate cannot - that the divine Spirit will never leave us nor forsake him. So, insofar as he fails to “seek” at that moment he is not obedient to Christ. So saints are not saints when they fail to seek as sinners.
Finally, it is not good for the church in general to neglect preparation. If it has been shown that this is the teaching of the Word of God, it cannot be good for the church to disregard it. If the church is ignorant of it, she must be ignorant of the Word of God. Where there is no vision the people perish - and surely they are perishing today almost as rapidly in the church as out of it. The church is commanded to teach whatever Christ has commanded as the condition of his being with her until the end of the age. If Edwards was right - and no one has shown him wrong - Christ not only taught the duty of striving to enter in at the strait gate but promoted it preeminently in his own ministry. Unless the church today presumes to be a better evangelist than our Lord it will follow His example.
But to show how much wiser we are than He let me tell an experience with a group of church leaders. In a discussion I asked them what they would never say if they were trying to win a soul to Christ. They answered, to a man, “We would not preach the law and duty and giving up things.” I then turned to the encounter of the Rich Young Ruler who asked Christ what he must do to inherit eternal life and how our Lord goofed by saying: “Thou knowest the commandments, Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Honour thy father and they mother” (Luk_19:20).
Let me conclude simply:
1. If the church of Jesus Christ is founded on Christ as God and Savior;
2. If the church’s supreme commission is to win souls and build them up in the most holy faith;
3. If Christ and the Scriptures alone can tell her how to carry out her commission;
4. If Christ and the Scriptures have told her and that the directions include preparing sinners and saints for salvation;
5. If the church notwithstanding has grossly ignored and neglected where she has not deliberately disobeyed;
6. Then the church must importunately ask God to forgive her and set about the task, in the footsteps of Christ’s greatest herald, crying: “Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.”
To that end, perhaps we may consider and appreciate anew the example of Edwards, in this powerful and passionate exposition and application of the Biblical doctrine of “seeking.”