- This article is about the theologian (b.
1703). For other uses of Jonathan Edwards see Jonathan Edwards.
Jonathan Edwards (October 5, 1703 – March 22,
1758) was a preacher, theologian, and
missionary to
Native Americans.
Edwards "is widely acknowledged to be America's most important and
original philosophical theologian," and one of America's greatest
intellectuals. Edwards's theological work is very broad in scope,
but he is often associated with his defense of Reformed theology,
the
metaphysics of theological
determinism, and the
Puritan heritage.
Edwards
played a critical role in shaping the First Great Awakening, and oversaw
some of the first fires of revival
in 1733-1735 at his church in Northampton, Massachusetts
. Edwards's sermon "
Sinners in the Hands of an
Angry God," is considered a classic of early American
literature, which he delivered during another wave of revival in
1741, following
George
Whitefield's tour of the
Thirteen
Colonies. Edwards is widely known for his many books:
The
End For Which God Created the World;
The Life of David Brainerd,
which served to inspire thousands of
missionaries throughout the nineteenth century;
and
Religious
Affections, which many
Reformed Evangelicals read even today.
Edwards
died from a smallpox inoculation shortly after beginning the
presidency at the College of New Jersey (later to be named Princeton
University
), and was the grandfather of Aaron Burr.
Great Awakening
On July 7, 1731, Edwards preached in Boston the "Public Lecture"
afterwards published under the title "God Glorified — in Man's
Dependence," which was his first public attack on
Arminianism. The emphasis of the lecture was on
God's absolute sovereignty in the work of
salvation: that while it behooved God to create
man pure and without
sin, it was of his "good
pleasure" and "mere and arbitrary
grace" for him to grant any person the faith
necessary to incline him or her toward holiness; and that God might
deny this grace without any disparagement to any of his
character.
In 1733, a religious revival began in Northampton and reached such
intensity in the winter of 1734 and the following spring as to
threaten the business of the town. In six months, nearly three
hundred were admitted to the church. The revival gave Edwards an
opportunity for studying the process of conversion in all its
phases and varieties, and he recorded his observations with
psychological minuteness and discrimination in
A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God in the
Conversion of Many Hundred Souls in Northampton (1737). A
year later, he published
Discourses on Various Important
Subjects, the five sermons which had proved most effective in
the revival, and of these, none, he tells us, was so immediately
effective as that on the
Justice of God in the
Damnation of Sinners, from the text, "That every mouth may
be stopped." Another sermon, published in 1734, on the
Reality
of Spiritual Light set forth what he regarded as the inner,
moving principle of the revival, the doctrine of a special grace in
the immediate, and supernatural divine illumination of the
soul.
By 1735, the revival had spread--and popped up
independently--across the Connecticut River Valley, and perhaps as
far as New Jersey. However, criticism of the revival began, and
many New Englanders feared that Edwards had led his flock into
fanaticism. Over the summer of 1735, religious fervor took a dark
turn. A number of New Englanders were shaken by the revivals but
not converted, and became convinced of their inexorable damnation.
Edwards wrote that "multitudes" felt urged--presumably by Satan--to
take their own lives. At least two people committed suicide in the
depths of their spiritual duress, one from Edwards's own
congregation--his uncle, Joseph Hawley II. It is not known if any
others took their own lives, but the suicide craze effectively
ended the first wave of revival, save in some parts of
Connecticut.
However, despite these setbacks and the cooling of religious
fervor, word of the Northampton revival and Edwards's leadership
role had spread as far as England and Scotland. It was at this time
that Edwards was acquainted with
George Whitefield, who was traveling the
Thirteen Colonies on a revival
tour in 1739-1740. The two men may not have seen eye to eye on
every detail--Whitefield was far more comfortable with the strongly
emotional elements of revival than Edwards was--but they were both
passionate about preaching the Gospel.
They worked together
to orchestrate Whitefield's trip, first through Boston
, and then to Northampton. When Whitefield
preached at Edwards's church in Northampton, he reminded them of
the revival they had experienced just a few years before. This
deeply touched Edwards, who wept throughout the entire service, and
much of the congregation too was moved.
Revival began to
spring up again, and it was at this time that Edwards preached his
most famous sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an
Angry God" in Enfield, Connecticut
in 1741. This sermon has been widely
reprinted as an example of "
fire and
brimstone" preaching in the colonial revivals, though the
majority of Edwards's sermons were not this dramatic. Indeed, he
used this style deliberately. As historian
George Marsden put it, "Edwards could take
for granted...that a New England audience knew well the Gospel
remedy. The problem was getting them to seek it."
The movement met with opposition from conservative
Congregationalist ministers. In 1741, Edwards published in its
defense
The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of
God, dealing particularly with the phenomena most criticized:
the swoonings, outcries and convulsions. These "bodily effects," he
insisted, were not distinguishing marks of the work of the Spirit
of God one way or another; but so bitter was the feeling against
the revival in the more strictly Puritan churches that, in 1742, he
was forced to write a second apology,
Thoughts on the Revival
in New England, his main argument being the great moral
improvement of the country. In the same pamphlet, he defends an
appeal to the emotions, and advocates preaching terror when
necessary, even to children, who in God's sight "are young vipers…
if not Christ's." He considers "bodily effects" incidentals to the
real work of God, but his own mystic devotion and the experiences
of his wife during the Awakening (which he gives in detail) make
him think that the divine visitation usually overpowers the body, a
view in support of which he quotes Scripture. In reply to Edwards,
Charles Chauncy wrote
Seasonable Thoughts on the State of Religion in New
England in 1743 and anonymously penned
The Late Religious
Commotions in New England Considered in the same year. In
these works he urged conduct as the sole test of conversion; and
the general convention of Congregational ministers in the Province
of Massachusetts Bay protested "against disorders in practice which
have of late obtained in various parts of the land."
In spite of Edwards's able pamphlet, the impression had become
widespread that "bodily effects" were recognized by the promoters
of the Great Awakening as the true tests of conversion. To offset
this feeling, Edwards preached at Northampton, during the years
1742 and 1743, a series of sermons published under the title of
Religious Affections (1746), a restatement in a more philosophical
and general tone of his ideas as to "distinguishing marks." In
1747, he joined the movement started in Scotland called the
"concert in prayer," and in the same year published
An Humble
Attempt to Promote Explicit Agreement and Visible Union of God's
People in Extraordinary Prayer for the Revival of Religion and the
Advancement of Christ's Kingdom on Earth. In 1749, he
published a memoir of
David Brainerd
who had lived with his family for several months and had died at
Northampton in 1747. Brainerd had been constantly attended by
Edwards's daughter Jerusha, to whom he was rumored to have been
engaged to be married, though there is no surviving evidence for
this. In the course of elaborating his theories of conversion
Edwards used Brainerd and his ministry as a case study, making
extensive notes of his conversions and confessions.
Views on Gender
Edwards's relationship with his wife, nagger
Sarah Pierrepont, has been the subject of
critical and popular inquiry. Their relationship has been overly
romanticized, but Edwards was genuinely committed to the promotion
of gender equality. Edwards's interest in Eve has been construed by
scholars as an indication that he harbored proto-feminist
views:
"Edwards repeatedly draws attention to Eve’s title as “the mother
of all living” (Genesis 3:20), emphasizing this name as an
indication of her godlike qualities. Just as “God hath life in
himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in Himself ”
(John 5:26), and Eve, as the “mother of Christ” (“Note 399” 397)
also has life in herself —she is the source of all spiritual life
on earth. Edwards confirms that “[there is] not one, that has
spiritual and eternal life, of all mankind, that in this sense is
excepted, not Adam, nor Christ, no, nor herself” (“Note 399” 397).
This distinction is unique. Edwards does not honor Mary similarly,
despite her more immediate connection to Christ, and it is evident
that for Edwards, Eve represents the living nature and attributes
of both God and his Christ closely."
Edwards's letters to his wife and his considerations of other
important biblical women, including Sarah, Mary and Anna, likewise
indicate that he viewed women in a progressive manner ahead of his
time. Many of these writings have only recently been made widely
available in his
"Miscellanies" and
Notes on
Scripture.
Science and aesthetics
Edwards was fascinated by the discoveries of
Isaac Newton and other
scientists of his age. Before he undertook full-time
ministry work in Northampton, he wrote on various topics in natural
philosophy, including "flying
spiders,"
light, and
optics. While
he was worried about the
materialism and
faith in reason alone of some of his contemporaries, he saw the
laws of nature as derived from God and demonstrating his wisdom and
care. Hence, scientific discoveries did not threaten his faith, and
for him, there was no inherent conflict between the spiritual and
material.
Edwards also wrote sermons and theological treatises that
emphasized the beauty of God and the role of
aesthetics in the spiritual life, in which he
anticipates a twentieth-century current of theological aesthetics,
represented by figures like
Hans
Urs von Balthasar.
Jonathan Edwards was 22 at the time.
Later years
In 1747, according to Ola Elizabeth Winslow, his household came to
include a slave, "a negro girl named Venus", purchased by Edwards
for 80 pounds from Richard Perkins of Newport.In 1748, there had
come a crisis in his relations with his congregation. The
Half-Way Covenant, adopted by the synods
of 1657 and 1662, had made
baptism alone the
condition to the civil privileges of church membership, but not of
participation in the
sacrament of the
Lord's Supper. Edwards's grandfather and
predecessor in the pastorate, Solomon Stoddard, had been even more
liberal, holding that the Supper was a converting ordinance and
that baptism was a sufficient title to all the privileges of the
church. As early as 1744, Edwards, in his sermons on Religious
Affections, had plainly intimated his dislike of this practice. In
the same year, he had published in a church meeting the names of
certain young people, members of the church, who were suspected of
reading improper books, and also the names of those who were to be
called as witnesses in the case. It has often been reported that
the witnesses and accused were not distinguished on this list, and
so, therefore, the entire congregation was in an uproar. However,
Patricia Tracy's research has cast doubt on this version of the
events, noting that in the list he read from, the names were
definitely distinguished. Those involved were eventually
disciplined for disrespect to the investigators rather than for the
original incident. In any case, the incident further deteriorated
the relationship between Edwards and the congregation. In a time of
significant cultural foment, he was associated with the old
guard.
Edwards's preaching became unpopular. For four years, no candidate
presented himself for admission to the church, and when one did, in
1748, he was met with Edwards's formal but mild and gentle tests,
as expressed in the Distinguishing Marks and later in
Qualifications for Full Communion (1749). The candidate refused to
submit to them, the church backed him, and the break between the
church and Edwards was complete. Even permission to discuss his
views in the pulpit was refused him. He was allowed to present his
views on Thursday afternoons. His sermons were well attended by
visitors, but not his own congregation. A council was convened to
decide the communion matter between the minister and his people.
The congregation chose half the council, and Edwards was allowed to
select the other half of the council. His congregation, however,
limited his selection to one county where the majority of the
ministers were against him. The ecclesiastical council voted that
the pastoral relation be dissolved. The church members, by a vote
of more than 200 to 23, ratified the action of the council, and
finally a town meeting voted that Edwards should not be allowed to
occupy the Northampton pulpit, though he continued to live in the
town and preach in the church by the request of the congregation
until October 1751. He evinced no rancour or spite; his "Farewell
Sermon" was dignified and temperate; he preached from 2 Cor. 1:14
and directed the thoughts of his people to that far future when the
minister and his people would stand before God; nor is it to be
ascribed to chagrin that in a letter to Scotland after his
dismissal he expresses his preference for Presbyterian to
Congregational church government. His position at the time was not
unpopular throughout New England; his doctrine that the Lord's
Supper is not a cause of regeneration and that communicants should
be professing Christians has since (very largely through the
efforts of his pupil
Joseph Bellamy)
become a standard of New England
Congregationalism.
Edwards, with his large family, was now thrown upon the world, but
offers of aid quickly came to him. A parish in Scotland could have
been procured, and he was called to a Virginia church. He declined
both, to become, in 1750, pastor of the church in
Stockbridge and a missionary to the Housatonic
Indians. To the Indians, he preached through an interpreter, and
their interests he boldly and successfully defended by attacking
the whites who were using their official positions among them to
increase their private fortunes.
In Stockbridge
, he wrote the Humble Relation, also called
Reply to Williams (1752), which was an answer to Solomon
Williams (1700–1776), a relative and a bitter opponent of Edwards
as to the qualifications for full communion; and he there composed
the treatises on which his reputation as a philosophical theologian
chiefly rests, the essay on Original
Sin, the Dissertation Concerning the Nature of True
Virtue, the Dissertation Concerning the End for which God
created the World, and the great work on the Will,
written in four months and a half, and published in 1754 under the
title, An Inquiry into the Modern Prevailing Notions Respecting
that Freedom of the Will which is supposed to be Essential to Moral
Agency.
In 1757,
on the death of the Reverend Aaron Burr, who five years before had
married Edwards's daughter Esther and was the father of future US
vice-president Aaron Burr, he reluctantly
agreed to replace his late son-in-law as the president of the
College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), where he was installed on February 16,
1758.
Almost immediately after becoming president, Edwards being a strong
supporter of small pox inoculations, decided to get inoculated
himself in order to encourage others to do the same. Unfortunately,
never having been in robust health, he died of the inoculation on
March 22, 1758.
He was buried in Princeton
Cemetery
. Edwards had three sons and eight
daughters.
Legacy
The followers of Jonathan Edwards and his disciples came to be
known as the
New Light Calvinist ministers, as opposed to the traditional
Old Light Calvinist ministers. Prominent disciples included
Samuel Hopkins,
Joseph Bellamy, Jonathan Edwards's son
Jonathan Edwards Jr.
and
Gideon Hawley.
Through a practice of
apprentice ministers living in the homes of older ministers, they
eventually filled a large number of pastorates in the New England
area. Many of Jonathan and Sarah Edwards's
descendants became prominent citizens in the United States,
including the Vice President
Aaron Burr
and the College Presidents
Timothy
Dwight,
Jonathan
Edwards Jr. and
Merrill
Edwards Gates. Jonathan and Sarah Edwards were also ancestors
of the
First Lady
Edith Roosevelt, the writer
O. Henry, the publisher
Frank Nelson Doubleday and
the writer
Robert Lowell.
Edwards's writings and beliefs continue to influence individuals
and groups to this day. Early
American
Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions missionaries were
influenced by Edwards's writings, as is evidenced in reports in the
ABCFM's journal "The Missionary Herald," and beginning with
Perry Miller's seminal work, Edwards
enjoyed a renaissance among scholars after the end of the
Second World War. The
Banner of Truth Trust and other
publishers continue to reprint Edwards's works, and most of his
major works are now available through the series published by
Yale University Press, which
has spanned three decades and supplies critical introductions by
the editor of each volume. Yale has also established the Jonathan
Edwards Project online. Author and teacher,
Elisabeth Woodbridge Morris,
memorialized him, her paternal ancestor (3rd great grandfather) in
two books,
The Jonathon Papers (1912), and
More
Jonathon Papers (1915). In 1933, he became the namesake of
Jonathan Edwards College,
one of the first of the twelve
residential colleges of Yale.
Edwards is commemorated as a teacher and missionary by the
Evangelical Lutheran Church in
America on March 22.
Progeny
Edwards's many eminent descendants have led some
Progressive Era scholars to view Edwards's
progeny as proof of
eugenics, though most
people today consider eugenics a discredited
pseudoscience. That said, no modern scholar
would dispute the fact that Edwards's genealogy is indeed
impressive, and his descendants have had a disproportionate impact
upon American culture. Edwards's biographer
George Marsden notes that "the Edwards family
produced scores of clergymen, thirteen presidents of higher
learning, sixty-five professors, and many other persons of notable
achievements." Such august descendants befit both Edwards's own
Puritan ancestors--the Stoddard and Edward family lines--and
Jonathon Edwards himself.
Works
The
entire corpus of Edwards's works including previously
unpublished works is available online.Many of Edwards's works have
been regularly reprinted. Some of the major works are listed below:
- A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of
God, reprinted by Diggory Press ISBN 978-1846857225
- A History of the Work of Redemption including a
View of Church History, reprinted by Diggory Press ISBN
978-1846856334
- A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections,
reprinted by Diggory Press ISBN 978-1846857461
- Concerning the End for Which God Created The
World, reprinted by Diggory Press ISBN 978-1846856242
- Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of
God, reprinted by Diggory Press ISBN 978-1846856372
- Freedom of the Will, reprinted by Diggory Press
ISBN 978-1846856198
- Original Sin, reprinted by Diggory Press
ISBN 978-1846857607
- Some thoughts concerning the present revival in New
England and the way it ought to be acknowledged and
promoted, reprinted by Diggory Press ISBN
978-1846853791
- The Life and Diary of David Brainerd, Missionary to the
Indians, reprinted by Diggory Press ISBN
978-1846853814
- The Nature of True Virtue, reprinted by Diggory
Press ISBN 978-1846857591
- Charity and its Fruits, reprinted by Banner of Truth ISBN 978-0851513515
- Christian Charity or The Duty of Charity to the
Poor, Explained and Enforced (1732), online text at Bible Bulletin
Board
See also
- ) imma g
Notes
References
- Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Jonathan
Edwards," First published Tue Jan 15, 2002; substantive revision
Tue Nov 7, 2006
- George Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Life (New Haven,
Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003), pg. 498-505.
- George Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Life (New Haven,
Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003), pg. 150-163.
- George Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Life (New Haven,
Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003), pg. 214-226.
- George Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Life (New Haven,
Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003), pg. 499.
- http://edwards.yale.edu/research/about-edwards/biography
- George Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Life (New Haven,
Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003), pg. 162.
- George Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Life (New Haven,
Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003), pg. 161.
- George Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Life (New Haven,
Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003), pg. 168.
- George Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Life (New Haven,
Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003), pg. 168.
- George Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Life (New Haven,
Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003), pg. 163-169.
- George Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Life (New Haven,
Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003), pg. 168-169.
- George Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Life (New Haven,
Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003), pg. 211-212.
- George Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Life (New Haven,
Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003), pg. 206-207.
- George Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Life (New Haven,
Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003), pg. 206-207.
- George Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Life (New Haven,
Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003), pg. 219-226.
- George Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Life (New Haven,
Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003), pg. 224.
- Hutchins, "Edwards and Eve," Early American Literature
40.3 (2008): 674
- Jonathan Edwards, a biography, 1703-1757 pages 203, 328,374,
Chapter XI Trouble in the Parish; First Collier Books Edition
1961.
- Albert E. Winship, Jukes-Edwards: A Study in Education and
Heredity (Harrisburg, Pa.: R. L. Myers, 1900).
- Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson, Applied
Eugenics (New York, 1920), 161-162.
- George Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Life (New Haven,
Conn.: Yale University Press, 2003), pg. 500-501.
External links
Primary sources
Other
Further reading
- ISBN 0-85151-397-2
- 1940
- Avihu Zakai, Jonathan Edwards's Philosophy of History: The
Reenchantment of the World in the Age of Enlightenment
(Princeton, PUP, 2003), 368 pp.
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