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In her Epilogue entitled “What Is His Greatness?”, Ola Elizabeth Winslow stated in the first serious modern biography of Jonathan Edwards: “In a word, it is the greatness of one who had a determining art of initiating and directing a popular movement of far-reaching consequence, and who in addition, laid the foundations for a new system of religious thought, also of far-reaching consequence.” After two and a half centuries since Edwards’s death, Winslow’s statement is undoubtedly true, and perhaps, more so now than ever. The recovery of Edwards pioneered by Perry Miller, Ola Winslow, and Thomas Schafer, among others, has become what is often referred to as an “Edwards renaissance,” and has been made even more popular among lay people by John Piper, Stephen Nichols, and the like. Since the free online access of The Works of Jonathan Edwards by Yale University, dozens of books, and articles, as well as numerous dissertations, each year are written to seek a facet of Edwards’s “greatness,” and thus as an exemplar of his continued “far-reaching consequence.” Jonathan Edwards, more than any other pre-revolutionary colonial thinker, grappled with the promises and perils of the Enlightenment. Organized by John T. Lowe and Daniel N. Gullotta, Jonathan Edwards within the Enlightenment brings together a group of young and early career scholars to present their propping the life, times, and theology of one of America’s greatest minds. Many of these subjects have been seldom explored by scholars while others offer new and exciting avenues into well covered territory. Some of these topics include Edwards’ interaction with and involvement in slavery, colonialism, racism, as well as musings on gender, populism, violence, pain, and witchcraft.
This volume gathers together for the first time all known extant letters of Jonathan Edwards, along with his major personal writings. For more than three decades George S. Claghorn has scoured America, Great Britain, and Scotland for letters and documents by and about Edwards. The result is an unparalleled compendium of 235 letters--including 116 never before published or never reprinted since Edwards's death--and four autobiographical texts--Edwards' meditation "On Sarah Pierpont," his future wife, and "Diary," "Resolutions," and "Personal Narrative." These letters and personal writings reveal the private man behind the treatises and sermons. They trace his relations with parents, siblings, college classmates, friends, and family, as well as with political, religious, and educational leaders of his day. New documents include Edwards' only known statement on slavery and letters on the Indian mission at Stockbridge, Massachusetts, that display Edwards' interest in native Americans and his efforts on their behalf. These writings show the human face of Edwards as he applied theological and philosophical insights to the events of his daily life. They provide an unprecedented resource for understanding the man, his times, and his personal connections.
This book presents previously unpublished manuscript sermons from a crucial yet little-known period in Edwards's life: the years between the completion of his Master's degree at Yale College and the death of Solomon Stoddard, his famous grandfather and predecessor at Northampton, Massachusetts. These sermons, constituting the second in a projected series of six sermon volumes, highlight the intellectual and professional development of the young Edwards through his pastorate at Bolton, Connecticut, his Yale tutorship, and his colleagueship at Northampton. In his introduction, Kenneth P. Minkema weaves together the details of Edwards's emerging career with the concerns expressed in the sermons. He shows how Edwards addressed local and provincial concerns as well as the great theological debates of his day, and how he struggled to work out the implications of his innovative concept of "excellency" and to develop his definition of conversion as a "spiritual light." From these sermons emerges an unparalleled portrait of a rapidly maturing Edwards seeking to give shape to his theological vision.
Jonathan Edwards Jr. (1745-1801) is well-known for his governmental theory of the atonement; however, aside from a biography produced in 1978 not much has been done to interact with his thinking on other theological matters. Further, he is often portrayed as a metaphysical preacher who drove away his congregation with cerebral abstractions. Accordingly, this received caricature also describes Edwards Jr. as distorting the Edwardsean legacy through theological innovation. This negative caricature of Edwards Jr was produced by the early liberalism of the Civil War era and has stuck to Edwards Jr. for nearly two hundred years. This treatise provides a greater interaction with primary sources, taking into account his upbringing, awakening, tragedy, pastoral challenges, as well as his actual pulpit notes. Of particular interest to scholars will be the interaction with new source materials derived from the preaching manuscripts used in his weekly preaching ministry. Harry Stout has observed that the weekly sermon was the heart and soul of New Englanders prior to the American Revolution. Notably in this treatise, Edwards Jr.'s Sermon on the Mount Manuscripts, which cover his whole thirty-year pulpit ministry, are examined and found to be strongly reliant upon his father's Religious Affections. Furthermore, Edwards Jr.'s systematic theology of the Holy Spirit demonstrates a received pneumatology, which is essentially the same as his father's system. A received pneumatology can be reconstructed out of the student notebook of Maltby Gelston, as well as the published and unpublished sermons of Edwards Jr. From primary documents this volume demonstrates how the younger Edwards's is important to Edwardsean study. The thinking of Hopkins, Bellamy, and Edwards Jr. are relevant as receivers of Edwards Sr.'s thinking, but also as improvers of his thoughts. Without an adequate study of his son's biography and writing, the Edwardsean theology has, at times, suffered from an apparent decline for failure to develop the thinking of the younger Edwards. This volume begins to address a lacuna in the New England Theological project. REVIEWS The "other" Jonathan Edwards has never received the attention his work as New Haven pastor, dedicated theologian, and interpreter of his famous father's legacy deserves. With especially fruitful use of the younger Edwards' manuscript sermons, this carefully researched book goes a long way to redress that undeserved neglect. Mark Noll, author of In the Beginning Was the Word: The Bible in American Public Life, 1492-1783 Jonathan Edwards, Jr. played a crucial but still largely unappreciated role as a conduit of his father's varied legacies. In this fine study by an up-and-coming scholar, that role is paid respect and Edwards Jr.'s own honor and legacy are defended against their critics, past and present. Many thanks to John Banks for coloring in our understanding of the Edwardsean tradition in Revolutionary America. Douglas A. Sweeney, Dean of Beeson Divinity School, Samford University This study offers an engaging account of a pastor and divine whose career included an early exposure to missions among Mohican and Mohawks, public debates about the culture of reason and Calvinism, the American Revolution, contestations over the abolition of slavery, and changes in the practice of collegiate education in New England. Based on deep original archival research and a solid grasp on current scholarship, it brings to life the complications and tensions in the career of the namesake son of Jonathan Edwards. In so doing, it gives us a humane and lucid narrative of theology and its relation to social life when America became a nation. Mark Valeri, The Reverend Priscilla Wood Neaves Distinguished Professor, John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics, Washington University in St. Louis
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