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Jonathan Edwards

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Jonathan Edwards was without a doubt the greatest theologian America ever produced. That he was also without a doubt the greatest philosopher colonial America ever produced shows what theology was once upon a time in America. Obsessed with returning American churches to its more devout Calvinist roots, Edwards began the Great Awakening in America, only to find himself cast out of his own pulpit for daring to challenge the social order of his church. Edwards deeply investigated the concept of free will, reconciling it as no other theologian had with the doctrines of predestination and divine omnipotence. But Edwards was also a figure of the Enlightenment, and applied Locke's rationalist doctrine of the senses to his preaching style, creating almost singlehandedly the fire-and-brimstone approach used to this day to terrify poor sinners into repentance. Perry Miller, the twentieth century's most dominant American intellectual historian, here explicates the life of Jonathan Edwards as no one has before or since: on the merit of his ideas. Miller was an atheist who spent his life studying American religious movements; this was one of his finest works. Not to be missed by anyone interested in the history of American religion or philosophy.

Perry Miller, Jonathan Edwards (Lincoln, NE, University of Nebraska Press, 2005) First published in 1949 by William Morrow.
Jonathan Edwards (1703--1758) is on the short list for the most creative American thinker, and may be better known than the leader in that race, Charles Sanders Peirce (1839--1914), due primarily one famous sermon he preached in 1741, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. Ever since encountering Edwards, by reputation, in an American Intellectual History class, I have puzzled over the source of Edwards' fame and reputation. It seems like one sermon is a bit thin to be hanging a continent-wide reputation for greatness. This book more than answers the question, written by someone who is eminently qualified to address the issue.
Among American historians, Perry Miller (1905--1963) is recognized as the leading authority on early New England intellectual history. His The New England Mind from Colony to Province, which revealed the long-forgotten figure of Peter Ramus, was our `bible' in that Lehigh American Intellectual History course I mentioned. This biography of Edwards was his third book, the first after he returned from serving in the Psychological Warfare Branch of the O.S.S. during WW II.
In spite of the 2004 award-winning Edwards biography by George Marsden, you will be wise to read this volume, to be certain of getting the fullest possible picture of Edwards' intellectual achievement `from the inside' as it were.
Jonathan Edwards was trained as a Reformed clergyman at Yale, the very new college in New Haven, CT. The Reformed theology was based primarily on the writings of John Calvin (1509--1564), modified by the Puritans' in England in to a revision which has been called `federal covenantism' which went far to soften some of the harsher edges of strict Calvinism. The central tenant of this adaptation was that the people achieve 'election', the state of grace, by entering into a covenant with the Lord, where God relinquishes some of his power over human action, with the quid pro quo being that the human entering the contract will praise and be faithful to the worship of the Lord.
This way of thinking was pervasive in colonial, Puritan New England, until Edwards, with great subtlety at first, began preaching on the fact that this doctrine was a variation of Arminianism, a Dutch Reformed interpretation of salvation which is considered heretical by orthodox Calvinists.
This is a significant `local' achievement, which would not necessarily put Edwards in the first rank of theologians. What promotes Edwards into world-class status is the fact that he establishes a new underpinning for Calvinistic doctrines, especially the doctrine of predestination, based on his study of John Locke's (1632--1704) An Essay Concerning Human Understanding and the physics of Isaac Newton's (1643--1727) Principia Mathematica. Locke's work was so unfamiliar to colonial New England at that time that historians are hard pressed to determine where it was that Edwards actually got his hands on a copy. Newton's work would have been more widely familiar in the colonies, but Edwards seems to have had only a layman's understanding of Newton's physics. On Locke, however, Edwards literally improved on the great Englishman's thinking and took it to some logical conclusions which Locke did not pursue. From Edwards' writings, it seems he totally absorbed the doctrines of the Essay at a very early age, and its thinking pervaded his writings for the rest of his life. Edwards seems to have not been touched at all by the writings of the other great English empiricists, Bishop Berkeley and David Hume.
The aspect of Edwards' thought which advances him to the first rank of world theologians' is that he may, in the opinion of Dr. Miller, be the last major theologian to attempt a synthesis of theology and modern science and epistemology. One may claim that in the days before relativity and Darwin's theories, this was easier, but I think this is a mistaken impression. Edwards seems to have a keen eye for great beauty, and great life lessons, in the minutiae of nature, not unlike the skills so important to a great naturalist. As Miller describes it, `Edwards would not compartmentalize his thinking. He is the last great American, perhaps the last European, for whom there could be no warfare between religion and science, or between ethics and nature. ...His mind was so constituted--...- that he went directly to the issues of his age, defined them, and asserted the historic Protestant doctrine in full cognizance of the latest disclosures in both psychology and natural science.' This means that while Edwards marshals all the best thinking of the Age of Enlightenment' (sometimes dated from the publication of Newton's Principia in 1687) he arrives at conclusions which are diametrically opposed to the deification of reason.
It is not surprising then that Edwards was one of the prime influences (along with Englishman, George Whitefield, 1714--1770) contributing to the Great Awakening in New England. Edwards emotionally charged language, such as `...let every one that is out of Christ, now awake and fly from the wrath to come. The wrath of Almighty God is now undoubtedly hanging over a great part of this congregation. Let every one fly out of Sodom: "Haste and escape for your lives, look not behind you, escape to the mountain, lest you be consumed.' (End of Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God) aroused religious enthusiasm and ardor, but it was based on a calculated assessment of the power of language to mould affections.
Edwards most durable work, read today by evangelicals, is his Religious Affections, which addresses a real, serious question from an empirical point of view. How do you tell when a person has achieved salvation. What are the signs of the elect? The book was written as an analysis of the Great Awakening experience, among opponents who tended to prefer a rational or a highly emotional approach to Christian devotion. He used Locke's new psychology to object to both poles as too simple, to create a new underpinning for traditional Calvinism against `comfortable' Arminianism, and to provide a perception, which is as good today as it was in 1743, of assessing whether or not one's state of grace, one's election to salvation, is genuine.
Like Luther and Calvin before him, Edwards believed in experience, he was a nominalist, but his tools were more powerful, and rather than directing his nominalist glass at the revelation of the Bible, he directed it at the phenomenal world.
My only objection to this book is the fact there are no footnotes showing us from where in Edwards' works his quotes, or quotes from any other primary source, are located. Otherwise, this may be a perfect intellectual introduction to Edwards thought and importance.

Biography is only a small portion of this work. That is what the author calls external biography. Analysis of Edwards's thoughts and writings is what makes up the bulk of this book. By no way is the history of Edwards ignored. Facts about Edwards family, culture and community are told. The history of Revivalism in America during Edwards's lifetime is told. The Halfway controversy and Northampton is dealt in depth in the chapter called Hubris. Jonathan Edwards read John Locke in his college years. The theme is that Edwards was greatly influenced by Locke's method of argument and method in studying a matter. The goals of each man's argument are vastly different. The author argues that Edwards' purpose was neither to be novel, a revolutionary, nor to be distinct in his ideas of scripture or theology. A better way to argue against new thoughts is what Edwards is all about. Edwards argued against Arminianism among other novel ideas of his days on earth. The author Perry Miller admires Edwards, but not in agreement with the primitive theology and philosophy of Edwards. Yet he argues Edwards was advance in his knowledge of science and Psychology.

Perry Miller presents the paradox in Edwards' normally steadfastness to conservative theological interpretation. That is Edwards was otherwise consistent with word and thought. Edwards was the son in law to a Solomon Stoddard. . The Father in Law was the pastor of the Northampton church that eventually Edwards succeeded to the pastorate. When Jonathan Edwards became an associate minister at Northampton, Stoddard's' policy of not demanding a profession of Faith or evidence Christian faith to be a member of the Church or to participate in the Lord's Table was well established and a controversy in the Christian community. Yet Edwards' waited almost twenty years before changing church policy of membership and participation of the Lord's Table. This book goes into great depth about the controversy.