Jonathan Edwards: A Life [Hardcover]

Professor George M. Marsden (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 11, 2003

Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) is a towering figure in American history. A controversial theologian and the author of the famous sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God", he ignited the momentous Great Awakening of the 18th century. In this biography, Jonathan Edwards emerges as both a great American and a brilliant Christian. George Marsden evokes the world of colonial New England in which Edwards was reared - a frontier civilization at the centre of a conflict between Native Americans, French Catholics and English Protestants. Drawing on the available sources, Marsden demonstrates how these cultural and religious battles shaped Edwards's life and thought. Marsden reveals Edwards as a complex thinker and human being who struggled to reconcile his Puritan heritage with the secular, modern world emerging out of the Enlightenment. In this, Edwards's life anticipated the deep contradictions of American culture.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Although probably best known for his fire-and-brimstone sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," Jonathan Edwards led a rich intellectual and spiritual life that took him far beyond the pulpit in his contributions to colonial America. In this first critical biography in over 60 years, Marsden, a professor of history at Notre Dame, places Edwards squarely within the context of his times. Drawing on newly available sources in the Yale edition of The Works of Jonathan Edwards, he elegantly traces the details of Edwards's life, from his precocious childhood of observing God's handiwork in the natural world and his adolescent struggles with his faith to his powerful preaching in the revivals that dominated the Connecticut Valley in the First Great Awakening to his later modestly successful mission to the Indians. From his childhood, Edwards struggled to understand the sovereignty of God, and as he later developed his theology he placed the "religious affections" at the center of his notions about God's sovereignty. Marsden reminds us that Edwards struggled with his faith as he labored to write his treatises on the freedom of the will, the religious affections and the nature of true virtue. Marsden's elegant prose and vivid, vivacious storytelling brings Edwards to life. This magisterial and definitive biography reveals the complexities of Edwards's life and provides new appreciation for his commitment to fostering religious sensibilities in the increasingly secular world of his time. This is a beautifully written book about one of America's most important thinkers.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

In the first full critical biography of Edwards in 60 years, a distinguished Notre Dame scholar humanizes America's greatest colonial clergyman, a man highly esteemed in his own time but since singled out for decades of abuse by Puritan-bashers. To be sure, Edwards' brimstone pulpit rhetoric (most famously deployed in his 1741 sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God") offends modern sensibilities. But Marsden--drawing heavily on recent scholarship--restores Edwards to an eighteenth-century New England where most shared his doctrines, though few could rival him in the power with which he preached them. Exceptional insight shines through a felicitous style as Marsden recounts how Edwards acquired that power, the intellectual rigor of his Yale studies gradually lending force to his intense spiritual vision. His rare gifts enabled Edwards to kindle the Great Awakening, emblazoning his name on the pages of American history. But in narrating Edwards' luminous achievements, Marsden also scrutinizes the periods of deep personal depression and probes the dark drama of jealousy that cost him his position of ecclesiastical prominence. The man who emerges from this tangle of triumph and travail defies the easy stereotypes of the hellfire preacher: tender in his pastoral care, passionate in his conjugal loyalty, joyous in his celebration of divine love, unintentionally democratic in his New Light theology. Neither alabaster saint nor cardboard hypocrite, the Edwards Marsden delivers will fascinate serious students of American culture and history. Bryce Christensen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 640 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press; First Edition edition (March 11, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300096933
• ISBN-13: 978-0300096934
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.4 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (48 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #627,328 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

105 of 110 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding, August 16, 2003

By 

R. Albin (Ann Arbor, Michigan United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Jonathan Edwards: A Life (Hardcover)

Jonathan Edwards was probably the most impressive American intellectual of the 18th century. Not the best known, which would be Benjamin Franklin, or the most influential, which would be James Madison, but the individual with most impressive intellect and purely intellectual achievements. Edwards' reputation today suffers because he was on the losing side, so to speak, of a pair of particularly important developments in American life. In the Great Awakening that inaugurated modern American religous life, Edwards was an outspoken proponent of revivalism, but the ultimate emergence of a more democratic and less organized form of Protestantism ran counter to his essentially conservative form of Calvinism. Edwards' conservative Calvinism led him also to oppose the rationalistic philosophy and theology of the Enlightenment that came to be such an important element of American life. One of the great virtues of this outstanding biography is that it gives readers a vivid and unanachronistic understanding of how this powerful intellect ended up reaffirming doctrines that were coming to be regarded as outmoded by so many of his contemporaries.

Marsden shows Edwards' development as the son and grandson of learned Puritan clergymen, his immersion in the complicated theology of his branch of Calvinism, and his encounters with new intellectual currents emanating from Europe. Marsden does a particularly good job of connecting Edwards' thought with the interesting circumstances of his social position. Edwards was a child of the Puritan establishment of Colonial New England. Edwards grew up at the apex of a rural society whose social organiztion was based on deference, with social position shaped by personal and family relationships to an extent largely unknown in modern society (though there are exceptions; see George Bush). He was embedded in a strongly patriarchal family structure, with religion occupying a central position in society that would have been unusual even in contemporary Europe. Edwards also inherited an intense sense of being part of a larger British and Protestant world. The colonial New England of Edwards' time was not, however, impervious to outside influences. The Puritans placed great emphasis on education, particularly for clergy, and by Edwards' youth, many Puritan clergy were familiar with intellectual developments in Europe. Edwards was influenced by Locke's epistemology, was familiar with the work of Newton and later assimilated Newton into his theological work, and had a more positive view of the natural world than his 17th Puritan forebears. He remained connected with European intellectual trends throughout his life. It clear that he read Hume's Treatise at a time when it was ignored by most European intellectuals.

The combination of his Puritan heritage and receptivity to new ideas makes Edwards a peculiarly transitional figure. His life's work was to defend the sophisticated but demanding Calvinist theology and eschatology of his ancestors. In so doing, he would incorporate Newton and borrow ideas from Locke, Hutcheson, and other philosophers of the Enlightenment. He was an advocate of the Great Awakening that broke the fragile unity of New England Protestantism but but was unsympathetic to its increasingly influential anti-establishment elements. Edwards produced a number of impressive treatises defending his views, though he did not live long enough to complete all his projected theological works. If he had lived longer, he would have been the most systematic theologian since Aquinas.

Marsden's biography is not just an account and exploration of Edwards' ideas. Given the limited documentation about Edwards' personal life, this is also the story of Edwards' family life and pastoral work. It is remarkable that a man who produced thousands of pages of written work was also an active minister serving a substantial congregation. Edwards also devoted a good part of each day to contemplative activities.

This book is valuable also because it casts light on many important features of American history. Marsden's goal is to tell Edwards' story in a way that will illuminate Colonial America in the first half of 18th century. This book is instructive about religion, family life, education, Native American relations, and colonial politics. For example, there is a brief but very interesting section on Edwards' attitude towards slavery. This is an ambitious and superb piece of scholarship.

46 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Surprisingly Christian Biography, June 20, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Jonathan Edwards: A Life (Hardcover)

What's most surprising about Yale's latest attempt at an Edwards Biography is how thoroughly Christian it is. Having extensively studied the 18th century Puritan, I've long been baffled by just how many of his biographers have attempted to make Edwards, to quote G. Marsden, "over in their own images" (p.2). In so doing, some of these books have made his Orthodox Christianity, which was truly the centerpiece of his life and thought, strangely and eerily quiet. Some biographers have tried to separate Edwards' religious convictions from his genius. Marsden doesn't. Any biographer who wishes to write honestly about Edwards must necessarily write much on Edwards' faith and his God. Marsden does. These things were truly the centerpiece of his life and so therefore should be the centerpiece of any book about his life.

35 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent! Everything You Want in a Good Biography, December 4, 2003

By 

Brian G Hedges (South Bend, Indiana) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Jonathan Edwards: A Life (Hardcover)

This excellent study on the greatest theologian/philosopher in American history is everything you would ever want in a good biography. George Marsden writes with an objective eye and at an even pace in this thoroughly researched, yet popularly written biography on Edwards. Much attention is given to the intellectual development of Edwards, and Marsden helps us see Edwards against the backdrop of the age in which he lived. There is also considerable focus on the Great Awakening, including the good, the bad, and the ugly. No one can understand Edwards without understanding something about the controversies in which he was enmeshed; and again, Marsden gives an objective account which is not unsympathetic to Edwards, but does not fail to recognize his feet of clay either. Towards the end of the book are several chapters introducing Edwards most important theological books, such as Freedom of the Will, Original Sin, History of Redemption, and The End for Which God Created the World. The book is carefully documented and indexed, but for all the detail it is an absolutely delightful read! I highly, highly recommend this book.