Jonathan Edwards

by Perry Miller

Book Overview

Jonathan Edwards (1703-58) was preeminent as a theologian in the eighteenth century American colonies, deeply involved in the religious revival known as the Great Awakening. He was also the first... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• ISBN: B0032K3LRE
• Release Date: January 1965
• Publisher: Meridian
• Weight: 0.60 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Fine Intellectual precis of Edwards by Dean of NE Colonial History

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 w

Jonathan Edwards read John Locke

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.

Two first-rate minds confront each other

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.