Jonathan Edwards

by George M. Marsden

My task as an historian is to make intelligible the outlook of another time, which demands taking into account the various perspectives of readers and also what has transpired since the eighteenth century. Yet it would be a failure of imagination if we were to start out-as today's histories sometimes do-by simply judging people of the past for having outlooks that are not like our own. Rather, we must first try to enter

sympathetically into an earlier world and to understand its people. Once we do that we will be in a far better position both to learn from them and to evaluate

The central principle in Edwards' thought, true to his Calvinistic heritage, was the sovereignty of God.

If the central principle of Edwards' thought was the sovereignty of God, the central practical motive in his life and work was his conviction that nothing was more momentous personally than one's eternal relationship to God. Many

find him to be a person of immense personal integrity. He was intensely pious and disciplined, admirably but dauntingly so for those of more ordinary religious faith. His unrelenting intensity led him to follow the logic of his faith to its conclusions. His accompanying seriousness made him not an easy person to spend time with as a casual

acquaintance, although he would have been fascinating to talk to about matters that concerned him. His prowess as a logician made him exceedingly sure of his opinions, sometimes given to pride, overconfidence, tactlessness, and an inability to credit opposing views. At the same time, he was often aware of his pride and was constantly trying-and apparently often succeeding-to subdue his arrogant spirit and to cultivate such Christian virtues as meekness, gentleness, and charity. As was common

for eighteenth-century leaders, he was authoritarian, yet he was also extremely caring. He was much loved by those closest to him. His opponents found him aloof, opinionated, and intolerant. For a time he won the hearts of almost everyone in his Northampton parish; th...

The tensions of a life are often what cast most light, not only on the person but also on the culture and on wider human experience.

the overwhelming proportion of his surviving writings deal with theological or ecclesiastical matters. Even his family letters seldom deal with personal matters outside of a theological framework.

The real war was among spiritual powers, a nation God had favored with true religion versus peoples in Satan's grip, Catholics and pagans.

"Oh yes, yes," Timothy replied, "Martha is a good girl but ... the grace of God will dwell where you or I cannot!"20

any signs of willfulness, although Puritan practices of childrearing varied and often included more displays of warm affection than is sometimes depicted. For those whose first concern was to prepare their children for salvation, the most loving thing a parent could do was to teach children the disciplines that would open them to receive a truly submissive spirit.

As John Wesley, who was also born in 1703 and reared with similar rigor in an English parsonage, put it, "Break their wills that you may save their souls."24

"Remember my love to each of the children," and then mentions each of the first seven by name, "Esther, Elizabeth, Anne, Mary, Jonathan, Eunice and Abigail." He goes on: "The Lord have mercy on and eternally save them all, with our dear little Jerusha. The Lord bind up their souls with thine and mine in the bundle of life." Ask the children, he continues, "if they desire to see their father again, to pray daily for me in secret; and above all things to seek the grace and favor of God in Christ, and that while they are young."26 In a later sermon Timothy preached that a husband's love for his wife should be a "singular peculiar thing," that displayed the "honor and respect" she deserved. He should "not act magisterial or lordly, but in a loving manner with due respect to his wife."27

Jonathan Edwards is sometimes criticized for having too dim a view of human nature, but it may be helpful to be reminded that his grandmother was an incorrigible profligate, his great-aunt committed infanticide, and his great-uncle was an ax-murderer.

He prayed secretly five times a day, spoke much of religion to other boys, and organized prayer meetings with them. "My mind was much engaged in it," he recalled, "and had much self-righteous pleasure; and it was my delight to abound in religious duties." He and his schoolmates "built a booth in a swamp, in a very secret and retired place, for a place of prayer." He also had his own secret places in the woods where he would retire "and used to be from time to time much affected." Eventually, the nine-year-old lad "entirely lost all those affections and delights" and "returned like a dog to his vomit, and went on in ways of sin."2

Satan's favorite device was self-deception. Self-generated religious enthusiasm could look like the real thing for a time but soon would fade away.

If life was uncertain and frightening, eternity was more so. Parents who themselves experienced God's saving grace and who lost children in infancy might have hopes in God's covenant promises of mercy from generation to generation. Young children might have saving grace, even if they did not live long enough for it to come to fruition in identifiable signs of conversion. One nighttime prayer (a form of which has long survived) was "Lord, if my Soul this night away thou

Normally, following the first enthusiasm of their awakening, they would experience a backsliding into sin that would lead them to realize the terribleness of their sins and that God would be entirely just in condemning them to hell.

Potential converts not only had to recognize their guilt deserving eternal flames, but be "truly humbled" by a total sense of their unworthiness.'

Only then was one sufficiently prepared to reach the third step-if God graciously granted it-of receiving God's regenerating "light," or a "new spirit created in them," so that they truly repented and sin would no longer reign in them, but rather they would be guided by the Holy Spirit "dwelling in them" and they would receive the gift of faith in Christ alone as their hope of salvation and would experience a "glorious change" to a life dedicated to serving God. Following stricter Puritan practice, Timothy Edwards requi...

this Calvinist scheme of things God's grace could not be controlled. Puritans, like others in the Reformed tradition, were insistent on giving God credit for everything. God's saving grace was in no way a reward for good works. Truly good works, or works motivated by true love to God, were possible only for the regenerate, and even then they were tinged by the remnants of one's inherited sinful nature. Even faith itself, though a positive act of receiving God's free gift of sa...

Seldom has there been a spiritual discipline where so much effort was put into recognizing the worthlessness of one's own efforts.

Despite their doctrines of grace, New England Calvinists, such as the Edwardses, worked constantly at trying to regulate their own lives and those of others by God's law. Keeping the law of God was part of

as much as that could be

knowledge of the principals of religion."22 Privately he confided to his poetry notebooks the greater danger of returning to the degeneracy of the national Church of England, ruled by bishops or prelates: Apostasy wherewith thou art thus driven Unto the tents of Presbyterianism (Which is refined Prelacy at best) ... Where open Sinners vile unmasked indeed Are welcome Guests (if they can say the Creed) Unto Christ's Table 23 In Boston Stoddard's leading opponents were the Mathers, Increase and his

We can imagine the strict attentions that such an exacting mentor must have directed toward preparing his only son for the ministry. In matters academic the two were well matched. The son's precocious aptitudes suited the father's perfectionist demands. Far more difficult for Jonathan was meeting the high standards his father set for true spirituality. No amount of discipline and striving could satisfy. For a boy who took great satisfaction in his own superior standing and achievements, the challenge of attaining superior humility was truly daunting. Yet God-and Timothy Edwards, the expert in God's standard-would accept nothing less. Twelve-year-old Jonathan's zeal for the revival of 1716 was transparent and he may have shown hopeful signs of seeking grace, yet he was not among those who could make profession. His next years would be spiritually troubled.

As early as he could remember, he had resented much of the endless tedium of his parents' teaching and discipline. Holiness seemed "a melancholy, morose, sour and unpleasant thing."39

We, of course, cannot tell what brought him to overcome this hurdle, since he says he himself did not fully understand. Yet we do know that around this time he was beginning to formulate his most characteristic and profound insights on God's character and relationship to the entire universe.

These insights were for him like a Copernican revolution, providing a whole new perspective for understanding God's relation to reality and putting questions of God's relation to humans in an entirely new framework.

put it, "I thought with myself, how excellent a Being that was; and how happy I should be, if I might enjoy that God, and be wrapped up to God in heaven, and be as it were swallowed up in him."

What overwhelmed him was two seemingly opposite attributes of the triune God "in a sweet conjunction: majesty and meekness joined together: it was a sweet and gentle, and holy majesty; and also a majestic meekness; an awful sweetness; a high, and great, and holy gentleness

Despite his massive intellect and heroic disciplines, he was, like everyone else, a person with frailties and contradictions.

with insight on his most besetting sin (which he was not the only one to notice), "I am greatly afflicted with a proud and self-righteous spirit; much more sensibly, than I used to be formerly. I see that serpent rising and putting forth its head, continually, everywhere, all around me."3

As he later recalled, "I once lived for many months next to a Jew (the houses adjoining one to another) and had much opportunity daily to observe him; who appeared to me the devoutest person that ever I saw in my life; great part of his time being spent in acts of devotion, at his eastern window, which opened next to mine, seeming to be most earnestly engaged, not only in the daytime, but sometimes whole nights."'

I used to be earnest to read public news-letters, mainly for that end; to see if I could not find some news favorable to the interest of religion

"Resolved, never to suffer the least motions of anger to irrational beings."

Most of the specifically practical resolutions have to do, however, with correcting personal faults, especially irritability, pride, and evil-speaking. Typically, he related these tendencies to his pride and resolved to view

New York sermon on "poverty of spirit" he attempted to show of what "an excellent, lovely temper and disposition true Christians" possess if the self-denying spirit of Christ truly dwells in them. A Christian was "at all times to esteem others better than himself, to place himself last in his own esteem."12 He was preac...

In spite of the preoccupation with self that Puritan piety inevitably entailed, Edwards was desperately trying to keep God in the forefront of his consciousness.

Quite a few of the sermons are on self-renunciation and total dedication to God. "God will not accept of any if we keep back a part. The flesh, the world, and the devil are God's most irreconcilable enemies."17 Constantly he reminded his hearers of the inversion of values that Christianity involves. They must be renouncing all worldly

"When I am violently beset with temptation, or cannot rid myself of evil thoughts, to do some sum in arithmetic, or geometry, or some other study, which necessarily engages all my thoughts, and unavoidably keeps them from wandering" (July 27).

He also privately "resolved, never to leave searching, till I have satisfyingly found out the very bottom and foundation, the real reason, why they used to be converted in those steps."24

He was profoundly influenced by Isaac Newton, probably the most important thinker of the era.'

by a sense of a special calling. He felt called to use the new learning in defense of God's eternal word.

When, as a tutor at Yale a few years later, he recorded his views of Locke in his notebooks, it was to refute him or go far beyond him.16 As others have observed, Edwards was "a miser who critically appraised his treasure."17

The greatest philosophers of the day agreed that the more one explored the ingenuities of nature, the more one must admire the genius of the Creator. Only

among students of Locke and Newton-that colors were phenomena that existed nowhere but in the minds that experienced them was a crucial stimulant to much wider philosophical reflections. Edwards' discussions

By Edwards' time witchcraft and the preternatural had almost disappeared from clerical attention.

He recognized that in a general way "afflictions come as corrections for sin" and should remind one to repent of "all our sin." Further, one should be reminded "that all things shall work together for our good; not knowing in what way, indeed, but