Jonathan Edwards
(1703 – 1758)
Jonathan Edwards (October 5, 1703 – March 22, 1758) was a preacher,
theologian, and missionary to Native Americans. Edwards "is widely acknowledged
to be America's most important and original philosophical theologian, and one of
America's greatest intellectuals.
Edwards's theological work is very broad in scope, but he is often associated
with his defense of Reformed theology, the metaphysics of theological
determinism, and the Puritan heritage. Edwards played a critical role in shaping
the First Great Awakening, and oversaw some of the first fires of revival in
1733-1735 at his church in Northampton, Massachusetts. Edwards's sermon "Sinners
in the Hands of an Angry God," is considered a classic of early American
literature, which he delivered during another wave of revival in 1741, following
George Whitefield's tour of the Thirteen Colonies.
Edwards is widely known for his many books: The End For Which God Created the
World; The Life of David Brainerd, which served to inspire thousands of
missionaries throughout the nineteenth century; and Religious Affections, which
many Reformed Evangelicals read even today. Edwards died from a smallpox
inoculation shortly after beginning the presidency at the College of New Jersey
(later to be named Princeton University), and was the grandfather of Aaron Burr.
Early life
Jonathan Edwards, born on October 5, 1703, was the son of Timothy Edwards
(1668–1759), a minister at East Windsor, Connecticut (modern day South Windsor)
who eked out his salary by tutoring boys for college. His mother, Esther
Stoddard, daughter of the Rev. Solomon Stoddard, of Northampton, Massachusetts,
seems to have been a woman of unusual mental gifts and independence of
character.
Jonathan, their only son, was the fifth of eleven children. He was trained for
college by his father and by his elder sisters, all of whom received an
excellent education. When ten years old, he wrote a semi-humorous tract on the
immateriality of the soul. He was interested in natural history and, at the age
of eleven, wrote a remarkable essay on the habits of the "flying spider."
He entered Yale College in 1716, at just under the age of thirteen. In the
following year, he became acquainted with John Locke's Essay Concerning Human
Understanding, which influenced him profoundly. During his college studies, he
kept note books labelled "The Mind," "Natural Science" (containing a discussion
of the atomic theory), "The Scriptures" and "Miscellanies," had a grand plan for
a work on natural and mental philosophy, and drew up for himself rules for its
composition. Even before his graduation in September 1720, as valedictorian and
head of his class, he seems to have had a well formulated philosophy. He spent
two years after his graduation in New Haven studying theology.
In 1722 to 1723, he was, for eight months, "stated supply" (a clergyman employed
to supply a pulpit for a definite time, but not settled as a pastor) of a small
Presbyterian Church in New York City. The church invited him to remain, but he
declined the call. After spending two months in study at home, in 1724–1726, he
was one of the two tutors at Yale, earning for himself the name of a "pillar
tutor", from his steadfast loyalty to the college and its orthodox teaching, at
the time when Yale's rector (Timothy Cutler) and one of her tutors had gone over
to the Episcopal Church.
The years, 1720 to 1726, are partially recorded in his diary and in the
resolutions for his own conduct which he drew up at this time. He had long been
an eager seeker after salvation and was not fully satisfied as to his own
conversion until an experience in his last year in college, when he lost his
feeling that the election of some to salvation and of others to eternal
damnation was "a horrible doctrine," and reckoned it "exceedingly pleasant,
bright and sweet." He now took a great and new joy in the beauties of nature,
and delighted in the allegorical interpretation of the Song of Solomon.
Balancing these mystic joys is the stern tone of his Resolutions, in which he is
almost ascetic in his eagerness to live earnestly and soberly, to waste no time,
to maintain the strictest temperance in eating and drinking.
On February 15, 1727, Edwards was ordained minister at Northampton and assistant
to his grandfather, Solomon Stoddard. He was a scholar-pastor, not a visiting
pastor, his rule being thirteen hours of study a day. In the same year, he
married Sarah Pierpont. Then seventeen, Sarah was from a storied New England
clerical family: her father was James Pierpont (1659–1714), the head founder of
Yale College, and her mother was the great-granddaughter of Thomas Hooker.[14]
Sarah's spiritual devotion was without peer, and her relationship with God had
long proved an inspiration to Edwards--he first remarked on her great piety when
she was a mere 13 years old.[15] She was of a bright and cheerful disposition, a
practical housekeeper, a model wife and the mother of his eleven children, who
included Esther Edwards. Solomon Stoddard died on February 11, 1729, leaving to
his grandson the difficult task of the sole ministerial charge of one of the
largest and wealthiest congregations in the colony, and one proud of its
morality, its culture and its reputation.
Great Awakening
On July 7, 1731, Edwards preached in Boston the "Public Lecture" afterwards
published under the title "God Glorified — in Man's Dependence," which was his
first public attack on Arminianism. The emphasis of the lecture was on God's
absolute sovereignty in the work of salvation: that while it behooved God to
create man pure and without sin, it was of his "good pleasure" and "mere and
arbitrary grace" for him to grant any person the faith necessary to incline him
or her toward holiness; and that God might deny this grace without any
disparagement to any of his character.
In 1733, a religious revival began in Northampton and reached such intensity in
the winter of 1734 and the following spring as to threaten the business of the
town. In six months, nearly three hundred were admitted to the church. The
revival gave Edwards an opportunity for studying the process of conversion in
all its phases and varieties, and he recorded his observations with
psychological minuteness and discrimination in A Faithful Narrative of the
Surprising Work of God in the Conversion of Many Hundred Souls in Northampton
(1737). A year later, he published Discourses on Various Important Subjects, the
five sermons which had proved most effective in the revival, and of these, none,
he tells us, was so immediately effective as that on the Justice of God in the
Damnation of Sinners, from the text, "That every mouth may be stopped." Another
sermon, published in 1734, on the Reality of Spiritual Light set forth what he
regarded as the inner, moving principle of the revival, the doctrine of a
special grace in the immediate, and supernatural divine illumination of the
soul.
By 1735, the revival had spread--and popped up independently--across the
Connecticut River Valley, and perhaps as far as New Jersey. However, criticism
of the revival began, and many New Englanders feared that Edwards had led his
flock into fanaticism. Over the summer of 1735, religious fervor took a dark
turn. A number of New Englanders were shaken by the revivals but not converted,
and became convinced of their inexorable damnation. Edwards wrote that
"multitudes" felt urged--presumably by Satan--to take their own lives. At least
two people committed suicide in the depths of their spiritual duress, one from
Edwards's own congregation--his uncle, Joseph Hawley II. It is not known if any
others took their own lives, but the suicide craze effectively ended the first
wave of revival, except in some parts of Connecticut.
However, despite these setbacks and the cooling of religious fervor, word of the
Northampton revival and Edwards's leadership role had spread as far as England
and Scotland. It was at this time that Edwards was acquainted with George
Whitefield, who was traveling the Thirteen Colonies on a revival tour in
1739-1740. The two men may not have seen eye to eye on every detail--Whitefield
was far more comfortable with the strongly emotional elements of revival than
Edwards was--but they were both passionate about preaching the Gospel. They
worked together to orchestrate Whitefield's trip, first through Boston, and then
to Northampton. When Whitefield preached at Edwards's church in Northampton, he
reminded them of the revival they had experienced just a few years before. This
deeply touched Edwards, who wept throughout the entire service, and much of the
congregation too was moved. Revival began to spring up again, and it was at this
time that Edwards preached his most famous sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an
Angry God" in Enfield, Connecticut in 1741. This sermon has been widely
reprinted as an example of "fire and brimstone" preaching in the colonial
revivals, though the majority of Edwards's sermons were not this dramatic.
Indeed, he used this style deliberately. As historian George Marsden put it,
"Edwards could take for granted...that a New England audience knew well the
Gospel remedy. The problem was getting them to seek it."
The movement met with opposition from conservative Congregationalist ministers.
In 1741, Edwards published in its defense The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of
the Spirit of God, dealing particularly with the phenomena most criticized: the
swoonings, outcries and convulsions. These "bodily effects," he insisted, were
not distinguishing marks of the work of the Spirit of God one way or another;
but so bitter was the feeling against the revival in the more strictly Puritan
churches that, in 1742, he was forced to write a second apology, Thoughts on the
Revival in New England, his main argument being the great moral improvement of
the country. In the same pamphlet, he defends an appeal to the emotions, and
advocates preaching terror when necessary, even to children, who in God's sight
"are young vipers… if not Christ's." He considers "bodily effects" incidental to
the real work of God, but his own mystic devotion and the experiences of his
wife during the Awakening (which he gives in detail) make him think that the
divine visitation usually overpowers the body, a view in support of which he
quotes Scripture. In reply to Edwards, Charles Chauncy wrote Seasonable Thoughts
on the State of Religion in New England in 1743 and anonymously penned The Late
Religious Commotions in New England Considered in the same year. In these works
he urged conduct as the sole test of conversion; and the general convention of
Congregational ministers in the Province of Massachusetts Bay protested "against
disorders in practice which have of late obtained in various parts of the land."
In spite of Edwards's able pamphlet, the impression had become widespread that
"bodily effects" were recognized by the promoters of the Great Awakening as the
true tests of conversion. To offset this feeling, Edwards preached at
Northampton, during the years 1742 and 1743, a series of sermons published under
the title of Religious Affections (1746), a restatement in a more philosophical
and general tone of his ideas as to "distinguishing marks." In 1747, he joined
the movement started in Scotland called the "concert in prayer," and in the same
year published An Humble Attempt to Promote Explicit Agreement and Visible Union
of God's People in Extraordinary Prayer for the Revival of Religion and the
Advancement of Christ's Kingdom on Earth. In 1749, he published a memoir of
David Brainerd who had lived with his family for several months and had died at
Northampton in 1747. Brainerd had been constantly attended by Edwards's daughter
Jerusha, to whom he was rumored to have been engaged to be married, though there
is no surviving evidence for this. In the course of elaborating his theories of
conversion Edwards used Brainerd and his ministry as a case study, making
extensive notes of his conversions and confessions.
Views on Gender
Edwards's relationship with his wife, Sarah Pierrepont, has been the subject of
critical and popular inquiry. Their relationship has been overly romanticized,
but Edwards was genuinely committed to the promotion of gender equality.
Edwards's interest in Eve has been construed by scholars as an indication that
he harbored proto-feminist views:
"Edwards repeatedly draws attention to Eve’s title as “the mother of all living”
(Genesis 3:20), emphasizing this name as an indication of her godlike qualities.
Just as “God hath life in himself; so hath he given to the Son to have life in
Himself ” (John 5:26), and Eve, as the “mother of Christ” (“Note 399” 397) also
has life in herself —she is the source of all spiritual life on earth. Edwards
confirms that “[there is] not one, that has spiritual and eternal life, of all
mankind, that in this sense is excepted, not Adam, nor Christ, no, nor herself”
(“Note 399” 397). This distinction is unique. Edwards does not honor Mary
similarly, despite her more immediate connection to Christ, and it is evident
that for Edwards, Eve represents the living nature and attributes of both God
and his Christ closely."
Edwards's letters to his wife and his considerations of other important biblical
women, including Sarah, Mary and Anna, likewise indicate that he viewed women in
a progressive manner ahead of his time. Many of these writings have only
recently been made widely available in his "Miscellanies" and Notes on
Scripture.
Science and aesthetics
Edwards was fascinated by the discoveries of Isaac Newton and other scientists
of his age. Before he undertook full-time ministry work in Northampton, he wrote
on various topics in natural philosophy, including "flying spiders," light, and
optics. While he was worried about the materialism and faith in reason alone of
some of his contemporaries, he saw the laws of nature as derived from God and
demonstrating his wisdom and care. Hence, scientific discoveries did not
threaten his faith, and for him, there was no inherent conflict between the
spiritual and material.
Edwards also wrote sermons and theological treatises that emphasized the beauty
of God and the role of aesthetics in the spiritual life, in which he anticipates
a twentieth-century current of theological aesthetics, represented by figures
like Hans Urs von Balthasar.
Later years
In 1747, according to Ola Elizabeth Winslow, his household came to include a
slave, "a negro girl named Venus", purchased by Edwards for 80 pounds from
Richard Perkins of Newport.[29] In 1748, there had come a crisis in his
relations with his congregation. The Half-Way Covenant, adopted by the synods of
1657 and 1662, had made baptism alone the condition to the civil privileges of
church membership, but not of participation in the sacrament of the Lord's
Supper. Edwards's grandfather and predecessor in the pastorate, Solomon
Stoddard, had been even more liberal, holding that the Supper was a converting
ordinance and that baptism was a sufficient title to all the privileges of the
church. As early as 1744, Edwards, in his sermons on Religious Affections, had
plainly intimated his dislike of this practice. In the same year, he had
published in a church meeting the names of certain young people, members of the
church, who were suspected of reading improper books, and also the names of
those who were to be called as witnesses in the case. It has often been reported
that the witnesses and accused were not distinguished on this list, and so,
therefore, the entire congregation was in an uproar. However, Patricia Tracy's
research has cast doubt on this version of the events, noting that in the list
he read from, the names were definitely distinguished. Those involved were
eventually disciplined for disrespect to the investigators rather than for the
original incident. In any case, the incident further deteriorated the
relationship between Edwards and the congregation. In a time of significant
cultural foment, he was associated with the old guard.
Edwards's preaching became unpopular. For four years, no candidate presented
himself for admission to the church, and when one did, in 1748, he was met with
Edwards's formal but mild and gentle tests, as expressed in the Distinguishing
Marks and later in Qualifications for Full Communion (1749). The candidate
refused to submit to them, the church backed him, and the break between the
church and Edwards was complete. Even permission to discuss his views in the
pulpit was refused him. He was allowed to present his views on Thursday
afternoons. His sermons were well attended by visitors, but not his own
congregation. A council was convened to decide the communion matter between the
minister and his people. The congregation chose half the council, and Edwards
was allowed to select the other half of the council. His congregation, however,
limited his selection to one county where the majority of the ministers were
against him. The ecclesiastical council voted that the pastoral relation be
dissolved. The church members, by a vote of more than 200 to 23, ratified the
action of the council, and finally a town meeting voted that Edwards should not
be allowed to occupy the Northampton pulpit, though he continued to live in the
town and preach in the church by the request of the congregation until October
1751. He evinced no rancour or spite; his "Farewell Sermon" was dignified and
temperate; he preached from 2 Cor. 1:14 and directed the thoughts of his people
to that far future when the minister and his people would stand before God; nor
is it to be ascribed to chagrin that in a letter to Scotland after his dismissal
he expresses his preference for Presbyterian to Congregational church
government. His position at the time was not unpopular throughout New England;
his doctrine that the Lord's Supper is not a cause of regeneration and that
communicants should be professing Christians has since (very largely through the
efforts of his pupil Joseph Bellamy) become a standard of New England
Congregationalism.
Edwards, with his large family, was now thrown upon the world, but offers of aid
quickly came to him. A parish in Scotland could have been procured, and he was
called to a Virginia church. He declined both, to become, in 1750, pastor of the
church in Stockbridge and a missionary to the Housatonic Indians. To the
Indians, he preached through an interpreter, and their interests he boldly and
successfully defended by attacking the whites who were using their official
positions among them to increase their private fortunes. In Stockbridge, he
wrote the Humble Relation, also called Reply to Williams (1752), which was an
answer to Solomon Williams (1700–1776), a relative and a bitter opponent of
Edwards as to the qualifications for full communion; and he there composed the
treatises on which his reputation as a philosophical theologian chiefly rests,
the essay on Original Sin, the Dissertation Concerning the Nature of True
Virtue, the Dissertation Concerning the End for which God created the World, and
the great work on the Will, written in four months and a half, and published in
1754 under the title, An Inquiry into the Modern Prevailing Notions Respecting
that Freedom of the Will which is supposed to be Essential to Moral Agency.
In 1757, on the death of the Reverend Aaron Burr, who five years before had
married Edwards's daughter Esther and was the father of future US vice-president
Aaron Burr, he reluctantly agreed to replace his late son-in-law as the
president of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton University), where he was
installed on February 16, 1758.
Almost immediately after becoming president, Edwards being a strong supporter of
small pox inoculations, decided to get inoculated himself in order to encourage
others to do the same. Unfortunately, never having been in robust health, he
died of the inoculation on March 22, 1758. He was buried in Princeton Cemetery.
Edwards had three sons and eight daughters.
Legacy
The followers of Jonathan Edwards and his disciples came to be known as the New
Light Calvinist ministers, as opposed to the traditional Old Light Calvinist
ministers. Prominent disciples included Samuel Hopkins, Joseph Bellamy, Jonathan
Edwards's son Jonathan Edwards Jr. and Gideon Hawley. Through a practice of
apprentice ministers living in the homes of older ministers, they eventually
filled a large number of pastorates in the New England area. Many of Jonathan
and Sarah Edwards's descendants became prominent citizens in the United States,
including the Vice President Aaron Burr and the College Presidents Timothy
Dwight, Jonathan Edwards Jr. and Merrill Edwards Gates. Jonathan and Sarah
Edwards were also ancestors of the First Lady Edith Roosevelt, the writer O.
Henry, the publisher Frank Nelson Doubleday and the writer Robert Lowell.
Edwards's writings and beliefs continue to influence individuals and groups to
this day. Early American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions
missionaries were influenced by Edwards's writings, as is evidenced in reports
in the ABCFM's journal "The Missionary Herald," and beginning with Perry
Miller's seminal work, Edwards enjoyed a renaissance among scholars after the
end of the Second World War. The Banner of Truth Trust and other publishers
continue to reprint Edwards's works, and most of his major works are now
available through the series published by Yale University Press, which has
spanned three decades and supplies critical introductions by the editor of each
volume. Yale has also established the Jonathan Edwards Project online. Author
and teacher, Elisabeth Woodbridge Morris, memorialized him, her paternal
ancestor (3rd great grandfather) in two books, The Jonathon Papers (1912), and
More Jonathon Papers (1915). In 1933, he became the namesake of Jonathan Edwards
College, one of the first of the twelve residential colleges of Yale, and The
Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale University was founded to provide scholarly
information about Edwards' writings.
Edwards is commemorated as a teacher and missionary by the Evangelical Lutheran
Church in America on March 22.
Progeny
Edwards's many eminent descendants have led some Progressive Era scholars to
view Edwards's progeny as proof of eugenics, though most people today consider
eugenics a discredited pseudoscience. That said, no modern scholar would dispute
the fact that Edwards's genealogy is indeed impressive, and his descendants have
had a disproportionate effect upon American culture. Edwards's biographer George
Marsden notes that "the Edwards family produced scores of clergymen, thirteen
presidents of higher learning, sixty-five professors, and many other persons of
notable achievements."