Editing Jonathan Edwards (theologian) (section)

==Biography==

===Early life===
Jonathan Edwards was born on October 5, 1703, the fifth of 11 children and only son of Timothy Edwards, a [[Minister (Christianity)|minister]] at East Windsor, Connecticut (modern-day [[South Windsor, Connecticut|South Windsor]]), who supplemented his salary by tutoring boys for college. His mother, Esther Stoddard, daughter of Rev. [[Solomon Stoddard]] of [[Northampton, Massachusetts]], seems to have been a woman of unusual mental gifts and independence of character.{{Sfn |Marsden|2003}}{{Rp|needed=yes|date=January 2012}}{{Sfn |Gardiner|Webster |1911 |p=3}} Timothy Edwards held at least one person in enslavement in the Edwards' household, a black man named Ansars.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Minkema |first=Kenneth P.|date=1997 |title=Jonathan Edwards on Slavery and the Slave Trade |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2953884 |journal=The William and Mary Quarterly |volume=54 |issue=4 |pages=823–834 |doi=10.2307/2953884 |jstor=2953884 |issn=0043-5597}}</ref> Jonathan was prepared for college by his father and elder sisters, all of whom received an excellent education. His sister Esther, the eldest, wrote a semi-humorous tract on the immateriality of the soul, which has often been mistakenly attributed to Jonathan.<ref>Kenneth P. Minkema, "The Authorship of 'The Soul,'" ''Yale University Library Gazette 65'' (October 1990):26–32.</ref>{{Verify source|date=July 2021}}

[[File:A Faithful Narrative of the Surprizing Work of God by Jonathan Edwards 1737.jpg|thumb|right|{{Citation | title = [[A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God in the Conversion of Many Hundred Souls in Northampton|A Faithful Narrative of the Surprizing Work of God in the Conversion of Many Hundred Souls in Northampton]] | first = Jonathan | last = Edwards | place = London | year = 1737}}]]
He entered [[Yale University|Yale College]] in 1716 at just under the age of 13. In the following year, he became acquainted with [[John Locke]]'s ''[[An Essay Concerning Human Understanding|Essay Concerning Human Understanding]]'', which influenced him profoundly.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780300062045|title=A Jonathan Edwards Reader|publisher=[[Yale University Press]]|year=1995|isbn=978-0-300-06203-8|editor-last=Smith|editor-first=John E.|location=New Haven|page=xx|editor-last2=Stout|editor-first2=Harry S.|editor-last3=Minkema|editor-first3=Kenneth P.|url-access=registration}}</ref> During his college studies, he kept notebooks labeled "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 rules for its composition.{{Sfn |Gardiner|Webster |1911 |p=3}} He was interested in [[natural history]] and, as an 11-year-old, had observed and written an essay detailing the [[Ballooning (spider)|ballooning behavior]] of some spiders. Edwards edited this text later to match the burgeoning genre of scientific literature, and his "The Flying Spider" fit easily into the contemporary scholarship on spiders.{{Sfn|Marsden|2003|p=66}}<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Wilson|first=David S.|date=1971|title=The Flying Spider|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2708360|journal=Journal of the History of Ideas |volume=32 |issue=3 |pages=447–458 |doi=10.2307/2708360 |jstor=2708360 |issn=0022-5037}}</ref> Although he studied theology for two years after his graduation from Yale, Edwards continued to be interested in science. Although many European scientists and American clergymen found the implications of science pushing them towards [[deism]], Edwards believed the natural world was [[Teleological argument|evidence]] of God's masterful design. Throughout his life, Edwards often went into the woods as a favorite place to pray and worship in the beauty and solace of nature.<ref>{{cite book|author=Edwards|first=Jonathan|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wkBDAQAAIAAJ&pg=PR54|title=The Works of Jonathan Edwards, A.M.|publisher=Ball, Arnold, and Co.|others=Essay by Henry Rodgers. Memoir by Sereno E. Dwight.|year=1840|editor-last=Hickman|editor-first=Edward|location=London|page=54|oclc=4577834}}</ref>

Edwards was fascinated by the discoveries of [[Isaac Newton]] and other scientists of this time period. Before he started working as a full-time pastor in Northampton, he wrote on various topics in natural philosophy, including light and optics, in addition to spiders. While he worried about those of his contemporaries who seemed preoccupied by materialism and faith in reason alone, he considered the laws of nature to be derived from God and demonstrating his wisdom and care. Edwards's written sermons and theological treatises emphasize the beauty of God and the role of [[aesthetics]] in the spiritual life. He is thought to anticipate a 20th-century current of theological aesthetics, represented by figures such as [[Hans Urs von Balthasar]].<ref>[https://banneroftruth.org/uk/store/sermons-and-expositions/charity-its-fruits/ Banner of Truth website, ''Charity and Its Fruits'']</ref><ref>{{cite journal | url=https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0014524616650381q | doi=10.1177/0014524616650381q | title=Book Review: When Jonathan Edwards Encounters Ecumenical Thinkers: Kyle C. Strobel, ''The Ecumenical Edwards: Jonathan Edwards and the Theologians'' | date=2016 | last1=Zhu | first1=Victor | journal=The Expository Times | volume=127 | issue=11 | pages=569–570 }}</ref>

In 1722 to 1723, he was for eight months an un-ordained "supply" pastor (a clergyman employed to preach and minister in a church for a definite time but not settled as a pastor) of a small [[Presbyterianism|Presbyterian]] church on William Street in New York City.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Everdell|first=William R. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=d5EvEAAAQBAJ&q=everdell+evangelical+counter+enlightenment|title=The Evangelical Counter-Enlightenment: From Ecstasy to Fundamentalism in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam in the 18th Century|date=2021|publisher=Springer Nature|isbn=978-3-030-69762-4|language=en}}</ref> 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 tasked with leading the college in the absence of a rector. Yale's previous rector, [[Timothy Cutler]], lost his position when he defected to the [[Anglican Church]]. After two years, he had not been replaced.{{Sfn |Marsden|2003|pp=46, 101}}

He partially recorded the years 1720 to 1726 in his diary and in his resolutions for his 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 [[Unconditional election|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 taking in the beauties of nature and delighted in the allegorical interpretation of the [[Song of Songs|Song of Solomon]]. Balancing these mystic joys is the stern tone of his Resolutions, in which he is almost [[Asceticism|ascetic]] in his eagerness to live earnestly and soberly, to waste no time, to maintain the strictest temperance in eating and drinking.{{Sfn|Marsden|2003|p=51}}{{Sfn |Gardiner|Webster |1911 |p=3}}

On February 15, 1727, Edwards was ordained minister at Northampton and assistant to his grandfather [[Solomon Stoddard]], a noted minister. He was a scholar-pastor, not a visiting pastor, his rule being 13 hours of study per day.{{Sfn |Gardiner|Webster |1911 |p=3}} In the same year, he married [[Sarah Edwards (mystic)|Sarah Pierpont]]. Then 17, Sarah was from a notable New England clerical family: her father was [[James Pierpont (minister)|James Pierpont]], a founder of Yale College; and her mother was the granddaughter of [[Thomas Hooker]].{{Sfn|Marsden|2003|pp=87, 93}} 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 13 years old.{{Sfn|Marsden|2003|pp=93–95, 95–100, 105–9, 241–42}} She was of a bright and cheerful disposition, a practical housekeeper, a model wife, and the mother of his 11 children, who included [[Esther Edwards Burr|Esther Edwards]].{{Sfn|Gardiner|Webster|1911|p=3}} Edwards held to [[Complementarianism|complementarian]] views of marriage and gender roles.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Dodds|first=Elisabeth D.|title=Marriage to a Difficult Man: The Uncommon Union of Jonathan and Sarah Edwards|publisher=Westminster Press|year=1971|isbn=978-0-664-20900-1|location=Philadelphia}}</ref>{{Page needed|date=May 2020}}

Solomon Stoddard died on February 11, 1729, leaving to his grandson the sole ministerial charge of one of the largest and wealthiest congregations in the colony. Its members were proud of its morality, its culture and its reputation.{{Sfn|Marsden|2003}}{{Rp|needed=yes|date=January 2012}} Summing up Edwards' influences during his younger years, scholar John E. Smith writes, "By thus meditating between Berkeley on the one hand and Locke, [[René Descartes|Descartes]], and [[Thomas Hobbes|Hobbes]] on the other, the young Edwards hoped to rescue Christianity from the deadweight of rationalism and the paralyzing inertia of skepticism."<ref>{{cite book|last1=|first1=|url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780300062045|title=A Jonathan Edwards Reader|publisher=[[Yale University Press]]|year=1995|isbn=978-0-300-06203-8|editor-last=Smith|editor-first=John E.|location=New Haven|page=xii|editor-last2=Stout|editor-first2=Harry S.|editor-last3=Minkema|editor-first3=Kenneth P.|url-access=registration}}</ref>

===Great Awakening===
{{Calvinism}}
On July 8, 1731,{{Sfn|Marsden|2003|p=140}} Edwards preached in Boston the "Public Lecture," afterwards published under the title "God Glorified in the Work of Redemption, by the Greatness of Man's Dependence upon Him, in the Whole of It," which was his first public attack on [[Arminianism]]. The emphasis of the lecture was on God's absolute sovereignty in the work of salvation: 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 spiritual revival began in Northampton and reached such an intensity in the winter of 1734<ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last=Bass |first=Diana Butler |title=Christianity After Religion: The End of Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening |publisher=[[HarperOne]] |year=2012 |isbn=978-0-06-200373-7 |editor-last=Bass |editor-first=Diana Butler |edition=1st |location=New York |pages=253 |author-link=Diana Butler Bass}}</ref> and the following spring that it threatened the business of the town. In six months, nearly 300 of 1,100 youths were admitted to the church.{{Sfn |Gardiner|Webster |1911 |p=3}}<ref name=":0" />

The revival gave Edwards an opportunity to study 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. Of these, none was so immediately effective as that on [[The Justice of God in the Damnation of Sinners|''The'' ''Justice of God in the Damnation of Sinners'']], from the text, "That every mouth may be stopped." Another sermon, published in 1734, ''A Divine and Supernatural Light, Immediately Imparted to the Soul by the Spirit of God'', 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.{{Sfn|Marsden|2003|p=|pp=156{{en dash}}157}}{{Sfn |Gardiner|Webster |1911 |p=3}}

By 1735, the revival had spread and appeared 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.{{Sfn|Marsden|2003|p=|pp=161{{en dash}}162}}

Over the summer of 1735, religious fervor took a dark turn. Many New Englanders were affected by the revivals but not converted and became convinced of their inexorable damnation. Edwards wrote that "multitudes" felt urged{{snd}}presumably by Satan{{snd}}to take their own lives.{{Sfn |Marsden|2003| p = 168}} At least two people committed suicide in the depths of their [[spiritual distress]], one from Edwards's own congregation{{snd}}his uncle Joseph Hawley II. It is not known if any others took their own lives, but the "suicide craze"{{Sfn|Marsden|2003|p=|pp=168, 541}} effectively ended the first wave of revival, except in some parts of Connecticut.{{Sfn|Marsden|2003|p=|pp=163–169}}

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 became acquainted with [[George Whitefield]], who was traveling the [[Thirteen Colonies]] on a revival tour in 1739–40. 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 undergone just a few years before.{{Sfn|Marsden|2003|pp=206–212}} This deeply touched Edwards, who wept throughout the entire service, and much of the congregation too was moved.<ref>[https://www.nhinet.org/ccs/docs/awaken.htm National Humanities Institute website, ''Jonathan Edwards: On the Great Awakening'' (1998)]</ref>

[[File:JE Sinners in the Hands Monument.jpg|thumb|left|Monument in [[Enfield, Connecticut]] commemorating the location where ''[[Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God]]'' was preached. The monument is on the grounds of [[Enfield Montessori School]].]] Revivals began to spring up again, and Edwards preached his most famous sermon, ''[[Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God]]'', in [[Enfield, Connecticut]], in 1741. Though this sermon has been widely reprinted as an example of "[[fire and brimstone]]" preaching in the colonial revivals, that characterization is not in keeping with descriptions of Edward's actual preaching style. Edwards did not shout or speak loudly, but talked in a quiet, emotive voice. He moved his audience slowly from point to point, towards an inexorable conclusion: they were lost without the grace of God. While most 21st-century readers notice the damnation looming in such a sermon text, historian [[George Marsden]] reminds us that Edwards was not preaching anything new or surprising: "Edwards could take for granted... that a New England audience knew well the Gospel remedy. The problem was getting them to seek it.".{{Sfn |Marsden|2003| p = 224}}

The movement met with opposition from conservative [[Congregational church|Congregationalist]] ministers. In 1741, Edwards published in the defense of revivals ''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. So bitter was the feeling against the revival in some churches that in 1742 he felt moved to write a second apology, ''Thoughts on the Revival in New England,'' where his main argument concerned 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."{{Sfn |Gardiner|Webster |1911 |p=3}}

He considered "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 recounts 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 (1705–1787)|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. The general convention of Congregational ministers in the Province of Massachusetts Bay seemed to agree, protesting "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.{{Sfn |Gardiner|Webster |1911 |p=4}}

To offset this feeling, during the years 1742 and 1743, Edwards preached at Northampton 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,{{Sfn |Gardiner|Webster |1911 |p=4}} though there is no surviving evidence of this. In the course of elaborating his theories of conversion, Edwards used David Brainerd and his ministry as a case study,<ref>{{cite journal | url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/1509706 | jstor=1509706 | title=The Melancholy Saint: Jonathan Edwards's Interpretation of David Brainerd as a Model of Evangelical Spirituality | last1=Weddle | first1=David L. | journal=The Harvard Theological Review | date=1988 | volume=81 | issue=3 | pages=297–318 | doi=10.1017/S0017816000010117 }}</ref> making extensive notes of his conversions and confessions.

[[File:Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God by Jonathan Edwards 1741.jpg|thumb|right|{{citation | title = Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, A Sermon Preached at Enfield | date = July 8, 1741 | first = Rev. Jonathan | last = Edwards }}]]