Jonathan Edwards was born into a Puritan evangelical household on October 5, 1703, in East Windsor, Connecticut. He was the fifth of eleven children born to the Rev. Timothy and Esther Edwards. His childhood education immersed him not only in the study of the Bible and Christian theology but also in classics and ancient languages.
Undergraduate Years
During his undergraduate
years (1716-1720) and graduate studies (1721-1722) at Yale College, Edwards
engaged all manner of contemporary issues in theology and philosophy. He
studied the debates between the orthodox Calvinism of his Puritan forebears and
the more "liberal" movements that challenged it, such as Deism,
Socinianism, Arianism, and Anglican Arminianism, as well as the most current
thought coming out of Europe, such as British empiricism and continental
rationalism.
Becoming a Pastor
In 1726, Edwards succeeded
his grandfather, Solomon Stoddard, as the pastor of the church in Northampton,
Massachusetts, the largest and most influential church outside of Boston.
Turning his attention from the theoretical pursuits of his Yale years to more
practical matters, he married Sarah Pierpont in 1727. Jonathan and Sarah had
met in New Haven eight years earlier, when she was just thirteen years old, but
they were not married until eight years later. The two of them would go on to
raise ten children in Northampton.
First Great Awakening
In 1734-1735, Edwards
oversaw some of the initial stirrings of the First Great Awakening. He gained
international fame as a revivalist and "theologian of the heart"
after publishing A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God (1738),
which described the awakening in his church and served as an empirical model
for American and British revivalists alike.
The widespread revivals of
the 1730’s and 1740’s stimulated one of the two most fruitful periods for
Edwards' writings. In this period, Edwards became very well known as a
revivalist preacher who subscribed to an experiential interpretation of
Reformed theology that emphasized the sovereignty of God, the depravity of
humankind, the reality of hell, and the necessity of a "New Birth"
conversion. While critics assailed the convictions of many supposed converts as
illusory and even the work of the devil, Edwards became a brilliant apologist
for the revivals. In The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of
God (1741), Some Thoughts Concerning the Present Revival (1742), A
Treatise Concerning Religious Affections(1746), and The Life of David
Brainerd (1749), he sought to isolate the signs of true sainthood from
false belief. The intellectual framework for revivalism he constructed in these
works pioneered a new psychology and philosophy of affections, later invoked by
William James in his classic Varieties of Religious Experience (1902).
"The dismissal of America’s Greatest
Theologian”
In 1750, Edwards’ church
dismissed him from Northampton after he attempted to impose stricter
qualifications for admission to the sacraments upon his congregation. Concerned
that the "open admission" policies instituted by Stoddard allowed too
many hypocrites and unbelievers into church membership, he became embroiled in
a bitter controversy with his congregation, area ministers, and political
leaders. His dismissal is often seen as a turning point in colonial American
history because it marked the clear and final rejection of the old "New
England Way" constructed by the Puritan settlers of New England.
A Mission Post
From Northampton, Edwards
went to the mission post of Stockbridge, on the western border of Massachusetts,
where he served from 1751 to 1757. Here he pastored a small English
congregation, was a missionary to 150 Mahican and Mohawk families, and wrote
many of his major works, including those that addressed the "Arminian
controversy." Foremost among these was A Careful and Strict Inquiry
into the Modern Prevailing Notions of that Freedom of Will..." (1754),
in which he attempted to prove that the will was determined by the inclination
of either sin or grace in the soul. This book, one of the most important works
in modern western thought, set the parameters for philosophical debate on
freedom and determinism for the next century and a half. Also written during
this period were The Great Christian Doctrine of Original Sin Defended (1758),
in which Edwards asserted that all humankind has a natural propensity to sin
due to its "constitutional unity" in Adam; and two major statements
on ethics, The Nature of True Virtue and The End for Which God
Created the World (published posthumously in 1765).
Though Stockbridge provided
something of a haven for Edwards, he could not avoid the limelight. In late
1757, he accepted the presidency of the College of New Jersey (later Princeton
University). While at Princeton, Edwards hoped to complete at least two more
major treatises, one that would show "The Harmony of the Old and New
Testaments" and the other that would be an experiment in narrative
theology, a much expanded treatise on "The History of the Work of
Redemption." However, he did not live to complete these works. After only
a few months in Princeton, he died on March 22, 1758, following complications
from a smallpox inoculation. He is buried in the Princeton Cemetery.
**This biography was taken and revised from The Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale University.
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