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Born on October 5, 1703, in East Windsor, Connecticut Colony, Jonathon Edwards was a child prodigy. At the age of ten he wrote an extensive essay regarding the nature of the soul. At 13 he entered the Collegiate School of Connecticut (now Yale University) and graduated in 1720, as valedictorian of his class. After two additional years of study in theology at Yale, he preached for eight months in a New York church.
He then returned to Yale as a college tutor, studying at the same time for his masters degree. He was ordained in 1727 and received a call to assist his grandfather Solomon Stoddard. Stoddard was a pastor of the church at Northampton, Massachusetts Bay Colony, which contained one of the largest and wealthiest congregations in the entire colony. When Edwards was 26, the sudden death of his grandfather left him the job of pastor. He was a firm believer in Calvinism, which represented absolute sovereignty of God.
This conflicted with the tendency toward belief in Arminianism (a modified form of Calvinism) that existed in the New England colonies. In 1731, in Boston, Edwards preached his first public attack on Arminianism. Using a sermon entitled God Glorified Mans Dependence he called for a return to strict Calvinism. Three years later he delivered a series of powerful sermons on the same subject in his own church. The series included the famous Reality of Spiritual Light in which Edwards combined Calvinism with mysticism (religious experience directly given and experienced). He was a notable pulpit orator.
The result of his 1734 - 35 sermons was a religious revival in which Edwards received 300 new members into his church. Some of the converted became so obsessed by his fiery descriptions of eternal damnation, that several suicides were noted in the area. In 1740 Edwards teamed up with the British evangelist George Whitefield. Together, they started a revival movement that became known as the Great Awakening. This developed into a religious frenzy that overtook all of New England.
During one of Edwards sermons, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, his congregation was said to have risen weeping and moaning from their seats. 1 By 1742 the movement had grown heedlessly and for the next 60 to 70 years, had a major effect on all American religion. In Northampton, Edwards sermons created a demand for harsher religious discipline. However, eventually his entire congregation turned on him because of his insolence and bigotry. A council representing ten congregations in the region dismissed him in 1750. The following year he received a call to Stockbridge, Massachusetts where he became pastor of the village church.
During the next seven years he wrote his most important theological works. In 1757, Edwards accepted the presidency of the College of New Jersey, which later became Princeton University. He was inaugurated in 1758, but five weeks later, on March 22, 1758, he died as the result of the smallpox epidemic. The literature Edwards created was a type completely new to the time period.
It reflected the traditional religious culture of Calvinism, but evolved into Edwards combination of religious components. His sermons were characterized by convulsions and hysteria on the part of his parishioners. He used extreme harshness and appeal to religious fear to get his point across to his diocese. He delt with the denial that human beings have self-determined will. Edwards firmly believed that people could not initiate acts that hadnt been decreed previously by God. His views were reflected mostly in essays and sermons.
His personal diary was found emulating personal goals, and failures. By the mid 18 th century, many people considered American religion to be static. Sermons were seen as instructional rather than inspirational, and there was a general sense that religion was taken completely for granted. What was needed were sermons that represented emotions and emphasized the spiritual side of religion. The movement that was spurred by the dullness of the church was known as the Great Awakening.
Jonathon Edwards was one of the greatest leaders of this movement. He was a unique man who added his interpretation of pure religious truths to American culture. Using his passion for writing and speaking, he inspired the Great Awakening through his passion sermons, strong Calvinistic beliefs, and response to his preaching. Edwards is best known for his skills as a preacher.
Each of his sermons was known to have incredible impact on its listeners. One of the main reasons his lectures caught on so well was that people were vitally interested in the matter he was speaking about. The Puritans were growing deeply concerned by what they perceived to be a striking decline in piety. Edwards and others were deeply concerned about the frivolity of the youth in the town.
They were afraid of the impact on the state of adolescent morals. Edwards also attempted to reverse the decline in worship attendance. Due to the declining allegiance to the church, congregation numbers were quickly descending. His powerful sermons immediately began to alter this concept and people were actually making honest attempts to attend weekly Sunday Mass. Without his passionate sermons, response to the need for conversion (and the initiation of the Great Awakening), would have been nonexistent. Edwards also believed strongly in Calvinism, and used this as the root of his theological ideas.
It was unusual for people to openly preach conversion, as Edwards did. A history professor at Wake Forest University commented, What Edwards said in his sermons was pure Calvinism. 2 Edwards obviously preached exactly what he intended for his audience to hear, an honest attempt of why they should convert to Calvinism. In New England Edwards influence reinvigorated Calvinism. However, opponents of the revival began preaching against everything Edwards had worked for. In Middle Colonies, Scottish Presbyterians reacted by arguing that their orthodox doctrine was being weakened by the revivalists emphasis on religious experience. All of these arguments did, however, bring about a sense of unity of supporters of the Great Awakening revival.
Edwards, and the Awakening, used Calvinism to respond to the peoples need for reassurance and direction. Perhaps the most important aspect of Edwards contributions to the Great Awakening, was not something he directly did, but the response that he obtained from his preaching audience. Leonard Ravenhill put it best in his Portrait of a Revival Preacher when he said, When Jonathon Edwards uttered in the Spirit, the expressionless face, the sonorous voice, the sober clothing were forgotten. The tongue of Edwards must have been like a sharp two-edged sword to his attentive hearers. 3 In this statement Ravenhill is trying to express how even the most solemn member of the congregation would be touched by his words. He also uses a metaphor to describe how painful Edwards words are to the consciences of the assembly; comparing it to a double-edged sword. Edwards sermons had enormous impact, sending whole congregations into hysterical fits.
He discussed topics such as the blackness of death and the emptiness of non bearing, and he amplified how man is subject to spiritual weakening. Throughout his works he uses himself as a carrier of the wrath of God the people will face, if they fail to respond to the call for conversion. Edwards contributed to the Great Awakening through his sermons, devout Calvinism, and the response of his parishioners. His additions to the Great Awakening were his most important offering to American culture. These contributions led to the spread of this movement throughout New England.
Edwards and his volumes of writing represent the entire understanding of the Great Awakening. Just like Edwards, this movement was a mixture of scientific thought and the quest for spirituality. This is why Edwards contributions were so critical to its survival. The main basis for its popularity was the fact that it was based on the necessity for sinners to be converted. 4 Many others followed Edwards example of invigorating lectures, and many small local revivals merged into a great awakening. Edwards teachings and the Great Awakening had varied and somewhat contradictory effects on American religion. Edwards and his additions to the Great Awakening did create a significant intercolonial movement.
Edwards led the field of theologians and philosophers during the first half of the seventeenth century, leaving a lasting legacy of religious thought. He lived in a world shaped by the Puritans, and yet was still able to reconcile scientific discoveries with his own religious beliefs. Edwards had, like most people, many sides to his character. His complete writings give the reader a glimpse of the scholar, the pastor an the man.
In The Mind Edwards is portrayed as a student of thought pondering what makes something beautiful and excellent. He writes, It is something we all strive for, yet, do we truly know what it entails? 5 This vivid description of the human mind causes the reader to reflect on their quest for perfection. The very nature of a persons being is made up of equality and consistencies. After concluding that excellence is agreement and proportion, Edwards moves on to types of excellence. One alone, he writes, cannot be excellent as there is nothing for that one to relate to and no agreement is possible. 6 In this view Edwards describes the interaction between people, and shows how excellence can not be achieved without this interaction.
The second section of the essay represents the way people form ideas regarding basic elements of life. Edwards also deals with the nature of substance. In the entire essay the reader clearly sees Edwards as a scholar and scientist. He focuses on the beauty of the mind, but also discusses gravity, and properties of solids and light. The apparent influence of science on his education can be seen in the selection.
Edwards wrote this as a young man, but he had already learned to form a common bond between science and religion. Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God is one of Edwards most famous sermons. In this we see another side of Edwards. The academic professor portrayed in The Mind becomes a passion orator; inspiring fear of a flaming hell 7 into the hearts and minds of his parishioners. Edwards reiterates the basic tenets of Christianity in a way that reinforces the idea that everyone in his congregation deserves to be in hell. One can truly imagine Edwards in front of a huge crowd with his warnings, O sinner!
Consider the fearful danger you are in: tis a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath, that you are held over in the hand of that God, whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you as against many of the damned in hell: you hang by a slender thread 8 Again Edwards returns to a metaphor so that each parishioner can behold that terrible threat of damnation that lingers upon their heads. After experiencing this, the congregation is not so quick to dispute thier strong Puritan beliefs. The writings of Jonathon Edwards demonstrate the many sides of his personality, from the scholar to the inspiring preacher. He was influenced both by Calvinism and the Puritan legacy. Gifted with the genius of being able to merge two seemingly opposite ideas together, he left behind a legacy of learning and independent thought. Bibliography 1 Edwards, Jonathan.
Microsoft Encarta 98 Encyclopedia. CD-ROM. 1997, p. 1. 2 Tlosty, Matthew. Lecture Four: The Great Awakening. Wake Forest University. Online 1998. (October 26 2000) p. 2. 3 Ravenhill, Leonard. Jonathan Edwards: Portrait of a Revival Preacher.
Online 1999. (October 30 2000) p. 1. 4 Great Awakening. Microsoft Encarta 98 Encyclopedia. CD-ROM. 1997, p. 2. 5 Edwards, Jonathan. The Mind. Jonathan Edwards Online. Online 2000. (October 28 2000) p. 9. 6 Edwards, Jonathan.
The Mind. (see above) p. 2. 7 Edwards, Jonathan. Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. Christian Word Ministries. Online 1998. (October 28 2000) p. 6. 8 Edwards, Jonathan. Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. (see above) p. 12. 33 b
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