Jonathan Edwards

Abstract

Considered by many to be America's most brilliant theologian, Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) was also a philosopher, a college president, a pastor, a revival preacher, a missionary to the Native Americans, a noted author (whose writings are known and read around the globe), the husband of a remarkable woman and the father of eleven children. Drawing primarily upon Edwards' own writings, this course will seek to explore the fascinating life and ministry of one of America's most influential figures. Each session will focus on at least one major aspect of Edwards' life and work and each session will examine at least one of Edwards' major writings.

Table of Contents

Introduction4

Biography4

Life5

Metaphysics7

Theological Determinism7

Occasionalism, Idealism, Mental Phenomenalism, and Views on Identity9

God as Being in General11

God's End in Creation12

Value Theory14

Ethics14

Aesthetics14

Epistemology15

A Sense of the Heart15

Sanctified Reason16

The History of Redemption17

Conclusion17

Bibliography21

Biographical Outline

Introduction: First, not everyone who reads Edwards is attracted to him. Harriet Beecher Stowe complained that Edwards's sermons on sin and suffering were “refined poetry of torture.

Biography: Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) is widely acknowledged to be America's most important and original philosophical theologian. His work as a whole is an expression of two themes -- the absolute sovereignty of God and the beauty of God's holiness. The first is articulated in Edwards' defense of theological determinism.

Life: Edwards was born into a family of prominent Congregational ministers in East Windsor, Connecticut in 1703. In 1716 Edwards enrolled in Yale where he read Newton and Locke, and began "Notes on the Mind" and "Notes on Natural Science."

Edwards believed that indeterminism is incompatible with our dependence on God and hence with his sovereignty.

Theological Determinism: Edwards' occasionalism, idealism, and mental phenomenalism provide a philosophical interpretation of God's absolute sovereignty: God is the only real cause and the only true substance.

Occasionalism, Idealism, Mental Phenomenalism, and Views on Identity: Edwards' occasionalism, idealism, and mental phenomenalism provide a philosophical interpretation of God's absolute sovereignty.

Jonathan Edwards

Introduction

First, not everyone who reads Edwards is attracted to him. Harriet Beecher Stowe complained that Edwards's sermons on sin and suffering were “refined poetry of torture.” After staying up one night reading Edwards's treatise on the will, Mark Twain reported, “Edwards's God shines red and hideous in the glow from the fires of hell, their only right and proper adornment. By God, I was ashamed to be in such company.”Generations of Americans have drawn similar conclusions after reading is “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” sermon in their high school and college literature classes. They would be surprised to learn that Edwards was obsessed by God's beauty, not wrath, and that, as historian Patrick Sherry recently argued, Edwards made beauty more central to theology than anyone else in the history of Christian thought, including Augustine and the twentieth century Swiss Catholic Hans Urs von Balthasar. They would also be surprised to learn that Edwards is widely regarded as America's greatest philosopher before the twentieth century, and arguably this continent's greatest theologian ever. One measure of his greatness is Yale University Press's critical edition of his works, which ...