The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 18: The "Miscellanies", 501–832
Overview
Throughout his ministerial career, Jonathan Edwards filled a series of private notebooks with writings on a wide variety of theological topics, numbering his entries—some 1,400 of them—in sequence. This book, the second of four volumes devoted to these “Miscellanies,” contains entries written during the decade of the 1730s, from July 1731 to approximately January 1740, the eve of the Great Awakening. They record the development of Edwards’ thought as he first emerged as a public spokesperson for orthodox Calvinism, assumed a leadership role in colonial New England church politics, and acquired an international reputation as an evangelist for his role in the revivals in the Connecticut River Valley of 1734 and 1735.
Edwards used the “Miscellanies” as a repository for ideas that he intended to develop in future sermons and treatises, and these entries contain the seeds of such contemporaneous works as Justification by Faith Alone and The History of the Work of Redemption. These entries also record how the Connecticut Valley revivals influenced Edwards’ thoughts on such important theological topics as the significance of perseverance, the nature of spiritual knowledge, justification by faith alone, the rationality of the Christian religion, the history of the work of redemption, and conversion and the religious life.
Top Highlights
“but had no distinct notion about the doleful state of the soul the dissolution of the body was to usher in.” (Page 53)
“Hence we see why it was needful, that temporal death should be inflicted on Adam and all his posterity,” (Page 53)
“Hence ’tis impossible for any person to be willing to be perfectly and finally miserable for God’s sake, for this supposes love to God to be superior to self-love in the most general and extensive sense of self-love, which enters into the nature of love to God.” (Page 75)
“God’s providential disposals of the material part of the world are all subordinate to his providence towards the spiritual and intelligent part of it.” (Page 284)
“the enjoying faculty opening the mouth wide to receive the more.” (Page 533)
- Title: The “Miscellanies”: (Entry Nos. 501–832)
- Author: Jonathan Edwards
- Series: The Works of Jonathan Edwards
- Volume: 18
- Publisher: Yale University Press
- Print Publication Date: 2000
- Logos Release Date: 2014
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
- Subject: Theology, doctrinal
- ISBNs: 9780300083309, 0300083300
- Resource ID: LLS:EDWARDS18
- Resource Type: text.monograph.collected-work
- Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-29T23:37:20Z
Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) is considered one of America’s greatest theologians. While attending Yale College, he encountered the same Calvinism that had influenced his own Puritan upbringing.
Three years after Edwards was ordained as a minister, the First Great Awakening began in his church, which prompted Edwards to study conversion and revival within the context of Calvinism. During the revival, Edwards preached his most famous sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” and penned many of his most popular works, including Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God, A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, and Life and Diary of the Rev. David Brainerd.
In 1757, Edwards reluctantly became president of the College of New Jersey (Princeton University), where he hoped to complete two major works—an expansion of his treatise on the history of redemption and a study of the harmony of the Old and New Testaments. The Works of Jonathan Edwards (26 vols.) is a massive collection containing five decades’ worth of study and scholarship on and from Edwards.