The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 5: Apocalyptic Writings
Overview
This edition presents the first text of Jonathan Edwards’ private commentary on the book of Revelation. Written over a period of thirty-five years, Edwards’ notebook reveals his lifelong fascination with apocalyptic speculation—including its bizarre aspects—and his persistent conviction concerning the usefulness of the visions in the life of the Christian church.
In this volume is also published the first complete edition (since the eighteenth century) of the Humble Attempt (1748)—the call for united prayer that was Edwards’ response to the decline in religious fervor after the Great Awakening. In his introduction and commentary, Stephen J. Stein examines the development of Edwards’ apocalyptic interests in light of the situation in the eighteenth century, showing also how Edwards’ private judgments on the book of Revelation affected his personal and theological activity. Together the texts and the introduction illuminate a hitherto inadequately explored facet of Edwards’ religious thought.
Top Highlights
“The future promised advancement of the kingdom of Christ is an event unspeakably happy and glorious.” (Page 337)
“would return to his church, and grant the tokens and fruits of his gracious presence,” (Page 316)
“Calvin was the most guarded of all the reformers in his attitude toward the Apocalypse. He stood firmly in the Augustinian line, rejecting chiliasm, eschatological calculations, and millenarian fanaticism. The Revelation was the only book of the Bible on which he did not write a commentary.” (Page 3)
“are truly and properly waiting for, and earnestly expecting that event.” (Page 346)
“We find it common in the prophecies of the Old Testament, that when the prophets are speaking of the favors and blessings of God on the Jews, attending or following their return from the Babylonish captivity, the Spirit of God takes occasion from thence to speak of the incomparably greater blessings on the church, that shall attend and follow her deliverance from the spiritual or mystical Babylon, of which those were a type; and is, as it were, led away to speak almost wholly of these latter, and vastly greater things, so as to seem to forget the former.” (Page 314)
- Title: Apocalyptic Writings: “Notes on the Apocalypse” An Humble Attempt
- Author: Jonathan Edwards
- Series: The Works of Jonathan Edwards
- Volume: 5
- Publisher: Yale University Press
- Print Publication Date: 1977
- Logos Release Date: 2014
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
- Subject: Bible. N.T. Revelation › Commentaries
- ISBNs: 0300019459, 9780300019452
- Resource ID: LLS:EDWARDS05
- Resource Type: text.monograph.collected-work
- Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-29T23:37:07Z
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.