The Life of David Brainerd (The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Vol. 7 | WJE)
Overview
Edwards’ Life of David Brainerd is a rare, almost forgotten document depicting life in pre-Revolutionary America during the period when religious enthusiasm swept the colonial frontier. From 1743 to 1747 Brainerd had been a missionary to the Indians. Riding alone, thousands of miles on horseback, he kept a journal of daily events that he continued until the week before he died, at the age of twenty-nine, in Edwards’ house.
Published in 1749, the Life of Brainerd became a spiritual classic in its own time. As the first popular biography to be published in America, it went through numerous editions and has been reprinted more frequently than has any other of Edwards’ works. But what has not until now been known is that Edwards made drastic alterations in the original text. He shaped the narrative events to fit his own needs, presenting Brainerd as an example of a man who by example and deed opposed the rationalist, Arminian stance. Because the Yale edition is the first to print that portion of Brainerd’s manuscript that survives, set in parallel columns with Edwards’ text, these alterations can readily be discerned.
Top Highlights
“Brainerd, as the diary shows, did not immediately baptize and admit to the Supper those whom he converted but waited weeks and even months while he observed the ‘fruits’ of the Spirit. He withheld baptism and communion until he had reason to hope that candidates were ‘truly religious.’” (Page 15)
“Finally, although historians over the years have made every effort to shape Brainerd into the foremost missionary of his times, his achievement in the field was slight; he made relatively few converts along the way.” (Page 2)
“And Brainerd, like Edwards, felt frequently the need to show that ‘ecstasy’ and the true work of the Spirit can go together.” (Page 6)
“God also in his Providence has been wont to make use of both these methods to hold forth light to mankind, and inducement to their duty, in all ages: He has from time to time raised up eminent teachers, to exhibit and bear testimony to the truth in their doctrine, and oppose the errors, darkness and wickedness of the world; and also has, from age to age, raised up some eminent persons that have set bright examples of that religion that is taught and prescribed in the Word of God; whole examples have in divine providence been set forth to public view.” (Pages 89–90)
“grasped for multitudes of souls. I think I had more enlargement for sinners than for the children of God; though” (Page 162)
- Title: The Life of David Brainerd
- Author: Jonathan Edwards
- Edition: Corrected Edition
- Series: The Works of Jonathan Edwards
- Volume: 7
- Publisher: Yale University Press
- Print Publication Date: 2002
- Logos Release Date: 2014
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
- Subjects: Brainerd, David, 1718-1747; Indians of North America › Missions; Missionaries › United States--Biography
- ISBNs: 0300030045, 9780300030044
- Resource ID: LLS:EDWARDS07
- Resource Type: text.monograph.collected-work
- Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-29T23:37:09Z
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.