The Works of Jonathan Edwards, vol. 20: The "Miscellanies", 833–1152
Overview
Throughout his adult life Jonathan Edwards kept a series of personal theological notebooks on a wide variety of miscellaneous subjects. This volume includes the notebook entries written during the eventful and tumultuous years 1740–1751, when Edwards was plagued by a series of bitter controversies with his Northampton congregation that culminated in his dismissal. This was also the period during which he witnessed, documented, and pondered the surprising revivals of the Great Awakening, as well as their precipitous decline.
The notebook entries chronicle Edwards’ continuing fascination with the nature of saving faith and with faith’s culmination in the glories of heaven and the torments of hell. They also reflect his keen interest in defending Christianity’s reasonableness from enemies at home and abroad. A new theme emerges as Edwards expresses a growing sense of the deist threat and in numerous entries defends Christian doctrines by showing striking similarities between Christian orthodoxy and ancient “heathen” philosophy. Finally, the entries show the development of Edwards’ thinking on the topics of the great treatises he would come to write during his years in Stockbridge.
Top Highlights
“whereby the Father acts as head of the society and supreme Lord of all, and the Son and the Spirit subject unto him” (Page 434)
- Title: The Miscellanies: (Entry Nos. 833–1152)
- Author: Jonathan Edwards
- Series: The Works of Jonathan Edwards
- Volume: 20
- Publisher: Yale University Press
- Print Publication Date: 2002
- Logos Release Date: 2014
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
- Subjects: Congregational churches › United States--Doctrines; Reformed Church › United States--Doctrines; Theology › Early works to 1800; Philosophy; Ethics
- ISBNs: 0300091745, 9780300091748
- Resource ID: LLS:EDWARDS20
- Resource Type: text.monograph.collected-work
- Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-29T23:37:22Z
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.