Bücher der Reihe Jonathan Edwards Classic Studies

Originally published posthumously in 1955, Harvey G. Townsend''s Philosophy of Jonathan Edwards reprinted some of Edwards'' most important early compositions on natural philosophy, "Of Being" and "The Mind," and collected nearly two hundred "Miscellanies" entries, some of them published here for the first time. In his introduction, Townsend points to Edwards'' "radical idealism" that derived from Christian Platonism and John Locke rather than George Berkeley, as commonly thought. Townsend''s work represents an important sourcebook for Edwards'' writings, and his introduction presents a clear picture of mainstream Edwards scholarship at the middle of the twentieth century.

The problems of moral philosophy were a central preoccupation of literate people in eighteenth-century America and Britain. It is not surprising, then, that Jonathan Edwards was drawn into a colloquy with some of the major ethicists of the age. Moral philosophy in this era was so all-encompassing in its claims that it encroached seriously on traditional religion. In response, Edwards presented a detailed analysis and criticism of secular moral philosophy in order to demonstrate its inadequacy, and he formulated a system that he believed was demonstrably superior to the existing secular systems. In this comprehensive study, Norman Fiering skillfully integrates Edwards's work on ethics into seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British and Continental philosophy and isolates Edwards's particular contributions to the ethical thought of his time. In addition, Fiering traces the chronological development of Edwards's thought, showing the relationship between his wide reading and his writing.

While there were earlier biographies and memoirs of Jonathan Edwards, the great eighteenth-century religious figure, than the one written by A. V. G. Allen, they were apologetic versions that had been produced by Edwards's disciples. Allen's stands out as the first to approach the life of Edwards comprehensively and critically, attempting to discern the positive and negative elements in his thought. Nearly forgotten today, Allen's book deserves a place among the landmark studies on Edwards. Alexander Viets Griswold Allen (1841-1908) was an Episcopalian priest and theologian educated at Andover Theological Seminary. After being the first rector of St. John's Church, Lawrence, Massachusetts, he was appointed Professor of Church History in the Episcopal Theological School, Cambridge, Massachusetts. His principal writings are Continuity of Christian Thought; Freedom in the Church, or, The Doctrine of Christ; Christian Institutions; and Life and Letters of Phillips Brooks.

The vast corpus of Jonathan Edwards includes sermons, treatises, dissertations, Miscellanies, Diary and Resolves, and his Personal Narrative. Underlying all his writing is his Calvinist God whose anger (justice) matched his love (glory). Equally important is the human condition, its darkness and its regenerative light, sin and salvation. For these reasons Simonson aptly calls Edwards a theologian of the heart, one not satisfied with only theological abstractions but also a necessary, heartfelt sense of them. Penetrating to these levels where literary artists do their work, he shares company with the likes of Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Emily Dickinson and William Faulkner. Since the resurgence of interest starting in the 1950s, Edwards is now recognized as America's foremost religious thinker. Simonson emphasizes Edwards' language--its imagery, metaphors, grand sweeps of cadences, along with Edwards' intensity of both thought and feeling. Throughout, Simonson's book provides an incisive and carefully documented introduction to Edwards' magisterial range of mind and style.

Twentieth century discussions of Edwards' covenant theology frequently named a tension in the purity of Edwards' Calvinism. Was his insistent teaching on the covenant of grace suggestive of incipient Arminianism, or was Perry Miller correct in asserting that Edwards rejected the covenant, with its abridging of God's freedom, by his categorical insistence on God's absolute sovereignty in salvation? Bogue explores the breadth of Edwards' writing, including many unpublished manuscripts, and interacts with a broad spectrum of secondary works to demonstrate conclusively that Calvinism and the covenant of grace are entirely consistent and do not exclude one another. The covenant of grace is not a device of man acting autonomously; it is a provision of the eternal, sovereign, electing God. As set forth by Edwards, it is simply the way the sovereign God has committed Himself to carry out what He has decreed from all eternity pertaining to the redemption of sinners.

Jonathan Edwards towered over his contemporaries--a man over six feet tall and a figure of theological stature--but the reasons for his power have been a matter of dispute. Edwards on the Will offers a persuasive explanation. In 1753, after seven years of personal trials, which included dismissal from his Northampton church, Edwards submitted a treatise, Freedom of the Will, to Boston publishers. Its impact on Puritan society was profound. He had refused to be trapped either by a new Arminian scheme that seemed to make God impotent or by a Hobbesian natural determinism that made morality an illusion. He both reasserted the primacy of God''s will and sought to reconcile freedom with necessity. In the process he shifted the focus from the community of duty to the freedom of the individual. Edwards died of smallpox in 1758 soon after becoming president of Princeton; as one obituary said, he was ""a most rational . . . and exemplary Christian."" Thereafter, for a century or more, all discussion of free will and on the church as an enclave of the pure in an impure society had to begin with Edwards. His disciples, the ""New Divinity"" men--principally Samuel Hopkins of Great Barrington and Joseph Bellamy of Bethlehem, Connecticut--set out to defend his thought. Ezra Stiles, president of Yale, tried to keep his influence off the Yale Corporation, but Edwards''s ideas spread beyond New Haven and sparked the religious revivals of the next decades. In the end, old Calvinism returned to Yale in the form of Nathaniel William Taylor, the Boston Unitarians captured Harvard, and Edwards''s troublesome ghost was laid to rest. The debate on human freedom versus necessity continued, but theologians no longer controlled it. In Edwards on the Will, Guelzo presents with clarity and force the story of these fascinating maneuverings for the soul of New England and of the emerging nation.""Allen Guelzo writes with grace, charm, and even wit about a weighty subject that others have found forbidding. His scholarship is broad and his expositions lucid.""--Daniel Walker Howe, University of California at Los Angeles, Emeritus""Edwards on the Will is an important contribution to the study of Jonathan Edwards''s thought. Where earlier scholars have been largely preoccupied with Edwards''s ''modernity'' or with measuring the social effect of Edwards in the context of the American Revolution, Allen Guelzo demonstrates his intellectual ''legacy'' not only to the generation of the Revolution but also beyond. This work will stand as the definitive treatment of the legacy of Edwards''s classic treatise on Freedom of the Will.""--Harry Stout, Yale University""This book elevates the study of eighteenth-century New England theology to a new level of sophistication and insight. With a precise, fresh, and lively literary style, Guelzo makes old controversies come alive for a twentieth-century reader. This is intellectual history at its best--learned, animated, and compelling. It is one of the finest studies of theology in America ever written.""--E. Brooks Holifield, Emory University""By tracing the development of one central point of Edwards''s doctrine, Guelzo allows us to see the unfolding of the entire history of the Edwardsean school, and, by implication, of American theology, in the period between 1750-1830. This book is a major work of scholarship--thorough, enlightening, intellectually uncompromising.""--Philip F. Gura, University of North Caroline, Chapel HillAllen C. Guelzo is Henry R. Luce Professor of the Civil War Era and Professor of History at Gettysburg College. He is formerly Dean of the Templeton Honors College and the Grace F. Kea Professor of American History at Eastern University. He holds an MA and a PhD in history from the University of Pennsylvania, an MDiv from Philadelphia Theological Seminary, and an honorary doctorate in history from Lincoln College in Illinois.

The Jonathan Edwards Classic Studies Series The Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale University is pleased to offer this volume, in grateful cooperation with Wipf & Stock Publishers, as part of its mission to encourage ongoing research into and readership of one of America's most original thinkers and one of its most significant historical and cultural figures. As much as the Edwards Center is devoted to presenting Edwards's own writings in a comprehensive and authoritative online format, we also see providing secondary resources as vital to supporting an ongoing understanding of Edwards's extensive and varied corpus, which can be accessed at http: //edwards.yale.edu.