Publisher’s Description
Jonathan Edwards has been recognized as the most influential evangelical theologian of all time. Before his death at the age of fifty-four, he had sparked a new movement of Reformed evangelicals who played a major role in fueling the rise of modern missions, preaching revivals far and wide, and wielding the cutting edge of American theology. He has never gone out of print, and Christians today continue to flock to seminars and conferences on him.

In this biography of the great preacher and teacher, historian Douglas Sweeney locates for us the core and key to Edwards’ enduring impact. Sweeney finds that Edwards’ profound and meticulous study of the Bible securely anchored his powerful preaching, his lively theological passions and his discerning pastoral work. Beyond introducing you to Edwards’ life and times, this book will provide you with a model of Christian faith, thought and ministry.

Endorsements
“Doug Sweeney has written a fine introduction to Jonathan Edwards’ life and theology. Accessible and accurate, this introduction is a good place to start in trying to understand Edwards as a man, a Christian, a theologian and a pastor.” —Mark Dever, senior pastor, Capitol Hill Baptist Church, Washington, D.C.

“I love this book! Doug Sweeney not only demonstrates the central role of Scripture in the theology and pastoral ministry of Jonathan Edwards but also provides us with a vibrant portrayal of his life and the many brilliant insights that have rightly contributed to his global reputation. Combining clarity and ease of style with a remarkable breadth of research, Sweeney has given us a treatment of Edwards that may well prove to be the standard against which all future contributions are judged. I highly recommend it!” —Sam Storms, Ph.D., senior pastor, Bridgeway Church, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

“Doug Sweeney gives us a nourishing and tasty introduction to the real Edwards, and focuses in this brief but substantial volume on Edwards’ ministry of the Word. He provides a fascinating entre to the life and career of Edwards, and then zeroes in on Edwards’ multifaceted understanding of Scripture. Sweeney gives us enough detail to stimulate new insights into Edwards,Scripture and its Author. But his writing is not so technical that the general reader would not be abundantly rewarded by perusing this slim but informative and illuminating volume.” —Gerald McDermott, professor of religion, Roanoke College, Salem, Virginia

“Douglas Sweeney has written an admirable ‘Jonathan Edwards for Christians.’ It is at once authoritative and addressed to the practical concerns of evangelicals in the pews.” —George Marsden, author of Jonathan Edwards: A Life and A Short Life of Jonathan Edwards

“With the exception of George Marsden and Kenneth Minkema, it is hard to find someone more knowledgeable about Jonathan Edwards than Douglas Sweeney. In focusing his book on Edwards as minister, Sweeney offers academic and clerical readers a treasure trove of insight and elegant prose. If not Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses, the inclusion of seven ‘theses’ for discussion at the end is a stroke of genius and will certainly enhance the reading experience for church groups of all levels. For anyone interested in getting to know America’s greatest theologian in greater detail, this masterful analysis is must-reading.” —Harry S. Stout, Jonathan Edwards Professor of American Religious History, Yale University

“A lively, intimate portrait of a man many have found distant and intimidating. Douglas Sweeney reveals Jonathan Edwards to be the flesh-and-blood Christian we should have suspected he was, in a way that neither patronizes nor idealizes him. As importantly, we have here for the first time an account of Edwards’ life that rightly places the Bible at the center of his intellectual and pastoral genius.” —Robert E. Brown, assistant professor, Department of Philosophy and Religion, James Madison University, and author of Jonathan Edwards and the Bible

“Strangely, it has taken nearly three centuries for us to realize the obvious: that Jonathan Edwards had a lifelong love affair with the Bible. Doug Sweeney has been at the forefront of elucidating Edwards the exegete and the biblical foundations of his theology. In this new work, Sweeney shows the vital, reflective and informed connections between Edwards’ Biblicism and his calling as a ‘faithful minister of the Word.’ Even more, Sweeney points out the extent to which Edwards’ more formal theological formulations arose directly out of his local pastoral experience. This study will be a blessing to pastors, preachers and spiritual leaders, who can learn from Edwards’ faith, thought and experience.” —Dr. Kenneth P. Minkema, executive director, Jonathan Edwards Center, and adjunct assistant professor of American religious history, Yale University

It is with this in mind that the editors of Jonathan Edwards at Home and Abroad sought to gather a group of scholars to begin the conversation in hopes of sparking further study into this important topic. In the introduction of this volume, the problem the authors observed is further spelled out: “Much work remains to be done on the long-term significance of his life and ministry, the dissemination of his many writings (both published and unpublished), his roles as a clerical and intellectual exemplar, his influence outside the world of religion, the appropriation and re-appropriation of his remarkably resilient cultural authority, and the convergence of these developments into discernible intellectual and ecclesiastical movements” (xii). That one sentence represents generations of further Edwards studies.

The book is divided into three parts, each offering a broad lens from which to approach the study of Edwards’s legacy. Part one, entitled “Remembering Edwards’s Ministry,” is comprised of four essays looking at how Edwards is remembered as a pastor in eighteenth century New England. George Marsden, more qualified than anyone to do so, muses on the various challenges faced by Edwards’s biographers. Michael McClymond speculates on the probable cultural shifts that may have occurred had Edwards lived to finish his History of the Work of Redemption, self-described by Edwards as “a body of divinity in an entire new method.” Catherine Brekus discusses Edwards’s ministry to children, specifically in how he thought and ministered in terms of the salvation of children, and the controversies that later developed out of it. Concluding part one of this volume, Ava Chamberlain probes the “bad book” controversy, seeing this episode as less to do with reputations in the community and everything to do with cultural transformations related to sex and speech that were coming to a head in the late eighteenth century.

Part two of this collection focuses on the influence of Edwards on American culture at large. Mark Valeri looks at how Edwards, and those who followed him, were influential on the development of the American market economy. James German explores Edwards’s doctrine of depravity and how that played into early American politics. Charles Hambrick-Stowe discusses the marriage of Edwardsian piety and the burgeoning abolition movements, particularly in the activism of Samuel Hopkins, Sarah Osborn, and Lemuel Haynes. Rounding out part two, Sharon Kim and Amanda Porterfield contribute articles tracing Edwardsian influence into pop culture, the former in the world of nineteenth century woman’s fiction, the latter in the film Runaway Bride.

Part three takes us abroad to get a better idea of how Edwards was received outside America. David Bebbington begins this discussion with a survey of the countries most known as having been penetrated by Edwards, whether through influence or published works. D. Bruce Hindmarsh focuses in on England, particularly early evangelicals in England. Moving north on the island, Christopher Mitchell explores the well-known “Scottish connection” that Edwards developed, primarily looking at this connection through the six correspondents with whom Edwards formed the closest friendships. Andrew Walls and Stuart Piggins focus on how missionary efforts were sparked by Edwards and those who followed him, first through the publication of Life of Brainerd and later through the efforts of the various evangelical missionary societies. The final essay in this volume comes from M.X. Lesser, best known for the extensive annotated bibliographies on Edwards that he has compiled and edited. Naturally, then, he briefly discusses how Edwards’s works have traveled across the globe, and then gives an extensive list of Edwards’s works published abroad.

This collection of essays is very helpful in bringing the various issues regarding Edwards’s legacy into view. Indeed, there is something here for all types of scholarly pursuit and can be very useful in thinking through ways to bridge disciplines in knowing how Edwards’s works have been used since his death in 1758. Hopefully this book has started the conversation and furthered the interest in this very important, yet very neglected, study of Jonathan Edwards and his works.

This question becomes even more interesting when, as Kidd reminds us, there was really nothing that extraordinary about the content of the sermon.  “Awakening sermons” were quite common in the period, especially among Calvinist preachers.  These sermons were designed to “shake sinners out of their self-righteous delusions” (104), and would often include graphic descriptions of the plight of the unconverted and their everlasting torment in the fires of hell.  Certainly Sinners fulfilled that qualification to the utmost.  Another point that makes the lasting significance of this sermon quite curious is the fact that a good number of the other Awakening preachers employed lavish preaching styles that may have, at the very least, effected, and at the very most, manipulated, the response they received while preaching.  This was not so for Edwards, however, who was known for his somber deliveries.  A third and final consideration to be made, one that Kidd doesn’t bring up but still bears mentioning, is the fact that the preaching of this sermon that made it famous was not the first time it was preached.  We remember the episode at Enfield, Connecticut on July 8, 1741, but we do not remember that Edwards first preached this sermon to his own Northampton congregation in June of that year as the revival movements were beginning to gain steam.

With these considerations in mind, Kidd offers a two suggestions as to why this sermon has been remembered as the archetype for “awakening sermons” and the most representative work during the period of the Great Awakening.  The first is, of course, the response it received.  It should always be known that Enfield lay in close proximity to the town of Suffield, which, only days before the preaching of July 8, had undergone heightened senses of divine things to the point of there being, in the words of Stephen Williams, “considerable crying among ye people…& a Screaching in ye streets” (104).  Surely these emotional responses were known in Enfield and Enfield may have caught the awakening fever from its neighbor, especially considering that many who had fallen into fits in Suffield may have come over to hear the preaching at Enfield.

The second, and more likely, reason that this sermon is remembered is the grand style of the rhetoric that Edwards used.  Sinners is a masterpiece of imagery and style that is simply unmatched by other awakening sermons of the era.  Kidd says, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God was brilliant, vivid, and terrifying.  Edwards’s warnings of judgment made the congregation scream for fear of hell” (105).  And he did this, again, through the mere communication of words.  Not through performance or affected style, but simply through the power of his imagery.  George Marsden makes this very point in explaining, “Sinners is so remarkable because Edwards employed so many images and addressed them so immediately to his hearers that they were left with no escape” (Jonathan Edwards: A Life, 222).

It’s interesting, when you talk to the average person about Edwards, the person that only knows Edwards from high school English or Intro to Literature in college, that all they remember is the imagery of the sermon.  Much of this remembered imagery comes from the infamous “spider” passage in which Edwards proclaims, “The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect, over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked….”  Yet the imagery used in this passage is merely one of many metaphors that Edwards uses for the purpose of shaking his hearers out of their sin and into the marvelous light of faith in Christ.  That is why this sermon is so remembered and regarded as exemplar of the period.  The unending barrage of metaphors, the vivid, terrifying imagery, the seriousness of the subject, the carefully crafted and designed rhetoric—all these work together to produce a masterful work in which Edwards, at least on the surface of reaction, achieved the end in which he set out to get.

The majority of the new material in this volume is found through the juxtaposition of Edwards’s life with the life of Benjamin Franklin, in which Franklin serves as a sort of contemporary foil to Edwards.  He forsook the religion of his Puritan forebears, viewed the pursuit and accumulation of wealth as the primary goal of human life, and was thoroughly entrenched in Enlightenment science and thought.  Edwards, on the other hand, fervently defended the old religion, saw the glorification of God as man’s highest and chief end, and was also abreast and interested in the new thinking and ideologies that were making their way to the American colonies.  Unlike Franklin, however, Edwards does not elevate the Enlightenment emphasis on human reason to preeminent status.  Instead, he uses reason and scientific method to confirm what God teaches through Scripture and in nature.

With the details and minutiae of Edwards’s life and thought left to his larger work, Marsden here sweeps through the grand drama of his subject’s life, painting Edwards as a man who tirelessly held on to the old Puritan religion he inherited, despite new ideas and trends in religion coming over from Britain and the European continent. Edwards’s resolve would inevitably lead to strife with his extended family, other clergy, and his own congregation, although he would experience times of great joy and sweetness as in the awakenings of 1734-35 and 1740-42, and in seeing the piety and devotion of his wife and eleven children.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of this shorter biography, other than the parallels between Franklin and Edwards, is the way in which Marsden uses events in Edwards’s life to talk about the larger social and cultural issues of eighteenth century New England.  These issues are certainly addressed at great length in the larger work, but here the rise of American individualism, relationships with Native Americans, the issue of slavery, in addition to the various religious issues–these are all covered in a bite-sized, yet revealing manner.  These then lead to the crescendo of the work, the ever-important “so what?” question.

The last chapter of the book, “What Should We Learn from Edwards?”, well-worth the small price of the book on its own, explores both the American cultural significance of Edwards, as well as the the religious impact of Edwards’s influence on later evangelicalism.  Before the revolution of 1776, Marsden argues that Edwards was deeply involved in an earlier revolution that would shape the future of American Christianity, a revolution we are still seeing the effects of today.  Marsden concludes this work by examining the lasting theological insights that Edwards pursued and which are shared and treasured by a number of religious traditions today.

Jonathan Edwards was truly a remarkable figure in American history, and a figure that we would do well not to forget.  Though a Puritan preacher from the pre-American republic days may seem distant and passé to us today, Marsden presents an Edwards that has much yet to say.  Succeeding in the goal he had for this book, this volume is a wonderful jumping off point for those who have never read anything on Edwards, especially church groups and American history students.  In addition, this book can serve as an excellent refresher and short reference volume for those who are involved in scholarly pursuits.  Very highly recommended.