If you’re unaware of these other centers, the JEC at Yale has formed partnerships in Melbourne, Australia, Tübingen, Germany, Wrocslaw, Poland, and Bloemfontein, South Africa, and has established a second American center at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. These are exciting times in the history of Edwards studies and it’s wonderful that the JEC is doing so much to significantly extend such studies beyond the traditional American borders.

So become a Facebook fan of the JEC and take some time to check out the great work that they are doing!

From: HCTU Director Doug Sweeney
RE: New Jonathan Edwards Center at TEDS
Date: 1/12/2010

In conjunction with the Jonathan Edwards Center of Yale University, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School is pleased to announce the formation of a new Jonathan Edwards Center at TEDS, effective immediately. This partnership was formalized on the campus of TEDS on Wednesday, January 6, 2010. Kenneth P. Minkema, director of the Yale Center, and Douglas A. Sweeney, director of the Trinity Center, both spoke to this groundbreaking development and noted its excellent prospects.

The Center at TEDS is the newest of several satellite Edwards Centers founded by Yale’s Edwards Center in strategic locations around the world. The purpose of these Centers is to promote awareness of and scholarship on Edwards in the academy and also the church. Existing locations include Germany (Tübingen), Poland, South Africa, and Australia (Ridley College). The Jonathan Edwards Center at Trinity is, apart from the Yale Center, the only existing such center in North America.

The JEC at Trinity provides a rare opportunity for us to engage the larger world of Edwards studies, and to share the riches of that world with our community. The Center will debut a website near the end of February that will offer our academic and ecclesial communities access to a wide range of Edwards resources. The Center will also feature a designated computer terminal in the library on which students and visiting scholars will be able to access a wealth of resources for the study of Edwards and related figures and movements throughout history. Trinity is the only school in North America, other than Yale, with access to this range of materials.

As Director of the new Center, Sweeney is currently planning the further development of its work. In coming weeks, the JEC will announce a program of events. In addition to regular conferencing, the JEC at Trinity will offer two lecture series: “Jonathan Edwards and the Church,” which will feature the best Christian Edwards scholars in the world in conversation with Sweeney and a variety of clergy who are interested in Edwards and his legacies to the church; and “New Directions in Edwards Studies,” which will feature cutting-edge research on Edwards and his influence.

Furthermore, the JEC at TEDS will seek to encourage Trinity students, and other students in the region, to undertake advanced work on Edwards and his legacies around the world. It will provide pastors and scholars with up-to-date web resources for making good on Edwards’ legacy and for staying up on the most important Edwards scholarship.

Those interested in the JEC at TEDS should look for a second announcement in late February that will make public the new website and announce a range of programs. It is with gratefulness to God, and thanks to our friends at Yale, that we announce this unique partnership.

Because of the size of this post, it’s not all going to be on the front page of the site. So, to view the whole thing just click

The day got started with an early trek over to the Yale Divinity School where we were to get on the bus at around 8:00AM to get a good start on the day. Most of what we were going to see would be outside, so we were all hoping the rain would hold off. Thankfully, it did. Before getting to the pictures of the trip, here’s a couple showing the room we spent hours in discussing the man himself.

What better place to have a week-long class on Jonathan Edwards than in the Jonathan Edwards Dining Room? Although, the room hardly looked like a dining room at all.

The room was the perfect size for the nine students and two instructors. Seminar-type set up that really aided in fostering meaningful discussion of the texts and concepts.

A close-up of the portrait on the wall. Edwards never sat for this portrait. It was created by an artist in the 19th century, I believe, using the portrait that Edwards did sit for, for the bust, and making up the rest.

The first stop on the trip was East Windsor, Connecticut, which is now called South Windsor (for my purposes here, I’m going to refer to the town as Edwards would have known it, East Windsor; just keep in mind that it is modern South Windsor). Not exactly sure how that works, but there you go. East Windsor was where Edwards was born and grew up, his father Timothy being pastor of the town church. If you’ve looked carefully at the sign, you may notice a glaring omission. While mentioning Edwards’s work at Bolton, Yale, Stockbridge, and Princeton, there is no mention of Northampton, where Edwards pastored from 1726-1750! Perhaps there is some bitterness toward Northampton for ousting East Windsor’s beloved son?

This is the house that now sits on the property where Timothy and Esther’s house stood. Unfortunately, this is not the house that Edwards grew up in. It was amazing, driving through old East Windsor, that so many old houses are still around. The oldest I recall seeing was a house that had been there since 1694. Behind the house that currently exists are the famous woods and swampland that Edwards played in as a boy, and where he and some friends built a prayer closet.

This is the grave of Timothy Edwards, Jonathan’s father. It had been raining all week and all the gravestones we saw were either soaked or partially soaked which did funny things with the legibility of the words on the markers. So these did not come out as well as I would have hoped, but you can still get a sense of them, I hope. Timothy and his wife, Esther, are buried in the graveyard that used to be next to the church where TImothy pastored. More on that in a second. Timothy died, just a few months before Jonathan, in January 1758. This was a traumatic year for the Edwards clan, losing Timothy in January, Jonathan in March, Jonathan’s daughter Esther Edwards Burr in April, and Sarah, Jonathan’s wife, in October.

The grave of Jonathan’s mother, Esther Stoddard Edwards, who died in January 1771 at the age of 99. Quite remarkable for the times! Esther was the daughter of Solomon Stoddard, the highly revered pastor of Northampton, Massachusetts whom Jonathan would succeed. Notice the iconography on the gravestone. Seventeenth and eighteenth colonial gravestone iconography is quite fascinating (and, at times, humorous). In addition to Timothy and Esther being buried in East Windsor, a couple of Edwards’s sisters, of which he had 10, are buried there as well.

Adjacent to the graveyard is a building that now sits where Timothy’s church would have been. The current building is not a church, however. It is a Masonic Lodge. How I would love to get Timothy or Jonathan’s thoughts on that!

This is an interesting site dealing with Edwards’s legacy. As you can tell from the sign, this is the president’s house of a seminary that was established in East Windsor in 1834. This seminary was borne out of a theological controversy in which both sides claimed to be “true Edwardsians.” This conflict is what is known as the “Taylor-Tyler Controversy,” N.W. Taylor, professor at Yale, and his followers on one side, and Bennet Tyler and his followers on the other. Because of what Tyler perceived to be liberalizing tendencies at Yale, he and his group founded a new establishment for the training of pastors and religious thinkers, intentionally doing so in Jonathan Edwards’s hometown. This was their way of proclaiming that they were the true Edwardsians, defending the true, orthodox, Calvinist faith. This seminary was moved in 1865 and is now Hartford Seminary, in Hartford, Connecticut.

Next stop, Enfield, Connecticut. I suppose you could call this the Mecca of Edwardsiana. At least in how we remember him, much to my chagrin, today. Pretty self-explanatory, this is the very place where the church in Enfield stood, in which, on July 8, 1741, Edwards famously preached “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” It’s interesting to note that this was not the first time Edwards preached this sermon. He preached it to his congregation in Northampton a couple of months before, but did not get quite the response from them as he did in Enfield.

In Northampton, Massachusetts now, where Edwards pastored from 1726-1750, and where is grandfather, Solomon Stoddard, ministered for an astounding 55 years. This plaque is on the steps of the church that is currently there today, though it’s not the building that Edwards would have known. However, the bottom step and a semi-circular stone in front of the current church are original to the church in the mid-eighteenth century. The church that sits there today has two churches meeting in it, a United Church of Christ congregation, and an American Baptist congregation. Again, it would be interesting to see what Edwards would think of this, especially in regard to the presence of “separatist Baptists.”

The grave of Solomon Stoddard in a nearby cemetery. Not quite as well-kept as some of the other graves we have seen.

Also in the Northampton cemetery is the grave of David Brainerd, a missionary to the Native Americans and good friend of the Edwards family. Brainerd’s journals were edited and published by Jonathan, along with an account of Brainerd’s life, and the resulting Life of David Brainerd was the standard text, in addition to the Bible, for missionaries going into the field. It is still read widely today. A couple of irregularities about this grave marker: first is the curious spelling of Brainerd’s name, which is here spelled “Brainard.” Though it’s believed that both spellings were used, most references use the “e” spelling. This stone also incorrectly lists Brainerd’s death date and age. Brainerd died October 9, 1747, not the 10th, and was 29 years old, not 32.

Buried next to David Brainerd, is Jonathan’s daughter, Jerusha. Jerusha was very beloved of her father, and her death on February 14, 1748 was a great shock to Jonathan and the entire family. The fact that she is buried next to Brainerd, as well as their traveling to Boston a couple of times together unchaperoned, has led to much speculation about whether there were romantic feelings between the two young people. None of this is confirmed, although the two were definitely kindred spirits in terms of piety and religious devotion.

A monument to the Edwards family. Jonathan and Sarah are not buried in Northampton, but the good people of the town saw fit to erect a monument to their memory. A classy gesture by a town who really wanted nothing to do with Edwards after 1750, though Joseph Hawley, Jr., one of Edwards’s most vocal critics, reconciled with Edwards later on. Jonathan and Sarah are listed on the front of this marker, and their ten children occupy the other three sides.

After leaving Northampton we made our way to Stockbridge, Massachusetts, home of the Indian mission in which Edwards was involved from 1751-1758. Our first stop in Stockbridge bore no pictures, unfortunately. We visited the Stockbridge public library where a number of Edwards artifacts are held, but photography was not allowed. The most interesting piece held by the library is the rotating desk that Edwards designed himself and had made for his studies. Very practical. I could use one myself.

The picture is of a sundial marking the place where the Edwards home stood while they were in Stockbridge. Quite quaint.

Our last stop on the tour was the Stockbridge mission house, which is the very house that stood in the eighteenth century, though it has been moved from its original location. This was the home of John Sargeant and Abigail Williams Sargeant, nemeses to Edwards while he was in Stockbridge. The inside of the house (no photos allowed!) gives a good idea of what life was like in the Indian wilderness for the Edwards family, though the Sargeants were probably more well off than the Edwards’ would have been. After Stockbridge, we got on the bus to head back, our tour having ended. However…

What better way to end a photo essay of sites related to Jonathan Edwards than his final resting place? I took these pictures on a trip to Princeton last year. This is the marker of Sarah Edwards, Jonathan’s wife, who died in October 1758, just a little over six months after her husband died. I love the epitaph, “A sincere Friend, a courteous and Obliging Neighbour, A judiciously indulgent Mother, An affectionate and prudent Wife.”

And finally, the grave of Jonathan Edwards himself, buried at Princeton cemetery, being the third president of the, then, College of New Jersey. His epitaph is entirely in Latin, and unfortunately I do not have a transcription or translation of it with me right now. Hopefully I can get back up there sometime and sneak a charcoal rubbing of the epitaph.

It was a great week and a great class (this is all of us on the steps of the church in Northampton). I’m thankful for the opportunity, for the interactions, and for the wonderful experience provided by Ken Minkema and Adriaan Neele of the Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale. There’s talk that there will be a different class related to Edwards offered next year, perhaps a little more narrow than this year’s, so I look forward to that. If you are interested at all in Edwards (why else would you be here!), you should absolutely consider making the trip. You will not regret it.

For our final discussions, the topic was Jonathan Edwards’s legacy. This is one of the most popular topics in Edwards scholarship today, and one that is still very open to inquiry and work. It’s amazing that there is still so little on this important aspect of American religious history, but hopefully that is beginning to change. Edwards’s legacy can be looked at from a number of different angles, the first being his theological legacy. The latter half of the 18th century and beginning of the 19th century saw dramatic shifts in religion and theology, several groups forming rather quickly based largely on distancing themselves from other groups. Of course the first of these theologies are the Edwardsians or the New Divinity school. These folks defended revivalism, spoke in natural and moral ability/inability categories, championed a moral rigorism (largely through adapting Edwards’s Nature of True Virtue for their own ends), and sought to carry forward Jonathan Edwards’s ecclesiastical views, especially in repudiating the old Halfway Covenant.

In opposition to the New Divinity school, as mentioned in a previous post, were the Old Lights, or Old Calvinists, with their emphasis on social hierarchies and tradition-based practices. In addition to these, new opponents emerging from Scottish Common Sense philosophy began writing against the New Divinity movement. One of the more prominent men in this school was John Witherspoon, a Presbyterian minister, president of the College of New Jersey (later, Princeton), and, incidentally, the only clergyman to have signed the “Declaration of Independence.” Witherspoon, taking his cues from philosopher Thomas Reid, despised the idealism and occasionalism that Edwards espoused, so much so that when he got to Princeton he formally removed all traces to Edwards whatsoever, in favor of a more pragmatist, or realist, approach.

Other new theologies cropping up were those of the Methodists and the Baptists, particularly in the southern colonies. Both of these groups generally spread after the Great Awakening, with ecclesiastical power shifting away from the gentried clergy to a more democratic system of everyman preachers and evangelists. The Methodists were especially characterized by an emphasis on disciplined spirituality, universal grace, and a certain brand of perfectionism.

Other areas in which Edwards’s legacy can be seen is the culture of the 19th century, particularly in women’s fiction, of all places! Authors such as Susan Warner, Maria Cummins, and Louisa May Alcott were greatly influenced by Edwards and those who followed him. The James family is also a prime example of this. Henry James, Sr. preached a socialized gospel that largely stemmed from Edwards’s Nature of True Virtue, the novels of Henry James, Jr. were influenced by Edwards, and William James’s Varieties of Religious Experience cites Edwards a number of times in looking at religious experience from a psychological point of view.

Other areas that Edwards has been prominent in is the revivalism that was a big part of the 19th and 20th centuries, and missions, Edwards’s Life of David Brainerd being immensely influential and beneficial for a variety of global Christian missions boards. Even today we see Edwards in the resurgence of Reformed Theology, particularly among young evangelicals, that TIME magazine deemed the #3 idea changing the world right now.

One of my favorite quotes about Jonathan Edwards comes from Ezra Stiles, president of Yale from 1778-95. He said, “The works of Jonathan Edwards in another generation will pass into as transient notice perhaps scarce above oblivion, and when posterity occasionally comes across them in the rubbish of libraries, the rare characters who may read and be pleased with them will be looked upon as singular and whimsical.” Clearly, not all men were born prophets.

(Note: pictures, understandably, were not allowed inside the library; however, the Beinecke’s website has digital images of many of the pieces in their collection; if images of the works mentioned here are available, they have been linked)

Before getting into the Edwards pieces, however, our instructors had a couple of other treats for us. 2009 marks the 500th birthday of John Calvin, and the Beinecke holds a copy of the earliest French edition of Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion, printed in 1541. A very rare book, this would have been 1 of about 500 in the print run. The second non-Edwards piece we got to see and touch was quite fascinating. Isaac Newton first published his Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, or simply Principia Mathematica, in 1687. In the early 18th century, around 1714-15, a 1713 copy of the Principia was presented to the Yale Library. This copy was presented by none other than Isaac Newton himself, most likely a copy donated from his own collection. Edwards, highly interested in philosophical pursuits, read and very much appreciated Newton’s Principia (the title page to the Beinecke’s 1687 first edition, here, and a page from the 1713 edition that we saw, here.

After these two pieces, it was time for the main attraction. We started with a couple of Edwards’s notebooks, one from his miscellanies collection and then the Images or Shadows of Divine Things notebook. I had seen a couple of Edwards manuscripts before, in a previous visit to the Beinecke, as well as numerous manuscript pictures, most of which were very hard to read and decipher. So it was interesting to see that, the miscellanies notebook especially, these notebooks were written quite clearly and legibly. We were also able to see one of the notebooks that Edwards used to prepare his treatise on Freedom of the Will. This notebook is quite peculiar in the irregularly shaped pages, as you can see in the linked picture. These pages are such because they are the scraps from paper fans that his daughters made in order to make some extra money. After these notebooks was one of my favorite pieces of Edwardsiana, the Blank Bible (sample pages here and here). Given to Edwards by Benjamin Pierpont, relative to his wife Sarah, the Blank Bible is an unbound King James Bible, rebound with blank, columned paper between the Bible sheets for the purpose of notes and commentary on Scripture.

After these notebooks, there was an opportunity to look at several sermon manuscripts, the pièce de résistance, of course, being the manuscript of “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” Edwards’s sermon manuscripts are quite interesting in that most of them are hand-sewn booklets, the pages of which are 4″x4″. The writing is diminutive and the pages are cluttered with strike-throughs, erratic notations, and other markings. It’s a wonder that Edwards himself could read them, let alone preach from them!

Several other Edwards manuscripts were presented, which I won’t go into further, and we then moved into items related to Edwards. The first of these is alleged to be a small swatch from Sarah’s wedding dress. A second piece of material was an embroidered bedsheet said to have been made by Esther Stoddard Edwards, Jonathan’s mother. A final item that I will mention may have been my favorite piece that we saw, surprising in it not being an Edwards manuscript. Edwards youngest son, Jonathan, Jr., a pastor like his father, was highly interested in the historical linguistics of Native Americans. In 1787 he published a study of the Mahican language, a language he was well familiar with having grow up in Stockbridge, Massachusetts where his father was a missionary from 1751-1758. One of the people to receive an early copy of this study was the new president-elect of the neonate American Republic, General George Washington. What we go to see was a letter from Washington to Jonathan Edwards, Jr. acknowledging receipt of the “pamphlet,” and encouraging the younger Edwards to continue to pursue the study of Native American language. It’s not often that one holds a document written by the father of our nation.

This trip to the Beinecke was truly remarkable experience, and I sincerely thank Ken and Adriaan for taking the class there and showing us all that magnificent stuff!

Of course, Jonathan Edwards was greatly in tune with this emphasis on the new birth, especially seen in his sermon “A Divine and Supernatural Light,” which points to “a new sense of divine things” that comes about through the illuminating work of God’s Spirit upon the soul of an individual. This “new sense” awakens the soul to see things as they really are, namely the majesty and glory of God, the beauty of Christ and his work, and the truth of Scripture and teachings of the Christian religion. Edwards was also no stranger to awakenings, having gone through several “stirrings” and times of “harvest” both in his father’s church in East Windsor and his grandfather’s church in Northampton. Edwards himself pastored through a brief awakening in 1734-35 in Northampton, half a decade before nearly all of the English colonies were caught up in religious fervor.

After 1735, however, many of Edwards’s parishioners went through periods of backsliding, an evident sign to Edwards that the Holy Spirit was drawing back his influence on the congregation. This prompted Edwards to embark on several sermon campaigns, including the “Charity and its Fruits” sermons, a series on the parable of the wise and foolish virgins, and the sermon series on a “History of the Work of Redemption.” These work little effect among the town and Edwards begins to examine more closely the nature of Christian obedience and behavior, realizing that he may have overemphasized the “divine light” aspect of conversion, not giving sufficient attention to the “divine living” aspect of the Christian life and sanctification. Edwards’s treatise on Religious Affections, published in 1746, a few years after the awakenings of 1740-42, displays a much more balanced approach as he meticulously works these ideas out.

The entire game would change, however, with the arrival of a young, charismatic preacher named George Whitefield. Experiencing some success as a preacher in England, Whitefield comes over to the colonies and sets society on fire by sparking a wide series of awakenings throughout the colonies, resulting in the period known as the Great Awakening. Not everyone was caught up in this movement, however, with many clergy denouncing charismatic excesses and a perceived tendency toward antinomianism that seemed to follow the awakenings as they swept through the land. This sparked controversies between Old Lights, those critical of the awakenings, and New Lights, awakening supporters, causing further upheaval.

Edwards attempted to plow a middle road, championing the revivals as a true work of the Spirit of God, but also warning against the few excesses that were reported and observed. He criticizes New Lights for being un-Christian and un-Scriptural at times, and Old Lights for a stale theology and tradition-driven (as opposed to Scripture-driven) critiques of new approaches to preaching, evangelism, and ministry in general. Though Whitefield would be the most successful awakening preacher of the era, Edwards would also find success, largely away from his congregation at Northampton, this being the period where he (in)famously preached “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” at Enfield, Connecticut.

Much more could be said about the Great Awakening, and especially Edwards’s awakening writings (Religious Affections sparked a fascinating and wonderful discussion in the class), but that was the gist of what we discussed in class today.

After formal class and discussion time, we were surprised with another guest lecture, this time by Dr. Walter Kimnach. Dr. Kimnach served as the general editor for the six sermon volumes in the Yale Works of Jonathan Edwards project, personally editing volumes 10 and 25 himself (just as a sidenote, anyone interested in Edwards’s sermons and preaching should absolutely read Dr. Kimnach’s introduction to volume 10). Dr. Kimnach, naturally, spoke to us about Edwards’s methods as a preacher, particularly in how he structured his sermons, beginning formally with Scripture, then moving to an explanation of the doctrine in view, and concluding with a lengthy application section.

With that, the third day of instruction ended, but there was much more to come. Up next: a trip to the Beinecke Library, home to the largest Jonathan Edwards manuscript collection. A geek’s dream come true!

Day two of the class centered around looking at Edwards as a theologian. He was presented as both a typical and an atypical theologian and pastor in New England. Typical in defining his theology against a post-Reformation Reformed background with an emphasis on the sovereignty of God, centrality of Christ, and utmost necessity for practical piety in the Christian life. Edwards was not typical, however, in focusing much of his effort on philosophical and polemical pursuits, no doubt as a result of the theological and philosophical milieu of his day (i.e., Enlightenment and British moral philosophy, and the theological challenges of Arminianism and Deism). Typical or atypical, however, it it clear that Edwards was a theologian who was thoroughly immersed in the Scriptures, his doctrine and exegesis using Scripture as their foundation and starting point, and his sermons (part of the outflow of that doctrinal and exegetical work), of course, were centralized on Scripture as well.

After this short discussion on Edwards as a theologian, the class then moved into discussing the works that we had read the night before, unquestionably the most substantial set of readings both in amount and depth. On the docket was The End for Which God Created the World, Original Sin, Freedom of the Will, The Nature of True Virtue, and A History of the Work of Redemption. Formidable texts, each one. I won’t bore you with the details of our class discussion on each of those texts, but I will say that the discussion was very lively and it’s so encouraging to see others wrestling with these difficult works in order to better understand Edwards and the God he held so dear.

At the end of the discussion we were surprised with a guest appearance by Dr. Harry (Skip) Stout, the general editor of the Yale Works of Jonathan Edwards project. Dr. Stout spoke to us on both the History of Redemption as well as a brief glimpse into what made the Great Awakening so great. Dr. Stout proposed that the American colonies went through a first democratic revolution decades before the American Revolution, this first event being the Great Awakening revivals that seemed to enrapture the whole of the British colonies. The awakenings would put religion into the hands of the people and would create many of the attitudes and lay the ground work for many of the ideologies that would lead the revolt against British tyranny including how information was disseminated, oratorial styles, audience responses, and the new style of leadership based on popularity rather than accomplishment or aristocratic stature.

Today was a very heavy class, though very stimulating as well. With all that has been written on Edwards and these greatest treatises of his, it is very evident that there is still much work to be done, particularly in making them more accessible to non-academics, as it was often questioned how we can take these ideas of Edwards and use them in church communities or high school classes, etc. A question at once daunting and exciting!

Today was mainly about orientating, both to the class and our immediate surroundings as well as to Jonathan Edwards himself and the world he lived in. After registration and introductions, which included fascinating brief explanations on the participants’ familiarity or not with Edwards, we were invited to the offices of the JEC at Yale to hear more about what they are doing, especially with the online project. It’s been mentioned before, but the JEC has graciously put up, for free, electronic versions of all twenty-six printed volumes in the Yale Works of Jonathan Edwards series, as well as nearly fifty additional “volumes” that contain mostly unfinished works and unpublished sermons. The amount of Edwards primary source material at that website is simply astounding. What a blessing to those who are interested in Edwards, whether cursorily or vocationally.

One of the coolest things we heard about in our tour of the JEC is a program that they are working on called First Source. First Source will eventually develop into an online repository of entire corpora of noted theologians including John Calvin, Philip Melanchthon, George Whitefield, John Wesley, etc. These collections will function much like the Edwards collection currently does, except, and here’s the really cool part, they will all be cross-searchable. So one would be able to construct a search query that only searches the Edwards texts, or that includes the Edwards and Whitefield text, or any other combination. So, for example, if someone was interested in how this disparate array of men used a particular biblical text, they would simply search the biblical reference and include whomever’s work they pleased in the search. This could have a profound impact on the way we study the exegetical methods, historical methods, etc. as they developed and passed through the centuries. Very exciting!

After the tour the class officially began and we heard about the world that Edwards was born into, largely influenced by the English Puritan milieu, but also greatly impacted by theology and philosophy from the broader European context, particularly Continental Reformed theology and the early inklings of Enlightenment philosophy. From there launched brief discussions of several of JE’s writings, including “On Being,” “The Mind,” and the famous “Spider Letter” which he wrote as a young man. Tomorrow the class discusses Edwards the theologian with readings from several of the more major works. Lots of reading for this class, but it’s all good!

Stay tuned for more from New Haven and you can also follow updates through aDaSL’s twitter. Til then…

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Here is the full info which can also be found at the website for Yale’s Summer Term at Sterling Divinity Quadrangle:

Jonathan Edwards and His World
Ken Minkema
Yale Divinity School
June 15 – 19 (see schedule below for times)
$400

The staff of the Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale will present a week-long summer course examining the life, thought, and legacies of Jonathan Edwards,  one of the great theologians in the Christian tradition and one of the most significant figures in American religious history.

The classroom portion of the course will feature lectures and discussions of common readings. There will be ample time allowed for questions and dialogue. Common readings will include selections from printed collections of Edwards’s writings and secondary sources. Also, the course will be integrated with the use of materials located in The Works of Jonathan Edwards Online.

Special features of the course will be a viewing of Edwards’s manuscripts at Yale’s Beinecke Library, and a day-long tour of sites in the Connecticut River Valley relating to Edwards and the Great Awakening. These sites include East Windsor (Edwards’s birthplace) and Enfield, Connecticut (where he preached Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God), and Northampton  and Stockbridge, Massachusetts, the towns where he ministered for most of his career.

Readings
John Smith et al., eds., A Jonathan Edwards Reader
Douglas Sweeney and Allen Guelzo, eds., The New England Theology: From Edwards to Edwards Amasa Park

Participants can also utilize the Jonathan Edwards Center’s free website, edwards.yale.edu.

Schedule

Monday, 9-11:30
The Post-Reformation Era, Puritanism, and the Young Edwards
JE Reader, “Spider Letter,” “Of Being,” “Beauty of the World,” “The Mind,” “Diary,” “Resolutions,” “Apostrophe to Sarah Pierpont”
Online: A Biographical Sketch, edwards.yale.edu/about-edwards/biography

Tuesday, 9-11:30
Edwards the Theologian
JE Reader, “A History of the Work of Redemption,” “Freedom of the Will,” “Original Sin,” “Nature of True Virtue”
Online: Edwards as Theologian, edwards.yale.edu/about-edwards/theologian

Wednesday, 9-11:30
The Great Awakening
JE Reader, “Faithful Narrative,” “Religious Affections,” “Personal Narrative”
Online: JEC Exhibit, “Billy Graham Preaches ‘Sinners,’” edwards.yale.edu/graham.

1:30-3:00
Edwards’s Manuscripts at Beinecke Library

Thursday, 9-11:30
Edwards’s American and Global Legacies
Douglas Sweeney and Allen Guelzo, eds., The New England Theology: From Edwards to Edwards Amasa Park (divide readings among class)
Online: Edwards’s Legacies, edwards.yale.edu/about-edwards/legacy

Friday, 8-4
A Tour of Edwards and Great Awakening Sites