Volume 1: Freedom of the Will – This inaugural volume in The Works of Jonathan Edwards is his major contribution to theology and stands as a leading document on Calvinist thought. Mr. Ramsey’s introduction provides a fresh analysis of Edwards’ theological position, includes a study of his life and the intellectual issues in America during his time, and examines the problem of free will in the philosophical context of today and in connection with Leibniz, Locke, and Hume.

Volume 2: Religious Affections – This volume contains Edwards’ most mature and persistent attempt to judge the validity of the religious development in eighteenth-century America known as the Great Awakening. In developing criteria for such judgment he attacked at the same time one of the fundamental questions facing all religion: how to distinguish genuine from spurious piety? The Awakening created much bitter controversy; on the one side stood the emotionalists and enthusiasts, and on the other the rationalists, for whom religion was essentially a matter of morality or good conduct and the acceptance of properly formulated doctrine. Edwards, with great analytical skill and enormous biblical learning, showed that both sides were in the wrong. He attacked both a “lifeless morality” as too pale as to be the essence of religion, and he rejected the excesses of a purely emotional religion more concerned for sensational effects than for the inner transformation of the self, which was, for him, the center of genuine Christianity.

Volume 4: The Great Awakening – Interpreting the Great Awakening of the eighteenth century was in large part the work of Jonathan Edwards; whose writings on the subject defined the revival tradition in America. Moving from sensitive descriptions of “the Surprising work of God” in conversion to a consuming quest for the essence of true religion, and threading his way through mounting controversies over “errors in doctrine and disorders in practice,” Edwards sought to locate an authentic core of evangelical experience, to define it in terms of biblical faith and psychological insight, and to defend it against both overheated zealous and rationalistic critics. The tracts that unfold his thoughts, presented here (with related correspondence ) for the first time in accurate critical texts, document a movement so significant for the American character that it has been called “our national conversion.”

Hopefully Yale Press will publish the other volumes in paper as well, but this is a good start!

(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!

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!