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Jonathan Edwards as Historian

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

John F. Wilson
John F. Wilson
Affiliation:
professor of religion inPrinceton University.This Presidential Address was delivered at the annual meeting of the Society, December 28, 1976.
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Extract

Presidential addresses to professional societies are a special kind of presentation. Undoubtedly each of us has his or her own set of categories for them: the lofty pronouncement upon the current professional scene, the prescription of a new direction for the discipline, an analysis of presuppositions prevailing in the field, and, of course, a review of and reflections upon developments in the course of the incumbent's professional years. Whether this particular typology of addresses, that is, this general classification system, accords with yours is not the point at issue. Rather, I wish to stress the moment of uncertainty which is experienced, inevitably, as one sets about the task of composing his or her contribution under the constraints of office. Quite frankly, at first I had thought to turn this problem to advantage by offering as the substance of my presentation a critical review of those presidential addresses which have graced the Society through its venerable history. This seemed to be a way that an office-holder might serve the Society in a properly historical fashion. Of course I foresaw difficulties. Should I stop analysis at a discreet distance, shall we say in 1950? Or ought I pass over the addresses of those predecessors who are still active members of the Society, especially if they might be in attendance? Such practical considerations were finally less important in dissuading me from taking this course, however, than the advice of good friends and colleagues: “Build upon your current research interests; it will be a more appropriate presentation.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 46 , Issue 1 , March 1977 , pp. 5 - 18
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1977

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References

1. The published version presented the sermons in the form of a sustained treatise. Heimert, Alan, in Religion and The American Mind (Cambridge, Mass., 1966), p. 60,Google Scholar referred to “the thirty-nine sermons delivered in 1739.” The actual number was thirty.

2. Edwards' literary techniques and practices have been studied by Wilson Kimnach in his doctoral dissertation, published on demand by University Microfilms. This analysis is extremely important for anyone working with Edwardsean texts. It also illuminates Edwards' working procedures in such a way as to have very general relevance for interpretation of his thought. The Literary Techniques of Jonathan Edwards (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1971).

3. Issued in the new critical edition by Smith, John E., The Works, vol. 2 (New Haven, 1959).Google Scholar

4. These notebooks are discussed in a forthcoming essay, “Edwards's Notebooks for A History of the Work of Redemption.”

5. Edwards' letter to the Trustees of the College of New Jersey at Princeton (October 19, 1957) is well known since it was printed in Jonathan Edwards, Representative Selections, ed. Clarence H. Faust and Thomas H. Johnson, American Century Series (New York, 1962), pp. 409–414.Google Scholar The passage about a “History of the Work of Redemption” is on pp. 411 f.

6. See prefatory matter to Edinburgh edition, including “Preface” by Jonathan Edwards, Jr., dated “Newhaven, Feb. 25, 1773,” and “Advertisement” by John Erskine, dated “Edinburgh, April 29, 1774.”

7. “Printed for W. Gray, Edinburgh, and J. Buckland and G. Keith, London, 1774.”

8. Charity and Its Fruits was first published in 1852 by Tryon Edwards but was never widely circulated.

9. T. H.Johnson's bibiliography lists 27 different editions, some with multiple printings, excluding collected works, prior to 1870, including translations into Dutch, Welsh, French and Arabic.

10. See an essay by Wilson H. Kimnach which suggests long-term transformations in Edwards' literary forms which might argue for such an outcome. “The Brazen Trumpet: Jonathan Edwards's Conception of the Sermon,” in Angoff, Charles, ed., Jonathan Edwards: His Life and Influence (Rutherford, N.J., 1975).Google Scholar

11. A kind of implication which may be read in Miller's, PerryJonathan Edwards (New York, 1949), pp. 297–305.Google Scholar Roland Delattre has graciously shared an unpublished essay with me, titled “Beauty and Politics,” which suggests this interpretation.

12. First published 1966 (New York, 1968), Chapter 4.

13. Ibid., p. 106.

14. Ibid., p. 96 f.

15. Ibid., p. 94.

16. Ibid., p. 97.

17. This judgment is offered on the basis of extensive work comparing the text of the original sermons with the published version.

18. See the “Letter to the Trustees” cited above.

19. An argument developed in the concluding chapter of Jonathan Edwards, pp. 307–330.

20. See the reflections on this question at end of the major notebook Edwards kept toward revising the work of redemption materials. He designated it “Book I.” (Described in detail in the forthcoming essay.)

21. Published shortly after Edwards' death as Two Dissertations (Boston, 1765).Google Scholar Thereafter at times separately circulated.

22. On John Foxe see Haller, William, The Elect Nation (American title) (New York, 1963).Google ScholarMather's, CottonMagnalia Christi Americana is being issued by the Harvard University Press in a new critical edition.Google Scholar

23. A point which Perry Miller developed throughout Jonathan Edwards.

24. A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections.

25. See, as an example of this judgment, Perry Miller's comment, “no anthropologist ever reported more objectively on the fertility rites of a jungle tribe…” Jonathan Edwards, p. 139. The Edwardsean materials relating to the Great Awakening have been published in the edition currently in progress edited by Goen, C. C.. See The Great Awakening (Works) (New Haven, 1972).Google Scholar

26. These materials are available in Dwight, Sereno E., The Life of Jonathan Edwards (New York, 1830).Google Scholar

27. See A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections.

28. See, for example, Augustine, Saint, The City of God, tr. Dods, Marcus (New York, 1950), p. 477:Google Scholar Book 14, chapter 28, “of the nature of the two cities, the earthly and the heavenly.”

29. See the discussion of Concerning the End… noted above in Jonathan Edwards, pp. 297–305.

30. Published first in 1765.

31. The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative (New Haven, 1974).Google Scholar

32. Mimesis, the Representation of Reality in Western Literature, tr. Willard Trask (Princeton, N.J., 1953).Google Scholar See the essay “Figura, ”in Scenes From the Drama of European Literature (New York, 1959).Google Scholar

33. These are pervasive themes in the 1739 sermons and in the later notebooks.

34. The “Letter to the Trustees” includes a fuller and more precise “outline” of the projected Work of Redemption than the notebooks.

35. Edwards repeatedly used the category of redemption, for example, throughout his “Miscellanies.” An explicit statement to this effect is offered at the end of the notebook “History of Redemption Book I”: “Method. Perhaps in the beginning have an introduction in a discourse to prove the Work of Redemption to be the greatest of God's works and the end of all other works of God.”

36. So much is explicit and implicit throughout the sermons.

37. In passages in the notebook “History of the Work of Redemption, Book I” he reflects explicitly about how the Work of Redemption is represented in Scripture through such images and figures.

38. The following statement appears in the same notebook and is but one illustration of many which could be given. “In each grand period there has been a gradual increase and diminution like the waxing and waning of moon.”

39. Among the more systematic discussions of Edwards from the point of view of his interest in history is: Pfisterer, Karl D., The Prism of Scripture: Studies on History and Historicity in the Works of Jonathan Edwards (Frankfurt/M, 1975).Google Scholar See also, Richardson, Herbert W., The Glory of God in the Theology of Jonathan Edwards (Ph.D. diss., Harvard, 1962).Google Scholar