contending with versions of Edwardsean theology he had first encountered

contending with versions of Edwardsean theology he had first encountered

∑≠≠ The Transitory and the Enduring

educational parity with men, yet at the time it was equally renowned for the number of its graduates who served as foreign missionaries, described by one historian as ''nineteenth-century versions of Jerusha Edwards.''≤π

By the late nineteenth century, however, rigorous Calvinist theology was in full retreat in most American cultural centers, and Edwards' reputation su√ered accordingly. All but a dwindling group of ardent followers jettisoned the particulars of his Calvinist teachings. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. entertained his contemporaries with ''The Deacon's Masterpiece, or The Wonderful 'One-Hoss Shay' '' (1858), which lampooned the dramatic collapse of New England Calvinism. The heirs of Charles Chauncy had finally won a longstanding battle for cultural supremacy. Still, Edwards remained, as Joseph Conforti has put it, ''a kind of white whale of American religious history.''≤∫

The relentless rigor of his Calvinism long hovered as a force that could obsess even its enemies. As late as the early twentieth century, Mark Twain was worrying about Edwards. ''A resplendent intellect gone mad,'' he wrote in 1902. In The Mysterious Stranger and Letters from Earth, Twain was still contending with versions of Edwardsean theology he had first encountered on the Missouri frontier.

Even as specific Calvinist beliefs were being discredited in the cultural mainstream, New Englanders of the later nineteenth century increasingly celebrated Puritanism in American hagiography and iconography as they constructed a heroic heritage that had endowed them with moral fortitude.≤Ω

Anglo-Protestants still hoped to define America's heritage as essentially Protestant, but in an era of growing diversity they substituted morality for theology as the essence of that heritage. Edwards, who had opposed earlier versions of such moralistic trends, might seem di≈cult to fit into that mold. Nonetheless, he could be presented as someone who exemplified the ruggedness of earlier days and who left a laudable legacy of moral discipline. One famous study, for instance, celebrated Edwards' contribution to the moral character of America through his descendants. The work, published in 1900, contrasted the character and intelligence of 1,200 descendants of one of his most dissolute contemporaries to those of 1,400 of Edwards' heirs. The descendants of Max Jukes, a New York Dutchman whose name the researchers changed to protect the guilty, left a legacy that included more than three hundred ''professional paupers,'' fifty women of ill repute, seven murderers, sixty habitual thieves, and one hundred and thirty other convicted criminals. The Edwards family, by contrast, produced scores of clergymen, thirteen

The Transitory and the Enduring ∑≠∞

presidents of institutions of higher learning, sixty-five professors, and many other persons of notable achievements.≥≠

By the early decades of the twentieth century, however, Puritan bashing had become widely acceptable as a way for progressive Americans to free themselves from Victorian moralism. Edwards was an easy target. This was the era of the invention of American literature as a field of study and the canonization of Holmes' ''One-Hoss Shay'' and of Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. The latter fixed Edwards in the public mind as simply a hell-fire preacher. Edwards' biographer of this era, Henry Bamford Parkes, writing in the 1920s, was explicit in blaming Edwards and his disciples for much of what was wrong with America. ''It is hardly a hyperbole to say,'' wrote Parkes, ''that, if Edwards had never lived, there would be to-day no blue laws, no societies for the suppression of vice, no Volstead act.'' Parkes found some things to admire in Edwards, but he viewed him mostly as a tragic figure who poured his youthful ''pantheistic'' insights into the rigid mold of John Calvin's theology. Calvinism, according to Parkes, was based on a ''cosmic despot, God,'' and was ''an amazing travesty of . . . Christianity.'' ''If he had thought about it more deeply, he might have become the greatest figure in the history of American thought; he might have altered the whole of the future history of America.''≥∞ Even Ola Winslow's largely sympathetic biography, published in 1940, reflected this progressive tone, regretting that Edwards spoke ''through an outworn, dogmatic system'' that ''needed to be demolished.''≥≤

Already by the time Winslow was writing, however, the theological and cultural climate was changing and a new Edwards—best characterized as the neo-orthodox Edwards—was emerging. This new trend was signaled in 1932 by the publication of theologian A. C. McGi√ert's sympathetic biography and the more explicitly neo-orthodox Joseph Haroutunian's Piety versus Moralism: The Passing of the New England Theology, which characterized everything after Edwards as a decline into moralism.≥≥ H. Richard Niebuhr in a number of influential publications from the 1930s through the 1950s also celebrated what he saw as the essence of Edwards' theology, even while moving far from most of its particulars.≥∂

At the same time, and closely related, was the emergence of the scholar's Edwards. Perry Miller contributed immeasurably to this trend with the publication of his intellectual biography in 1949, characterizing Edwards as America's greatest genius and as a profound modern philosopher who happened to use Calvinist categories. Miller thereby created the possibility of

∑≠≤ The Transitory and the Enduring

''atheists for Edwards.'' At the same time he enlisted scholars from a wide spectrum of theological or nontheological views to launch the Yale publication of Edwards' Works. Since Miller's time Edwards has been a major scholarly industry.≥∑ Many of the scholars who have worked on Edwards in the recent decades have sympathies to some aspects of his thought, and some have been theologians who have appropriated many aspects of his outlook.≥∏

Others are scholars simply intrigued by his intellectual power, his cultural influence, or his interconnections with the social and cultural forces of his day.

One of my hopes is that this book may help bridge the gap between the Edwards of the students of American culture and the Edwards of the theologians. Historians of American culture, thought, and literature are primarily concerned to understand Edwards in relation to his time or perhaps to understand his influence in relation to subsequent times. Theologians are concerned to appropriate aspects of Edwards' thought for their own times. As a biographer attempting to understand Edwards first as an eighteenth-century figure, I have been working most directly as a cultural historian. Yet I have been doing this always with an eye on the theological question, taking his thought seriously as part of the larger Christian tradition.

If one has, as I do, theological mentors from across the ages, then it is valuable to realize that their insights on spiritual matters come framed by their particular personal and cultural circumstances. My belief is that one of the uses of being an historian, particularly if one is part of a community of faith, is to help persons of such communities better understand what they and their community might appropriate from the great mentors of the past and what is extraneous and nonessential. Everything is, of course, time-bound and there is a danger for us who are so shaped by historical consciousness to dismiss every authority from the past once we have understood the peculiarities of the historical, personal, or theoretical factors that shaped its outlook. A far more profitable approach is to employ historical consciousness for developing more discriminating assessments of the wisdom of the past. The point of historical scholarship should not be, as it so often is today, simply to take things apart, to destroy myths, or to say that what looks simple is really quite complex. It should also be to help people see how to put things back together again. We need to use history for the guidance it o√ers, learning from great figures in the past—both in their brilliance and in their shortcomings. Otherwise we are stuck with only the wisdom of the present.

My hope, then, is that this account will be helpful to others, as it has been to myself, in thinking about what might be best appropriated from Edwards.

The Transitory and the Enduring ∑≠≥

I realize, of course, that the criteria various readers employ in making such judgments will vary hugely according to points of view. So I can not speak as though my judgments should represent the consensus of what all rightthinking people should think about Edwards. What I can do, however, is attempt to provide as full an account as is feasible of Edwards' own theological and spiritual concerns, including both his most profound insights and his peculiarities. By attempting first to understand these in terms of his own eighteenth-century outlook, we can better see the assumptions and characteristic patterns of his thought. Once we have identified such assumptions and patterns and see how they di√er from our own, we are in a better position to respond to the particulars of his thought.

How Edwards may be appropriated, then, should not be an all-ornothing question. Almost everyone will find in Edwards some theological views, biblical interpretations, or eighteenth-century social attitudes that were based on assumptions that seem antiquated beyond recovery. Some readers' lists of these will be long, others short. In either case, such views need not distract us from whatever else might be of merit in his outlook.

At the least, we should be open to regarding other dimensions of Edwards' thought that grow out of assumptions di√erent from our own as challenging our own assumptions and conclusions. We will never learn anything from sages of the past unless we get over our naive assumption that the most recently popular modes of thought are the best. Edwards had a wonderful ability to carry the implications of widely held Christian assumptions to their logical conclusions, sometimes with unnerving results. Not everyone will agree with all his premises and so will not be compelled by all his conclusions. Nevertheless, anyone might do well to contemplate Edwards' view of reality and its awesome implications.

Among other things, Edwards challenges the commonsense view of our culture that the material world is the ''real'' world. Edwards' universe is essentially a universe of personal relationships. Reality is a communication of a√ections, ultimately of God's love and creatures' responses. Material things are transitory and ephemeral. Their meanings are found in their relation to the loves at the center of reality. Although they are transitory, they can have great eternal significance if they are recognized for what they are, signs or expressions of God's love.

Our culture's intellectual life is largely preoccupied with observing material and social forces that lead to change. Typically we think we have found the best explanation of an event when we can see some of the cultural or

∑≠∂ The Transitory and the Enduring

psychological dynamics that contribute to its development. This biography itself reflects some of those characteristic concerns. Edwards, while not indifferent to such matters, would challenge us to see the universe as most essentially God's unceasing action.

Living as he did at a time and in a place when there was a substantial cultural overlap between the late medieval–Reformation outlook, preserved largely intact in Edwards' Puritan heritage, and the world of the scientific revolution and the Enlightenment, Edwards saw the immense challenges to a rigorous God-centeredness in the modern era. Sharing with his theological predecessors the premise that God was the creator and sustainer of reality, Edwards applied that premise to a vastly expanded Newtonian universe. The theological tradition that Edwards inherited included the belief that God must be eternal and unchanging—a doctrine that led some toward a view of the deity as static and impassive in his perfections. Edwards instead emphasized all those dimensions of his trinitarian heritage that helped to understand God as the active creator and sustainer of an inconceivably immense universe. The universe of Newton was one of constant action and changing relationships, and Edwards' conception of God was matched to that dynamic universe. Lockean and early modern idealist philosophies, as Edwards appropriated them, added the notion that created reality was not independent of the minds that engage it. That reinforced the point that the universe most essentially consisted of personal relationships. All of creation was a system of powers to communicate. Creation was most essentially a means by which the creator-sustainer communicated his holiness, beauty, and redemptive love to other persons.

Edwards thus addressed one of the greatest mysteries facing traditional theism in the post-Newtonian universe: how can the creator of such an unimaginably vast universe be in intimate communication with creatures so infinitely inferior to himself? How can it be that God hears their prayers and responds by caring not only about their eternal souls but even about the details of their temporal lives? To answer such questions one would have to face more starkly than is usually done the immensity of the distance between God and humans and between God's ways and our understandings. At the same time, Edwards insisted, if God is meaningfully related to us, God must be intimately involved with the governance of all the universe in its detail. Further, God must be governing it in some way that also grants the maximum possible autonomy to created beings. Whether Edwards, or anyone else,

The Transitory and the Enduring ∑≠∑

adequately explains how this mystery may be resolved is a matter of some debate.

Yet Edwards' solution—a post-Newtonian statement of classic Augustinian themes—can be breathtaking. God's trinitarian essence is love. God's purpose in creating a universe in which sin is permitted must be to communicate that love to creatures. The highest or most beautiful love is sacrificial love for the undeserving. Those—ultimately the vast majority of humans—who are given eyes to see that ine√able beauty will be enthralled by it. They will see the beauty of a universe in which unsentimental love triumphs over real evil. They will not be able to view Christ's love dispassionately but rather will respond to it with their deepest a√ections. Truly seeing such good, they will have no choice but to love it. Glimpsing such love, they will be drawn away from their preoccupations with the gratifications of their most immediate sensations. They will be drawn from their self-centered universes. Seeing the beauty of the redemptive love of Christ as the true center of reality, they will love God and all that he has created.

A P P E N D I X A kl Genealogical Table of Edwards' Relatives

Edwards' Extended Family (Selected members who played important roles in his kinship connections. Many siblings of these figures are omitted.)

Eleazar Mather

.....(1)..... Esther Warham

.....(2)..... Solomon Stoddard

Elizabeth

.....(1)..... (m. 1667)

Richard Edwards (1647–1718)

.....(2)..... (m. 1692)

Mary Talcott

(d. 1669) [brother of

(c. 1640–1736)

(1643–1729)

Tuthill (1645)–?)

Increase Mather, uncle

of Cotton

Mather]

.......

Eunice Mather (d. 1704) m.

Christian*

John Stoddard m.

Mary m. Rev.

Rev. Anthony Stoddard (Woodbury,

Rebecca m.

Esther Timothy Edwards

Daniel Edwards (fellow tutor

m. Rev. William Williams*

Stephen Mix

Joseph Hawley II

Prudence

Rev. John

Chester

(d. 1735)

at Yale)

Williams

(d. 1741)

Conn.)

Eunice m.

Rev. Stephen

Elisha Mix Joseph Hawley III

Esther m. Rev. Samuel Hopkins (W.

Eunice m. Rev. Simon

Martha m. Rev. Moses

et al. (see Appendix B)

Jonathan

François

Williams (Longmeadow,

Edwards m. Sarah Pierpont

Xavier Aronsen (Mohawk)

Backus

Tuttle

Mass.)

Springfield)

[uncle to Rev. Samuel

*Continued on following table: Some of Edwards' Williams Relatives

Hopkins, Edwards'

protégé]

Some of Edwards' Williams Relatives

(Continued from previous table)

Elizabeth Cotton .....(1)..... Rev. William Williams*

.....(2)..... Christian* Stoddard (sister of

Ephraim Williams Sr. (Stockbridge, Mass.) (brother of

(Hatfield) (d. 1741)

Esther Stoddard Edwards)

Rev. William Williams)

Rev. Chester

Elisha Williams (Yale rector,

Rev. Solomon

Israel Williams (Hatfield, Mass.)

Dorothy

Ephraim Williams Jr. (Stockbridge)

Abigail (Stockbridge)

Elijah Williams

Williams (Hadley, Mass.)

Williams (Lebanon, Conn.)

m. Rev. Jonathan Ashley (Deerfield, Mass.)

(Stockbridge)

m. (1) Rev. John Sergeant

[distant cousin]

etc.)

m. Sarah

(d. 1755)

Chester

(d. 1749) m. (2) Brig. Joseph Dwight

The Williams-Stoddard clan intermarried with other influential Connecticut River Valley families, including the Chesters, Ashleys, and Partridges. See Kevin Michael Sweeney, ''River Gods and Related Minor Deities: The Williams Family and the Connecticut River Valley, 1637–1790'' (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1986), 733–55.

A P P E N D I X B kl

Edwards' Sisters

The following is from Kenneth P. Minkema, ''Hannah and Her Sisters: Sisterhood, Courtship, and Marriage in the Edwards Family in the Early Eighteenth Century'' New England Historical Register 146 (January 1992): 35.

Children of Timothy Edwards (1669–1758) and Esther Stoddard Edwards (1672–1770)

Esther, 1695–1766, m. Rev. Samuel Hopkins of West Springfield, Mass., 1727

Elizabeth, 1697–1733, m. Jabez Huntington of Windham, Conn., 1724

Anne, 1699–1790, m. John Ellsworth of East Windsor, Conn., 1734

Mary, 1701–76, cared for aged Stoddard grandparents in Northampton and parents in East Windsor

Jonathan, 1703–58, m. Sarah Pierpont, 1727

Eunice, 1705–88, m. Rev. Simon Backus of Newington, Conn., 1729

Abigail, 1707–64, m. Rev. William Metcalf of Lebanon, Conn., 1737

Jerusha, 1710–29

Hannah, 1713–73, m. Seth Wetmore of Middletown, Conn., 1746

Lucy, 1715–36

Martha, 1718–94, m. Rev. Moses Tuttle of Granville, Mass., 1746

A P P E N D I X C kl Edwards' Immediate Family,

from His Family Bible

The following is a transcription from Edwards' entries, in his own hand, in his family Bible, from Works of Jonathan Edwards, ed. Hickman, cclxxiv.

Jonathan Edwards, son of Timothy and Esther Edwards of Windsor in Connecticut. I was born October 5, 1703. I was ordained at Northampton, Feb. 15, 1727. I was married to Miss Sarah Pierrepont, July 28, 1727. My wife was born Jan. 9, 1710. My daughter Sarah was born on a sabbath day, between 2 and 3 o'clock in the afternoon, Aug. 25, 1728.

My daughter Jerusha was born on a sabbath day, towards the conclusion of the afternoon exercise, April 26, 1730.

My daughter Esther was born on a sabbath day, between 9 and 10 o'clock in the forenoon, Feb. 13, 1732.

My daughter Mary was born April 7th, 1734, being sabbath day, the sun being about an hour and a half high, in the morning.

My daughter Lucy was born on Tuesday, the last day of Aug. 1736, between 2 and 3 o'clock in the morning.

My son Timothy was born on Tuesday, July 25, 1738, between 6 and 7 o'clock in the morning.

My daughter Susannah was born on Friday, June 20, 1740, at about 3 in the morning. All the family above named had the measles, at the latter end of the year 1740. My daughter Eunice was born on Monday morning, May 9 1743, about half an hour after midnight, and was baptized the sabbath following.

My son Jonathan was born on a sabbath-day night, May 26, 1745, between 9 and 10 o'clock, and was baptized the sabbath following.

My daughter Jerusha died on a sabbath day, Feb. 14, 1747, about 5 o'clock in the morning, aged 17.

My daughter Elizabeth was born on Wednesday, May 6, 1747, between 10 and 11 o'clock at night, and was baptized the sabbath following.

∑∞≤ Appendix C

My son Pierrepont was born on a sabbath-day night, April 8, 1750, between 8 and 9 o'clock; and was baptized the sabbath following.

I was dismissed from my pastoral relation to the first church in Northampton, June 22d, 1750. My daughter Sarah was married to Mr. Elihu Parsons, June 11, 1750 My daughter Mary was married to Timothy Dwight, Esq. of Northampton, Nov. 8, 1750. My daughter Esther was married to the Rev. Aaron Burr of Newark, June 29, 1752. Mr. Burr aforesaid, President of the New Jersey college, died at Princeton, Sept. 24, 1757, of the nervous fever. Mr. Burr was born Jan. 4, 1715. I was properly initiated President of New Jersey college, by taking the previous oaths, Feb. 16, 1758.

Notes

Note on Sources

Works refers to The Works of Jonathan Edwards, 22 volumes to date (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957–), Perry Miller, John E. Smith, Harry S. Stout, general editors, and will be cited simply by volume number (e.g., Works, 18) and page.

The short form Diary refers to Edwards' diary, which can be found in Works, 16: 759– 89, and in other editions, cited by dates of entries only. Dwight, Life, refers to Sereno Dwight's Life of President Edwards, vol. 1 of The Works of President Edwards, with a Memoir of His Life, 10 vols., ed. Sereno Dwight (New York, 1829). Hopkins, Life, refers to Samuel Hopkins, The Life and Character of the Late Reverend Mr. Jonathan Edwards (Boston, 1765). Page numbers will be cited from the more accessible reprint in David Levin, ed., Jonathan Edwards: A Profile (New York: Hill and Wang, 1969), except for Hopkins' appendices on Esther Edwards Burr and Sarah Pierpont Edwards, which are available only in the original.

Reader refers to A Jonathan Edwards Reader, ed., John E. Smith, Harry S. Stout, and Kenneth P. Minkema (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995).

Citations for works found in the various two-volume editions of Edwards' works are from The Works of Jonathan Edwards, ed. Edward Hickman, 2 vols. (London, 1865) and are cited as Works of Jonathan Edwards, ed. Hickman.

Unpublished sermons are from The Works of Jonathan Edwards transcriptions and will be cited by Scripture text and date. The originals are found in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

Sibley's Harvard Graduates is used as the short citation for Biographical Sketches of Those Who Attended Harvard College, ed. Cli√ord K. Shipton, 14 vols., vols. 4–17 (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1933–75), successor to Biographical Sketches of Graduates of Harvard College, ed. John Langdon Sibley, 3 vols., vols. 1–3 (Boston, 1873–85). It will be cited by volume number and name of biographical subject.

Beinecke is the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut.

ANTS is the Franklin Trask Library, Andover Newton Theological School, Newton Centre, Massachusetts.

↑ Back to top