Jonathan Edwards

Edwards, Jonathan

(1703–58) Protestant clergyman, theologian; born in East Windsor, Conn. He entered Yale at age 13, graduated in 1720, and studied theology there for two years. He was a pastor in New York City briefly before returning to Yale as a tutor. In 1726 he became an assistant to his grandfather Solomon Stoddard as minister of the Northampton, Mass., Congregational Church; he succeeded Stoddard after his death in 1729. Imbued with an almost perversely stern Calvinist doctrine, he was a powerful preacher and is regarded as the greatest theologian of the extreme form of American Puritanism. His best-known sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," declared man's baseness and vividly described the conditions of damnation. In the early 1740s he helped inspire the religious revival ironically known as the Great Awakening. Dismissed from the Northampton pulpit in 1750 for overzealousness, he became a missionary to the Indian tribes around Stockbridge, Mass. In 1757 he was appointed president of the College of New Jersey (later Princeton), but died (from a smallpox inoculation) only a few weeks after taking office.

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Edwards, Jonathan

 

Born Oct. 5, 1703, in East Windsor, Conn.; died Mar. 22,1758, in Princeton, N.J. American religious philosopher and Calvinist theologian; an opponent of atheism and materialism.

Edwards combined the mysticism of the Cambridge Platonists with views close to those of G. Berkeley and N. de Malebranche. For Edwards, god was the only reality and the cause of all that occurs. At the same time, he differed on a number of points from orthodox Calvinism. Edwards’ ideas were sharply criticized by members of the American Enlightenment.

WORKS

Works, vols. 1–10. New York, 1829–30.
Selections From the Unpublished Writings of Jonathan Edwards. Edinburgh, 1865.

REFERENCES

Iverach, J. Jonathan Edwards. Edinburgh, 1884.
Allen, A. V. G. Jonathan Edwards. Boston-New York, 1889.
MacCracken, J. H. Edwards’ Idealismus. Halle, 1899.
Parkes, H. B. Jonathan Edwards: The Fiery Puritan. New York, 1930.
Cherry, C. The Theology of Jonathan Edwards. Garden City, N.Y., 1968.

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.