Portraits Jonathan Edwards

Jonathan Edwards was born in Windsor Connecticut on October 5^th, 1703. If ever there was a child born with a pedigree it was young Edwards. His paternal grandfather was Richard Edwards, a wealthy lawyer and successful merchant. His maternal grandfather was Solomon Stoddard, the pastor of Northampton church for 50 years. Stoddard's influence over the churches of New England was so great that he was often called "Pope Stoddard."

Jonathan's father, Timothy Edwards, was a graduate of Harvard and pastored the Second Church of Windsor from 1694 until his death 62 years later. Both Solomon and Timothy achieved far greater influence during their lifetime than Jonathan would ever know during his lifetime. But neither could even hold a candle to the long-term influence that their successor would have over the church and a nation.

From early on it was obvious that Jonathan was cut from a different cloth than most young boys. He loved books and nature with a passion. Edward's love for nature was evident in later years as many illustrations in his books and sermons were taken from it. One biographer wrote of those early years:

"There is a loneliness of spirit marked through Edward's life that must have had its origin in a somewhat solitary boyhood. His feeling for nature, for the fields and woods and hills of his native Connecticut Valley, is evident from his earliest boyish scientific writings through the sermons of his middle years and in the monumental theological and philosophical works of his intellectual maturity." 1

As Jonathan grew up he became more and more aware of the spiritual nature of the family and world in which he lived. The Puritan world was a world ordered around religious life and it was no different in the Edward's household. Soon, because of his upbringing and brilliant mind, Edwards was ready to head off for college at the age of 13. Thus, Jonathan found himself at Yale College in the fall of 1716.

While at Yale, Edwards discovered the writings of the philosopher, John Locke. His Essay Concerning Human Understanding made a lifelong impact on Jonathan Edwards. The budding theologian wrote that in Locke one could find, "far more pleasure than the most greedy miser in gathering up handfuls of silver and gold, from some newly discovered treasure." 2 Locke's arguments concerning human reason and the reasonableness in believing in the existence of God captivated Edwards. His teaching from that point emphasized a God we know. Theology was more than knowledge for the head - it was an experience also of the heart.

By the age of 18 Jonathan Edwards was ready to face the world. He could have excelled at anything he wanted to be and could easily have been a doctor, a lawyer or a poet. But during those years at Yale he had not only read Locke; he had been soundly converted. He had become a child of God beyond doubt. So touched by God was he that Jonathan chose to enter the ministry like his father and grandfather.

A number of things led to the direction Edward's set for himself in life. Near the end of his studies at Yale, he became very ill. He wrote later that during the time he became so ill that God "brought me nigh to the grave and shook me over the pit of hell."3  Before that time young Edwards had rebelled in his own mind against the Puritan doctrine of election. The idea that God chose some to salvation and did not chose others seemed unfair. However, by 1739 Edwards wrote:

"And there has been a wonderful alteration in my mind, with respect to the doctrine of God's sovereignty … God's absolute sovereignty and justice with respect to salvation and damnation, is what my mind seems to rest assured of … Absolute sovereignty is what I love to ascribe to God. But my first conviction was not so."

Edwards was an unusual mixture of sound theological rightness and deep mystical warmness. His conversion made him see God every where and in everything. Now made right with God, he headed off to pastor his first church in New York in 1720. There, Edwards began to make a list of his famous "67 Resolutions." Some of those resolutions included:

To live with all might while I do live. (and) Never to allow the least measure of any fretting or uneasiness at my father or mother.

After three good years in New York, Edwards returned home to pastor. Due to unusual circumstances he found himself teaching at Yale and then more or less becoming its administrator. Such responsibility left Edwards ill to the point he had to return home to be cared for by his mother. Once recovered Jonathan Edwards, now 23 embarked on what would be the greatest adventure of his life. His adventure was not to be traveling to other lands, or teaching in great universities. He was going to help father a Great Awakening.

In 1726, Edwards went to serve as assistant to his grandfather, Solomon Stoddard, at the Northampton Church. Within two years Stoddard had gone on to be with the Lord and Edwards became the senior pastor. From early on, Edward's power in the pulpit proved to be his great strength. His ill health and frail frame caused Edwards to spend many hours alone in God's Word. While not an active visitor or counselor, Edwards accomplished both through the influence of the words he preached and taught. His theology was formed in the furnace of the lives of real people with real problems. It is interesting that most of Dr. Edward's writings were not published until years later, after he left the Northampton Church. His theology and philosophy was the result of years of deep thinking, praying, pastoring, and walking with God.

Jonathan Edwards was born into interesting times. The American Colonies were on the verge of revolution. While not associated, Edwards was a contemporary of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin.4 The colonies were ready for change and so was the church. Unfortunately, the children of the Pilgrims and Puritans had strayed far from their religious and spiritual roots. A coldness had crept into the hearts and pews of most of the churches in New England. Under his grandfather, Solomon Stoddard, children of church members were allowed church membership even though they showed no evidence of being Christians. Historically, this is known as the "Halfway Covenant." During his tenure at Northampton, Edwards saw the fallacy of this practice and preached against what his own grandfather had instituted. Within a few years, that stance would spell the end for Edwards as pastor.

Out of the theology of Edwards and the preaching of George Whitfield and others there arose a Great Awakening between the years of 1735 and 1741. These revivals were not born out of mass meetings or contrived methods. Instead they were born out of fervent preaching of the deep truths of God. Edwards was a committed Calvinist who believed deeply in the Sovereignty of God, the depravity of man, and the necessity of regeneration by the Holy Spirit. True, there were excesses of emotion during those revivals, which Edwards denounced. But those revivals prepared our land for the American Revolution. It gave the people a moral foundation, which the French did not have in their revolution.

During and just after the years of that first awakening Edwards wrote and preached a number of important works. In 1741 he preached his famous sermon Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God. Many have caricatured this sermon as an example of how New England Puritans delighted in the wrath of God. To the contrary, Sinners is a good example of how Edwards believed in the grace of God in sparing man from wrath affording him an opportunity to believe on Christ. In that sermon Jonathan Edwards warned:

"There are black clouds of God's wrath now hanging directly over your heads, full of dreadful storm … and were it not for the restraining hand of God, it would immediately burst upon you. The sovereign pleasure of God, for the present, stays His rough wind; otherwise it would come with fury, and your destruction would come like a whirlwind … Therefore, let everyone that is out of Christ, now awake and fly from the wrath to come … Let everyone fly out of Sodom; 'Haste and escape for your lives…."

In 1746, Edwards published, A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections. This was Edwards' thoughts on the great revival that had swept the colonies. There were excesses during those revivals including convulsions, shakes and other physical manifestations and many discounted the entire movement because of those excesses. Some, in our day, have used Edwards as a proof for their excesses. Unfortunately, those people divorce Edwards from his theology and that is a grave mistake. Religious Affections is a great manual on a doctrinal revival. Something our time is in sore need of.

Edwards himself preached with no physical manifestations at all. "Edwards was frail and sickly, his voice thin and weak, his eyesight dim. He preached with a full manuscript held closely before his eyes, his manner almost passive, devoid of gestures."5 His presentation was frail but his message was spiritual dynamite! New England was rocked by the call to a return to true salvation, a personal knowledge of God, and a walk of holiness. A few years later that dynamite exploded in the face of Edwards.

As mentioned earlier, Solomon Stoddard had allowed non-Christians to partake of Communion and enjoy the rights of church membership. Because of his devotion to God's Word, Edwards begin to see the fault of such teaching. After several years of debate, the people came to odds with their pastor in his insistence on church members being true believers. So after 24 years of faithful service, Edwards was dismissed as pastor of Northampton Church. The greatest evangelical mind America has ever known was fired!

Jonathan Edwards firmly believed in the sovereignty of God. He experienced it in the deepest sense during that time of rejection. Had the Apostle Paul not spent so many years in prison he may not have had time to write some of his Epistles. In the same way, Edwards found himself a teacher in a small frontier town teaching Indian children to read and write. John Gerstner writes of the period: "The exile was fifty miles west on the brink of civilization with Indians as the bulk of his congregation and their arrows often flying around him…"6

There in that isolation the greatest mind in the colonies had time to draw together in writing all the truths that God had taught him as a student and pastor. At the Stockbridge Massachusetts mission Edwards wrote a number of his great works which culminated in the publishing of A Careful and Strict Inquiry into the Modern Prevailing Notions of Freedom of Will. Often called Freedom of the Will, that work was Edwards' crowning achievement. Even those who disagree with Edwards' conclusions about election, depravity and regeneration have found no way to successfully argue with his presentation. The book is simply a masterpiece ranking along with Augustine's City of God and Calvin's Institutes as high points in Christian history.

Finally, in 1758, Edwards returned to public life as the president of the College of New Jersey (now Princeton). After only six months of service Edwards died from a smallpox vaccination. Only his earthly life was take because his influence has grown stronger through the years. Edward's influence is undeniable. Secular and religious scholars alike see him as the greatest thinker this country ever knew. A.M. Fairbrain wrote, "He is not only the greatest of all the thinkers that America has produced but also the highest speculative genius of the eighteenth century." W.W. Sweet said, "Jonathan Edwards is the outstanding figure of colonial America and has been generally recognized as one of the greatest minds America has produced."7 B.B. Warfield wrote, "JONATHAN EDWARDS, saint and metaphysician, revivalist and theologian, stands out as the one figure of real greatness in the intellectual life of colonial America. Born, bred, passing his whole life on the verge of civilization, he has made his voice heard wherever men have busied themselves with those two greatest topics which can engage human thought - God and the soul."

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1 Mr. Jonathan Edwards by James Playsted Wood, The Seabury Press, 1968, p. 18.

2 Mr. Jonathan Edwards, p. 25.

3 Mr. Jonathan Edwards, p. 32.

4 20 Centuries of Great Preaching, Clyde Fant, editor, Word Books, Volume 3, p.48.

5 20 Centuries, p.53.

6 The Rational Biblical Theology of Jonathan Edwards by John H. Gerstner, Berea Publications, 1991, Volume 1, p.19.

7 20 Centuries, p.50.