To get everyone into the properly Puritan Thanksgiving spirit, we here at Patheos Evangelical decided to explore the life and theology of Jonathan Edwards. Widely considered to be one of America’s greatest thinkers, Edwards was a leading light in the famous Great Awakening, a highly influential American religious revival that occurred in the early 17oos. While some of the fruits of his legacy are left up to debate, it cannot be denied that his thought and influence should be an important subject for any evangelical’s study.
Rhys Bezzant of Ridley College focused on Jonathan Edwards’ ideas on mentoring, observing,
We can’t really explain what the goal of mentoring is, until we understand what the church is for.
Our own Adrian Warnock also provided insight from Edwards. This time, it was on the seasonal concern of thanksgiving:
The godly, those who have that inestimable blessing, have cause to bless God which cannot be expressed.
It became apparent that Edwards held some fascinating and somewhat unsuspected beliefs. After all, most interactions that Americans have with the theologian are his famous “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” sermon. Little do many realize that Edwards responded to the leading philosophers of his day, such as Hume and Locke. Frank Viola helpfully highlighted some of these intellectual curiosities in this post, which includes such eccentricities as…
Edwards believed that God’s sovereignty requires that He create the entire universe out of nothing at every moment.
Likewise, our “Sinners in the Hands”-alone perception of Edwards presents us with a skewed picture of the man. As scholar Gerald McDermott contends, there’s a lot more to the revivalists’ thought than we give him credit for:
For Edwards, the essence of true religious experience is to be overwhelmed by a glimpse of the beauty of God, to be drawn to the glory of his perfections, and to sense his irresistible love.
Another Edwards scholar, Thomas Kidd, gave a fascinating glimpse into what it means to do church history while interacting with this great theologian:
Edwards said that only people with faith in Christ go to heaven, but we cannot demonstrate whether this is the case. We can only believe so, or not.
We certainly hope that you enjoyed this series, and that it stoked a spark or two of Thanksgiving for what good fruits that this man of God provided the world at large.
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