Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758)

Jonathan Edwards is known today principally as the author of the great sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." Despite his fire-and-brimstone imagery, Edwards was not merely a stern, zealous, preacher. He was a brilliant, thoughtful, and complicated man whose accomplishments and failures deserve our interest and study. Born eighty years after the Puritans landed in New England and only three years before the birth of Benjamin Franklin, Edwards stood between Puritan America and modern America. Tragically, he fit into neither world.

Edwards's grandfather, Solomon Stoddard, was pastor of the Congregational Church in Northampton, Massachusetts. Stoddard was so powerful a figure in religious affairs that he was known as the "Pope of the Connecticut Valley." His grandson's abilities were recognized early; even in his teens Jonathan was being groomed to succeed his grandfather. The boy entered Yale in 1716, when he was only thirteen. A few years after his graduation, he was made senior tutor of the college—a significant achievement for one so young. In 1726, Jonathan became his grandfather's co-pastor. When Stoddard died three years later, his grandson succeeded him.

Edwards was a strong-willed and charismatic pastor. His formidable presence and brilliant sermons helped to bring about the religious revival known as the "Great Wakening." This revival began in Northampton in the 1730's and during the next fifteen years spread throughout the Eastern Seaboard.

The Great Awakening began at a time when enthusiasm for the old Puritan religion was declining. To offset the losses in their congregations, churches had been accepting increasing numbers of "unregenerate" Christians. These were people who accepted church doctrine and lived upright lives but who had not confessed they had been "born again" in God's grace. Thus they were not considered to be saved. In their sermons, Edwards and other pastors strove to make these "sinners" understand the precariousness of their situation by helping them actually to feel the horror of their sinful state.

"Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" is the greatest and best-known example of these sermons. Edwards's methods in the sermon were influenced by the work of the English philosopher John Locke (1632-1704). Locke believed that everything we know comes from experience, and he emphasized that understanding and feeling were two distinct kinds of knowledge. (To Edwards, the difference between these two kinds of knowledge was like the difference between reading the word fire and actually being burned.) Edwards preached his famous sermon in Enfield, Massachusetts, in July of 1741. Although he read it in his usual straightforward, unemotional manner, it had such a powerful effect on the congregation that the minister had to pause several times to ask for quiet.

Intellectually, Edwards straddled two ages: the modern, secular world exemplified by such men as Benjamin Franklin, and the religious world of his zealous Puritan ancestors. Edwards could draw on the ideas of philosophers such as John Locke, but he used those ideas to achieve a vision compatible with that of older Puritans such as William Bradford. Science, reason, and observation of the physical world only confirmed Edwards's vision of a universe filled with the presence of God. As he explained in his autobiography, his sense of God was formed not only by his reading of the Bible but also by his close examination of nature.

Edwards became known for his extremism as a pastor. In his sermons, he didn't hesitate to accuse prominent church members, by name, of relapsing into sin. He was also unbending in his refusal to accept the "unregenerate" into his church. Such attitudes eventually lost him the support of his congregation. In 1750, he was voted out of his prestigious position in Northampton and sent to the then remote and raw Mohican Indian community of Stockbridge, Massachusetts. After eight years of missionary work in this lonely exile, Edwards was "rescued" and named president of the College of New Jersey (which later became Princeton University). Three months after assuming his position, he died of a smallpox inoculation.