About Edwards
Jonathan Edwards : Legacy
by Professor Douglas Sweeney, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School
Jonathan Edwards has proven to be the most influential religious thinker in American history. His work gave birth to the first indigenous school of American theology, referred to variously as the New Divinity, Consistent Calvinism, the Edwardsian tradition, the New England Theology and, in England, the American Theology. His early disciples, led by the Revs. Samuel Hopkins (1721-1803) and Joseph Bellamy (1719-90), spread his views far and wide by means of their storied “schools of the prophets” (ministerial training grounds that preceded modern seminaries), ecclesiastical reforms (most importantly, their reversal of New England’s “Half-Way Covenant”), publications, concerts of prayer and frequent revivals. Edwards’s distinction between the sinner’s “natural ability” (i.e. constitutional capacity) and “moral inability” (i.e. ineradicable unwillingness) to repent and believe the gospel, and his related, universal appeal for “immediate repentance,” were especially influential in shaping his legacy. By the end of the eighteenth century, his disciples, with these doctrines, had begun to lead the modern Protestant missions movement--both from England and the U.S.--exporting Edwardsian evangelicalism to far-flung posts in Africa, south Asia, and to west of the America’s Appalachian Mountains (i.e. the “western frontier”).
During and after the revivals of the Second Great Awakening, Edwards’s views spread even further, largely through the teaching and writing of Yale’s Nathaniel William Taylor (1786-1858). They contributed to the ministry of Charles Grandison Finney (1792-1875); they were contested during a rupture of Connecticut Congregationalists in the early 1830s (the notorious “Taylorite-Tylerite” split); they shaped the doctrines of the New School Presbyterians, north and south, yielding a Presbyterian schism beginning in 1837; and they informed the views of Baptists, both in England and America, from William Carey (1761-1834) and Andrew Fuller (1754-1815) to Isaac Backus (1724-1806), Jonathan Maxcy (1768-1820) and even William Bullein Johnson (1782-1862), the leading founder of the Southern Baptist Convention.
By the antebellum period, Edwards’s thought and reputation had made their way into the leaves of American literary culture. His typology resurfaced in the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82). His doctrines shaped the “woman’s fiction” of authors like Susan Warner (1819-85). His reputation, as well as those of some of his New Divinity followers, infused historical novels by writers like Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-96).
The New England Theology proper died with Edwards Amasa Park (1808-1900), dubbed “the last of the consistent Calvinists,” who defended Edwards’s views for many years at Andover Seminary. But since the end of the Civil War, Edwards’s legacy has expanded through the lives of many who used his work selectively. Groups as diverse as the Old Princetonians (e.g., Charles Hodge and B. B. Warfield), the progressive New Theologians (e.g., Theodore Munger and Frank Hugh Foster), American Pragmatists (e.g., William James and John Dewey), neo-orthodox (e.g., Joseph Haroutunian and Richard Niebuhr) and evangelical thinkers (e.g., R. C. Sproul and John Piper) have continued to make Edwards known to modern audiences.
During his lifetime, Edwards’s writings were published in several different countries. Today, they are available in Arabic, Chinese, Choctaw, Dutch, English, French, Gaelic, German, Italian, Korean, Spanish, Swedish and Welsh.
Professor Douglas Sweeney has written extensively on Jonathan Edwards and his legacy, including the volume Nathaniel Taylor, New Haven Theology, and the Legacy of Jonathan Edwards (Oxford, 2002). He edited volume 23 of the Works of Jonathan Edwards, "The Miscellanies" 1153-1360, and for two years held the position of Assistant Editor at the Works of Jonathan Edwards.
• Nathaniel Taylor, New Haven Theology, and the Legacy of Jonathan Edwards by Douglas Sweeney
• Jonathan Edwards: A Life by George Marsden
For further bibliographic resources, check out JEC Recommends...
Also, check out our Bookstore
