Summer Course 2011


Jonathan Edwards as Pastoral Theologian

Yale Divinity School, June 13-17, 2011

 

 Monday

 

  • Introduction
  • The Jonathan Edwards project at Yale University
  • Letterpress edition
  • Digital edition
  • Jonathan Edwards Centers worldwide
  • Global Editing Project
  • Edwards on the Matthean Parables (3 vols.)

 

  • Summer course
    • Edwards' sermon corpus
    • Early sermons
    • Occasional Sermons
    • Pastoral theologian: towards a definition
  • Additional speaker: Prof. Wilson Kimnach is Presidential Professor in the Humanities (Emeritus) at the University of Bridgeport. He has been the sermon editor-in-chief of The Works of Jonathan Edwards for more than twenty years.

 

Readings

Primary texts.

1.     The Way of Holiness (WJE 10:465-480).

2.     The Pleasantness of Religion (WJE 14:97-116).

3.     A Spiritual Understanding of Divine Things Denied to the Unregenerate (WJE 14:67-97).

4.     Spiritual Appetites Need no Bounds. (PDF)

5.     Youth is Like a Flower that is Cut Down (WJE 22:322-338, and 319-322)

6.     Directions for Judging of Persons Experiences (WJE 21:520-524).

7.     Copy of a Covenant, Entered and Subscribed by the People of Northampton (WJE 39).

 

Secondary readings

8.     Wilson Kimnach, "Edwards' Pursuit of Reality," in Jonathan Edwards and the American Experience, Nathan Hatch and Harry Stout (eds.), 102-17. In part via Google book.

9.     Karin Stetina, Jonathan Edwards' Early Understanding of Religious Experience: His New York Sermons, 1720-1723 (Mellon Press, 2011). (PDF)

 

Tuesday

Primary texts.

1.     True and False Christians: The Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins. (Selected readings, handout in class): no. 451, no. 459, no. 461, no. 462, and no. 463.

2.     Gospel Ministers a Savor of Life or of Death (WJE 22:205-210, and 203-205).

3.     Divine Husbandman: The Parable of the Sower and the Seed. (Selected reading, handout in class): Sower sermon no. 1, no. 3, and no. 6.

 

Secondary readings

4.     Ava Chamberlain, "Brides of Christ" in Jonathan Edwards' Writings: Text, Context, Interpretation, ed. Stein. (PDF)

5.     William Stoever, "The Godly Will's Discerning: Shepard, Edwards, and the Identification of True Godliness," in Jonathan Edwards' Writings: Text, Context, Interpretation, ed. Stein. (PDF)

6.     George Whitefield, Directions How to Hear Sermons (London: Printed for James Hutton, 1739). (PDF)

 

Wednesday

Primary texts.

1.     Importance and Advantage of a thorough Knwoledge of Divine Truth, in Practical Sermons never before published (Edinburgh: M. Gray, 1788), 1-11 (sermon I), 12-25 (sermon II). PDF. See also WJE 22:83-102, and 80-83.

 

Secondary reading

2.     Wilson Kimnach et al, eds., Sinners in the Hands of an Angry  God: A Casebook (Yale, 2010).

 

Thursday

Primary text.

1.     A Fish Out of His Element: The Parable of the Net. (Selected readings, handout in class): no. 820, no. 826, and no. 829.

2.     Additional speaker: Dr. Rhys Bezzant: "Edwards as Mentor."

  • Dr. Rhys Bezzant is Visiting Fellow in the Yale Divinity School, and Dean of Missional Leadership, 
Lecturer in Christian Thought, and leads the Jonathan Edwards Center Australia, housed at Ridley, Melbourne, which sponsors the study of evangelical history, and the texts and thought of Edwards. Rhys' writings include, Orderly but Not Ordinary: Jonathan Edwards's Evangelical Ecclesiology"(Oxford University Press, forthcoming).

 

Secondary readings

3.     David Waanders,"The Patoral Sense of Jonathan Edwards," Reformed Review (Winter 1976), vol. 29:129-132. (PDF)

4.     Helen Westra, "JE and What Reason Teaches," Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 34 (1991), 495-503. (PDF)

5.     Rachel Wheeler, "Friends to Your Souls": Jonathan Edwards' Indian Pastorate and the Doctrine of Original Sin, Church History Dec2003, Vol. 72 Issue 4, p736-765. (PDF)

6.     Patricia Tracy, Jonathan Edwards, Pastor (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2006, reprint Hill & Wang, 1980), 171-196 [chapter 8 "Confrontation"]. (PDF)

 

Friday

Visit to the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

From Manuscript to Digital text

Discussion