Unique Edwards Biography | Jonathan Edwards: A Life

Awakening Religion in Early America | Jonathan Edwards: A Life | George M. Marsden

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	• Jonathan Edwards: A Life George M. Marsden Yale University Press, 2004 - 640 pages average customer review:based on 34 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Lacks the Personal Touch

This is certainly a good biography of the life and times of the great Jonathan Edwards. However, it does lack something of a the personal touch, especially about the days to day details of his life; his study and spiritual life. For a man living in the backwoods of America, lacking intellectual and spiritual companionship, he must have (and other biographies tell us) spent much of his days in his study, writing, thinking and praying.

Although I am not of Edward's philosophical or religious persuasion, I found the description of his thoughts very illuminating, and at times, a little frightening. When everything that happened in his little town or in the turbulent times of US and world history are sourced back to the work of God; in most cases, God's judgements on the sins of the people, one wonders what sort of psychological damage he must inflicted in his poor flock! You almost feel, that for all his learning, he was still living in pre-scientific times.

And you have to laugh where he refers to Hume's Treatise as a 'corrupt book'!But at least he read Hume and a number of other enlightenment philosophers; more than what can be said for the average pastor or preacher/'pop'writer today!

This is a good readable work that does justice to a great, though in many ways, misguided, thinker.

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Unique Edwards Biography

Marsden, George M. Jonathan Edwards: A Life. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003.

There is almost a glut of material on Jonathan Edwards. That can be both good and bad. It is good that men are wrestling with Edwards's life and thought. A study of Edwards can renew intellectual life within the church. Furthermore, Edwards is being fairly studied by scholars outside the conservative world. This, too, is good. But there is always the question when a new Edwards book comes out: is there anything left to say? George Marsden thinks so. And Marsden takes his point of departure from other Edwards scholars. For all of the work on Edwards, the standard biographies (Perry Miller and Iain Murray) leave holes in some places.
Thesis: Jonathan Edwards lived in the crossroads of intellectual and social history. He is a perfect representative of both streams of both European and American thought: he was a traditionalist who stood for authority, order, and stable values. Ironically, he also planted the seeds of the individualism that would later haunt evangelicalism. Even more paradoxically, the very cure (e.g., the Great Awakening) to the problem (e.g., spiritual decay and social stagnation) would later become another problem for religious America.

There are two illustrations of Marsden's thesis from Edwards' ministry: the Great Awakening and the communion controversy, the latter will be examined in light of his political views. In both cases we see Edwards the traditionalist clash with Edwards the innovator. Edwards' instrumental role in the Great Awakening conflicted with other pastors in the region. Unwillingly, or unwittingly, Edwards inspired other men to rise up and carry on the revival, a task that also meant criticizing the status quo ecclesiology. Another example is Edwards' view on church-state relations (160). Was Edwards going to be the traditional Constantinian Protestant and favor a state-protected church, or would he encourage his people to be a holy congregation, called-out and separated from the world? It appears he wanted both. On p. 196 Edwards advocates a strong Constantianism. This clashed with his view on presenting spiritual evidences to the Lord's Supper. It is obvious why.

Solomon Stoddard, Edwards' grandfather and the previous pastor, sought a mediating position with the Puritans demand for evidence of conversion alongside the painful fact that many people did not have that evidence. If they did not have that evidence, they weren't really in the covenant. So they posited a "half-way" covenant. There was still the nagging problem of evidence. Therefore, the parishioners would give evidence of moral sincerity whereas Edwards' demanded evidence of godly piety (368). It was Edwards' downfall (or heroic hour, depending on your point of view) to overturn this compromise.

Evaluation:
This book faithfully carries on the Edwardsean tradition. It presents a pastor who sought Christ-exalting power in the pulpit. Yet it is one of the first sympathetic books on Edwards to illustrate tensions in his worldview--tensions the Evangelical world is feeling today. Does a longing for revival and fresh power from the Spirit undermine certain stati quo in Reformed orthodoxy? Marsden's thesis leaves the reader wrestling and thinking on this question. Another fine point is Marsden's emphasis on the healthy sexual morality and love found between Jonathan and Sarah, especially in light of current confusion on sexual mores. I heartily recommend this book.

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Awakening Religion in Early America

I was seeking information regarding religious teachings before the American Revolution and found a theologian's theologian. This was not a quick read since I was largely unfamiliar with Edwards' writings and teachings. I now have a "Great Awakening" anchor thanks to Marsden's treatment of Jonathan Edwards, his time, and his contemporaries. An important preacher at a particularly important time in the history of America. Brilliant presentation by Marsden.

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Grand, balanced full-length biography

This is a long book; the text alone is a little over 500 pages. In the ample space of those pages, Marsden very fully sets out virtually everything that is known about Jonathan Edwards. First and foremost, this is the story of a life. It is biography on a grand scale, in which Edwards' life is described, from beginning to end, in great detail.

What is really marvelous about this book is how Marsden combines the professional objectivity of a historian with sympathetic understanding of his subject. This is very important, because Edwards is not the kind of person that just anyone could write about in a useful way. The events of Edwards' life are not very dramatic or significant. What makes Edwards important is his thought. He was a theologican and a philosopher, who stood on the point of transition between a world in which God still reigned supreme and the modern world of secular thought and scientiic belief. He was also a defender of Calvinism, in a world which was about to turn against Calvin.

To write usefully about such a man, the writer needs to have a deep interest in theological and philosophic subjects, and Marsden does. I am not entirely sure what his own perspective is, because he keeps his own beliefs off stage, as is proper, but Marsden says that he is, and he plainly is, someone whose personal religious viewpoint is not too far away from that of Edwards. Marsden is someone to whom the issues Edwards wrestled with are still alive. He is thus able to bring alive Edwards' philosophic and theological concerns in a wonderful way.

I, personally, do not yet know enough about Protestant thought to really be able to make sense of all of this. Much of Calvinism seems very odd to me. I am perplexed by such doctrines as the teaching that humans have absolutely no ability to merit grace -- not just faith alone, but the further teaching that what we believe and feel is not relevant either -- combined with the belief that we should exert ourselves greatly to be saved. If nothing we do makes any difference, where is our motive to work hard to accept God? I find all of this very perplexing.

Marsden does not try to explain the larger Calvinist framework of thought to those, like me, who are bascially ignorant of it, so much of this material goes past me. One point that came across very strongly, however, is that Edwards -- in his own, odd Puritan way -- was a passionate mystic, as devoted to God as Saint John of the Cross or Teresa de Avila. I think, quite often, we find the Puritans repugnant, because their stress on God's anger is so foreign to us. While I still find that aspect of Puritan thought hard to sympathize with, I am glad to have someone show me that the Puritans -- in their own way -- were extremely sincere and zealous Christians.

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Perfect condition! Quick delievery!

Above all, it's very nice that I can recieved this book very quickly with perfect condition (paperback).
Among biography of Jonathan Edwards, this book is a masterfiece!
I'm very satisfied with this order!

Jonathan Edwards (1703?1758) is a towering figure in American history. A controversial theologian and the author of the famous sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, he ignited the momentous Great Awakening of the eighteenth century.

In this definitive and long-awaited biography, Jonathan Edwards emerges as both a great American and a brilliant Christian. George Marsden evokes the world of colonial New England in which Edwards was reared?a frontier civilization at the center of a conflict between Native Americans, French Catholics, and English Protestants. Drawing on newly available sources, Marsden demonstrates how these cultural and religious battles shaped Edwards?s life and thought. Marsden reveals Edwards as a complex thinker and human being who struggled to reconcile his Puritan heritage with the secular, modern world emerging out of the Enlightenment. In this, Edwards?s life anticipated the deep contradictions of our American culture.

Meticulously researched and beautifully composed, this biography offers a compelling portrait of an eminent American.

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