In this video from a lecture given at Gospel Fellowship PCA in Valencia, PA, I discuss the marriage of Jonathan and Sarah Edwards.
We begin by considering Sarah’s beginnings, her early life, and Jonathan’s famous “Apostrophe,” a love poem to his future bride, then thirteen. After that we consider their marriage in 1727 and their eleven children. We look at Sarah’s daily life, their pastoral ministry as pastor and wife, and consider several early accounts of her character and countenance.
We move on then to consider Sarah’s ecstatic religious experiences during the Great Awakening in 1740-1742. Meanwhile, we look at several of the ways that Sarah suffered, including their untimely deaths in 1757-1758. Finally, we look at the last words of each person.
I am a pastor here in central Tennessee and have been following you on YouTube for a few months. I have been more interested in the Puritan writers lately and was wondering what you would recommend for a first book or first few books. The only material from that era I am really familiar with would be Pilgrim’s Progress and Edward’s “Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God.”
Thanks in advance,
Ethan
Ethan,
Great idea! I do have a few suggestions. First, would be a good overall survey. Check out Worldly Saints, by Leland Ryken. This will give you a good overview of their times and ethos. Next, it would be good to have a nice reference manual as to who is who. Meet the Puritans is perfect for that. This will give you nice, short introductions to their biographies, including times, places, and major events. After that, you might want a larger work on their theology. A Puritan Theology is the best overview of what they believed. You can piecemeal this work by reading the chapters that interest you most, or go ahead and read it straight through.
Finally, I would suggest that you pick ONE puritan and really get to know him. Three good options would be 1. Thomas Watson (loveable, sweet, sincere, easy to understand, very quotable for sermons); He’s sort of the Spurgeon of the Puritans. 2. John Bunyan (his Pilgrim’s Progress and Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners are both “must read” in the Puritan genre), and of course…
Jonathan Edwards. Edwards is technically NOT a Puritan (too late, and wrong side of the ocean) but he exhibits the authentic Puritan vibe through and through, and so is commonly lumped in with his English predecessors. If you are interested in Edwards, I would have a lot more to say. Thankfully, everything Edwards wrote is FREE online at Edwards.yale.edu. I have created a beginner’s Edwards reading guide here.
I want to remind frequenters of this blog that I have an entire series of videos on my YouTube channel that are related to the life, ministry, and theology of Jonathan Edwards. The playlist is growing all the time as I add new Edwards-related content to the channel. Check out my Jonathan Edwards playlist here.
My most recent video, posted this morning features a brief survey of his theology of joy or happiness. This is obviously derivative from my doctoral dissertation on Edwards and joy.
In this recent video, we will have a look at Jonathan Edwards’s theology of joy or happiness. Here we will consider (1) how Edwards saw joy in his doctrine of the Trinity, (2) as a change of affections wrought in conversion (3) as a happy consequence of the revivals, and more.
This work is my magnum opus on Edwards, which I wrote during my time at Reformed Theological Seminary (Orlando) studying under my supervisor Dr. Michael Allen. A Theology of Joy was almost immediately selected for publication with the JESociety after being defended for my doctoral degree.
This work is not overly complicated with academic or scholastic formatting. It has been completely reworked as an approachable book for those with moderate interest and background in Jonathan Edwards studies. One does not need to be an expert in Edwardsean theology to gain meaningfully from this book.
The chapters of the main book are as follows:
The Quest for Joy
Joy According to Scripture
Jonathan Edwards’s Theology of Joy
Comparative Theological Studies
A Survey of Edwards’s Important Writings
The Preaching of Jonathan Edwards
Joy Amidst the Revivals
Broadly Identifiable Themes in Edwards’s Theology of Joy
Several More Important Themes
Celebrating Joy Like Edwards: A Pastoral Model
Guarding the Pastor’s Heart
Conclusion
Much of this work was developed as I struggled with joy in my own life during times of stress from the work of the ministry. I found Edwards to be an especially helpful writer during my own times of duress. I found happiness almost everywhere in Edwards’s writings including his personal writings, theological treatises, sermons, and revival writings. If you are looking for joy, I can guarantee you that you will find much substantial and real happiness herein.
This new updated edition is an expanded print edition, and now contains nine short essays and articles as a part two in the back of the book. Several of these items were published elsewhere including Desiring God,Logos Academic, and Modern Reformation.
Part Two of the work, the included essays that expand the original edition include the following articles, also previously published elsewhere:
Three Years in the Mind of a Genius
Jonathan Edwards’s Blank Bible
The Organizational Genius of Jonathan Edwards
Jonathan Edwards’s Complex Views on Race
Jonathan Edwards: A Model of High Pastoral Productivity
Three Disciplines of a Happy Christian Leader
The Preaching of Jonathan Edwards
Edwards, Warfield, and Plato on the Immortality of the Soul
300th Anniversary of Edwards’s “Resolutions”
I am thankful for the JESociety which originally published this book. But for several reasons which I will explain in a forthcoming YouTube video, I requested that it be removed from JESociety Press’s catalog so that I could relaunch this project under a new banner of INDY-REF (Independent Reformed Media). I am thankful that Dr. Rob Boss let this book go out of print so that I could relaunch it with more of my own creative input and direction for publishing.
This book is available on Amazon.com with this affiliate link: (click here).
Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield were friends.
For the most part, they labored together on the same page as far as the First Great Awakening was concerned. Both were pro-revival. And both defended itinerant preaching and the veracity of the working of the Spirit during the awakening. Edwards even hosted Whitefield in his own home and invited him to preach in his church. As far as we know that meeting was splendid and Edwards wept the whole time Whitefield preached. As for Whitefield, he was moved by the love that Jonathan had for his own wife Sarah.
But that doesn’t mean that the two got along perfectly all the time. They did have a couple of disagreements as we might expect from a Congregationalist and an Anglican. When we read through WJE 16 in the personal letters of Edwards, we can see that there was in fact some difficulty that came between them on a couple of occasions.
These disagreements were minor and did not cause lasting fracture. The tension between Edwards and Whitefield was probably not as intense as Whitefield’s engagement with the Wesleys on predestination, for example. Nor was it as intense as Edward’s arguments with some of his polemic interlocutors. But the tension can be perceived in at least three events.
In this video, I will tell you the true story of how Edwards and Whitefield got sideways on a handful of occasions.
People often ask me about particular views of Jonathan Edwards. What would he have believed about this or that topic? For some questions, it would be impossible to answer. I simply don’t know what he would have believed on any given modern controversy. He didn’t say.
But when it comes to the 5-Points of Calvinism, there can be no doubt. He told us.
The acronym T.U.L.I.P. stands for Total depravity, Unconditional election, Limited atonement, Irresistible grace, and the Perseverance of the saints. John Calvin, of course, did not come up with the acronym illustrated by the glorious Dutch flower. Someone else made up that handy-dandy mnemonic device.
But Edwards did attempt to show his convictions with relationship to each of the 5-Points. He does so in his magnum opus, the Freedom of the Will. Personally, I have always thought Freedom is hard to understand. (I have a brief summary and explainer of the work here). It’s not exactly my favorite work of Edwards. I much prefer Religious Affections and Some Thoughts on the Revival.
Nevertheless, there can be no doubt by what Edwards says in his own words in the conclusion of this monumental work that he does support the 5-Points of the Synod of Dordt as over against the remonstrance of the Arminians. In this in-depth video, I am going to take you through Edwards’s defense of the traditional TULIP doctrines.
In two recent videos on my YouTube channel posted earlier today, I shared a preview of my forthcoming 7,000-word essay for the Miscellanies Companion Volume 3 project (2023) entitled “The Immortality of the Soul: Edwards, Warfield, and Plato.” In this piece, I consider one of the most pressing questions that we as human beings can imagine — what happens to us when we die?
As it turns out, both philosophy and theology have repeatedly tried to answer that question.
Beginning with a rubric suggested by B.B. Warfield in his chapter entitled “Annihilation” in the Collected Works, Volume 9, we look at four possible outcomes for the soul after death. According to B.B. Warfield, they are 1) Pure mortalism, 2) Conditional Mortality, 3) Conditional Mortality (or Annihilation Proper), and 4) Unconditional Immortality.
Both Edwards and Plato would fit into this fourth and last box, though they obviously disagree on a great many things. In these videos, as well as the forthcoming article in the Miscellanies Companion series, we will look at how both Plato and Jonathan Edwards answer the question of what happens to the soul after death. Here are the videos:
These volumes offer wonderfully rich resources for in-depth study of Jonathan Edwards’s thought. Scholars will find them to offer essential guidance and valuable commentary on Edwards’s wide-ranging theological reflections.
George Marsden, Author of Jonathan Edwards: A Life
“The Miscellanies Project” is a remarkable step forward in Edwards scholarship and indicates ways that historiography and digital technology can bear surprising and fruitful results. The creativity of this project matches that of Edwards’s own mind, which is often best seen in the panoply of topics he dealt with in his “Miscellanies.” This second volume of the project utilizes the work of predominantly up-and-coming Edwards scholars to provide readers with a rich array of Edwards’s complex thought. They show very clearly that Edwards was both an explorative dogmatician, but one who was firmly steeped in the Christian tradition. Some of my favorite chapters in this volume dealt with Edwards and the natural law, the happiness of God, the conversion of infants, the nature of war, and the theology of the new earth. All of the essays, however, show the shocking range of Edwards’s intellectual interests and we now get the benefit of seeing those connected together in great detail.
Ian Clary, Assistant Professor of Historical Theology, Colorado Christian University
Edwards’s spiritual sensitivity was poetic and his poetic sensibility was spiritual though he has been never credited poet per se. Not unlike his Master, however, he discerned God’s presence in the birds of the sky and the lilies of the field. Reformers from Luther and Calvin onwards have received and passed on the voice of the Gospel through oral proclamation. Edwards’s mind, however, was visual, a rare virtue in Protestantism. Edwards’s ultimately visual imagination inspired scholars of the early 21th century to visualize the words and the concepts of his texts by discerning a network of correspondences and thereby creating beautiful digital cosmos to impress the mind of the postmodern viewer. With this second volume to The Jonathan Edwards Miscellaneous Companions, Robert L. Boss, founder of The Jonathan Edwards Society, and his daughter Sarah B. Boss, a new generation of laborers in the vineyard of Edwards studies have collected and edited a superb collection of essays to the benefit and pleasure of the devoted congregation of Edwards scholars.
Tibor Fabiny, Director of the Jonathan Edwards Center Hungary, Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church in Hungary
The “Miscellanies” manuscripts are a treasure trove of Jonathan Edwards’s unpublished private thoughts that later became a basis for many of his later published works. This volume provides cutting-edge essays that delve deeply into the thinking of one who many consider to be America’s greatest theologian. This collection, however, does more than just that. It connects Edwards’s vast and far-reaching reflections by means of a new technology called the “Visual Edwards.” Just as Gutenberg’s printing press of the fifteenth century replaced the tedious and expensive practice of copying by hand, the advent of computers and the Internet are displacing printed paper with screens and hypertext. Harnessing this digital revolution, Robert and Sarah Boss link each of the contributors’ essays to Edwards’s complex web of ideas with a pictorial matrix that makes for a helpful, striking, and aesthetically appealing visualization.
Chris Chun, Director of Jonathan Edwards Center Gateway, Professor of Church History, Gateway Seminary
The tools of digital humanities allow researchers to identify or represent patterns in literature in ways that would have been prohibitively time consuming or impossible with tools based in print technologies. Because of the structure of the “Miscellanies” of Jonathan Edwards and the breath of his corpus, an exhaustive analysis of a theme is difficult. Topical mapping allows researchers to clarify Edwards through his own writings. The “Visual Edwards” interface is clean and easy to navigate from the links that accompany the essays. The essays in this volume contextualize the concepts mapped. This project exemplifies what can be done to enrich theological research with data gathered from projects similar to The Works of Jonathan Edwards Online.
Jonathan McCormick, Director of Library Services, Gateway Seminary
My friend and academic accountability partner Rob Boss made another splendid work of compiling together works of emerging Edwards scholars. Tied with the amazing “Visual Edwards” project, these papers weave through treasures hidden in repositories of Edwards’s “Miscellanies” notebooks, reconstructing important themes such as covenant, conversion, happiness, glory, infant baptism, hell, the new world, and more. Summoning a new generation of Edwards scholars, the Jonathan Edwards Society is, by this contribution, showing a new direction of the study of this America’s greatest theologian.
Reita Yazawa, Professor of Christian Studies, Hokurikugakuin University, Japan
The Jonathan Edwards Miscellanies Companion, Volume 2 reflects the excellent ongoing work of JESociety Press. It is expertly edited, beautifully designed, and high quality. The second volume, like the first volume, is a collection of some of the best international Edwards scholars writing on a series of topics from Edwards’s “Miscellanies.” It is a strong collection and highly recommended.
Joshua R. Farris, Professor of Theology of Science, Missional University
Want to read more of Jonathan Edwards? Not sure where to begin or how to get started?
Here is a 2022 Jonathan Edwards reading plan. You can either print the PDF from here, or save it on your computer and use the hyperlinks. The links will take you directyly to the relevant portions of the official Edwards/Yale site.
This chart contains materials that are listed in order from shortest to longest. There are no specific days or timelines attached to the chart, so you can read at your own pace. Each checkbox represents one page of material from Edwards. You can read as fast or as slow as you want. No pressure.
Materials range from the Resolutions (just six pages) to the Religious Affections (several hundred pages). This chart will give you a good sampling of materials that include personal writings, sermons, and larger treatises.
This past week, Gospel Fellowship PCA hosted the Pursuit of Christ conference at our church, just North of Pittsburgh. We were very pleased to host a number of skilled pastors and professors to discuss faith in Christ. Several speakers had themes related to the puritans. I gave a talk on Jonathan Edwards and the 70 Resolutions (WJE 16). Here is the video.
Jonathan Edwards Studies 