Theologian has lasting legacy

Born 300 years ago Sunday, the Rev. Jonathan Edwards is little known to many Americans except, perhaps, as the answer to a trivia question: Who wrote the nation’s most famous sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”?

Edwards’ vision of torturous damnation seems a curiosity today, though the address caused an uproar at a 1741 revival meeting: “How dreadful is the state of those that are daily and hourly in the danger of this great wrath and infinite misery! But this is the dismal case of every soul in this congregation that has not been born again, however moral and strict, sober and religious, they may otherwise be.”

Yet on the tricentennial of his birth, theologians and historians warn not to sell Edwards short.

He was a pre-Revolutionary thinker who belongs in the pantheon with the Founding Fathers, says Wheaton College’s Mark Noll. He’s also generally considered the greatest theologian the nation has produced, and proponents say many of his ideas remain pertinent in the 21st century.

His influence is great enough that the Library of Congress is sponsoring a weekend conference with 15 experts on Edwards, and colleges and churches also are holding observances.

He’s “one of the most remarkable people in American history,” said George M. Marsden of the University of Notre Dame. And at Yale University, where Edwards was among the earliest alumni, Harry Stout said, “No other religious figure in this country is comparable.”

Stout will spend this year supervising completion of the Yale University Press’s 27-volume “Works of Jonathan Edwards” series. Half of these writings have never been published before, requiring experts to decipher Edwards’ notoriously difficult, tiny handwriting. Yale has also issued Marsden’s much-lauded “Jonathan Edwards: A Life.”

Though Edwards’ esteem has risen among scholars the past half-century, he’s no popular icon.

Marsden says one reason is that educators have emphasized “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” and ignored everything else.

But while some of Edwards’ Calvinistic views may seem extreme, even liberals often preached on hell in the 18th century, Marsden says. The minister’s main themes were actually the love, beauty, harmony and majesty of God and his created cosmos, he adds.

Edwards’ other contributions to national religious life are numerous. For example, he promoted four-part congregational singing that became central to Protestant services, and wrote a biography of a young missionary that helped inspire the 19th century surge in U.S. Protestant foreign missions.

But he’s mainly remembered for two things. In classics such as “Freedom of the Will,” “Original Sin” and “True Virtue,” he defended biblical tradition and orthodox Calvinism against the many new challenges posed by Enlightenment liberalism.

Secondly, he led and popularized the Great Awakening, America’s first major religious revival movement. Stressing personally experienced repentance and salvation through Jesus, the evangelical movement permanently reshaped American religion. Edwards then analyzed what had happened in “Religious Affections,” a pioneering work in the psychology of religion.

Edwards led for 21 years a congregation in Northampton, Mass., (now called First Churches). The congregation fired its famous but prickly pastor in 1750 after he excoriated some well-born lads in the congregation who were verbally harassing women. In another unpopular move, he sought to restrict the Lord’s Supper to those able to give “heartfelt” testimony to faith in Jesus.

He left for frontier Stockbridge as a missionary to local Indians, then briefly served as president of the College of New Jersey (today’s Princeton University) before dying from a smallpox vaccination at age 54.

In his Library of Congress address this weekend, Marsden commends Edwards for seeing God as the starting point in all religious questions, whereas Americans – even evangelicals – habitually “construct a God of our own design.”

He also argues that Edwards’ concept of universal human sinfulness is as pertinent as ever because it “fits the evidence.”