Synopses & Reviews
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 Edwardss 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, Edwardss life anticipated the deep contradictions of our American culture. Meticulously researched and beautifully composed, this biography offers a compelling portrait of an eminent American.
Review
"Marsden has brought together in a magisterial synthesis the details of the mans daily life and the range of ideas that challenged the assumptions of his time and ours." Edmund S. Morgan
Review
"This is the finest biography of Edwards that I have read. It will be the standard benchmark for Edwards scholarship for generations to come." Harry S. Stout, Yale University
Review
"[A] magisterial and definitive biography....This is a beautifully written book about one of America's most important thinkers." Publishers Weekly
Review
"In this conscientious and eloquent biography, pious Jonathan Edwards comes to unruly life with all his unresolved complexity intact." Thomas D'Evelyn, Christian Science Monitor
Review
"In his superb and engrossing new biography of Jonathan Edwards, George Marsden has given us the most comprehensive account we have of the man who, as much as Benjamin Franklin...is the spiritual godfather of our nation." The Washington Post
Review
"The finest biography of this towering figure." Benjamin Schwarz, The Atlantic Monthly
Synopsis
Meticulously researched and beautifully composed, this biography offers a compelling portrait of Edwards, a towering figure in American history, a controversial theologian, and the author of the famous sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." 30 illustrations.
Synopsis
Includes bibliographical references (p. [515]-600) and index.
About the Author
George M. Marsden is Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame. He has written numerous books, including The Soul of the American University and The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship.
Table of Contents
A time to be born -- The overwhelming question -- The Pilgrim's Progress -- The harmony of all knowledge -- Anxieties -- "A low, sunk estate and condition" -- On Solomon Stoddard's stage -- And on a wider stage -- The mighty works of God and of Satan -- The politics of the Kingdom -- "A city set on a hill" -- God "will revive the flame again, even in the darkest times" -- The hands of God and the hand of Christ -- "He that is not with us is against us" -- Heavenly Elysium -- Conservative revolutionary -- A house divided -- A model town no more -- Colonial wars -- Thy will be done -- I am born to be a man of strife -- The crucible -- The mission -- Frontier struggles -- Wartice -- Against an "almost inconceivably pernicious" doctrine -- Original sin "in this happy age of light and liberty" -- Challenging the presumptions of the Age -- The unfinished masterworks -- The transitory and the enduring.