Jonathan Edwards: A Life (review)

Since the initiation of the Yale University letterpress edition of The Works of Jonathan Edwards nearly fifty years ago, twentieth- and (now) twenty-first century scholars and devotees of the Northampton, Massachusetts, sage have sought a biographical complement to the definitive Yale edition of Edwards' written corpus, a biography that would incorporate the latest scholarship and provide a critical assessment of the life and thought of North America's most eminent divine. At last, the wait is over.

The celebrated author of Fundamentalism and American Culture, the McAnaney Professor of History in the University of Notre Dame, George Marsden, delivers a singular masterpiece that will disappoint neither Edwards commentators nor enthusiasts.

Jonathan Edwards:A Life already stands as the benchmark by which all biographical works on Edwards (1703-1758) are to be measured. Though older biographies of Edwards continue to circulate (including Ola E. Winslow's 1940 Pulitzer Prize winning account), and Iain Murray's fairly recent Jonathan Edwards:A New Biography (1988) still enjoys a wide readership, Marsden's book is to be preferred on account of three distinguishing factors: newly available resources, nonaligned (though sympathetic) composition, and a reliable contextualization of Edwards the man, the thinker, the cultural force.

In addition to providing a more complete and holistic understanding of Edwards' thought, influence, and personal struggles, another value of Marsden's biography is its contribution to correcting the hagiographical bias and defective caricaturing of Edwards, which at times has been endemic to Edwardsean scholarship and literature.

Marsden's key to understanding the nuances of Edwards' theological enterprise, ministerial vision, and relational idiosyncrasies, pivots on a threefold thesis: (1) that the socio-political context of eighteenth-century Colonial America—a societal context that functioned under the dictates of a monarchy and structured hierarchies of personal relationships—sets the parameters for Edwards' world and life view; (2) that Edwards' dramatic and affectional conversion outside of the rubrics of the established Puritan, preparationist step-model for conversion, resulted in an unrelenting doctrine of divine sovereignty; and (3) that his seminal participation in the 1734/35—1740/42 awakenings and revivals formed and informed his perspective on history (and eschatology).

The dynamic of vertically controlled relationships is particularly insightful and significant, for it places Jonathan Edwards under the regulating influences of his father, the Reverend Timothy Edwards, and maternal grandfather, Solomon Stoddard (venerated as the Congregational "Pope" of the Connecticut Valley), and, ona larger scale, Calvinistic confessions and, supremely, God. All had a profound and lasting impact on Edwards, though he would later (and controversially) assert his independence from the former two, erstwhile manifesting his theological and philosophical originality and genius under the aegis of the latter two.

Taking his place among only an elite handful of philosophical theologians and systematicians, Jonathan Edwards strove for a holistic Christian worldview that could make sense of seemingly disparate concepts such as the eternal and temporal realms, the unchangeableness of God and his creativity, and the relation of body and soul, and did so with a measured degree of success, enduring influence, and legacy. Amidst the changing tides of the Enlightenment thought and shifting moods in New England, Edwards attempted to accomplish a coherent and orthodox understanding of God, the world, and the Christian faith through innovative and comprehensive (but too often densely packed) metaphysical and theological reconceptions of reality and divinity, vis-à-vis "deistical religion." Marsden, however, skillfully unpacks Edwards' concentrated thinkingand thereby renders accessible the laudable fruit of Edwards' intellectual labors. But not only is Jonathan Edwards:A Life consciously didactic, it is beautifully crafted in elegant prose as a chronology of a deeply principled, deeply passionate man, much of whose life was spent embroiled in controversies and enfeebled by poor health.

Meticulously documented, truly captivating, occasionally speculative, and always instructive, Marsden's eloquent biographical account of this towering figure of early American history, a figure whose imprint on America arguably may...