The Forgotten Edwards

Jonathan Edwards Jr. (1745-1801) is well-known for his governmental theory of the atonement; however, aside from a biography produced in 1978 not much has been done to interact with his thinking on other theological matters. Further, he is often portrayed as a metaphysical preacher who drove away his congregation with cerebral abstractions. Accordingly, this received caricature also describes Edwards Jr. as distorting the Edwardsean legacy through theological innovation. This negative caricature of Edwards Jr was produced by the early liberalism of the Civil War era and has stuck to Edwards Jr. for nearly two hundred years. This treatise provides a greater interaction with primary sources, taking into account his upbringing, awakening, tragedy, pastoral challenges, as well as his actual pulpit notes.

Of particular interest to scholars will be the interaction with new source materials derived from the preaching manuscripts used in his weekly preaching ministry. Harry Stout has observed that the weekly sermon was the heart and soul of New Englanders prior to the American Revolution. Notably in this treatise, Edwards Jr.'s Sermon on the Mount Manuscripts, which cover his whole thirty-year pulpit ministry, are examined and found to be strongly reliant upon his father's Religious Affections. Furthermore, Edwards Jr.'s systematic theology of the Holy Spirit demonstrates a received pneumatology, which is essentially the same as his father's system. A received pneumatology can be reconstructed out of the student notebook of Maltby Gelston, as well as the published and unpublished sermons of Edwards Jr.

From primary documents this volume demonstrates how the younger Edwards's is important to Edwardsean study. The thinking of Hopkins, Bellamy, and Edwards Jr. are relevant as receivers of Edwards Sr.'s thinking, but also as improvers of his thoughts. Without an adequate study of his son's biography and writing, the Edwardsean theology has, at times, suffered from an apparent decline for failure to develop the thinking of the younger Edwards. This volume begins to address a lacuna in the New England Theological project.