Jonathan Edwards has been called the most important American theologian of the colonial period. Excerpts of his sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” appear in high school history and English texts. Identified with the revivalism of the Great Awakening of the early 18th century, and largely on the basis of his most famous and oft quoted sermon, Edwards has been characterized as a narrow-minded “hellfire” preacher determined to rescue what remained of New England Puritanism from the onslaught of the Age of Reason. This perception is grossly inaccurate.
The Coming of the Great Awakening
At the time Edwards began preaching at his Northampton, Massachusetts church in 1734, the revivalism of the Awakening was already apparent. Six years later, George Whitefield arrived from England, drawing large crowds with his fiery, emotional appeal to true religious conversion. The many New Englanders that committed their lives during this period were called the “New Lights,” distinguished from the staid congregations and clergymen that opposed the subjectivism of revivalist preaching.
The New England of Jonathan Edward’s day was vastly different from the earlier century when John Winthrop invoked the image of a “city on a hill” and admonished Puritans to be a righteous example in a sinful world. The 18th century was also the Age of Reason, the period of the Enlightenment, which rejected Calvinist notions of “total depravity.” These ideals had crept into the classrooms of Yale and Harvard, affecting the thinking of clergymen in the Congregational churches.
Additionally, materialism – the drive toward a prosperous and comfortable living, had replaced the austerity of earlier Puritan generations. While the same Psalms were still sung on the Sabbath, many sermons had departed from the strict Calvinist views that characterized 17th century Puritanism. Edwards’ “thunderings,” as characterized by historians Miller and Johnson (see sources below) changed much of that.
The Teachings of Jonathan Edwards
When revivalism broke out in New England, Edwards likened it to, “a flash of lightning, upon the hearts [of people]…” Like Edwards’ “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” preached in 1741, the emphasis was on conversion. Once individuals were made aware of their unworthiness before God and felt their own sinful nature, true conversion redeemed them to a life of righteousness. In this, Edwards never strayed from the Calvinist teachings that grace was unmerited or that human beings could, of themselves, achieve conversion. Edwards elaborated on this in his Treatise on Religious Affections, written in 1746 and designed not only to define the role of emotionalism in conversion but to refute the criticism of the “Old Lights,” the opponents of the Awakening.
The excerpt read by students from Edwards’ sermon “Sinners in the Hands…” fails to do justice to the entire message of the sermon, a document of many pages in length. The excerpted passages leave the impression of a vengeful and punishing God playing on the emotional fears of the listeners. The sermon in total, however, emphasizes the absolute love of God who desires that all turn to him in love.
Edwards, perhaps influenced by some aspects of Enlightenment thinking while a student at Yale, allows, however, for human choice, the exercise of free will. This was a move beyond the predestination so often equated with Calvin’s notions of a “limited atonement.”
Jonathan Edwards beyond his Famous Sermon
Edwards was a missionary to Native Americans, a loving husband and father, and died after being hired as president of the College of New Jersey (Princeton) in 1757. His friend and student, Samuel Hopkins, wrote that, “his tongue was as the pen of a ready writer…he conversed about important, heavenly, divine things, which his heart was so full of…” Edwards towered as a Protestant saint whose life went well beyond the Puritan pulpit.
Sources:
- J. Stephen Lang and Mark A. Noll, “Colonial New England: An Old Order, a New Awakening,” Christian History, Issue 8, October 1985
- Perry Miller and Thomas H. Johnson, The Puritans (New York: American Book Company, 1938)
- Perry Miller, Jonathan Edwards (University of Massachusetts Press, 1981)
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