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Jonathan Edwards: A Life by [George M. Marsden]

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George M. Marsden

Jonathan Edwards: A Life Kindle Edition

by George M. Marsden (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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Presents a biography of the controversial eighteenth century theologian.

ISBN-13

978-0300096934
Publisher

Yale University Press
Publication date

March 11 2003
Language

English
File size

7568 KB
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Review

"Magnificent. . . . This is a book that tells us as much about the intellectual foundations of America as it does about Jonathan Edwards."―Damian Thompson, Daily Telegraph

"It may not stretch the evidence to call Jonathan Edwards the most important religious figure in American history. . . . [Edwards’] arguments [are] analyzed with great skill and sensitivity in Jonathan Edwards: A Life.. . . Marsden, himself an evangelical believer, puts Edwards back where he belongs, firmly in the theological world of the Reformation. . . . Marsden makes a convincing case for his greatness."―Garry Wills, New York Times Book Review

"Whether the reader is an academic . . . or a nonprofessional, this imaginative, . . . sympathetic reading of Edwards's life is informative and enjoyable."—John P. Fitzgibbons, America

"It will endure as the standard account."—E. Brooks Holifield, American Historical Review

"This universally lauded biography portrays America’s greatest theologian, 300 years after his birth."—Richard N. Ostling, Associated Press

"This biography of one of the founding fathers of American religion is the first to appear in 60 years. The fact that it is an emotionally complex, almost novelistic account by one of the country’s foremost evangelical thinkers makes it an extraordinary read."—Paul Elie, Belief.net (A Best Spiritual Book of the Year Finalist)

"Better than anyone else before, Marsden enters Edwards’ world—physically, mentally, and spiritually—and helps us understand his significance as an 18th-century leader. . . . Marsden tells a wonderful story, enriching his narrative with a wealth of little-known gems from Edwards’ world."—Douglas Sweeney, Books & Culture

"Marsden has succeeded in the daunting task of exploring the fullness of Edwards’s life and work while avoiding hagiography or demonization. Marsden’s style is clear and his research thorough, yielding an unapologetic account of one of America’s most amazing personalities. . . . A volume that will stand for generations. Recommended."―Choice

"Marsden has written a life of Edwards the way Edwards would have liked such a life to be written."—Allen C. Guelzo, Christian Century

"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

"The author thoroughly demolishes the stereotype of Edwards as the purveyor of sadistic religion that damns most people to hell. Setting him and his ideas in context like no other, Marsden handles Edwards’s complex ideas with brilliant clarity without oversimplifying them."—Christianity Today

"It is one of the great merits of Marsden’s biography that he shows us the decidedly unheroic aspect of Edwards’ life (which is, of course, the stuff of every human life) while at the same time doing justice both to his towering intellectual achievements and to his incandescent faith, animated by a palpable sense of the sheer beauty and majesty of God. Neither debunking nor hagiographic, it is an almost supernaturally fair-minded portrait."—John Wilson, Christianity Today

"What non-specialists have needed for some time is an accessible biography that integrates his tumultuous ministerial career with his serenely logical mind. That need has at last been met, thanks to the magisterial synthesis of Edwards’s life and thought presented in George Marsden’s Jonathan Edwards."—Christopher D. Levenick, Claremont Review of Books

"Not only the definitive biography but also a narrative that reads like a novel. . . . [Marsden] lets Edwards' magnificence shine through."—Edward T. Oakes, Commonweal

"One of the grand features of this latest biography of Edwards is Marsden’s success in demonstrating that Edwards was far more than a mere intellect."―Scott A. Wenig, Denver Post

"Marsden provides a less tidy, which is to say, much more complete, account of Edwards’ life and work, bringing in a wealth of detail that forces us to qualify practically everything we had ever heard about Edwards. . . . By showing the complexity of the man and correcting many of the misunderstandings about him, Marsden has prepared the way for serious conversation with him."—George McKenna, First Things

"George M. Marsden is truly a Christian scholar who respects both the Faith and the canons of historical research. . . . In this finely presented biography, Edwards stands forth both as an historical being and a Christian. If one wants to understand him and his world, this biography is the starting point."—H-Net Book Review

"Magisterial. . . . Definitive, and it will remain so for decades to come."—Avihu Zakai, Journal of American History

"George Marsden's study of Jonathan Edwards is a magnificent one. While admittedly sympathetic to Edwards's Augustinian and Calvinistic theology, Marsden examines the life of this greatest of American minds with a great deal of clear-sightedness."—Don M. Shipley, Jr., Journal of Church and State

"Splendid. . . . Scholarly, balanced, fair-minded, and highly readable. . . . Ministerial students would profit immeasurably by reading Marsden’s vivid account of Edwards’s shining integrity and glaring flaws as a pastor."—Joe E. Barnhart, Journal of the American Academy of Religion

"A very readable biography."―William O. Paulsell, Lexington Theological Quarterly

"A comprehensive, compelling, and intensely human portrait of Edwards. . . . Marsden’s accessible style will appeal to laypeople and scholars alike. . . . This meticulously researched look at one of America’s most prominent thinkers and theologians is sure to set the standard for future studies of Jonathan Edwards’s life and work."—Pegge Bochynski, Magill’s Literary Annual

"This is the first full-scale critical biography of Edwards in 60 years. Marsden’s biography represents the re-awakening of great scholarship on the works, life, and influence of Jonathan Edwards. . . . The book is accessible to a general audience, but it does not surrender rigor for academic use. Marsden offers a balanced perspective on Edwards who was clearly a great figure in the history of early America and in the history of western philosophy."—Joseph W. Ulatowski, Metapsychology

"[An] excellent, fascinating biography. . . . Absorbing."―Adam Kirsch, New York Sun

"Marsden’s elegant prose and vivid, vivacious storytelling brings Edwards to life. This magisterial and definitive biography reveals the complexities of Edwards’s life and provides new appreciation for his commitment to fostering religious sensibilities in the increasingly secular world of his time. This is a beautifully written book about one of America’s most important thinkers."—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

Winner of the Philip Schaff Prize sponsored by the American Society of Church History

A finalist for the 2003 National Book Critics Circle Award in the biography category

Winner of the 2001-2003 Annibel Jenkins Biography Prize sponsored by the Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies

Winner of the 2004 Bancroft Prize in American History

"At last! A highly readable biography of Jonathan Edwards that takes account of the mountain of recent Edwards scholarship and is willing to acknowledge the agonies and ambiguities as well as the triumphs of Edwards life. A great companion to the Jonathan Edwards Reader and TheJonathan Edwards Sermons."—Amy Plantinga Pauw, Louisville Presbyterian Seminary

"Marsden has brought together in a magisterial synthesis the details of the man’s daily life and the range of ideas that challenged the assumptions of his time and ours."—Edmund S. Morgan

"In this biography, Marsden has produced a masterpiece. It is eloquent, reliable, and comprehensive. I found it insightful and inspiring throughout."—George S. Claghorn, West Chester University, editor of Letters and Personal Writings of Jonathan Edwards

"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

"There is no question that Marsden’s biography is the best book ever written about America’s (and perhaps the world’s) greatest theologian."—Sam T. Logan, Jr., Westminster Theological Seminary

--This text refers to the paperback edition.

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.
--This text refers to the paperback edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Although probably best known for his fire-and-brimstone sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," Jonathan Edwards led a rich intellectual and spiritual life that took him far beyond the pulpit in his contributions to colonial America. In this first critical biography in over 60 years, Marsden, a professor of history at Notre Dame, places Edwards squarely within the context of his times. Drawing on newly available sources in the Yale edition of The Works of Jonathan Edwards, he elegantly traces the details of Edwards's life, from his precocious childhood of observing God's handiwork in the natural world and his adolescent struggles with his faith to his powerful preaching in the revivals that dominated the Connecticut Valley in the First Great Awakening to his later modestly successful mission to the Indians. From his childhood, Edwards struggled to understand the sovereignty of God, and as he later developed his theology he placed the "religious affections" at the center of his notions about God's sovereignty. Marsden reminds us that Edwards struggled with his faith as he labored to write his treatises on the freedom of the will, the religious affections and the nature of true virtue. Marsden's elegant prose and vivid, vivacious storytelling brings Edwards to life. This magisterial and definitive biography reveals the complexities of Edwards's life and provides new appreciation for his commitment to fostering religious sensibilities in the increasingly secular world of his time. This is a beautifully written book about one of America's most important thinkers.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

From Booklist

In the first full critical biography of Edwards in 60 years, a distinguished Notre Dame scholar humanizes America's greatest colonial clergyman, a man highly esteemed in his own time but since singled out for decades of abuse by Puritan-bashers. To be sure, Edwards' brimstone pulpit rhetoric (most famously deployed in his 1741 sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God") offends modern sensibilities. But Marsden--drawing heavily on recent scholarship--restores Edwards to an eighteenth-century New England where most shared his doctrines, though few could rival him in the power with which he preached them. Exceptional insight shines through a felicitous style as Marsden recounts how Edwards acquired that power, the intellectual rigor of his Yale studies gradually lending force to his intense spiritual vision. His rare gifts enabled Edwards to kindle the Great Awakening, emblazoning his name on the pages of American history. But in narrating Edwards' luminous achievements, Marsden also scrutinizes the periods of deep personal depression and probes the dark drama of jealousy that cost him his position of ecclesiastical prominence. The man who emerges from this tangle of triumph and travail defies the easy stereotypes of the hellfire preacher: tender in his pastoral care, passionate in his conjugal loyalty, joyous in his celebration of divine love, unintentionally democratic in his New Light theology. Neither alabaster saint nor cardboard hypocrite, the Edwards Marsden delivers will fascinate serious students of American culture and history. Bryce Christensen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0017I1OR2
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Yale University Press (March 11 2003)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 7568 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 640 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #486,286 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #20 in Protestant Church History
- #38 in Presbyterian Church (Kindle Store)
- #107 in Presbyterian Church (Books)

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Top reviews from Canada

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Rodge

Masterful biography

Reviewed in Canada on April 23, 2015

This biography is masterful in every way. Marsden gives us a full picture of Edwards and his times. He makes the work look effortless, showing us Edwards' strengths and flaws, giving us a rounded picture of the relationships and conflicts in Edwards' life. Where Edwards butts heads with contemporaries, Marsden succeeds in helping us understand and sympathize with both sides, while perhaps being somewhat partial to Edwards in most matters. This is an extremely important work that will immerse you in the era and thought of Jonathan Edwards, helping you understand, as Marsden states his goal, Edwards on his own terms. It is difficult to imagine how this book could be bettered, it's that good.

One person found this helpful

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R. M. Williams

biography plus theology of a serious and important man

Reviewed in Canada on November 13, 2003

First, this book confirms my earlier suspicion that anything written by George Marsden is extraordinary and a must read, simply because of the quality of the research and the writing. The book was a 'from the pulpit recommendation' and as such not on my usual list of suspects to be read, i am however grateful for the recommendation and thankful for the time spent reading this biography of a very important and interesting person.
Second, the purpose of the book is aptly summed up by the author in the last chapter, "My belief is that one of the uses of being an historian, particularly if one is part of a community of faith, is to help persons of such communities better understand what they and their community might appropriate form the great mentors of the past and what is extraneous and nonessential. ... It should also be to help people see how to put things back together again. We need to use history for the guidance it offers, learning from great figures in the past-both in their brilliance and in their shortcomings. Otherwise we are stuck with only the wisdom of the present." pg 502
The book naturally breaks up into 3 pieces: the first, the much greater, is the biography of Edwards reaching a culmination in the church severing the pastoral relationship with Edwards that had been theirs for 26 years. The problems, both interpersonal and theological are summed up nicely in chapters 17 "A House Divided" and 18 "A Model Town No More". If you only have a limited time to invest in this book, i would start with reading these two chapters first. The next piece is the rest of his life, upto chapter 25. The final part is the systematic presentation of his theology in an historical context with one eye on its influence for the next 100 years in America. If you are primarily interested in Edwards as a theologian i would start but reading 26 "Against and 'Almost Inconceivably Pernicious' Doctrine" to the end.
The major threads in the biography appear to be:
Edwards as smitten by the beauty of God and His universe. The fragility of life and the necessity of getting right with God now as a consequence of mortality. The importance of 3 big controversies in Edwards' life: Old versus New Light, or the meaning and significance of emotional/enthusiastic revival, discipline in the church as illustrated by the boys and the midwife manual, which lead up to his dismissal from the church, and the place of reason in the life of a very bright man with deeply held convictions.
I appreciated the book, it is not a hard read, slanted to the general reader with all the hard stuff and references in endnotes. It moves evenly throughout with none of the low boring spots you might expect in a work this long. I would recommend it to most anyone with an interest in either theology or pre-Revolutionary America.
I am on the lookout for followup material. please email to rwilliam2 at yahoo. i have _Theology in American_ by Holifield and _America's God_ by Noll in hand.
as well as: The Philosophical Theology of Jonathan Edwards
by Sang Hyun Lee
thanks for reading this short review. i hope you pick up the book on this recommendation.

2 people found this helpful

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R. Albin

Outstanding

Reviewed in Canada on August 16, 2003

Jonathan Edwards was probably the most impressive American intellectual of the 18th century. Not the best known, which would be Benjamin Franklin, or the most influential, which would be James Madison, but the individual with most impressive intellect and purely intellectual achievements. Edwards' reputation today suffers because he was on the losing side, so to speak, of a pair of particularly important developments in American life. In the Great Awakening that inaugurated modern American religous life, Edwards was an outspoken proponent of revivalism, but the ultimate emergence of a more democratic and less organized form of Protestantism ran counter to his essentially conservative form of Calvinism. Edwards' conservative Calvinism led him also to oppose the rationalistic philosophy and theology of the Enlightenment that came to be such an important element of American life. One of the great virtues of this outstanding biography is that it gives readers a vivid and unanachronistic understanding of how this powerful intellect ended up reaffirming doctrines that were coming to be regarded as outmoded by so many of his contemporaries.
Marsden shows Edwards' development as the son and grandson of learned Puritan clergymen, his immersion in the complicated theology of his branch of Calvinism, and his encounters with new intellectual currents emanating from Europe. Marsden does a particularly good job of connecting Edwards' thought with the interesting circumstances of his social position. Edwards was a child of the Puritan establishment of Colonial New England. Edwards grew up at the apex of a rural society whose social organiztion was based on deference, with social position shaped by personal and family relationships to an extent largely unknown in modern society (though there are exceptions; see George Bush). He was embedded in a strongly patriarchal family structure, with religion occupying a central position in society that would have been unusual even in contemporary Europe. Edwards also inherited an intense sense of being part of a larger British and Protestant world. The colonial New England of Edwards' time was not, however, impervious to outside influences. The Puritans placed great emphasis on education, particularly for clergy, and by Edwards' youth, many Puritan clergy were familiar with intellectual developments in Europe. Edwards was influenced by Locke's epistemology, was familiar with the work of Newton and later assimilated Newton into his theological work, and had a more positive view of the natural world than his 17th Puritan forebears. He remained connected with European intellectual trends throughout his life. It clear that he read Hume's Treatise at a time when it was ignored by most European intellectuals.

The combination of his Puritan heritage and receptivity to new ideas makes Edwards a peculiarly transitional figure. His life's work was to defend the sophisticated but demanding Calvinist theology and eschatology of his ancestors. In so doing, he would incorporate Newton and borrow ideas from Locke, Hutcheson, and other philosophers of the Enlightenment. He was an advocate of the Great Awakening that broke the fragile unity of New England Protestantism but but was unsympathetic to its increasingly influential anti-establishment elements. Edwards produced a number of impressive treatises defending his views, though he did not live long enough to complete all his projected theological works. If he had lived longer, he would have been the most systematic theologian since Aquinas.

Marsden's biography is not just an account and exploration of Edwards' ideas. Given the limited documentation about Edwards' personal life, this is also the story of Edwards' family life and pastoral work. It is remarkable that a man who produced thousands of pages of written work was also an active minister serving a substantial congregation. Edwards also devoted a good part of each day to contemplative activities.
This book is valuable also because it casts light on many important features of American history. Marsden's goal is to tell Edwards' story in a way that will illuminate Colonial America in the first half of 18th century. This book is instructive about religion, family life, education, Native American relations, and colonial politics. For example, there is a brief but very interesting section on Edwards' attitude towards slavery. This is an ambitious and superb piece of scholarship.

One person found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Rohintan Mody

Wonderful!!!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 23, 2004

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Every review I have read of this biography rates it highly. Everyone I have spoken too who has read it speaks highly of it as well. As for my opinion, this is an extraordinary and wonderful book. It is superbly written and is a thrilling account of one of the world's greatest theologians. It has changed my life in giving me a new appreciation of the sheer great goodness of God, challenged me to worship and stretched my thinking. Buy it and enjoy the book,Edwards and above all, Edwards' God.

13 people found this helpful

P. Mead

The definitive biography

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 17, 2014

Verified Purchase

It is hard to think of a better biography, maybe impossible. This is the definitive biography of Jonathan Edwards. Marsden has also written a shorter biography in which he places Edwards in contrast to his contemporary, Benjamin Franklin. That is also good, but not as good as this one. Fair, accurate, balanced and a compelling read. You will feel like you know Edwards much better after reading this book, guaranteed.

2 people found this helpful

Michael Print

Wonderful Biography

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 14, 2018

Verified Purchase

Great read!

dbello88

Excellent biography, poor kindle version.

Reviewed in Brazil on August 3, 2018

Verified Purchase

Wonderful biography, surely a fine work. The same can't be said of this kindle version. The notes aren't linked, making it almost impossible to find them adequately. The first chapter letters sometimes overlap the first word, and words blend almost every page start. If you don't mind reading without notes, go for it, if not, buy the paperback.

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