Jonathan Edwards : A Life

by George M. Marsden

• ISBN13: 9780300105964
• ISBN10: 0300105967
• Format: Trade Paper
• Copyright: 2004-07-11
• Publisher: Yale University Press

Summary

This definitive biography of America's most important religious figure draws on newly available sources to reveal how he was shaped by the cultural and religious battles of his time. Selected as one of the Best Books of 2003 by Atlantic Monthly, Washington Post Book World, Christian Century, Books & Culture, Beliefnet, Publishers Weekly, and Christian Science Monitor. Featured in Preaching magazine as "one of the top ten books every preacher should read." Winner of the Merle Curti Award from the Organization of American Historians, the Annibel Jenkins Biography Prize sponsored by the Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, the 2004 John Pollock Award for Christian Biography, and the Eugene Genovese Prize for the Best Book in American History from the Historical Society. Book jacket.

Author Biography

George M. Marsden is Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame.

Table of Contents

List of Maps	ix
Cotton Mather's Map of New England	x
Chronology of Edwards' Life and Times	xiii
Preface	xvii
Note on the Text	xxi
Introduction	1	(10)
Chapter 1. A Time to Be Born	11	(14)
Chapter 2. The Overwhelming Question	25	(19)
Chapter 3. The Pilgrim's Progress	44	(15)
Chapter 4. The Harmony of All Knowledge	59	(23)
Chapter 5. Anxieties	82	(19)
Chapter 6. "A Low, Sunk Estate and Condition"	101	(13)
Chapter 7. On Solomon Stoddard's Stage	114	(19)
Chapter 8. And on a Wider Stage	133	(17)
Chapter 9. The Mighty Works of God and of Satan	150	(20)
Chapter 10. The Politics of the Kingdom	170	(14)
Chapter 11. "A City Set on a Hill"	184	(17)
Chapter 12. God "Will Revive the Flame Again, Even in the Darkest Times"	201	(13)
Chapter 13. The Hands of God and the Hand of Christ	214	(13)
Chapter 14. "He That Is Not with Us Is Against Us"	227	(12)
Chapter 15. "Heavenly Elysium"	239	(14)
Chapter 16. Conservative Revolutionary	253	(15)
Chapter 17. A House Divided	268	(23)
Chapter 18. A Model Town No More	291	(15)
Chapter 19. Colonial Wars	306	(14)
Chapter 20. "Thy Will Be Done"	320	(21)
Chapter 21. "I Am Born to Be a Man of Strife"	341	(16)
Chapter 22. The Crucible	357	(18)
Chapter 23. The Mission	375	(20)
Chapter 24. Frontier Struggles	395	(19)
Chapter 25. Wartime	414	(18)
Chapter 26. Against an "Almost Inconceivably Pernicious" Doctrine	432	(15)
Chapter 27. Original Sin "in This Happy Age of Light and Liberty"	447	(12)
Chapter 28. Challenging the Presumptions of the Age	459	(13)
Chapter 29. The Unfinished Masterworks	472	(18)
Chapter 30. The Transitory and the Enduring	490	(17)
Appendix A. Genealogical Table of Edwards' Relatives	507	(3)
Appendix B. Edwards' Sisters	510	(1)
Appendix C. Edwards' Immediate Family, from His Family Bible	511	(2)
Notes	513	(88)
Credits	601	(2)
Index	603