Jonathan Edwards, the most prominent American preacher and theologian of the colonial period, was born today, October 5, in 1703. Edwards was one of America's most important and original philosophical theologians. He played a critical role in shaping the First Great Awakening, and saw some of the first revivals, in 1733–35, at his church in Northampton, Massachusetts. He founded a distinct school of theology known as New England theology.
Something of a prodigy, Edwards entered Yale at age 13. In 1727, Edwards married Sarah Pierpont, then 17, who was from a notable New England clerical family. Sarah's piety was without peer, and her relationship with God had long proved an inspiration to Edwards. She was of a bright and cheerful disposition, a practical housekeeper, a model wife, and the mother of his 11 children.
Today, Edwards is best known for a sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," delivered during another revival in 1741 that followed George Whitefield's tour of the 13 Colonies. It is unfortunate that his contributions have been whittled down, in the popular mind, to one sermon, when that was a very small part of his prodigious output.
Edwards wrote many books, including:
Charity and its Fruits
Protestant Charity or The Duty of Charity to the Poor, Explained and Enforced (1732)
A Dissertation Concerning the End for Which God Created the World
Freedom of the Will and Dissertation on Virtue
Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God
A Divine and Supernatural Light, Immediately Imparted to the Soul by the Spirit of God (1734)
A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God in the Conversion of Many Hundred Souls in Northampton
The Freedom of the Will
A History of the Work of Redemption including a View of Church History
The Life and Diary of David Brainerd, Missionary to the Indians
The Nature of True Virtue
Original Sin
Some Thoughts Concerning the Present Revival in New England and the Way it Ought to be Acknowledged and Promoted
Religious Affections
David Brainerd, whose biography Edwards wrote, is himself a notable Christian figure. Born in 1718, Brainerd attended Yale to study for the ministry; in his second year he was sent home because of tuberculosis. When he returned the next year, 1740, tensions were high between the students and the faculty because, in the wake of George Whitefield’s revival, the faculty considered the students to be too religiously enthusiastic, whereas the students considered the faculty cold and barely Christian. This dynamic is routinely observed to this day in our seminaries and departments of religion.
Brainerd was expelled from Yale because of several impolitic comments about the impious teachers, but was licensed to preach by a group of evangelicals known as “New Lights.” He gained the attention of Jonathan Dickinson, the leading Presbyterian in New Jersey, who unsuccessfully attempted to reinstate Brainerd at Yale, and then suggested that Brainerd devote himself to missionary work among the Native Americans, supported by the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge.
Brainerd was approved for this missionary work on November 25, 1742, first working at Kaunameek, a Mohican settlement near present-day Nassau, New York, then among the Delaware Indians northeast of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, where he remained for another year. On October 5, 1744 (also this day in history) Brainerd began his ministry to the native Americans living along the Susquehanna River, at Crossweeksung, New Jersey.
Within a year, the Native American church at Crossweeksung had 130 members. Brainerd wrote in his diary:
“I could have no freedom in the thought of any other circumstances or business in life: All my desire was the conversion of the heathen, and all my hope was in God: God does not suffer me to please or comfort myself with hopes of seeing friends, returning to my dear acquaintance, and enjoying worldly comforts.”
In November 1746, Brainerd became too ill to continue ministering to the tribes, and so moved to Jonathan Dickinson's house in Elizabethtown, New Jersey, and later to Jonathan Edwards' house in Massachusetts, where he remained until his death in 1747.
During this time, Jerusha Edwards, Jonathan's seventeen-year-old daughter, nursed Brainerd, and a bond of affection formed between them. Eventually they were engaged, but the 29-year-old Brainerd died of tuberculosis before they could be married. Barinerd is buried at Bridge Street Cemetery in Northampton next to Jerusha Edwards, who tragically died the following year from the lung disease she contracted nursing Brainerd.
David Brainerd’s life was consequential. The College of New Jersey (Princeton) was founded due to the dissatisfaction of the New York and New Jersey Presbyterian Synods with Yale, especially Yale’s expulsion of Brainerd and refusal to readmit him; Princeton’s first classes were held in Dickinson's house in May 1747, while Brainerd was recovering there. Dartmouth was founded in 1748 by Eleazar Wheelock, who had been inspired by Brainerd, as a school for Native Americans as well as colonists. Brainerd's lasting influence is due in part to Jonathan Edwards’ biography of him, first published in 1749. It gained immediate recognition, with John Wesley urging: “Let every preacher read carefully over the Life of David Brainerd.”
Perhaps Jonathan Edward’s greatest work was “A History of the Work of Redemption,” which traces the plan of salvation across the ages. In scope and ambition, it is comparable to Ellen White’s “Great Controversy.”
Edwards states that, “The work of redemption is a work that God carries on from the fall of man to the end of the world.” He argues correctly that God’s work of redemption was in planning and process from before the creation of the world. He describes Satan’s work:
“Satan endeavored to frustrate his design in the creation of this lower world, to destroy his workmanship, to wrest the government of it out of his hands, to usurp the throne, and set up himself as the God of this world, instead of him who made it. To these ends he introduced sin into the world; and having made man God’s enemy, he introduced guilt, and death, and the most dreadful misery.”
But God’s plan of redemption will overcome the works of the devil:
“It was a part of God’s original design in this work, to destroy the works of the devil, and confound him in all his purposes: 1 John 3:8: “For this purpose was the Son of God manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil.” It was a part of his design, to triumph over sin, and over the corruptions of men, and to root them out of the hearts of his people, by conforming them to himself. He designed also, that his grace should triumph over man’s guilt, and sin’s infinite demerit. Again, it was a part of his design, to triumph over death; and however this is the last enemy that shall be destroyed, yet that shall finally be vanquished and destroyed. Thus God appears glorious above all evil, and triumphant over all his enemies by the work of redemption.”
“Man’s soul was ruined by the fall; the image of God was defaced; man’s nature was corrupted, and he became dead in sin. The design of God was, to restore the soul of man to life and the divine image in conversion, to carry on the change in sanctification, and to perfect it in glory. Man’s body was ruined; by the fall it became subject to death. The design of God was, to restore it from this ruin, and not only to deliver it from death in the resurrection, but to deliver it from mortality itself, in making it like unto Christ’s glorious body. The world was ruined, as to man, as effectually as if it had been reduced to chaos again; all heaven and earth were overthrown. But the design of God was, to restore all, and as it were to create a new heaven and a new earth: Isa. lxv. 17. “Behold, I create new heavens, and a new earth; and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind.” 2 Pet. 3:13: “Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens, and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.”
Edwards argues that Jesus’ mediatorial function began immediately after the Fall of our first parents:
“As soon as man fell, Christ entered on his mediatorial work. Then it was that he began to execute the work and office of a mediator. He had undertaken it before the world was made. He stood engaged with the Father to appear as man’s mediator, and to take on that office when there should be occasion, from all eternity. But now the time was come. Christ the eternal Son of God clothed himself with the mediatorial character, and therein presented himself before the Father. He immediately stepped in between a holy, infinite, offended Majesty, and offending mankind. He was accepted in his interposition; and so wrath was prevented from going forth in the full execution of that amazing curse that man had brought on himself.” A History of the Work of Redemption, p. 17.
Elle White agrees that Christ’s ministry began at the Fall:
“The fall of man filled all heaven with sorrow. The world that God had made was blighted with the curse of sin and inhabited by beings doomed to misery and death. There appeared no escape for those who had transgressed the law. Angels ceased their songs of praise. Throughout the heavenly courts there was mourning for the ruin that sin had wrought. The Son of God, heaven's glorious Commander, was touched with pity for the fallen race. His heart was moved with infinite compassion as the woes of the lost world rose up before Him. But divine love had conceived a plan whereby man might be redeemed. The broken law of God demanded the life of the sinner. In all the universe there was but one who could, in behalf of man, satisfy its claims. Since the divine law is as sacred as God Himself, only one equal with God could make atonement for its transgression. None but Christ could redeem fallen man from the curse of the law and bring him again into harmony with Heaven. Christ would take upon Himself the guilt and shame of sin—sin so offensive to a holy God that it must separate the Father and His Son. Christ would reach to the depths of misery to rescue the ruined race. Before the Father He pleaded in the sinner's behalf, while the host of heaven awaited the result with an intensity of interest that words cannot express. Long continued was that mysterious communing—“the counsel of peace” (Zechariah 6:13) for the fallen sons of men. The plan of salvation had been laid before the creation of the earth; for Christ is “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Revelation 13:8).” Patriarchs and Prophets, p. 63
Edwards states that the angels were told immediately upon the Fall that there was a plan of redemption in which the Son of God played a central mediatorial role:
“And therefore we may suppose, that immediately on the fall of Adam, it was made known in heaven among the angels, that God had a design of redemption with respect to fallen man; that Christ had now taken upon him the office and work of a mediator between God and man; and that they were to be subservient to him in this office.” A History of the Work of Redemption, p. 17.
Again, Ellen White describes this scene in heaven:
“The plan by which alone man's salvation could be secured, involved all heaven in its infinite sacrifice. The angels could not rejoice as Christ opened before them the plan of redemption, for they saw that man's salvation must cost their loved Commander unutterable woe. In grief and wonder they listened to His words as He told them how He must descend from heaven's purity and peace, its joy and glory and immortal life, and come in contact with the degradation of earth, to endure its sorrow, shame, and death. . . . When His mission as a teacher should be ended, He must be delivered into the hands of wicked men and be subjected to every insult and torture that Satan could inspire them to inflict. He must die the cruelest of deaths, lifted up between the heavens and the earth as a guilty sinner. He must pass long hours of agony so terrible that angels could not look upon it, but would veil their faces from the sight. He must endure anguish of soul, the hiding of His Father's face, while the guilt of transgression—the weight of the sins of the whole world—should be upon Him.”
Edwards note that the system of sacrifice was set up immediately after the Fall, not just after the Exodus, and that it pointed toward the sacrifice of Christ. Then, he makes a brilliant apologetical argument that this is why every pagan religion also features sacrifices of one sort or another:
“The institution of sacrifices was a great thing done towards preparing the way for Christ’s coming, and working out redemption. For the sacrifices of the Old Testament were the main of all the Old-Testament types of Christ and his redemption; and it tended to establish in the minds of God’s visible church the necessity of a propitiatory sacrifice, in order to the Deity’s being satisfied for sin; and so prepared the way for the reception of the glorious gospel, that reveals the great sacrifice in the visible church, and not only so, but through the world of mankind. For from this institution of sacrifices all nations derived the custom of sacrificing to the gods, to atone for their sins. No nation, however barbarous, was found without it.
“This is a great evidence of the truth of the Christian religion; for no nation except the Jews, could tell how they came by this custom, or to what purpose it was to offer sacrifices to their deities. The light of nature did not teach them any such thing. . . . yet they all had this custom; of which no other account can be given, but that they derived it from Noah, who had it from his ancestors, on whom God had enjoined it as a type of the great sacrifice of Christ. However, by this means all nations of the world had their minds possessed with this notion, that an atonement or sacrifice for sin was necessary; and a way was made for their more readily receiving the great doctrine of the gospel, the atonement and sacrifice of Christ.” A History of the Work of Redemption, p. 20. Rosland Press, Kindle Edition.
Doubtless there is more truth and light to be found beyond page 20 of Edwards’ greatest work. Suffice it to say that he was a pastor and theologian whose works are significant in the history of Christianity; his works should be read and studied even today. It is a tragedy and an historical injustice that such a great and influential Christian is remembered only for one sermon.
Edwards died far too young, at age 54, after having served briefly as president of the College of New Jersey (Princeton). Apropos of current events, he was killed by a smallpox vaccination.