JONATHAN EDWARDS

JONATHAN EDWARDS: AMERICAN VISIONARY

Jonathan Edwards, meticulously studied over the past 200 years, has emerged in America as a "representative man," not in the customary sense, but because he profoundly manifested the zenith of one period and heralded a succeeding one. It is a fact that colonial figures exerted exceptional influence upon their own age, and none, except possibly William Penn and Benjamin Franklin, so completely projected the ensuing shape of a distinctly American culture, both the material and spiritual, morally secular and realistically sacred, as did Edwards. This may be due in part to the crossing of Edwards' colonial times with the constantly changing American 'present'; as a result, he has the benefit of a distinctively demonstrative status in American thought and letters.

JONATHAN EDWARDS was born on October 5, 1703, in East Windsor, Connecticut, into a Puritan evangelical household. His childhood education as well as his undergraduate years (1716-1720) and graduate studies (1721-1722) at Yale College immersed him not only in the most current thought coming out of Europe, such as British empiricism and continental rationalism, but also in the debates between the orthodox Calvinism of his Puritan forebears and the more "liberal" movements that challenged it, such as Deism, Socinianism, Arianism, and especially Anglican Arminianism.

The American theologian and philosopher, Jonathan Edwards, was born in the state of C

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d I Live it wth your phisicall Genus to determin whether some medesinall applications might not be proper in such Cases and subscrib your proselite when I can have solution of these maters. www.jonathanedwards.com/text/The%20Soul.htm Edwards rarely wrote personal entries, but there is one piece that many find of particular interest in reflecting upon the true man and his personal beliefs. It is called 'Edward's Resolutions'. The resolutions are a series of journal entries or personal affirmations that Edwards strove to live by. They were begun in 1722, and after 70 were written, they end in 1723. Like contemporary Benjamin Franklin's, Edwards' resolutions were a set of rules of self-discipline that Edwards believed were a set of guidelines to live his life by. He pledged to read them once a week until he expired. The very first one reads as follows: Resolved, that I will do whatsoever I think to be most to God's glory, and my own good, profit and pleasure, in the whole of my duration, without any consideration of the time, whether now, or never so many myriad's of ages hence. Resolved to do whatever I think to be my duty and most for the good and advantage of mankind in general. Resolved to do this, whatever difficultie

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