Jonathan Edwards's Philosophy of History: The Reenchantment of the World in the Age of Enlightenment

by Avihu Zakai

Overview

Avihu Zakai analyzes Jonathan Edwards's redemptive mode of historical thought in the context of the Enlightenment. As theologian and philosopher, Edwards has long been a towering figure in American intellectual history. Nevertheless, and despite Edwards's intense engagement with the nature of time and the meaning of history, there has been no serious attempt to explore his philosophy of history. Offering the first such exploration, Zakai considers Edwards's historical thought as a reaction, in part, to the varieties of Enlightenment historical narratives and their growing disregard for theistic considerations.


Zakai analyzes the ideological origins of Edwards's insistence that the process of history depends solely on God's redemptive activity in time as manifested in a series of revivals throughout history, reading this doctrine as an answer to the threat posed to the Christian theological teleology of history by the early modern emergence of a secular conception of history and the modern legitimation of historical time. In response to the Enlightenment refashioning of secular, historical time and its growing emphasis on human agency, Edwards strove to re-establish God's preeminence within the order of time. Against the de-Christianization of history and removal of divine power from the historical process, he sought to re-enthrone God as the author and lord of history—and thus to re-enchant the historical world.


Placing Edwards's historical thought in its broadest context, this book will be welcomed by those who study early modern history, American history, or religious culture and experience in America.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691144306
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	07/26/2009
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Avihu Zakai is Professor of History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is the author of Exile and Kingdom Theocracy in Massachusetts, and Europe and the New World.

Table of Contents

Abbreviations xi

Preface xiii

Introduction

The American Augustine 1

EDWARDS'S LIFE OF THE MIND

One: A Short Intellectual Biography 29

Early Life ,Education, and Works 30

Early Career and Studies 35

Northampton Pastorate 37

The Great Awakening 41

Life and Works at Stockbridge 45

THE SOUL

Two: Young Man Edwards: Religious Conversion and Theologia Gloriae 51

Constructing the Self: Edwards's Conversion Moment 53

Conversion as an Existential Religious Experience 58

Edwards's Experience of Conversion 60

The Morphology of Edwards's Conversion 66

Conversion and the Development of Edwards's Theological and Philosophical Thought 74

SPACE

Three: Theology in the Age of Scientific Reasoning: Edwards and the Reenchantment of the World 85

The Scientific Revolution's Disenchantment of the World 92

Atomic Doctrine 96

The Mechanization of Nature and the World 101

The Laws of Nature 103

God and the World 108

The Nature of the Created Order 113

The Poverty of the Mechanistic Interpretation 116

Edwards and the Reenchantment of the World 118

Disenchantment of the World, Eighteenth-Century Imagination, and the Protestant Evangelical Awakening 120

TIME

Four: The Ideological Origins of Edwards's Philosophy of History 131

The Disenchantment of the World and the Reenchantment of the Soul 133

Constructing the Order of Time 138

Homogeneous Time, Empty Time, and "Redeeming the Time" 143

History, Ideology, and Redemption 150

Edwards's Poetics of History 155

Ecclesiastical History as a Mode of Christian Historical Thought 163

The Protestant and Puritan Ideology of History 168

Edwards as an Ecclesiastical Historian 174

Five: God's Great Design in History: The Formation of Edwards's Redemptive Mode of Historical Thought 182

The Quest for God's Absolute Sovereignty in the Order of Time 187

The Formation of the Redemptive Mode of Historical Thought: The Early Miscellanies 191

The Work of Redemption and the Work of Conversion 197

God's Great Design in History 200

Conversion, Revival, and Redemption—The "Little Revival," 1734-735 205

The Work of Redemption and God's Self-Glorification 210

The Work of Redemption as the "Great End and Drift of all Gods Works" 213

Six: Edwards's Philosophy of History: The History of the Work of Redemption 221

Sacred History and Historia Humana 226

The History of the Work of Redemption 234

The Redemptive Mode of Historical Thought 239

Revival as the Manifestation of Divine Agency in the Order of History 247

The Theological and Teleological Structure Inherent in the Redemptive Process 255

Seven: "Chariots of Salvation": The Apocalypse and Eschatology of the Great Awakening 272

Rhetoric and History in the Great Awakening 276

The Eschatology of Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God 280

"The Glory of the Approaching Happy State of the Church": The Distinguishing Marks 289

The "Glorious Work of God" which "Shall Renew the World of Mankind": Some Thoughts Concerning the Revival 294

ETHICS

Eight: Edwards and the Enlightenment Debate on Moral Philosophy 307

The Enlightenment Disenchantment of the World of Ethics and Morals 312

Edwards and the British School of Moral Sense 319

Epilogue: Edwards and American Protestant Tradition 325

Index 337

What People are Saying About This

Mark Valeri

This book places important themes from the theology of Jonathan Edwards in the context of the Enlightenment. An intellectual history, it makes a bold case that Edwards was not primarily a provincial social figure nor an American literary figure, but a European philosophical figure whose context was the great international movement of modern thought.
— Mark Valeri, Union Theological Seminary, Virginia

Stein

What most impresses me about this erudite and well-researched book is the deep contextualization of Edwards's philosophy of history within the intellectual world of the Enlightenment. This is a very learned piece of scholarship, and several features set this study apart from other major accounts of Edwards.
— Stephen J. Stein, Chancellor's Professor, Indiana University

Kling

A signal contribution in the ongoing rehabilitation of colonial America's greatest mind.
— David W. Kling, "American Historical Review"

From the Publisher

"This book places important themes from the theology of Jonathan Edwards in the context of the Enlightenment. An intellectual history, it makes a bold case that Edwards was not primarily a provincial social figure nor an American literary figure, but a European philosophical figure whose context was the great international movement of modern thought."—Mark Valeri, Union Theological Seminary, Virginia

"What most impresses me about this erudite and well-researched book is the deep contextualization of Edwards's philosophy of history within the intellectual world of the Enlightenment. This is a very learned piece of scholarship, and several features set this study apart from other major accounts of Edwards."—Stephen J. Stein, Chancellor's Professor, Indiana University

"A signal contribution in the ongoing rehabilitation of colonial America's greatest mind."—David W. Kling, American Historical Review

Editorial Reviews

"Perhaps the most remarkable contributor to [the] recent explosion of interest in Edwards is the Israeli historian Avihu Zakai."—-Gerald McDermott, The Weekly Standard

From the Publisher

Perhaps the most remarkable contributor to [the] recent explosion of interest in Edwards is the Israeli historian Avihu Zakai.

The Weekly Standard - Gerald McDermott

Perhaps the most remarkable contributor to [the] recent explosion of interest in Edwards is the Israeli historian Avihu Zakai.
— Gerald McDermott

The Weekly Standard