Evangelical Thought: John Wesley and Jonathan Edwards

1987 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-192
Author(s):  
Frederick Dreyer
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Proper Time ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Jonathan Edwards ◽  
Historical Event ◽  
John Wesley ◽  
John Maynard Keynes ◽  
Intellectual Influence ◽  
The Times ◽  
Do So

Historians suppose that men are ultimately to be understood in terms of their own time. If the age in which people live makes no difference to the way we perceive them, then historical explanation becomes superfluous. The evangelical revival, however, is often regarded as a event that occurs out of its proper time. It is the step-child of eighteenth century studies. For Peter Gay it belongs not to the eighteenth century but to the twelfth. Leslie Stephen denied all affinity between the evangelicals and their enlightened contemporaries: “There could scarcely be said to exist even the relation of contradiction.” To be sure, an affinity with the age was not a claim that the evangelicals insisted upon. No one would wish to number Jonathan Edwards and John Wesley among the philosophes. The merit claimed by the evangelicals was the merit not of thinkers but of believers. Yet, like it or not, the revival is still one of the facts of eighteenth century history. It cannot be wished away or passed off onto some other period. It started in the eighteenth century and it prospered in the eighteenth century. In any census of the times, it is a fair presumption that the saints will out-number the sceptics. Moreover, the revival is something that has to be analyzed in contemporary terms. What John Maynard Keynes once said of ranting politicians in the twentieth century works for ranting preachers in the eighteenth: “Mad men in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.” Faith, like thought, is an historical event that occurs in a specific historical context and ultimately it must be explained in terms of that context. It may be our deepest wish to think like St. Paul, but it is hard to do so in ways that St. Paul would have understood. Few men can insulate themselves against the intellectual influence of their time. In the case of John Wesley and Jonathan Edwards, the recognition of that influence is critical for the interpretation of their thought.

The potential which may lie in discarded, undeveloped or overlooked ideas

2015 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 328-344
Author(s):  
Tony Proctor
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Entrepreneurial Activity ◽  
Market Place ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Goods And Services ◽  
Temporary Solution ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
The Times ◽  
Escapement Mechanism

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine a particular aspect of the history of the watchmaking industry during the eighteenth century. Attention is drawn to overlooked ideas and inventions and how years later they may become profitable business opportunities for entrepreneurs. The approach adopted allows examination of the development and commercialisation of a watch escapement mechanism, the rack lever, within the context of the development of other escapements. The rack lever was an escapement which was initially overlooked in the early part of the eighteenth century but which many decades later was reinvented and became a commercial success in the early nineteenth century. Design/methodology/approach Reference is made to the literature on entrepreneurship and acquisition of knowledge in the eighteenth century and the nature of watchmaking in the same epoch. The literature on entrepreneurship produces a framework for examining the actions that were taken to bring the rack lever escapement to market. The historical context within which the innovations occurred was examined to establish the events and circumstances surrounding the times when commercialisation took place. An account of the commercialisation of the rack lever escapement is presented. Findings The entrepreneurial opportunity examined in this article relates to a need to satisfy consumers with a reasonably accurate and reliable portable time piece. The historical context within which commercialisation took place was found to be significant. Attention to the escapement mechanism in watches was identified as the key to improving performance, and the focus of the paper is placed upon how this opportunity was satisfied through the means provided by the rack lever escapement. Alertness to the potential of already discovered but undeveloped ideas appears to be an additional feature behind the entrepreneurial activity. The paper shows that innovation can be a discontinuous process. It also indicates the relevance of modern-day knowledge brokers in facilitating the process of new product innovation. Originality/value Entrepreneurship and innovation along with research and development are all intrinsically linked in producing goods and services to satisfy customer wants and needs. Together, they represent a cornerstone which helps to establish a business and maintain its continued survival. Importantly, the development of new products is a key contributor to this end and innovation and entrepreneurship play their part in bringing this about. The paper suggests that new ideas can occur which may be deemed unsuitable for commercialisation at one period in time but which can at a future time be considered a temporary solution to meet an unfulfilled need in the market place. It argues for the case for reserving judgement on new ideas that are not commercialised and ensuring that knowledge of them is kept for posterity and made accessible to future generations.

Inward Baptism

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Baird Tipson
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Holy Spirit ◽  
Jonathan Edwards ◽  
John Wesley ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Evangelical Christian ◽  
New Birth ◽  
The Holy Spirit ◽  
George Whitefield

Inward Baptism describes theological developments leading up to the great evangelical revivals in the mid-eighteenth century. It argues that Martin Luther’s insistence that a participant’s faith was essential to a sacrament’s efficacy would inevitably lead to the insistence on an immediate, perceptible communication from the Holy Spirit, which evangelicals continue to call the “new birth.” A description of “conversion” through the sacrament of penance in late-medieval Western Christianity leads to an exploration of Luther’s critique of that system, to the willingness of Reformed theologians to follow Luther’s logic, to an emphasis on “inward” rather than “outward” baptism, to William Perkins’s development of a conscience religion, to late-seventeenth-century efforts to understand religion chiefly as morality, and finally to the theological rationale for the new birth from George Whitefield, John Wesley, and Jonathan Edwards. If the average Christian around the year 1500 encountered God primarily through sacraments presided over by priests, an evangelical Christian around 1750 received God directly into his or her heart without the need for clerical mediation, and he or she would be conscious of God’s presence there.

Evangelical Devotion and the Transition to Modernity

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Bruce Hindmarsh
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Special Reference ◽  
Small Groups ◽  
Jonathan Edwards ◽  
John Wesley ◽  
Social Forms ◽  
George Whitefield ◽  
Group Experience

The “Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns” was critical to the emergence of modernity as an idea in the eighteenth century, and evangelicalism appeared in the midst of this cultural debate over the authority of things past and things new. This chapter explores the question of the extent to which evangelicalism was “modern,” with special reference to John Wesley, George Whitefield, and Jonathan Edwards. Both participants and critics understood there to be something new about the evangelical experience in its intensity and immediacy, and its public presence. The modernity of evangelical devotion was evident above all, however, in its dynamic social forms, uniting small group experience within wider, transnational networks. It had precedents in radical congregationalism, Pietist small groups, and the transdenominational fellowship of Moravians, but these were merged in a new evangelical “connexionalism” under the modern conditions that produced the democratic public sphere. In this respect it shared many of the characteristics of a modern social movement.

scholarly journals The Life of The Life of David Brainerd: Agency, Evangelicalism, and Book History

2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Snead
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Book History ◽  
First Century ◽  
Jonathan Edwards ◽  
John Wesley ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Material Texts ◽  
Editorial Practices

This article describes the editorial practices that Jonathan Edwards and John Wesley brought to their respective editions of The Life of David Brainerd, explains how those practices were informed by their opposing theological stances towards salvation, and traces the circulation and reception of each edition back to those theological stances. Finally, the article invokes classic models of the methodology of book history and recent work on the circulation of nineteenth-century evangelical publications, arguing that an understanding of the kind of theological editing eighteenth-century figures like Edwards and Wesley took can better help us to articulate nineteenth- and twentieth- (and twenty-first) century attitudes and assumptions about agency and material texts.

Domestic Violence and the Islamic Tradition

2015 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 130-133
Author(s):  
Hamid Mavani
Keyword(s):  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Minority Rights ◽  
Gender Issues ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Islamic Tradition ◽  
Legal Provisions ◽  
Novel Reading ◽  
Analytic Skills ◽  
Do So

The polyvalent Qur’anic text lends itself to multiple interpretations, dependingupon one’s presuppositions and premises. In fact, Q. 3:7 distinguishesbetween muḥkam (explicit, categorical) and mutashābih (metaphorical, allegorical,symbolic) verses. As such, this device provides a way for reinterpretingverses that outwardly appear to be problematic – be it in the area ofgender equality, minority rights, religious freedom, or war. However, manyof the verses dealing with legal provisions in such areas as devotional matters,marriage, divorce, child custody, inheritance and bequest, and specific punishmentsappear to be unequivocal, categorical, and explicit. As such, scholarshave devised certain hermeneutical strategies to situate and contextualizethese verses in a particular socio-historical context, as well as to emphasizethat they were in conversation with the society to which the Qur’an was revealedand thereby underlining the “performative” (p.15) nature of the relationshipbetween the Qur’an and the society.No verse is more problematic, in the sense that it offends contemporarysensibilities and is quite difficult to reconcile with an egalitarian worldviewwhen dealing with gender issues, than Q. 4:34, which allows the husband todiscipline his wife if he deems her guilty of nushūz (e.g., disobedience, intransigence,sexual lewdness, aloofness, dislike or hatred of himself). AyeshaChaudhry undertakes a study of this challenging verse by engaging the corpusof literature in Arabic from the classical period to the seventeenth century; shealso includes Urdu and English sources for the post-colonial period.She starts off by relating her personal journey from a state of discomfortand puzzlement when she first came across this verse in middle school to adefensive posture in trying to convince herself by invoking the Prophet’scompassion toward his wives and in cherishing the idea that the Qur’an gavemore rights to women than either the Hebrew Bible or the New Testament.She began a more rigorous and nuanced study of this verse after equippingherself with the necessary academic tools and analytic skills during her universitystudies. Frustrated with the shallow responses and the scholars’ circumspectionas regards any creative and novel reading of the verse for fearof losing their status in the community, she decided to do so herself with thehope of discovering views that would promote an egalitarian reading ...

The Nonconformist Inheritance

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isabel Rivers
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Church Of England ◽  
John Bunyan ◽  
John Wesley ◽  
Religious Attitudes ◽  
Pilgrim's Progress ◽  
The Many ◽  
John Owen

This chapter analyses the editions, abridgements, and recommendations of texts by seventeenth-century nonconformists that were made by eighteenth-century dissenters, Methodists, and Church of England evangelicals. The nonconformist writers they chose include Joseph Alleine, Richard Baxter, John Flavel, John Owen, and John Bunyan. The editors and recommenders include Philip Doddridge, John Wesley, Edward Williams, Benjamin Fawcett, George Burder, John Newton, William Mason, and Thomas Scott. Detailed accounts are provided of the large number of Baxter’s works that were edited, notably A Call to the Unconverted and The Saints Everlasting Rest, and a case study is devoted to the many annotated editions of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress and the ways in which they were used. The editors took into account length, intelligibility, religious attitudes, and cost, and sometimes criticized their rivals’ versions on theological grounds.

Bringing Rain and Protection

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barend J. ter Haar
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Northern China ◽  
Supreme Deity ◽  
Do So

Deities were thought to help and protect people, heal them from illnesses, and sometimes also to punish them. And yet, a worshipper was not free to decide what to ask for, but had to work within a collectively created and transmitted paradigm of expectations of the deity. In Northern China, Lord Guan was often requested to provide rain, and everywhere he was asked to assist in the fight against demons and other types of outsiders (barbarians, rebels, or otherwise), or even appeared of his own accord to do so. From the early seventeenth century onwards, Guan Yu was seen as the incarnation of a dragon executed at the command of the Jade Emperor for bringing rain out of compassion to a local community sentenced to extinction by the supreme deity. Finally, his loyal image inspired his rise as a God of Wealth in the course of the eighteenth century.

scholarly journals Representing, commemorating, and memorizing terrorist attacks: Discussing the US and French experiences

2021 ◽  
pp. 263300242110244
Author(s):  
Alice M. Greenwald ◽  
Clifford Chanin ◽  
Henry Rousso ◽  
Michel Wieviorka ◽  
Mohamed-Ali Adraoui
Keyword(s):  
Historical Context ◽  
The United States ◽  
Terrorist Attacks ◽  
The Political ◽  
Modes Of Operation ◽  
The Us ◽  
Places Of Memory ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Do So

How do societies and states represent the historical, moral, and political weight of the terrorist attacks they have had to face? Having suffered in recent years from numerous terrorist attacks on their soil originating from jihadist movements, and often led by actors who were also their own citizens, France and the United States have set up—or seek to do so—places of memory whose functions, conditions of creation, modes of operation, and nature of the messages sent may vary. Three of the main protagonists and initiators of two museum-memorial projects linked to terrorist attacks have agreed to deliver their visions of the role and of the political, social, and historical context in which these projects have emerged. Allowing to observe similarities and differences between the American and French approach, this interview sheds light on the place of memory and feeling in societies struck by tragic events and seeking to cure their ills through memory and commemoration.

Collective Burial in Late Prehistoric Virginia: Excavation and Analysis of the Rapidan Mound

2003 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary H. Dunham ◽  
Debra L. Gold ◽  
Jeffrey L. Hantman
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
North America ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Late Prehistoric ◽  
Mortuary Ritual ◽  
New Information ◽  
Virginia Piedmont ◽  
Burial Mounds ◽  
Secondary Burial ◽  
Lines Of Evidence

Recent excavation and analysis of the remaining section of the endangered Rapidan Mound site (44OR1) in the central Virginia Piedmont provide new insights into a unique complex of burial mounds in the Virginia interior. Known since Thomas Jefferson's eighteenth-century description, the mounds are both earth and stone and accretional earthen mounds. Thirteen are recorded, all dating to the late prehistoric and early contact era (ca. A.D. 900-1700). Typically containing few artifacts, the accretional mounds are unusual in North America in the numbers of individuals interred, more than one thousand in at least two cases, and in the nature of the secondary, collective burial ritual that built up the mounds over centuries. Following a review of the characteristics of the mound complex, we focus on the Rapidan Mound and the analysis of the collective, secondary burial features in the mound. Precise provenience information and bioarchaeological analyses of two large and intact collective burial features provide new information on health and diet, and several lines of evidence for demographic reconstruction. Finally, we discuss the mortuary ritual conducted at the mounds within the cultural and historical context of the region.

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