scholarly journals Antinomian Controversy in the Seventeenth-Century New England and the First Great Awakening---Focused on Jonathan Edwards' Doctrine of Justification

2012 ◽  
Vol 34 (null) ◽  
pp. 36-66
Author(s):  
Hyun Jin, Cho
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
New England ◽  
Jonathan Edwards ◽  
Great Awakening ◽  
First Great Awakening ◽  
Antinomian Controversy

Origins of the Eighteenth-Century Evangelical Revival: England and New England Compared

1987 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 361-397 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J. Crawford
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
New England ◽  
Reform Movement ◽  
Western Society ◽  
Great Awakening ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
First Great Awakening ◽  
Revival Movements ◽  
British Colonies

Current interpretations of North America's first Great Awakening present a paradox. Historians commonly interpret the Great Awakening as part of the revival of evangelical piety that affected widely scattered elements of the Protestant world in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; however, studies of the Great Awakening have almost exclusively focused on the particular local circumstances in which the revival movements developed. Since historians of the Great Awakening have emphasized the peculiar circumstances of each of the regional manifestations, the Revival often appears in their writings to have been composed of several distinct movements separated in time, character, and cause and united only by superficial similarities. In contrast, to say that the local revival movements, despite their distinctive characteristics, were manifestations of a single larger movement is to imply that they shared the same general causes. If we suppose that the Great Awakening was part of the Evangelical Revival, our attempts to explain its origins should take into account those general causes.Two recent reconsiderations of the eighteenth-century revival movements in their broader context come to opposite conclusions. Jon Butler underscores the span of time over which the revivals occurred across the British colonies, their heterogeneous character from one region to the next, and the differences in cultural contexts in which they appeared. He concludes that “the prerevolutionary revivals should be understood primarily as regional events.” Although he sees the eighteenth-century American revivals as part of the long-term evangelical and pietistic reform movement in Western society, he denies any common, single, overwhelmingly important cause.

Building Bensalem at Massachusetts Bay: Francis Bacon and the Wisdom of Eden in Early Modern New England

2010 ◽  
Vol 83 (4) ◽  
pp. 577-606
Author(s):  
Zachary Mcleod Hutchins
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
New England ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Jonathan Edwards ◽  
Educational Policies ◽  
Francis Bacon ◽  
Massachusetts Bay ◽  
Religious Leaders

Francis Bacon's influence on seventeenth-century New England has long passed unnoticed, but his plan for the restoration of prelapsarian intellectual perfections guided John Winthrop's initial colonization efforts, shaped New England's educational policies, and had an impact on civic and religious leaders from John Cotton to Jonathan Edwards.

Jonathan Edwards, Enthusiast? Radical Revivalism and the Great Awakening in the Connecticut Valley

2005 ◽  
Vol 74 (4) ◽  
pp. 683-739 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas L. Winiarski
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Jonathan Edwards ◽  
Great Awakening ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Private House ◽  
Connecticut Valley ◽  
Colonial New England ◽  
The Church

It is difficult to imagine Jonathan Edwards countenancing the “Confus'd, but very Affecting Noise” that erupted in Suffield, Massachusetts, on July 6, 1741. Yet there he stood, his loud voice rising in prayer above the din that emanated from an assembly of more than two hundred boisterous men and women who had gathered to listen to his exhortations in the “two large Rooms” of a private house. On the previous day, the visiting Northampton, Massachusetts, revivalist had administered the sacrament to nearly five hundred Suffield communicants, ninety-seven of whom had joined the church that very day. It was an extraordinary event—quite possibly the largest oneday church admission ritual ever observed in colonial New England.

Jonathan Edwards and Scripture

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
New England ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
Jonathan Edwards ◽  
Biblical Exegesis ◽  
Western History ◽  
The Bible ◽  
New Research

Jonathan Edwards and Scripture provides a fresh look at the important, burgeoning field of Edwards and the Bible. For too long, Edwards scholars have published new research on Edwards without paying due attention to the work he took most seriously: biblical exegesis. Edwards is recognized as an innovative theologian who wielded tremendous influence on revivalism, evangelicalism, and New England theology, but what is often missed is how much time he devoted to studying and understanding the Bible. He kept voluminous notebooks on Christian Scripture and had plans for major treatises on the Bible before he died. Edwards scholars need to take stock of the place of the Bible in his thought to do justice to his theology and legacy. In fact, more and more experts are recognizing how important this aspect of his life is, and this book brings together the insights of leading Edwards scholars on this topic. This volume seeks to increase our understanding of Edwards’ engagement with Scripture by setting it in the context of seventeenth-century Protestant exegesis and eighteenth-century colonial interpretation. It provides case studies of Edwards’ exegesis in varying genres of the Bible and probes his use of Scripture to develop theology. It also sets his biblical interpretation in perspective by comparing it with that of other exegetes. This book advances our understanding of the nature and significance of Edwards’ work with Scripture and opens new lines of inquiry for students of early modern Western history.

The Puritan Notion of the Covenant in Jonathan Edwards' Doctrine of Faith

1965 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 328-341 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Conrad Cherry
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
New England ◽  
Jonathan Edwards ◽  
Careful Attention ◽  
And Function

The immense importance of the idea of the covenant for the Puritans of England and New England has been thrown into sharp relief by recent Puritan studies. Many problems regarding the origin and function of the Puritan covenant-idea still await the careful attention of the student of Puritanism, but this much is clear: the notion of the covenant was decidedly a pervasive idea in Puritan theology, and the idea was developed in a rather elaborate scheme by a host of Puritan theologians. As Leonard J. Trinterud has discerned, the idea of the covenant so permeated the thinking of the Puritans that in “the first decades of the seventeenth century … scarcely a single important figure was not a covenant theologian” among “the Presbyterian and Independent Puritans.”1

scholarly journals The Theological Polemics of Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield: Differences in Their Understanding of the "Great Awakening" of the 1740s in New England

2020 ◽  
pp. 162-171
Author(s):  
Irina Yur'evna Khruleva
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Religious Movement ◽  
Great Awakening ◽  
First Great Awakening ◽  
British America ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Ideological Space ◽  
New Ideas ◽  
George Whitefield ◽  
First Time

The first "Great Awakening" took hold of all British colonies in North America in the 1730s-1750s and developed contemporaneously with the Enlightenment movement, which had a significant impact on all aspects of life in the colonies, influencing religion, politics and ideology. The inhabitants of the colonies, professing different religious views, for the first time experienced a general spiritual upsurge. The colonies had never seen anything like the Great Awakening in scale and degree of influence on society. This was the first movement in American history that was truly intercolonial in nature, contributing to the formation of a single religious and partially ideological space in British America. The beginning of the Great Awakening in British America was instigated by both the colonial traditions of religious renewal (the so-called "revivals") and new ideas coming from Europe, hence this religious movement cannot be understood without considering its European roots nor not taking into account its transatlantic nature. The development of pietism in Holland and Germany and the unfolding of Methodism on the British Isles greatly influenced Protestant theology on both sides of the Atlantic. This article explores the differences in understanding the nature of the Great Awakening by its two leaders - J. Edwards and J. Whitefield.

The Colonies, 1607–1763

2019 ◽  
pp. 13-40
Author(s):  
Gillis J. Harp
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
New England ◽  
Common Good ◽  
Moral Agent ◽  
Social Hierarchy ◽  
Great Awakening ◽  
The Common ◽  
State Relations ◽  
Social Conservatism

The Puritans conserved older medieval views in their holy commonwealth conception of church–state relations and in their prioritizing of the common good. Governor John Winthrop articulated a thoroughly conservative defense of social hierarchy and of the state as a divinely ordained moral agent. Meanwhile, many of the towns they first founded in the seventeenth century were extraordinarily stable and homogenous communities. Economic development and the religious upheaval of the Great Awakening threatened some of this social conservatism. Consequently, some criticisms of the revival represented the first examples of a coherent colonial conservatism. These critics fretted about local clerical authority and the threat posed to social cohesion by individualism, or what some termed the danger of the “private Christian.” Despite some differences, colonial Southerners shared much of the stress on hierarchy and deference that characterized their New England cousins.

scholarly journals Jonathan Edwards' Emphasis on Religious Affections As Via Media To Extreme Responses of Revival

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 90-121
Author(s):  
Heruarto Salim
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Jonathan Edwards ◽  
Great Awakening ◽  
Reformed Theology ◽  
Middle Ground ◽  
Great Work ◽  
The One ◽  
Time Critical ◽  
Extreme Responses ◽  
Assurance Of Salvation

God?s great work to reform His churches on earth many times preceded by great revival sent by Him. Apparently many revival like the one in the Great Awakening of New England colony in the eighteenth century produced two opposing responses: either fanaticism or denial. The Great Awakening became a battle to answer a key question: whether the Great Awakening was a genuine work of the Spirit? What is a true revival, then according to Reformed theology? The figure most fit to answer this question is none other than Jonathan Edwards. In the midst of the controversy, Jonathan Edwards stood in the middle ground trying to justify that the Great Awakening was truly a work of God while at the same time critical towards the excesses. Edwards Treatise of Religious Affections will be related to his discussion on the centrality of affections in religion, the nature of experience and the assurance of salvation.

Jonathan Edwards' Conception of the Church

1955 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas A. Schafer
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Jonathan Edwards ◽  
Great Awakening ◽  
Conversion Experience ◽  
American Protestantism ◽  
The Church

As the pioneer of the New England Awakening and its literary defender, Edwards has long been associated with revivalism and sectarianism in American Protestantism. Several writers have noted that his Faithful Narrative (1737) of the 1734 Northampton revival, with its many translations and reprints, not only stimulated the Great Awakening of 1740 and later revivals but helped set the pattern of conversion experience in its more “enthusiastic” features. Attention has been called to his involvement in the “hell-fire” preaching of the revival, its emotional excesses, its distorted conception of childhood religion, and its pietistic individualism.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document