We see that javascript is disabled or not supported by your browser - javascript is needed for important actions on the site. Read more

What's New - Home - Login

Member $avings: $81,751,696.55 | Books Available: 730,340 | Members Online: 114

Swap Used Books - Buy New Books at Great Prices!

How To Swap Books Sign Up Search submenu

PBS Market (New Books)

Gift Buying Guide

Book Browser Advanced Search Books Posted Today Member Book Reviews Award Winning Books NYT Best Sellers Amazon Best Sellers Most Traveled Copies Club Wish List

Discussion Forums Book Lists

Club Lists My Book Lists My Watched Lists Create a List

Blog Donations

School Donation Program In Memory of... Military Donation Program Friends of PBS

Box-O-Books Maps The Eclectic Pen Fun Stuff

20 Questions Sudoku Bookmark Creator

Top 100

Requests Posts Swappers Referrers Reviewers

Pulse of PBS Spread The Word

Invite Friends Bookmarks Facebook Page Facebook App More Ways...

Photo Gallery Recipes Club Tag Cloud Member Testimonials

Help Center submenu

How To Swap Books Browse Help Docs Ask the Librarian PBS Member Icons Live Help

Kiosk

PBS Market (New Books) Go Shopping Buy Credits Buy PBS Money Upgrade Membership Gift Certificates Transfer Credits

Need Help?

Search - Edwards on the Will: A Century of American Theological Debate

Edwards on the Will A Century of American Theological Debate
Author: Allen C. Guelzo

Jonathan Edwards towered over his contemporaries-a man over six feet tall and a figure of theological stature-but the reasons for his power have been a matter of dispute. Edwards on the Will offers a persuasive explanation. In 1753, after seven years of personal trials, which included dismissal from his Northampton church, Edwards submitted ... more »a treatise, Freedom of the Will, to Boston publishers. Its impact on Puritan society was profound. He had refused to be trapped either by a new Arminian scheme that seemed to make God impotent or by a Hobbesian natural determinism that made morality an illusion. He both reasserted the primacy of God's will and sought to reconcile freedom with necessity. In the process he shifted the focus from the community of duty to the freedom of the individual. Edwards died of smallpox in 1758 soon after becoming president of Princeton; as one obituary said, he was "a most rational . . . and exemplary Christian." Thereafter, for a century or more, all discussion of free will and on the church as an enclave of the pure in an impure society had to begin with Edwards. His disciples, the "New Divinity" men-principally Samuel Hopkins of Great Barrington and Joseph Bellamy of Bethlehem, Connecticut-set out to defend his thought. Ezra Stiles, president of Yale, tried to keep his influence off the Yale Corporation, but Edwards's ideas spread beyond New Haven and sparked the religious revivals of the next decades. In the end, old Calvinism returned to Yale in the form of Nathaniel William Taylor, the Boston Unitarians captures Harvard, and Edwards's troublesome ghost was laid to rest. The debate on human freedom versus necessity continued, but theologians no longer controlled it. In Edwards on the Will, Guelzo presents with clarity and force the story of these fascinating maneuverings for the soul of New England and of the emerging nation. "Allen Guelzo writes with grace, charm, and even wit about a weighty subject that others have found forbidding. His scholarship is broad and his expositions lucid."-Daniel Walker Howe, University of California at Los Angeles "Edwards on the Will is an important contribution to the study of Jonathan Edwards's thought. Where earlier scholars have been largely preoccupied with Edwards's 'modernity' or with measuring the social effect of Edwards in the context of the American Revolution, Allen Guelzo demonstrates his intellectual 'legacy' not only to the generation of the Revolution but also beyond. This work will stand as the definitive treatment of the legacy of Edwards's classic treatise on Freedom of the Will."-Harry Stout, Yale University "This book elevates the study of eighteenth-century New England theology to a new level of sophistication and insight. With a precise, fresh, and lively literary style, Guelzo makes old controversies come alive for a twentieth-century reader. This is intellectual history at its best-learned, animated, and compelling. It is one of the finest studies of theology in America ever written."-E. Brooks Holifield, Emory University "By tracing the development of one central point of Edwards's doctrine, Guelzo allows us to see the unfolding of the entire history of the Edwardsean school, and, by implication, of American theology, in the period between 1750-1830. This book is a major work of scholarship-thorough, enlightening, intellectually uncompromising."-Philip F. Gura, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

ISBN-13: 9780819551931
ISBN-10: 0819551937
Publication Date: 4/1/1989
Pages: 364
Edition: 1st
Rating:

0 stars, based on 0 rating

Publisher: Wesleyan
Book Type: Hardcover
Members Wishing: 0
Reviews: Amazon | Write a Review

Genres:

History >> Americas >> United States >> General
Religion & Spirituality >> General
Christian Books & Bibles >> Church History >> General
Christian Books & Bibles >> Protestantism >> Calvinist
Christian Books & Bibles >> Theology >> General
Christian Books & Bibles >> Bible Study & Reference >> Theology >> General

Back to the Top ↑

Search - Edwards on the Will: A Century of American Theological Debate

Loading...