New Titles Tuesday, September 19. The Works of Jonathan Edwards edition

Alloway Library recently received a generous donation of several volumes of  the print version of  The works of Jonathan Edwards   which complete our holdings of the entire 26 volume series. Currently, all one but volume is available in print.

Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758)—pastor, revivalist, Christian philosopher, missionary, and college president—is widely regarded as North America’s greatest theologian. He is the subject of intense scholarly interest because of his significance as an historical figure and the profound legacy he left on America’s religious and intellectual landscapes. His writings are being consulted at a burgeoning rate by religious leaders, pastors, and churches worldwide because of the fervency of Edwards’s message and the acumen with which he appraised religious experience. Yet for centuries, scholars and readers of Edwards have had to rely on inaccurate and partial versions of his writings. The Works of Jonathan Edwards, the critical edition of Edwards’s writings, was created at Yale University in 1953 to overcome these obstacles. (DHLab/Yale)

 A history of the work of redemption /Jonathan Edwards ; transcribed and edited by John F. Wilson. The scope A History of the Work of Redemption, is vast. From a  extensive knowledge of Scripture,  Edwards sets out to survey the whole of the redemptive work of God in history, from the Fall of man to the consummation of all things. A thrilling conclusion emerges: Everything in human history from start to finish is subservient to Christ’s work of redemption.

 Catalogues of books /Jonathan Edwards ; edited by Peter J. Thuesen. This final volume in The Works of Jonathan Edwards publishes  Edwards’ “Catalogue,” a notebook he kept of books of interest, especially titles he hoped to acquire, and entries from his “Account Book,” a ledger in which he noted books loaned to family, parishioners, and fellow clergy. These two records, along with several shorter documents presented in the volume, illuminate Edwards’ own mental universe while also providing a remarkable window into the wider intellectual and print cultures of the eighteenth-century British Atlantic. An extensive critical introduction places Edwards’ book lists in the contexts that shaped his reading agenda, and the result is the most comprehensive treatment yet of his reading and of the fascinating peculiarities of his time and place.

 Ethical writings /Jonathan Edwards ; edited by Paul Ramsey. This volume contains two major works of Jonathan Edwards: an unpublished text of a series of sermons he preached in 1738, known as Charity and Its Fruits, and his Two Dissertations: I. Concerning the End for Which God Created the World and II. On the Nature of True Virtue, published posthumously in 1765. Together these writings set out the principles of Edwards’ ethical reflections.

 Letters and personal writings /Jonathan Edwards ; edited by George S. Claghorn. An unparalleled compendium of 235 letters–including 116 never before published or never reprinted since Edwards’s death–and four autobiographical texts–Edwards’ meditation “On Sarah Pierpont,” his future wife, as well as “Diary,” “Resolutions,” and “Personal Narrative.” These  writings reveal the private man behind the treatises and sermons. They trace his relations with parents, siblings, college classmates, friends, and family, as well as with political, religious, and educational leaders of his day. New documents include Edwards’ only known statement on slavery and letters on the Indian mission at Stockbridge, Massachusetts, that display Edwards’ interest in native Americans and his efforts on their behalf. These writings show the human face of Edwards as he applied theological and philosophical insights to the events of his daily life. They provide an unprecedented resource for understanding the man, his times, and his personal connections.

 Notes on Scripture /Jonathan Edwards ; edited by Stephen J. Stein.  This is the private biblical notebook that Edwards compiled over a period of nearly thirty-five years. Notes on Scripture confirms the centrality of the Bible in his thought and provides more balance to earlier depictions of his writings that emphasized the scientific and philosophical while overlooking the biblical dimension. In this critical edition the entries appear in the order in which Edwards wrote them, beginning in 1724, and ending with his last entry, Number 507 on the Book of Solomon’s Song, written two years before his death. This volume provides direct access to one of America’s most influential religious thinkers. Edwards’ entries range across the entire scriptural canon and reveal his creativity in the interpretation of particular biblical texts and his fascination with typology. The notebook also documents Edwards’ engagement with the intellectual currents of his day, in particular his response to the challenge associated with the Enlightenment critique of biblical revelation.

 Original sin /edited by Clyde A. Holbrook.  Edwards  championed the  doctrine of original sin, he saw himself as not only defending a particular dogma but also combating an increasingly dominant drift of opinion which had already engulfed much of Europe and was encroaching dangerously upon America.  This book focuses on three major issues: the fact and nature of original sin, its cause and transmission, and God’s responsibility for man’s sinfulness.

Scientific and philosophical writings /Jonathan Edwards ; edited by Wallace E. Anderson. This volume contains two major notebooks of  Edwards―”Natural Philosophy” and “The Mind”―as well as shorter manuscript writings connected with his scientific interests and philosophical development. Several of the shorter papers have not previously been published, notably Edwards’ letter on the “flying” spider, an essay on light rays, and a brief but important set of philosophical notes written near the end of his life.

 Sermons and discourses, 1720-1723 /Jonathan Edwards ; edited by Wilson H. Kimnach. This volume presents the complete texts of twenty-three sermons preached by Edwards during the first years of his career. The sermons document one of the least explored periods of this eminent theologian’s life and thought.

 Sermons and discourses, 1743-1758 /Jonathan Edwards ; edited by Wilson H. Kimnach. This wide-ranging volume covers the final fifteen of the thirty-three years that  Edwards preached and includes some of his greatest sermons—including his Farewell Sermons. The period is defined by Edwards’ inventive strategies to improvise during the delivery of his sermons; he devised a double-columned, outlined format for his sermon manuscripts and continued to use it for the rest of his life. Sermons from this period also include those preached to Mahican and Mohawk Indians at the mission post of Stockbridge. Edwards’ writings here map the complex terrain of his spiritual, intellectual, and professional life after the Great Awakening. He deals with topics ranging from the spiritual role of youth in the community to the struggles over communion in his Northampton congregation to the war with the French and their Indian allies.

 The “blank Bible” /Jonathan Edwards ; edited by Stephen J. Stein. In 1730,  Edwards acquired a book-like, leather-bound manuscript containing an interleaved printed edition of the King James Version of the Bible. Over the next three decades, Edwards proceeded to write in the manuscript more than five thousand notes and entries relating to biblical texts.  This volume, perhaps the most unusual in Edwards’ oeuvre, brings to light more clearly than ever before the full scope of his creative investment in biblical studies.

The “miscellanies”: entry nos. 501-832 /Jonathan Edwards ; edited by Ava Chamberlain. Throughout his ministerial career, Edwards filled a series of notebooks with writings on a wide variety of theological topics, numbering his entries―some 1,400 of them―in sequence. This book, the second of four volumes devoted to these “Miscellanies,” contains entries written during the decade of the 1730s  January 1740, and the eve of the Great Awakening. They record the development of Edwards’ thought as he first emerged as a public spokesperson for orthodox Calvinism, assumed a leadership role in colonial New England church politics, and acquired an international reputation as an evangelist for his role in the revivals in the Connecticut River Valley of 1734 and 1735.

 The “miscellanies”: entry nos. a-z, aa-zz, 1-500 /Jonathan Edwards ; edited by Thomas A. Schafer. This book begins the publication of Jonathan Edwards’ personal theological notebooks, called collectively the “Miscellanies.” The entries  span the early years of Edwards’ ministry (1722-31) and range widely in subject matter. They record Edwards’ initial thoughts on some of his most characteristic ideas, for example, original sin, free will, the Trinity, and God’s end in creation. Many entries relate to doctrinal and polemical subjects not included in the corpus of Edwards’ published writings. The volume also contains Edwards’ alphabetical index to the entire “Miscellanies”; this “Table” is a theological document in its own right and reveals the interrelationship among the various components of Edwards’ theological system.

 The life of David Brainerd /Jonathan Edwards ; edited by Norman Pettit. From 1743 to 1747 Brainerd had been a missionary to the American Indians. Riding alone, thousands of miles on horseback, he kept a journal of daily events that he continued until the week before he died, at the age of twenty-nine, in Edwards’ house. The Life of Brainerd became a spiritual classic in its own time. As the first popular biography to be published in America, it went through numerous editions. But Edwards made drastic alterations in the original text. He shaped the narrative events to fit his own needs, presenting Brainerd as an example of a man who by example and deed opposed the rationalist, Arminian stance. Because the Yale edition is the first to print that portion of Brainerd’s manuscript that survives, set in parallel columns with Edwards’ text, these alterations can readily be discerned. This edition , the first complete, fully annotated edition ever to be compiled, includes related correspondence as well as an endpaper map of Brainerd’s travels. The editor’s introduction describes the place of Brainerd’s diary in Edwards’ life and thought, and provides ample historical background.

 Typological writings /Jonathan Edwards. This volume presents a comprehensive, readable, and annotated text of the key typological notebooks of  Edwards: “Images of Divine Things,” “Types Notebook,” and Miscellany 1069, “Types of the Messiah.” These three works illustrate the way the eminent eighteenth-century theologian developed his theory of typological exegesis, a theory that helped him to understand the relationship between the Old and New Testaments and to comprehend the correspondence between the natural and the spiritual worlds. These documents illuminate Edwards’ epistemology and show clearly his involvement in contemporary philosophical and exegetical trends. Introductions to the documents place Edwards’ typology within the context of his period, describe his typological practices, clarify some of the complex problems posed by his ambiguous use of the types throughout his career, and discuss his philosophical defenses of typologizing against the claims of materialists, deists, and rationalists.