Jonathan Edwards and the Protestant Scholastics

2018 ◽  
pp. 28-68
Author(s):  
Adriaan C. Neele
Keyword(s):  
Jonathan Edwards ◽  
Philosophical Thought ◽  
New Divinity ◽  
Continuity And Discontinuity

Edwards’s theological and philosophical reflections can be found in his treatises, miscellanies, sermons, forms of Scripture commentary, notebooks, and other writings. Given that he lived in the late orthodox period of the post-Reformation era, it is natural to raise the question to what degree there was continuity and discontinuity between his theological and philosophical thought and that of his predecessors. This is all the more important because some of Edwards’s doctrinal formulations found their way into New England’s “New Divinity.” The answer to this question, then, will be formulated, in part, against the background of Petrus van Mastricht (1630–1706), a representative of Protestant scholasticism, who wrote during high orthodoxy. It is hoped that this will also satisfy some in Edwards scholarship who ask who Mastricht is. He is an appropriate subject for comparison considering the praise the preacher of Northampton bestowed upon the German-Dutch theologian, philosopher, and Hebraist.

The New Divinity and the Origins of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions

2003 ◽  
Vol 72 (4) ◽  
pp. 791-819 ◽  
Author(s):  
David W. Kling
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Religious History ◽  
American Religious History ◽  
Jonathan Edwards ◽  
Foreign Missions ◽  
New Divinity

The theological influence of the New Divinity in the formation and character of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) is uncontested among scholars of American religious history and missions. Since the mid nineteenth century, both partisans of missions and nearly all scholarly observers have attributed the origins of the modern American Protestant missionary spirit to the writings of Jonathan Edwards and his self-appointed heirs, those Congregational ministers who came to be called New Divinity men. Edwards proposed a theology of cosmic redemption and supplied the exemplary missionary model in Life of Brainerd (1749), his most popular and most frequently reprinted work. Samuel Hopkins then furnished a theological rationale for missions by revising Edwards' aesthetic concept of “disinterested benevolence” into a practical one of self-denial for the greater glory of God's kingdom and the betterment of humankind.

‘The centre of Christianity—the doctrine of the cross’: Andrew Fuller as a Reformed Theologian

2019 ◽  
Vol 90 (3) ◽  
pp. 195-212
Author(s):  
Ian Hugh Clary
Keyword(s):  
Jonathan Edwards ◽  
Common View ◽  
New Divinity ◽  
The Cross

Studies of Andrew Fuller on the atonement typically focus on the question of whether or not he was influenced by the New Divinity of the followers of Jonathan Edwards in America. With the recent scholarly interest focusing on hypothetical universalism as a common view of the atonement amongst the Reformed Orthodox, evaluations of Reformed theologians like Fuller are appropriate. This article examines whether or not Fuller’s view of the atonement fits within the diverse views of the Reformed on this subject in light of growing understanding of the movement’s diversity. It concludes that though Fuller made some changes in his language between editions of The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation, his theology of the atonement is within the bounds of Reformed Orthodoxy on the atonement as expressed at the Synod of Dordt.

‘To Promote Religion and Learning and Piety’: The Failure of Queens College, Hampshire County, Massachusetts, Revisited

2020 ◽  
pp. 105-156
Author(s):  
Carl I. Hammer
Keyword(s):  
Jonathan Edwards ◽  
Regional Society ◽  
Educational Project ◽  
Lay Persons ◽  
New Divinity ◽  
Queens College ◽  
Ongoing Support ◽  
Ubiquitous Presence

This chapter details how, in the early 1760s, Hampshire magnates promoted a bold new educational project to found a college in Hampshire County. However, it was the clergy of northern Hampshire County who took the first formal steps to secure a college even though their initial efforts and ongoing support have been overshadowed in subsequent accounts by Israel Williams' ubiquitous presence. The ambition to establish a western counterpart to Harvard probably had been germinating for some time in the Williams family, and the leader in this new clerical enterprise was evidently the Rev. Jonathan Ashley of Deerfield, who certainly belonged to the Williams connection. These Hampshire clergy, particularly the leaders such as Ashley, were conservative, Stoddardian ‘Old Light’ Calvinists who, like Israel Williams and other lay persons, had supported the ouster of Jonathan Edwards from his Northampton pulpit in 1750 and who, in Kevin Sweeney's words, ‘found Harvard too liberal and Yale too susceptible to the New Divinity’. Queens College was conceived as the institutional expression of this distinctive and highly-conservative regional society within the Bay Province.

Reforming Church and Nation

2021 ◽  
pp. 54-85
Author(s):  
Larry Abbott Golemon
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
Theological Education ◽  
Jonathan Edwards ◽  
Critical Studies ◽  
Theological Schools ◽  
New Divinity ◽  
Narrative Interpretation ◽  
Princeton Theological Seminary

This chapter explores Protestant theological schools that educated pastors as reformers of church and the nation after religious disestablishment. This education built upon the liberal arts of the colleges, which taught the basic textual interpretation, rhetoric, and oratory. Rev. Timothy Dwight led the way in fashioning a new liberal arts in the college, which served as the foundation for advanced theological education. At Yale, he integrated the belles-lettres of European literature and rhetoric into the predominant American framework of Scottish Common Sense Realism. He also coupled these pedagogies with the voluntarist theology of Jonathan Edwards and the New Divinity, which bolstered Christian volunteerism and mission. With Dwight’s help, New England Congregationalists developed a graduate theological at Andover with a faculty in Scripture, theology, and homiletics (practical theology) who taught in the interdisciplinary, rhetorical framework of the liberal arts. Dr. Ebenezer Porter raised a generation of princes of the pulpit and college professors of rhetoric and oratory, and he wrote the first widely used manuals in elocution. Moses Stuart in Bible advanced German critical studies of Scripture for future pastoral work and for scholars in the field. The greatest alternative to Andover was the historic Calvinism of Princeton Theological Seminary, as interpreted through the empiricism of Scottish Common Sense. President Archibald Alexander, historian Samuel Miller, theologian Charles Hodge, and later homiletics professor James Wadell Alexander emphasized the text-critical and narrative interpretation of Scripture, and the emphasis on classic rhetoric and oratory in homiletics culminated the curriculum.

Before Jonathan Edwards

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adriaan C. Neele
Keyword(s):  
Political Transition ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Jonathan Edwards ◽  
The Past ◽  
Time Periods ◽  
Book Studies ◽  
Theological Thought ◽  
Continuity And Discontinuity ◽  
Comprehensive Study ◽  
The Way

This volume will present the first comprehensive study of Jonathan Edwards’s use of Reformed orthodox and Protestant scholastic primary sources in the context of the challenges of orthodoxy in his day. It will look at the way he appreciated and appropriated Reformed orthodoxy, among other topics. The book studies three time periods in Edwards’s life and work, the formative years of 1703–1725, the Northampton period of 1726–1750, and the final years of 1751–1758. A background of post-Reformation thought, but with particular attention to Mastricht, is offered for each period enabling readers to assess issues of continuity and discontinuity, development and change in Edwards. Since there has been limited research on Edwards’s use of his primary sources this study analyses the theological ideas of the past that found their way into Edwards’s own theological reflections. The book argues that the formation, reflection, and communication of theological thought must be historically informed. The teaching, preaching, and practice of theology must be rooted in the classical curricula, methods of preaching, and systema of theology. Inherited theology must be evaluated on its own terms, historically and theologically, so that meaningful answers for the present can be constructed. Tracing Edwards’s discerning engagement with past ideas exemplifies how theology unfolds in an era of intellectual, religious, social, and political transition.

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