Jonathan Edwards: A Life, Paperback

Recommended by Jeffrey Jue of Westminster Theological Seminary. See all of Dr. Jue's recommendations.

Recommended by Samuel Logan of Westminster Theological Seminary. See all of Dr. Logan's recommendations.

Publisher's Description

Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) is a towering figure in American history. A controversial theologian and the author of the famous sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, he ignited the momentous Great Awakening of the eighteenth century.

In this definitive and long-awaited biography, Jonathan Edwards emerges as both a great American and a brilliant Christian. George Marsden evokes the world of colonial New England in which Edwards was reared—a frontier civilization at the center of a conflict between Native Americans, French Catholics, and English Protestants. Drawing on newly available sources, Marsden demonstrates how these cultural and religious battles shaped Edwards’s life and thought. Marsden reveals Edwards as a complex thinker and human being who struggled to reconcile his Puritan heritage with the secular, modern world emerging out of the Enlightenment. In this, Edwards’s life anticipated the deep contradictions of our American culture.

Meticulously researched and beautifully composed, this biography offers a compelling portrait of an eminent American.

Winner of the Philip Schaff Prize sponsored by the American Society of Church History. A finalist for the 2003 National Book Critics Circle Award in the biography category. Winner of the 2001-2003 Annibel Jenkins Biography Prize sponsored by the Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies