Jonathan Edwards: Theologian of the Heart

The vast corpus of Jonathan Edwards includes sermons, treatises, dissertations, Miscellanies, Diary and Resolves, and his Personal Narrative. Underlying all his writing is his Calvinist God whose anger (justice) matched his love (glory). Equally important is the human condition, its darkness and its regenerative light, sin and salvation. For these reasons Simonson aptly calls Edwards a theologian of the heart, one not satisfied with only theological abstractions but also a necessary, heartfelt sense of them. Penetrating to these levels where literary artists do their work, he shares company with the likes of Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Emily Dickinson and William Faulkner. Since the resurgence of interest starting in the 1950s, Edwards is now recognized as America’s foremost religious thinker. Simonson emphasizes Edwards’ language--its imagery, metaphors, grand sweeps of cadences, along with Edwards’ intensity of both thought and feeling. Throughout, Simonson’s book provides an incisive and carefully documented introduction to Edwards’ magisterial range of mind and style.

Harold P. Simonson is Professor Emeritus of English, University of Washington, and is the author of The Closed Frontier: Studies in American Literary Tragedy; Prairies Within: The Tragic Trilogy of Ole Rolvaag; and Radical Discontinuities: American Romanticism and Christian Consciousness. He holds a PhD from Northwestern University and a BPhil in Divinity from the University of St. Andrews, Scotland.