Search this study companion
Scripture focus
Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it?
Isaiah 43:19 KJV
At a glance
How did Jonathan Edwards go from being dismissed as a relic of Puritan repression to being recovered as a major American thinker?
Early twentieth-century critics mocked and blamed him for America's ills, but figures like William James and William Harder Squires kept finding genuine intellectual power in his work, paving the way for later scholarly recovery.
Summary of the chapter
In the early twentieth century, Edwards was widely treated as an embarrassment. Mark Twain called Freedom of the Will the record of “a resplendent intellect gone mad”; Vernon Louis Parrington judged Edwards's life “tragic” because he had the gifts of an emancipator but remained a Calvinist; and Henry Bamford Parkes went so far as to blame Edwards for Depression-era social ills, calling him “a demon to be spat at.”
Yet even in these same decades, other readers found in Edwards something worth recovering. William James, in The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), praised the “admirably rich and delicate” descriptions of religious experience in Religious Affections, even while rejecting Edwards's sharp line between the regenerate and unregenerate. William Harder Squires's short-lived journal The Edwardean (from 1903) went further, proposing Edwards as the greatest thinker America had produced and highlighting his “voluntarism” — his account of reality as flowing from the personal will of God.
These scattered, often contradictory appraisals set the stage for a more serious scholarly reappraisal later in the century, driven above all by Perry Miller's reinterpretation of Edwards as a genuinely major philosophical mind, and by Yale University Press's ongoing critical edition of the Works of Jonathan Edwards, which gave later generations of scholars reliable texts on which the modern explosion of Edwards studies could be built.
Key points
- In the early twentieth century, prominent intellectuals — Mark Twain, George Santayana, Vernon Louis Parrington, Henry Bamford Parkes — treated Edwards with contempt, often blaming him for a repressive Puritan legacy.
- Even hostile critics could not ignore Edwards's intellectual power; Twain called Freedom of the Will the work of “a resplendent intellect gone mad.”
- William James's Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) praised Edwards's description of religious affections even while rejecting his theology of regeneration, giving Edwards new visibility among philosophers.
- William Harder Squires's short-lived journal The Edwardean (1903-) proposed Edwards as America's greatest thinker and emphasized his “voluntarism.”
- Perry Miller's mid-century reinterpretation and Yale University Press's critical edition of Edwards's Works together launched the modern scholarly recovery that produced the explosion of Edwards studies in the later twentieth century.
A line worth remembering
Edwards was set up as the straw man of repression and snobbery, a medieval relic that had no place in modern America.
McClymond & McDermott The Theology of Jonathan Edwards, ch. 39
Related Scripture
- Ecclesiastes 1:9-10
- Lamentations 3:22-23
- Psalm 102:18
- Romans 15:4
For reflection and discussion
- Why do you think a theologian dead for over 150 years could still provoke such strong contempt from early twentieth-century critics?
- William James rejected Edwards's theology yet still praised his description of religious experience — what does it look like to learn honestly from a thinker whose conclusions you reject?
- What does the swing from ridicule to recovery in Edwards's reputation suggest about how fairly any generation can judge a thinker from the past?
These notes are an original UECF.NET study companion and are not a reproduction of the book. Read the full chapter — chapter 39, “New Beginnings: The Twentieth-Century Recovery of Jonathan Edwards” — in The Theology of Jonathan Edwards by Michael J. McClymond and Gerald R. McDermott (Oxford University Press, 2012).