Jonathan
Edwards: A Life
by George M. Marsden
Book 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.
Hardcover from Yale Univ Pr
|