How Did Jonathan Edwards Influence American Philosophy

I. Introduction

Jonathan Edwards was extraordinary and many peoples' estimates he has the most acute an American philosopher, and he was the most brilliant of all American theologians at his time. There are at least three of Edwards many works such like: Religious Affection, Freedom of the Will and The Nature of True Virtue are standing as masterpieces in the history of the Christian literature. Jonathan Edwards was the machine encourage of Christianity in nineteenth-century. But not only the machine but he brought over lasting influence. His life involve most important things legacy that is religious and social movement. He preached a stronger message what became American’s most famous sermon: Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (Marsden

1). According to Jonathans’ later estimation of all the pastors in the region, he said only his grandfather; Solomon Stoddard oversaw more local awakening. In his famous account of the “Surprising Work of God” of 1734 to 1735 in Northampton, Jonathan recorded that there had been four of five outpourings of the spirit in my honored fathers’ parish, which has in past time as being a place favored with mercies of this nature above any on this western side of New England excepting Northampton (Marsden 25).
Jonathan has struggled with sexual lusts, which despite prodigious efforts, he could not wholly control, but Jonathan made a good decision by saying God would not suffer me to go on with any quietness; but I had a great and violent struggle. After many conflicts with wicked inclination and repeated resolutions and both that I laid myself under by a kind of vows to God. I was brought wholly to break off from my former wicked ways and all ways of knowing outward sins. Jonathan surrounds himself to God and he received his salvation and practices the duties of religion. I think without that kind of bold decision. He says that no affection and delight that I had formerly experienced (Marsden 36). Jonathan however, had remained pure through the goodness of God; he attested I am perfectly free of all their jangling (Marsden 39). A crude interpretation of Jonathan’s experience might suggest that his vision of God was a cosmic projection of his father (Marsden 42). Particularly the mature Edwards lamented insight of his most besetting sin; he says I am greatly afflicted with pride and self- righteous spirit much more sensibly than I used to be formerly. I see that serpent rising and pushing forth its head continually everywhere all around with a particularly important interpretation of the difference between his early and his mature years: though it seems to me, he wrote that in some respects I was a far better Christian for two or three years after my first conversion than I am now and lived in a more constant delight and pleasure: yet of late years I have had a more full and constant sense of the absolute sovereignty of God and a delight in that sovereignty and have more sense of the glory of the God as a mediator as it was revealed in the gospel (Marsden 45). In August 1722, not quite nineteen Jonathan Edwards went to New York City ton minister as an un-ordained pastor to a small Presbyterian Church that had broken away from large Presbyterian Church of the city (Marsden 46). Further, Edwards belonged to an elite extended family that was part of the ruling class of clergy, magistrates, judges, military leaders, villages’ squires, and merchants. The Stoddard and Williamses along with a few other families with whom they intermarried ruled the Connecticut River Valley, or western Massachusetts and parts of Connecticut (Marsden 3).

IV. Early Life of Jonathan Edwards
Jonathan Edwards’ memories were shaped in this wartime setting.

The real war was among spiritual powers. By the time the precocious Jonathan was old enough to read, he would have discovered that one of the most fascinating book in his father’s library was uncle’s The Redeemed Captive, Returning to Zion. John Williams’ vivid narratives recounted the horrors of the Indians attacks. It was an awful plight of the souls of poor Indians subject to the deceptions of antichrist. Jonathan, his only son, followed closely in his father’s footstep (Marsden 15 – 17). Jonathan Edwards from 1703 – 1758 was perhaps the outstanding American theologian and certainly the ablest American philosopher to writer before the great period of Charles S. Peirce in 1839 to 1914, William James in 1842 to 1910, Josiah Royce in 1855 to 1916, John Dewey 1859 to 1952, and George Santayana 1863 to 1952 they were judged over two centuries, but Jonathan Edwards stands out as one of America’s great original minds. He was considered as the foundation stone in the history of American philosophy and the unique theological and philosophical formulated (Zakai 29). Edwards was born in the east parish of Windsor, now the town of South Windsor, Connecticut on October 5, 1703. He was the only son in a family of eleven children his parent were Rev. Timothy Edwards and Esther Stoddard Edwards the daughter of the Rev. Solomon Stoddard of Northampton, Massachusetts. During Edwards’s youth, he was nurtured and instructed in Reformed theology and the practice of puritan piety. At age of thirteen he was admitted to Yale College in 1718 because his father was tutoring at the Yale College he find easily. Edwards’s course of study was including classical and biblical languages, logic, and natural philosophy. When Edwards was at Yale College in 1717 to 1718, he was inspired by the philosopher of Mr. Locke and Sir Isaac Newton. He became acquainted with the ideas of the scientific revelation and the early

Enlightenment, which want to diminish divine sovereignty with respect to creation, providence, redemption (Zakai 30). It was appears that many features of Edwards words of thought can be traced to its signal existential moment. Therefore among these were his theologia gloriae. The theology that was celebrates God’s majestic glory and sovereignty as the evident in the coherence and beauty, order, and harmony of God’s creation and the uncompromising notion of God’s absolute sovereignty (31).