Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Jonathan Edwards
Katja
ENGL 48A
Journal # 3, Jonathan Edwards
October 10, 2006
"And the world would spew you out, were it not for the sovereign hand of Him who hath subjected it in hope." (503)
The sentence above is from Jonathan Edwards's 1741 sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, which wholly captures the immense power of God that Edwards is trying to convey to his parishoners. It has the belligerent language and tone of the Old Testament, so commonplace in Edwards's writing, and is no doubt intended to instil terror in the masses.
However, the end of the sentence offers a more modern approach to faith than the fire and brimstone offfered by Puritan tradition. Here is where the reader gets a peek into Edwards's true ethos. Edwards claims God has subjected the ousting of the infidels because of hope; a sentiment closer to the traditionally gentler characteristics of the New Testament, such as mercy and forgiveness. Hope offers a completely open-ended relationship between Man and God, the very antithesis of the untouchable hierarchy of yore that proclaimed a certain Death without any chance for a future. These new and humane values signify a shift in Christian doctrine in the New World that perhaps, given Edwards's fate, came too soon.
The idea of a new era in American Christian values is especially interesting when considered in global context. Edwards, a learned man at the dawn of a new century, shared his forward-looking nature with contemporaries such as Franklin, Hume, Rosseau, Kant and Voltaire. Evidently, the age of Enlightenment also reached the shores of the by now established North American colonies; Edwards's Promised Land.
ENGL 48A
Journal # 3, Jonathan Edwards
October 10, 2006
"And the world would spew you out, were it not for the sovereign hand of Him who hath subjected it in hope." (503)
The sentence above is from Jonathan Edwards's 1741 sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, which wholly captures the immense power of God that Edwards is trying to convey to his parishoners. It has the belligerent language and tone of the Old Testament, so commonplace in Edwards's writing, and is no doubt intended to instil terror in the masses.
However, the end of the sentence offers a more modern approach to faith than the fire and brimstone offfered by Puritan tradition. Here is where the reader gets a peek into Edwards's true ethos. Edwards claims God has subjected the ousting of the infidels because of hope; a sentiment closer to the traditionally gentler characteristics of the New Testament, such as mercy and forgiveness. Hope offers a completely open-ended relationship between Man and God, the very antithesis of the untouchable hierarchy of yore that proclaimed a certain Death without any chance for a future. These new and humane values signify a shift in Christian doctrine in the New World that perhaps, given Edwards's fate, came too soon.
The idea of a new era in American Christian values is especially interesting when considered in global context. Edwards, a learned man at the dawn of a new century, shared his forward-looking nature with contemporaries such as Franklin, Hume, Rosseau, Kant and Voltaire. Evidently, the age of Enlightenment also reached the shores of the by now established North American colonies; Edwards's Promised Land.
# posted by Katja @ 7:11 PM 
