Freedom of the Will Book Reviews

Freedom of the Will by Jonathan Edwards & GP Editors Book Summary

In this book, Jonathan Edwards explains how God repairs and redeems the flaws of humankind by being an extension of the human being's free will. A superb and evocative treatise, Edwards draws on his knowledge of both theology and philosophy to deliver a convincing examination of the human soul. What is the nature of morality? Can God be evil? What constitutes sin? How does Gods foreknowledge of all events impact concepts of morality? How does intent inform our acts of vice and virtue? Still controversial and hotly debated in the 21st century, this demanding evangelistic worksome call it the best argument for the sovereignty of God is among the essential reading of the thinker whose philosophies inspired the 18th-century religious of the Great Awakening, which continues to hugely influence American Protestantism to this day. Edwards argues that God's divine will is a necessary and inseparable part of what it is to be human, it shapes and guides the very destiny of individuals. The reasoning of man pales in comparison to the essential truths of God's will in relation to morality and will.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Edwards was born in East Windsor, Connecticut, to Timothy Edwards, pastor of East Windsor, and Esther Edwards. The only son in a family of eleven children, he entered Yale in September, 1716 when he was not yet thirteen and graduated four years later (1720) as valedictorian. He received his Masters three years later. As a youth, Edwards was unable to accept the Calvinist sovereignty of God. In 1727 he was ordained minister at Northampton and assistant to his maternal grandfather, Solomon Stoddard. He was a student minister, not a visiting pastor, his rule being thirteen hours of study a day. In the same year, he married Sarah Pierpont, then age seventeen, daughter of James Pierpont (1659-1714), a founder of Yale, originally called the Collegiate School. In total, Jonathan and Sarah had eleven children. Throughout his time in Northampton his preaching brought remarkable religious revivals. Jonathan Edwards was a key figure in what has come to be called the First Great Awakening of the 1730s and 1740s. Edwards was dismissed over the issue of open communion in 1750. He then moved to Stockbridge, Massachusetts, then a frontier settlement, where he ministered to a small congregation and served as missionary to the Housatonic Indians. There, having more time for study and writing, he completed his celebrated work, The Freedom of the Will (1754). Edwards was elected president of the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University) in early 1758. On March 22, 1758, he died of fever at the age of fifty-four following experimental inoculation for smallpox and was buried in the President's Lot in the Princeton cemetery beside his son-in-law, Aaron Burr.

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