The author argues that Jonathan Edwards was very much a figure of the Enlightenment, having thoroughly absorbed the thought of Newton and Locke. Unlike most other Americans, however, Edwards was also a discerning critic of the Enlightenment. He was able, therefore, to use Enlightenment thought in his theology without yielding to its mechanistic and individualistic tendencies. Jenson sees Edwards's understanding as a radical corrective to what commitment to the
Enlightenment later wrought in American life, religious and otherwise. He argues that weaknesses in the common American faiths (a trivial evangelicalism or a deistical secularism) can be remedied by a recovery of Edwards's vision, and that weaknesses in American public moral discourse could likewise be
remedied by a reaffirmation of Edwards's God as the source and goal of all human existence.
- ISBN10 0195049411
- ISBN13 9780195049411
- Publish Date 25 August 1988
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 240
- Language English