Jonathan Edwards, Jr. (1745-1801)

Ferm, Robert L. Jonathan Edwards the Younger, 1745-1801: A Colonial Pastor. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Erdmans, 1976. Based on a Yale dissertation (1975), this is a scholarly study, with full apparatus, of the man who was long pastor of New Haven's First Church, and then second president of Union College, 1799-1801. Edwards "has tended to be lost in the long and heavy shadow of his illustrious father, seeming to exist only as a source of confusion to librarians and bibliographers." He "sought to defend Calvinism against new patterns of thought, both indigenous and imported from England and France. Loyalty to the premises of Reformed theology and fear of liberalizing inroads shaped his theological labors. His was a time when the church had to justify its message in the face of searching criticisms of its Calvinistic core." (p. 10) Heavy going.