scholarly journals Calvinistic Doctrines Reflected in Jonathan Edwards’s “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God”

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 67
Author(s):  
Dan Wang
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Original Sin ◽  
Great Awakening ◽  
Divine Election

Preached on July 8, 1741, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” remains Jonathan Edwards’s most famous written work and a classic of the Great Awakening of New England. The long-famed power of this sermon rests not only in his searing images of hellfire and the insecurity they elicit, but also in the Calvinistic thoughts Edwards imparts to his Enfield listeners. This paper mainly examines some basic doctrines of Calvinism Edward expresses in this sermon, such as God’s absolute sovereignty, original sin, human depravity, and divine election, etc.

Origins of the Eighteenth-Century Evangelical Revival: England and New England Compared

1987 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 361-397 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J. Crawford
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
New England ◽  
Reform Movement ◽  
Western Society ◽  
Great Awakening ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
First Great Awakening ◽  
Revival Movements ◽  
British Colonies

Current interpretations of North America's first Great Awakening present a paradox. Historians commonly interpret the Great Awakening as part of the revival of evangelical piety that affected widely scattered elements of the Protestant world in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; however, studies of the Great Awakening have almost exclusively focused on the particular local circumstances in which the revival movements developed. Since historians of the Great Awakening have emphasized the peculiar circumstances of each of the regional manifestations, the Revival often appears in their writings to have been composed of several distinct movements separated in time, character, and cause and united only by superficial similarities. In contrast, to say that the local revival movements, despite their distinctive characteristics, were manifestations of a single larger movement is to imply that they shared the same general causes. If we suppose that the Great Awakening was part of the Evangelical Revival, our attempts to explain its origins should take into account those general causes.Two recent reconsiderations of the eighteenth-century revival movements in their broader context come to opposite conclusions. Jon Butler underscores the span of time over which the revivals occurred across the British colonies, their heterogeneous character from one region to the next, and the differences in cultural contexts in which they appeared. He concludes that “the prerevolutionary revivals should be understood primarily as regional events.” Although he sees the eighteenth-century American revivals as part of the long-term evangelical and pietistic reform movement in Western society, he denies any common, single, overwhelmingly important cause.

The Beginnings of Arminianism in New England

1912 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 151-172 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francis Albert Christie
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Great Awakening ◽  
History Of ◽  
Spiritual History

In his Narrative of Surprizing Conversions, Edwards wrote: “About this time began the great noise that was in this part of the country, about Arminianism.” The context shows that the time in mind was about 1734. On the basis of this and similar allusions and because of Sereno Dwight's comments and Whitefield's invectives, it has been believed that before the Great Awakening the Congregational churches and ministers had to some degree adopted Arminian views. An investigation of this matter may contribute to the spiritual history of New England.

Jonathan Edwards, Enthusiast? Radical Revivalism and the Great Awakening in the Connecticut Valley

2005 ◽  
Vol 74 (4) ◽  
pp. 683-739 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas L. Winiarski
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Jonathan Edwards ◽  
Great Awakening ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Private House ◽  
Connecticut Valley ◽  
Colonial New England ◽  
The Church

It is difficult to imagine Jonathan Edwards countenancing the “Confus'd, but very Affecting Noise” that erupted in Suffield, Massachusetts, on July 6, 1741. Yet there he stood, his loud voice rising in prayer above the din that emanated from an assembly of more than two hundred boisterous men and women who had gathered to listen to his exhortations in the “two large Rooms” of a private house. On the previous day, the visiting Northampton, Massachusetts, revivalist had administered the sacrament to nearly five hundred Suffield communicants, ninety-seven of whom had joined the church that very day. It was an extraordinary event—quite possibly the largest oneday church admission ritual ever observed in colonial New England.

The Shattered Synthesis: New England Puritanism before the Great Awakening

1975 ◽  
Vol 80 (3) ◽  
pp. 710
Author(s):  
George William Pilcher ◽  
James W. Jones
Keyword(s):  
New England ◽  
Great Awakening

The Second Great Awakening and the New England Social Order

1970 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 345-364 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard D. Birdsall
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
New England ◽  
Social Order ◽  
First Generation ◽  
Great Awakening ◽  
Second Great Awakening ◽  
Henry Adams ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Social

“Only the shell of orthodoxy was left.” Such was the considered judgment of Henry Adams on the condition of the inherited socioreligious order of New England by the year 1800.1 The image of the shell of a gourd with loose seeds rattling within is a good one to convey the dissociation between the purposes of the society and the real beliefs of individuals that had come to pass by the end of the eighteenth century. And it presents a notable contrast to the close congruence of individual belief and the social aims of the first generation of New England Puritans.

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