“A Divine and Supernatural Light”: Jonathan Edwards and America
Program Date(s): 2011
Course Instructor: Melissa Kirkpatrick (Company of Teachers)
No one argues about it: Jonathan Edwards is colonial America’s greatest theologian and philosopher. He towers over the age as a religious figure. But though his roots are in colonial Puritanism, he worked to reshape a Puritan worldview into something quite different. He was modern for his own time. He sought to reconcile higher learning of the day with a loving piety and achieved this with an elegance not since seen. The publication of his massive collected works, begun in 1957, is only just now being completed. In this course, happening more than 250 years after his death, we will take advantage of this recent scholarship and explore how Edwards and his work have continued to have an impact on American thought.