On August 29, 1726, he is asked to assist his grandfather, Solomon Stoddard, in the church in Northampton. He is ordained on February 15, 1727. On February 11, 1729, Stoddard dies and Edwards becomes pastor of the church. The church in 1735 had approximately 620 members. It was customary for Edwards to spend 13 hours a day in his study. However, contrary to widespread opinion, he was anything but an academic recluse. He was always available both to his family and his congregation and generally received them into his study for counseling and prayer.

No one outside the biblical authors themselves has exerted the influence on me personally as has Jonathan Edwards. So here are ten things you should know about his life and ministry.

(1) Edwards was born October 5, 1703, in East Windsor, Connecticut. He had 10 sisters (no brothers), all of whom were at least 6 ft. tall! Jonathan’s paternal grandmother was a chronic adulteress who bore another man’s child. She was psychotic, often given to fits of perversity, rage, and threats of violence (her sister murdered her own child and her brother killed another sister with an ax). She eventually deserted her family and was finally divorced by Jonathan’s grandfather. Edwards received extensive theological training from his father during his early years and could read Latin by the age of six, Greek and Hebrew by twelve.

He entered Yale College as an undergraduate at the age of 13 and studied there from 1716 – 1720. This isn’t as surprising as it may seem as the average age for beginning college was 16. He began his studies in September at Connecticut Collegiate School at Wethersfield. In October he moves to New Haven to study in the newly built Yale College but soon returns to Wethersfield because of disagreement with tutor Samuel Johnson. Upon Johnson’s removal, Edwards returns to New Haven in June. During his senior year (during the winter of 1719-20) he fell deathly ill with pleurisy. In September he delivered the valedictory address in Latin.

(2) His conversion is difficult to date, but the likely time was in the spring of 1721. He spoke of it in terms of his response to 1 Timothy 1:17.

“The first that I remember that ever I found anything of that sort of inward, sweet delight in God and divine things, that I have lived much in since, was on reading those words, 1 Tim. 1:17, ‘Now unto the king eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honor and glory for ever and ever, Amen.’ As I read the words, there came into my soul, and was as it were diffused thro’ it, a sense of the glory of the Divine Being; a new sense, quite different from any thing I ever experienced before. Never any words of scripture seemed to me as these words did. I thought with myself, how excellent a being that was; and how happy I should be, if I might enjoy that God, and be wrapt up to God in Heaven, and be as it were swallowed up in Him. I kept saying, and as it were singing over these words of scripture to myself; and went to prayer, to pray to God that I might enjoy him; and prayed in a manner quite different from what I used to do; with a new sort of affection” (Personal Narrative).

(3) From August of 1722 to April of 1723 he served as pastor of a Presbyterian church in New York City. In the late fall of 1722 he began to record his Resolutions. The 70th, and last resolution, was written on August 17th, 1723. In December he started a spiritual diary in which he wrote intermittently from 1722 to 1725, with four additional entries in 1734-35. During this period he also begins the “Catalogue” of books he had read or wished to read. By the time Edwards arrived in New York he had been embroiled for nearly eighteen months in an argument with his father and mother concerning the nature of conversion (Yale 10:261-78). Writing in his Diary on August 12, 1723: “The chief thing, that now makes me in any measure to question my good estate, is my not having experienced conversion in those particular steps wherein the people of New England, and anciently the dissenters of Old England, used to experience it, wherefore, now resolved, never to leave searching till I have satisfyingly found out the very bottom and foundation, the real reason, why they used to be converted in those steps.”

(4) In October of 1722 he writes his first entry in what was to become known as The Miscellanies. These entries, of which there are over 1,400, varied in length from a short paragraph to several pages:

“My method of study, from my first beginning the work of ministry, has been very much by writing; applying myself in this way, to improve every important hint; pursuing the clue to my utmost, when anything in reading, meditation or conversation, has been suggested to my mind, that seemed to promise light in any weighty point. Thus penning what appeared to me my best thoughts, on innumerable subjects for my own benefit. The longer I prosecuted my studies in this method, the more habitual it became, and the more pleasant and profitable I found it” (Letter to the Trustees of the College of New Jersey, Oct. 19, 1757).

Read More