Throughout his adult life Jonathan Edwards kept a series of personal theological notebooks on a wide variety of miscellaneous subjects. This volume includes the notebook entries written during the eventful and tumultuous years 1740-1751, when Edwards was plagued by a series of bitter controversies with his Northampton congregation that culminated in his dismissal. This was also the period during which he witnessed, documented, and pondered the surprising revivals of the Great Awakening, as well as their precipitous decline.

Among the topics considered are spiritual perception, metaphysics, spirituality, ethics, history, and apologetics."--BOOK JACKET.

The great American pastor-theologian Jonathan Edwards remains undeniably relevant today, more than 250 years after his death, as attested by the unending flurry of articles, books, and dissertations treating him. Despite this, virtually nothing has been written concerning Edwards's views on worship, a subject central to the Christian faith, and certainly to Edwards himself. This volume explores Edwards's perspective on both public and private dimensions of worship, aspects of which rise from well-understood Puritan categories, and proposes the practice of self-examination as a bridge between public and private devotion. As Ken Minkema, of the Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale, writes in the foreword, "Ted Rivera's study is the first that systematically attempts to show us Edwards's views of worship, and so represents an important resource for scholars and religious practitioners alike who are interested in liturgy, 'the practice of piety,' and spiritual growth. Through an engagement with Edwards's own words--in letters, notebooks, and sermons--we learn of Edwards's own spiritual life, and of the nature of private and corporate devotion."

An important new biography of America's founding religious father. Jonathan Edwards was America's most influential evangelical, whose revivals of the 1730s became those against which all subsequent ones have been judged. The marvelous accomplishment of Philip Gura's Jonathan Edwards is to place the rich intellectual landscape of America's most formidable evangelical within the upheaval of his times. Gura not only captures Edwards' brilliance but respectfully explains the enduring appeal of his theology: in a world of profound uncertainty, it held out hope of an authentic conversion---the quickening of the indwelling spirit of God in one's heart and the consequent certitude of Godly behavior and everlasting grace. Tracing Jonathan Edwards' life from his birth in 1703 to his untimely death in 1758, Gura magnificently reasserts Edwards rightful claim as the father of America's evangelical tradition.