Theology and Reading
Southwestern Journal of Theology
Volume 52, No. 2 – Spring 2010
Managing Editor: Malcolm B. Yarnell III
By George M. Marsden. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008. 145 pages. Softcover, $12.95.
A Short Life of Jonathan Edwards is arguably the first authoritative, yet largely accessible, biographical volume on Edwards. By no means an abridgement from his definitive biography, Jonathan Edwards: A Life (Yale, 2003), Marsden’s A Short Life offers specific attention to Edwards that had previously only received brief mention in the larger volume (x). Its pages are filled with an elegant and clear prose, giving life and color to an otherwise and all too common misrepresentation of Edwards as dreary and morose. A Short life reads like a good narrative should: recounting the magnificence of Edwards’ life while regarding every detail as principal to an accurate retelling.
Chapter one, “Edwards, Franklin and Their Times,” is a brief comparative survey of Edwards and Benjamin Franklin and their reflection of American culture as “eighteenth-century British modernity and New England’s earlier puritan heritage” collided (2). In chapter two, “Wrestling with God,” Marsden introduces what is arguably the most critical section to a proper understanding of Edwards’ life and theology, namely the seminal influences of his family, his conversion to Christianity during his Yale tenure, and his bitter-sweet ministerial enterprise to New York City. In chapter three, “Transitions and Challenges,” Marsden sadly races through a second and similarly important period of Edwards’ life, arriving too quickly at the precipice of the first “Awakening” in chapter four and the story of its impact on the colonies in “An American Revolution” in chapter five. Despite what appears entirely reasonable—namely that Marsden devotes two whole chapters to Edwards’ involvement in such a pivotal time in American history as the Great Awakening—it is rather Edwards’ assumption of the role of assistant pastor to his grandfather, the great Solomon Stoddard in Northampton, Massachusetts, and his subsequent marriage to the stately and elegant Sarah Pierpont that greatly influences Edwards’ important role in the awakening. Although small, this is an oversight, even for a volume this brief.
Chapter six, “Drama on the Home Front,” clearly marks a slowing in the Edwards narrative, as Marsden sets into relief the dramatic shift in the course of Edwards’ life. After this respite, the pace picks up again in chapters seven and eight. Marsden develops, with relative quickness, a whirring series of events in the life of Edwards: his moves to the war-ravaged city of Stockbridge on the western Massachusetts frontier and then shortly after to Princeton to be installed as President of what was then the College of New Jersey, and his tragic and untimely death. Marsden’s conclusion, “What Should We Learn from Edwards?” is the most important chapter of the work and might best be read first as it offers glimpses into both Marsden’s interpretive choices for the composition of the present work and displays the constant and invariable theocentric impulse that steered Edwards’ work.
Marsden’s goal for a work that is, “balanced, entertaining, informative and short” has been not merely met but surpassed. A fresh perspective for the Edwards’ scholar and a warm, welcome read for all; there is none to match the brevity and authority of Marsden’s latest biographical contribution to the growing body of Edwards literature. I happily recommend A Short Life of Jonathan Edwards.
