Avihu Zakai analyzes Jonathan Edwards's redemptive mode of historical thought in the context of the Enlightenment. As theologian and philosopher, Edwards has long been a towering figure in American intellectual history. Nevertheless, and despite Edwards's intense engagement with the nature of time and the meaning of history, there has been no serious attempt to explore his philosophy of history. Offering the first such exploration, Zakai considers Edwards's historical thought as a reaction, in part, to the varieties of Enlightenment historical narratives and their growing disregard for theistic considerations.Zakai analyzes the ideological origins of Edwards's insistence that the process of history depends solely on God's redemptive activity in time as manifested in a series of revivals throughout history, reading this doctrine as an answer to the threat posed to the Christian theological teleology of history by the early modern emergence of a secular conception of history and the modern legitimation of historical time. In response to the Enlightenment refashioning of secular, historical time and its growing emphasis on human agency, Edwards strove to re-establish God's preeminence within the order of time. Against the de-Christianization of history and removal of divine power from the historical process, he sought to re-enthrone God as the author and lord of history--and thus to re-enchant the historical world.Placing Edwards's historical thought in its broadest context, this book will be welcomed by those who study early modern history, American history, or religious culture and experience in America.

Abbreviations xi Preface xiii Introduction The American Augustine 1 EDWARDS'S LIFE OF THE MIND One: A Short Intellectual Biography 29 Early Life ,Education, and Works 30 Early Career and Studies 35 Northampton Pastorate 37 The Great Awakening 41 Life and Works at Stockbridge 45 THE SOUL Two: Young Man Edwards: Religious Conversion and Theologia Gloriae 51 Constructing the Self: Edwards's Conversion Moment 53 Conversion as an Existential Religious Experience 58 Edwards's Experience of Conversion 60 The Morphology of Edwards's Conversion 66 Conversion and the Development of Edwards's Theological and Philosophical Thought 74 SPACE Three: Theology in the Age of Scientific Reasoning: Edwards and the Reenchantment of the World 85 The Scientific Revolution's Disenchantment of the World 92 Atomic Doctrine 96 The Mechanization of Nature and the World 101 The Laws of Nature 103 God and the World 108 The Nature of the Created Order 113 The Poverty of the Mechanistic Interpretation 116 Edwards and the Reenchantment of the World 118 Disenchantment of the World, Eighteenth-Century Imagination, and the Protestant Evangelical Awakening 120 TIME Four: The Ideological Origins of Edwards's Philosophy of History 131 The Disenchantment of the World and the Reenchantment of the Soul 133 Constructing the Order of Time 138 Homogeneous Time, Empty Time, and "Redeeming the Time" 143 History, Ideology, and Redemption 150 Edwards's Poetics of History 155 Ecclesiastical History as a Mode of Christian Historical Thought 163 The Protestant and Puritan Ideology of History 168 Edwards as an Ecclesiastical Historian 174 Five: God's Great Design in History: The Formation of Edwards's Redemptive Mode of Historical Thought 182 The Quest for God's Absolute Sovereignty in the Order of Time 187 The Formation of the Redemptive Mode of Historical Thought: The Early Miscellanies 191 The Work of Redemption and the Work of Conversion 197 God's Great Design in History 200 Conversion, Revival, and Redemption--The "Little Revival," 1734-735 205 The Work of Redemption and God's Self-Glorification 210 The Work of Redemption as the "Great End and Drift of all Gods Works" 213 Six: Edwards's Philosophy of History: The History of the Work of Redemption 221 Sacred History and Historia Humana 226 The History of the Work of Redemption 234 The Redemptive Mode of Historical Thought 239 Revival as the Manifestation of Divine Agency in the Order of History 247 The Theological and Teleological Structure Inherent in the Redemptive Process 255 Seven: "Chariots of Salvation": The Apocalypse and Eschatology of the Great Awakening 272 Rhetoric and History in the Great Awakening 276 The Eschatology of Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God 280 "The Glory of the Approaching Happy State of the Church": The Distinguishing Marks 289 The "Glorious Work of God" which "Shall Renew the World of Mankind": Some Thoughts Concerning the Revival 294 ETHICS Eight: Edwards and the Enlightenment Debate on Moral Philosophy 307 The Enlightenment Disenchantment of the World of Ethics and Morals 312 Edwards and the British School of Moral Sense 319 Epilogue: Edwards and American Protestant Tradition 325 Index 337