Jonathan Edwards (the younger)

This article is about the theologian (b. 1745), for other uses of Jonathan Edwards see Jonathan Edwards.

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Jonathan Edwards (May 26, 1745 – August 1, 1801) was an American theologian and linguist.

Life and career

Born in Northampton, Massachusetts, he was the second son of Jonathan Edwards, the elder. He graduated from Princeton in 1765, then studied theology under Joseph Bellamy, of Bethlehem, Connecticut. He was tutor in Princeton (1767–69), and pastor in White Haven, Connecticut (1769–95). After serving as pastor in Colebrook, Connecticut (1795–99), he went to Schenectady, New York to serve as president of Union College.

Jonathan Edwards, the younger, died on 1 August 1801, and was buried in the churchyard of the First Presbyterian Church in Schenectady, New York.

Contribution to Theology

As a theologian, his fame rests upon his reply to Charles Chauncy upon the salvation of all men, in which he defended the usual evangelical doctrine, his reply to Samuel West's Essays on Liberty and Necessity, in which he largely modified his father's theory of the will by giving it a liberal interpretation, and upon his sermons on the atonement. A great deal of religious controversy raged in New England during his lifetime. His works were published at Andover (1842), in two volumes, with a memoir by Tryon Edwards.

Unlike his father, who was a slave-owner, Jonathan Jr. supported abolition of the slave...
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