Birthday: Three centuries on, Jonathan Edwards is still in vogue

Resolution One: I will live for God. Resolution Two: If no one else does, I still will.

Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758)

Minister, theologian, philosopher

A precocious lad, Edwards entered Yale at 13. He was fascinated by the natural sciences, conducting his own studies of light, optics and flying spiders. He was much influenced by the writing of Locke and Newton, and believed nature was evidence of God’s grand design, rather than a damp, chilly path to deism and then Hell.

After some supply preaching in New York and teaching at Yale, Edwards accepted a call to his grandfather’s church in Northampton, Massachusetts. Caught up in the wave of revivalism that following George Whitefield’s tour of New England, Edwards began to take views his congregation considered heterodox, it not heretical. This drift back to the Puritanism of his forebears led him to assume an increasing superintendency of community morals, and after he called out prominent members, from the pulpit, for reading books Edward deemed improper, he was invited to seek his calling elsewhere.

He took another post in western Massachusetts, where on the side he acted as a missionary to the Housatonic tribe. A prolific author and well-connected- he married the Yale president’s daughter- his remarkable intellect dampened some of the social demerits his drift toward Presbyterianism would have cost him. When his son-in-law, the president of Princeton, died, Edwards accepted the post, but died from a smallpox inoculation a few months later.

Among theologists and academics, Edwards’ stock remains high to this day. His extant works are all available online via the Jonathan edwards Center at Yale. He is also a less savory role model for some: thanks to his family tree- which reflected lots of canny intermarriages with other, prominent, New England families- he became an early darling of the American eugenics movement. Albert Winship’s 1900 pamphlet, “Jukes-Edwards: A Study in Education and Heredity," is still relied on by American evangelicals for its dubious comparisons between the Edwards family and that of a New York clan of layabouts called Jukes. Winship contended having the slightest tincture of Jonathan Edwards’ blood brought blessings to his descendants, who included:

• "practically no lawbreakers";

• more than 100 lawyers and 30 judges;

• 13 college presidents, 100+ professors;

• 100 clergymen, missionaries and theological professors;

• 62 physicians;

• 80 elected public officials, including 3 mayors, 3 governors, several congressmen, 3 senators and 1 vice-president (Aaron Burr);

• 60 authors or editors with 135 books to their credit; and

• 75 army or navy officers.

Burr, of course, was the killer of Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, and was later tried for treason, but acquitted. Edwards’ female descendants, when counted at all, were noted for smart choices of spouse. His still-later descendents included the poet Robert Lowell, who picked up the less-celebrated Edwards family traits of depression, insanity and suicide; and a Presbyterian minister put on trial for marrying a lesbian couple in 2005. In the late twentieth century the Jukes-Edwards tale, slightly recast to meet new needs became a favorite among American evangelicals worried by minority population growth, and admiring of his theological absolutism.