America's Theologian

The author argues that Jonathan Edwards was very much a figure of the Enlightenment having thoroughly absorbed the thought of Newton and Locke. Unlike most other Americans however Edwards was also a discerning critic of the Enlightenment. He was able therefore to use Enlightenment thought in his theology without yielding to its mechanistic and individualistic tendencies. Jenson sees Edwards''s understanding as a radical corrective to what commitment to the Enlightenment later wrought in American life religious and otherwise. He argues that weaknesses in the common American faiths (a trivial evangelicalism or a deistical secularism) can be remedied by a recovery of Edwards''s vision and that weaknesses in American public moral discourse could likewise be remedied by a reaffirmation of Edwards''s God as the source and goal of all human existence.