Providence in Jonathan Edwards’s Thought and Times

In the early modern period, “Providence” was a term often used synonymously with “God,” but also used to identify God’s acting in the world to order events. Occurrences, both good and bad, were interpreted as “providences” in which God sought to convey meaning, although not always in parallel ways, and it was up to believers to consider what lessons were being taught and to form their lives accordingly. Nothing happened for nothing, or simply was the product of natural causes. We today might think of this as a rather “enchanted” way of conceiving of reality, but broadly conceived, the concept or doctrine of providence included the nature of being, continuous creation, divine and human agency, grace, and other urgent issues of both faith and human living. Combining selections from the writings of eighteenth-century British-American theologian and preacher Jonathan Edwards, including theological essays, notebook entries, and sermons, along with interpretive literature, this course will open up to participants the many facets of Edwards’s providential world, showing both transatlantic influences and legacies.

Sessions will be a combination of lectures, viewing presentations, and collected discussion. Participants will be asked to volunteer to lead brief discussions of selected readings, which will amount on average to 25-30 pages per day. All readings will be made available via Canvas.

Andreas J. Beck is Professor and Department Chair of Historical Theology and Honorary Dean at the Evangelische Theologische Faculteit (ETF) in Leuven, Belgium. He also serves as Director of the Institute of Post-Reformation Studies and Co-Director of the Jonathan Edwards Center Benelux, affiliated with Yale University. From 2003 until 2022, he served as Dean at ETF Leuven. His research focuses on late medieval and early modern theology and philosophy, particularly Reformed scholasticism. He earned his Ph.D. in Humanities (with an emphasis on Historical Theology) from Utrecht University in 2007. Since 2014, he has chaired the international and inter-university Classic Reformed Theology Research Group, and he was one of the general editors for the second and third volumes of the bilingual annotated edition of the Leiden Synopsis Purioris Theologiae, published by Brill. His most recent monograph is Gisbertus Voetius (1589–1676) on God, Freedom, and Contingency: An Early Modern Reformed Voice (Brill, 2022).

Dr. Kenneth P. Minkema is the Executive Editor of The Works of Jonathan Edwards and of the Jonathan Edwards Center & Online Archive at Yale University, with appointments as Research Faculty at Yale Divinity School and as Research Associate at the University of the Free State, South Africa. He offers seminars in early American and early modern religious history, as well as reading courses in all periods of American religious history. From 2004 through 2009, he served as the Executive Secretary of the American Society of Church History. Besides publishing numerous articles on Jonathan Edwards and topics in early American religious history in professional journals including The Journal of American History, The William and Mary Quarterly, The New England Quarterly, Church History and The Massachusetts Historical Review, he has edited volume 14 in the Edwards Works, Sermons and Discourses: 1723-1729, and co-edited A Jonathan Edwards Reader; The Sermons of Jonathan Edwards: A Reader; Jonathan Edwards at 300: Essays on the Tercentennial of His Birth; and Jonathan Edwards’ ‘Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God’: A Casebook. He has also co-edited The Sermon Notebook of Samuel Parris, 1689-1694, dealing with the Salem Witchcraft crisis, and The Colonial Church Records of Reading and Rumney Marsh, Massachusetts. Finally, Dr. Minkema is currently part of a team that is preparing Cotton Mather’s ‘Biblia Americana’ for publication.