Jonathan Edward's Philosophy of History

[Dave Monroe]

Zakai, Avihu.  Jonathan Edwards's Philosophy of
   History: The Reenchantment of the World in the
   Age of Enlightenment.  Princeton, NJ: PUP, 2003.

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.

http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/titles/7537.html

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