APPROACHING JONATHAN EDWARDS: THE EVOLUTION OF A PERSONA

Abstract

In a time when studies of Edwards have been increasingly dominated by explorations of central theological themes, Carol Ball has presented us with an appreciation of Edwards from a literary perspective, harking back to the beginning of the Edwards renaissance in the mid-twentieth century, when scholars such as Perry Miller, Edwin Cady, and Alan Heimert drew attention to Edwards the American writer. Drawing on a later generation of literary scholars of Edwards including Helen Westra, M.X. Lesser and particularly Wilson Kimnach, who was the first to engage in an extended treatment of Edwards’ “literary technique,” Ball takes a different approach by looking at how Edwards sought to present himself to those who read and heard him in a particular way, in a “persona.”