The theologian of love

Often when people think of Jonathan Edwards as a preacher, his famous 1741 Enfield sermon ‘Sinners in the hands of an angry God’ is what first comes to mind. But the reality is that Edwards preached more often on heaven.

History Professor Michael Haykin

His sermon ‘Heaven, a world of love’, preached a few years before the Enfield sermon, was actually more typical of Edwards’ sermonic corpus. He was, as a number of books on Edwards have recently emphasised, preeminently a theologian of love. His concern for the salvation and welfare of native Americans in Massachusetts is another good example of this focus.