Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 181:722 (Apr 2024)
Article: Periodical Reviews
Author: Joseph W. Lee

BSac 181:722 (April-June 2024) p. 232

Periodical Reviews

By The Faculty And Staff Of Dallas Theological Seminary

Joseph W. Lee

Editor

“Jonathan Edwards and the Anti-Slavery Movement,” Heejoon Jeon, JETS 63.4 (2020): 773–88.

Jeon is an associate pastor at Hebron Presbyterian Church in Illinois. In this article, he examines the proslavery position of Jonathan Edwards and considers an antislavery ethic located in his theology of sanctification. Specifically, Jeon looks at Edwards’s emphases on “Christian practice, moral duty, and virtuous benevolence” to argue that Edwards “might have had a positive influence on the later anti-slavery movement,” namely Samuel Hopkins’s doctrine of disinterested benevolence (773).

Jeon begins by looking at Edwards’s views on slavery to set the stage for a discussion of his impact on the antislavery movement via the Edwardseans. He highlights how Edwards grew up in a slave-owning family and purchased and owned a number of slaves throughout his adult life. He notes Kenneth P. Minkema’s discovery of a draft letter on slavery, which “shows that Edwards accepted the societal status of persons born into slavery” (775). The draft letter notes Edwards’s support of a fellow minister, Benjamin Doolittle, for his slave-owning right in response to concerns expressed by the congregants at Doolittle’s church. Jeon points to George M. Marsden’s helpful comment on Edwards’s “ambivalence” toward slavery, noting that “the anti-slavery impulse began growing in the 1770s because of its connection to revolutionary sentiment” (775). It was contradictory to want freedom from Britain while denying freedom to those enslaved in the colonies.

Jeon also surveys the proslavery heritage from the Puritans that Edwards embraced. He looks at the Puritan understanding of a hierarchical societal order, the need for masters to extend love toward slaves, and the importance of witnessing to those enslaved. He argues that “Edwards not only inherited this view of slavery from the Puritans, but he also developed it one step closer to the views that would later be held by the antislavery movement” (777).

Edwards’s “one step closer” put him ahead of his time as “the first minister at Northampton to baptize blacks and admit them into full membership” (778). Edwards also broadened the definition of neighbor to include not only those of the same religion but all people. Finally, Edwards was against the slave trade. Jeon observes that Edwards may have changed his views from the time he purchased his first slave in 1731 at

BSac 181:722 (April-June 2024) p. 233

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