Journal: Reformation and Revival
Volume: RAR 05:3 (Summer 1996)
Article: The Eschatology of Jonathan Edwards
Author: Christopher B. Holdsworth

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RAR 5:3 (Summer 1996) p. 119

The Eschatology of Jonathan Edwards

Christopher B. Holdsworth

In the theology of Jonathan Edwards, comprehensive as it is, one doctrine seems in particular to permeate the whole: that of eschatology, the doctrine of the last things. It colors his thinking on unfulfilled prophecy, on missionary interests, on revivals, prayer, the papacy, false religion, history, and the Jews. He contemplated at length the subjects of a latter-day glory, and of heaven and hell. Today, Jonathan Edwards would be known as a postmillennialist. “In his Work of Redemption,” says J. Marcellus Kik, “he gives a fine exposition of the post-mil position.” 1 While such labels may be inappropriate to eighteenth-century theology, there is no doubt that Edwards did not expect Christ to return until after a period of peace and prosperity for the church on earth: a millennium to be ushered in by such a great outpouring of the Holy Spirit that the revivals of the Great Awakening would be seen to be but a foreshadowing by contrast.

One area of continual study for Jonathan Edwards was the Apocalypse of John. The one book upon which John Calvin does not have a commentary was the only one upon which Jonathan Edwards has, although, of course, he wrote much on many Scriptures. His notes indicate various sources, but most significantly Moses Lowman, the author of Paraphrases and Notes on the Revelation (1737). As Stephen J. Stein indicates, “Edwards struggled mightily in his notebook with the interpretation of Lowman.” 2 Edwards was, however, an original thinker, and no slavish follower to his sources. He refused to endorse Lowman’s identification of Constantine as one of the heads of the Beast (Rev. 12:3), believing Constantine to be God’s chosen vessel for the protection of God’s people. Also, in his “Remarks on Lowman,” 3 Edwards thoroughly refutes the idea that the three woes of Revelation 8:13ff. represent periods of the prevailing of the Saracens; rather he emphasizes that these

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woes were not against the church, but against her enemies. In point of fact, “Mr. Lowman confounds the order of the prophecies of this book.” 4 Perry Miller has rightly observed that in America, Jonathan Edwards was “the greatest artist of the apocalypse.” 5

A typical English nonconformist, Moses Lowman was staunchly anti-Catholic. ...

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