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George Marsden, Ronald Story. Jonathan Edwards and the Gospel of Love., The American Historical Review, Volume 118, Issue 5, December 2013, Pages 1515–1516, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/118.5.1515
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If Americans know anything about Jonathan Edwards, chances are it is through the sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” Neither the academic revival of respect for Edwards since the mid-twentieth century nor the groundswell in religious circles of regard for Edwards as a world-class theologian has done much to dispel his image as a puritanical killjoy preoccupied with hellfire. Ronald Story confesses that he contributed to that stereotype by including “Sinners” as the selection from Edwards in early editions of the popular A More Perfect Union: Documents in U. S. History, Volume I: To 1877 (edited with Paul F. Boller, Jr.). He has since repented and now represents Edwards in that text via a vastly more positive excerpt from another sermon, “Heaven Is a World of Love.”
Jonathan Edwards and the Gospel of Love casts Edwards in a fuller and more positive light. Story begins by acknowledging that a number of personae loom large in most accounts of the eighteenth-century preacher. He was an intellectual, a revivalist, a Calvinist, and, frankly, sometimes a “scold.” He often chastised his congregation for failing to live up to the highest ideals. Even when the causes Edwards espoused were admirable, he could seem to be harping. Story goes on, however, to argue that beyond those traits, Edwards was “incomparably more—more tender, more sensitive, more poetic and perceptive and receptive” (p. 50). Such qualities are manifest in the tropes of beauty, harmony, and sweetness that permeate much of Edwards's speech and writing. More broadly, Story provides an intellectual portrait of Edwards, highlighting the positive themes of his thought and theology.
