Religious experience in the works of Jonathan Edwards
Religious experience in the works of Jonathan Edwards

Summary/Abstract: Religious experience is central to the life and thought of Jonathan Edwards. He is the author of many works which discuss the topic of religious experience, one of the most famous is A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections (1746). The intellectual basis of religious experience and revivalism, constructed in these works sparked a new philosophy and psychology of emotions. William James used Edward’s writings in his classic work Variety of Religious Experience (1902), which was one of the first attempts to analyze the Christian religious experience since Edwards. Jonathan Edward’s appraisal of religious experience is analyzed from the following different perspectives: 1. A brief examination of the roots of Edwards’s theology and philosophy of religious experience. 2. The cultural and historical setting in which he lived. 3. The theological and psychological understanding of human nature. 4. His theological analysis of religious experience. Edwards defended the place of emotion in religious experience as part of human will but, at the same time, he did not believed that subjective experience alone could serve as the source of religious authority. According to him, nobody could rely solely on their own spiritual experience. The conclusion of the article is that for Edwards, religious experience is not only a product of reason or emotion but it is an integrated experience of love.

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