The Young Jonathan Edwards: A Reconstruction

In his 1955 examination of Jonathan Edwards' formative years, Morris undertook a corrective of the prevailing view of Edwards' relation to John Locke. The result is an analysis of the intellectual milieu inhabited by Edwards during the years in which his philosophical vocabulary and his seminal theological concepts evolved. Long an unpublished dissertation, this massive work reflects that most unusual combination of being a pioneering exploration and, most likely, a definitive evaluation. Dr. Kenneth Minkema, Executive Director of the Jonathan Edwards Center, Yale University Other scholars have filled in our picture of Jonathan Edwards' mental world, adding new shades, hues and detail to our view of the young theologian. But no one matches William Morris's Young Jonathan Edwards for comprehension and virtuosity. His study is as rewarding as it is challenging. The Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale University deserves our thanks for bringing this masterpiece back to us. Douglas A. Sweeney, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School Written at the onset of the academic recovery of Jonathan Edwards, William Morris's Chicago dissertation remains the best record of the young Edwards from his years at home and at Yale to his months at the Scots Presbyterian Church in New York, altogether an extensive reconstruction of how he came to think the way he did. That it will be widely available now is a welcome recovery in itself. - M.X. Lesser, Emeritus, Northeastern University William Sparkes Morris wrote The Young Jonathan Edwards as a dissertation at the University of Chicago and completed it in 1955. His dissertation was originally published in 1991 as part of the Chicago Studies in the History of American Religion, edited by Martin Mary and Jerald C. Brauer. Morris died in 1983 at the age of 67.