Formerly approved and applauded, the continuity of Edwards's Treatise concerning religious affections with seventeenth-century Puritan analyses of the true piety, spiritual sensation and heart-religion

grantor: University of TorontoIt is a widespread scholarly commonplace that the theology of Jonathan Edwards represents, in many respects, a decisive departure from puritan tradition. A large number of important scholarly claims for Edwards's originality, or at least his discontinuity with the puritan past, relate particularly to his theological reflections on the nature of religious experience, generally as presented in his works occasioned by the Great Awakening, and especially in 'A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections'. The purpose of this thesis is to argue that, so far from being discontinuous with mainstream traditions of pietistic puritanism, Edwards's 'Religious Affections' is, in fact, a conservative extension of traditional puritan "heart religion" into the context of the Great Awakening. In the following section, I shall describe separately the various features of 'Religious Affections' which, according to much of the scholarly literature, represent Edwards's departure from puritan tradition. As complex as this catalogue appears at first glance, the innovations themselves generally fall into one of two categories: (1) those relating to Edwards's understanding of religious psychology, and (2) those relating to his method of distinguishing true from false piety. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)Th.D