1703 – 1758

Jonathan Edwards

Worth knowing

Pastor at Northampton, Massachusetts, and a leading preacher in the revivals of the 1730s and 1740s known as the Great Awakening.
His Religious Affections (1746) asks how to tell true conversion from strong emotion, and gives twelve signs of real grace.
Dismissed by his church in 1750, he became a missionary to the Mohicans at Stockbridge. He was made president of the College of New Jersey (later Princeton) in 1758 and died weeks later after a smallpox inoculation.

In Scholar’s Dream, Jonathan Edwards has one book

Religious AffectionsJonathan Edwards, A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections (1746)Spirituality

Jonathan Edwards’s quotes in the game

Every quotation from Jonathan Edwards that a player meets in Scholar’s Dream, attached to the move that says it. Or see them as a plain list →

In Scholar’s Dream, books argue with each other, and each thing a book can do in a debate is called a move. Every quote below is spoken by one of those moves. Open “How it works in the game” under a quote to see the move, which books learn it, and which arguments it answers best.

“True religion, in great part, consists in holy affections.”
Jonathan Edwards, A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections (1746), public domain.public domain

How it works in the game: the move Holy Affections

SpiritualityArgument · power 86 · 100% accurate

In the gameEdwards’ main claim is about where true religion lives. Not in ideas held coolly, and not in worked-up feeling, but in a heart moved because it has seen something true.

Learned byReligious Affections (Lv 1)

Strong against

×4Seasonable Thoughtsan argument · why?

Edwards grants every disorder in the book and then asks the question Chauncy never reaches: religion that moves nothing at all is not the safe kind, it is the dead kind!

×2.5The Varieties of Religious Experiencean argument · why?

Religion reduced to whatever a person feels in solitude has no way to tell a holy affection from a strong one. Edwards’ whole treatise is that test, and James set it aside to keep the method tidy.

“…there must be light in the understanding, as well as an affected fervent heart; where there is heat without light, there can be nothing divine or heavenly in that heart…”
Jonathan Edwards, A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections (1746), public domain. (trimmed quote)public domain

How it works in the game: the move Heat and Light

SpiritualityArgument · power 90 · 100% accurate

In the gameThe test James borrows and then misreads. Edwards asks for both: a heart genuinely moved, and an understanding that has genuinely seen. Heat alone is not holiness, and light alone is a cold head full of notions.

Learned byReligious Affections (Lv 52)

Strong against

×4The Varieties of Religious Experiencean argument · why?

James names Edwards as his own authority for "fruits, not roots" — and keeps only half of him. Edwards asks for the fruit AND the root: an affection moved because the understanding has genuinely seen. Effectiveness is not the same as holiness, and Edwards spent a book on the difference.

Words Jonathan Edwards’s books borrow from others

Moves these books can learn whose quotation comes from somebody else. The citation on each one names who actually said it.

“For in him we live, and move, and have our being. As some of your own poets have said.”
Acts 17:28 (WEB) — Paul at the Areopagus, quoting the Athenians’ own poets back to them.

How it works in the game: the move Affirm

Status

In the gamePick the part of the opponent’s case that is true and affirm it. That point can no longer be used against you, and the opponent’s Defend falls sharply. It deals no damage. Affirm something false and you have only agreed with an error.

Learned byReligious Affections (Lv 1)

“In peace I will both lay myself down and sleep, for you, Yahweh alone, make me live in safety.”
Psalm 4:8 (WEB).

How it works in the game: the move Rest

SpiritualityRest · 100% accurate

In the gameBreak off and rest. Stamina is restored in full and any trouble is slept off, but the book is then ASLEEP for a turn (two turns, one time in five) while the other side does as it likes.

Learned byReligious Affections (Lv 40)

“You made us for Yourself, and our heart is restless until it reposes in You.”
Augustine, Confessions 1.1 (trans. Pusey, 1838, public domain, lightly modernized).public domain

How it works in the game: the move Restless Heart

ExperienceArgument · power 75 · 100% accurate

In the gameExperience, directed toward God at last — what the Coach felt in his gut, Augustine prayed onto papyrus.

Learned byReligious Affections (Lv 48)

Strong against

×3The Absurdan argument · why?

Augustine’s line is that the heart is restless until it rests in God. It is the collision Camus describes, said fifteen centuries earlier by the man he studied for his degree, and with an answer.

×3The Man of the Worldan argument · why?

The cheerful, occupied man is restless and does not know it. The heart is restless until it rests in God.

×2Men Before Adaman argument · why?

Every people he names as older than Adam is a people with the same ache in it. One fall reaches all of them.

×2Penséesa book · why?

Pascal said that his account of man, wretched and great together, came from Augustine.

×2The Expressive Selfan argument · why?

The Romantic looks in and expects to find home. Augustine looked in and found the ache — and said nothing finite, the self included, has ever stilled it.

×2Totem and Tabooan argument · why?

Freud traces the restlessness to a child wanting its father. Augustine agreed it starts there, and said it does not stop there, because nothing finite has ever quieted it.

×2You Are Still a Manicheean argument · why?

A good thing, made restless — which is the distinction he says cannot be drawn.

Who else was alive

Jonathan Edwards against everyone else in the game.

A.D. 450A.D. 700A.D. 950A.D. 1200A.D. 1450A.D. 1700A.D. 1950

Boethius Boniface John of Damascus Daniel of Winchester Timothy I Alcuin of York Pope Leo III Eulogius of Córdoba Paul Alvaro of Córdoba Rimbert Humbert of Silva Candida Michael Cerularius Peter III of Antioch Anselm of Canterbury Ari Thorgilsson Ebo and Herbord Thomas Aquinas John Wyclif Lorenzo Valla Girolamo Savonarola Pope Paul III Martin Luther Miles Coverdale William Tyndale Emperor Charles V John Calvin Teresa of Ávila John Jewel The Council of Trent The English exiles at Geneva Hugo Grotius René Descartes John Owen Blaise Pascal John Bunyan Louis XIV of France Pierre Bayle Joseph Butler Jonathan Edwards Thomas Reid George Campbell William Paley John Henry Newman J. C. Ryle Friedrich Nietzsche James Orr B. B. Warfield Herman Bavinck W. R. Sorley James Denney J. Gresham Machen

Solid bar = firm dates · faded = approximate51 authors sit outside this window