Jonathan Edwards

Colonial American theologian and preacher who appears in Kyle’s corpus as the devotional counterweight to Benjamin Franklin.

That same Edwards anchors the central dichotomy of Benjamin Franklin — An American Life: Walter Isaacson frames Edwards (with the Mather family) as the pole of an “anointed elect” and salvation through God’s grace alone — religious fervor, social hierarchy, exalted over earthly values — set against the Franklins, who believed in salvation through good works, benevolent tolerance, and striving upward mobility. Edwards thus represents the grace-and-hierarchy side of the American character that Franklin’s good-works strain runs against.

Context: Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) was a leading Puritan theologian of the First Great Awakening, best known for the sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” and for works defending Calvinist doctrine; he briefly served as president of the College of New Jersey (later Princeton).

Where this appears

• Benjamin Franklin — An American Life — the grace-and-hierarchy pole (with the Mathers) of the book’s American dichotomy, contrasted against Franklin’s good-works striving.