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5 Minutes in Church History with Stephen Nichols

How Jonathan Edwards Wrote Books

5 Minutes in Church History with Stephen Nichols

Ligonier Ministries

Christianity, History, Religion & Spirituality

4.81.7K Ratings

🗓️ 10 May 2023

⏱️ 5 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Jonathan Edwards spent many hours with a quill pen in his hand writing books, sermons, and more. Today, Dr. Stephen Nichols takes us behind the scenes to explore the writing process of this prolific theologian.

Read the transcript: https://www.5minutesinchurchhistory.com/how-jonathan-edwards-wrote-books/

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Transcript

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0:00.0

Welcome back to another episode of Five Minutes in Church History.

0:09.9

On this episode, we are returning to one of our long-time friends, Jonathan Edwards.

0:15.4

We all know that Jonathan Edwards wrote many books, and we love those books, religious

0:20.8

affections.

0:22.2

The sermon series Charity in Its Fruits on 1 Corinthians 13, probably my favorite work

0:27.7

of Edwards, The History of Work of Redemption, again a sermon series.

0:33.2

There's also his philosophical treatises, Freedom of the Will, Original Sin, the end for which

0:39.6

God created the world, and of course, the nature of true virtue.

0:44.5

Well, again, we know Edwards wrote books, but how did he write these books?

0:50.9

It's a fascinating subject, let's dig in.

0:54.5

First, we need to mention this, Edwards used paper and a quill pen and ink.

0:59.8

It's no easy feat writing with a quill pen and ink, and when you consider the sheer volume

1:06.3

of words and sentences and pages that Edwards wrote, it is nothing short of amazing.

1:13.2

Well, Edwards writing style was this.

1:16.4

Thought and thought and more thought, and then writing and writing and more writing, and

1:20.6

along with the writing comes editing, and then he was ready to take those ideas out

1:26.1

into the public and communicate them as sermons and then as books.

1:30.8

A lot of this thought and thought and writing and writing comes to us in a series of volumes

1:36.5

of Edwards called The Miscellaneous.

1:39.0

This project started with Edwards numbering ideas or lettering them, actually, from A

1:43.2

to Z, then A to Z, he knew that wasn't working out anymore, so he started numbering them.

1:48.5

By the time he was done, he had 1360, adding the 52 for the first runs through the alphabet

...

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