Jonathan (1745) Edwards

American theologian and linguist.

He graduated from Princeton in 1765, then studied theology under Joseph Bellamy, of Bethlehem, Connecticut. He was a tutor in Princeton (1767–69) and a pastor in New Haven, Connecticut (1769–95). After serving as pastor in Colebrook, Connecticut (1795–99), he went to Schenectady, New York, to serve as president of Union College.

As a theologian, his fame rests upon his reply to Charles Chauncy upon the salvation of all men, in which he defended the usual evangelical doctrine, his reply to Samuel West's Essays on Liberty and Necessity, in which he largely modified his father's theory of the will by giving it a liberal interpretation, and upon his sermons on the atonement. Unlike his father, who was a slave-owner, Jonathan Jr. supported abolition of the slave trade and of slavery.

Edwards was a pioneer in the historical linguistics of Native North America. He was raised in the community of Stockbridge, Massachusetts, where Indian speakers of the Mahican language were in the majority, and he was fluent in that language. In 1787, Edwards published a study of the Mohegan language.

Jonathan Edwards, the younger, died on 1 August 1801, aged 56, at Schenectady.