Charity and Its Fruits

Jonathan Edwards on the subject of love:


The word “charity,” as used in the New Testament, is of much more extensive signification than as it is used generally in common discourse. What persons very often mean by “charity,” in their ordinary conversation, is a disposition to hope and think the best of others, and to put a good construction on their words and behavior. Sometimes the word is used for a disposition to give to the poor.


• All True Grace Is Summed Up in Charity

• The Spirit of Charity Is an Humble Spirit

• The Spirit of Charity Is the Opposite of a Selfish Spirit

• The Spirit of Charity Is the Opposite of an Angry Spirit

• The Spirit of Charity Is the Opposite of a Censorious Spirit

• Heaven Is a World of Charity, or Love 


Jonathan Edwards “is widely acknowledged to be America’s most important and original philosophical theologian,” and one of America’s greatest intellectuals. Edwards’s theological work is broad in scope, but he was rooted in Reformed theology, the metaphysics of theological determinism, and the Puritan heritage. 


Recent studies have emphasized how thoroughly Edwards grounded his life's work on conceptions of beauty, harmony, and ethical fittingness, and how central The Enlightenment was to his mindset. Edwards played a critical role in shaping the First Great Awakening, and oversaw some of the first revivals in 1733–35 at his church in Northampton, Massachusetts.