School Notes: Yale Divinity School
November/December 2017

Reuniting Jonathan Edwards papers

The arrival of Andover Newton at YDS has yielded numerous benefits for both institutions—among them the reuniting of Jonathan Edwards materials, previously split between Andover Newton and the YDS-based Jonathan Edwards Center. The center has received a trove of writings (officially they are “on deposit,” pending completion of a legal process) by Edwards, Class of 1720, the famed eighteenth-century pastor, revivalist, philosopher, missionary, and college president who continues to attract public and scholarly interest centuries after his life and career. “The arrival of these documents in New Haven means that, for the first time in about 150 years, the Edwards Papers are once again formally reunited,” said Ken Minkema, executive editor of the Edwards Center. “The joining of the Andover Newton materials to those at Yale Divinity School will be a boon to students and scholars alike who are interested in American religious history.”

Scholars unite to study the good life

The Yale Center for Faith and Culture at YDS has assembled a group of distinguished scholars from non-Christian traditions to join in its work to restore study of “the good life” to the core of the world’s colleges and universities and the most significant global conversations. Augmenting the work of Christian scholars at the center, the new group includes high-profile academics who engage traditions including Buddhism, Confucianism, Hinduism, Humanism, Islam, Judaism, positive psychology, and utilitarianism. The scholars’ work, which will be published as a book, is part of the center’s broad-scale Theology of Joy and the Good Life project, made possible by a $4.2 million grant from the John Templeton Foundation and other supporters. “The question of the good life is the most pressing question of our day,” said Miroslav Volf, Henry B. Wright Professor of Systematic Theology and founding director of the center.