Theology and the Kinesthetic Imagination: A Case Study of Jonathan Edwards in the Circum-Atlantic World

This dissertation explores bodily gesture as a source of theological knowledge, using as a case study the historical context and theology of colonial North American theologian Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758). The project has a two-fold aim: a recontextualization of Edwards in discourses about the making of modernity in the circum-Atlantic world; and, more suggestively, a constructive appraisal of bodily gesture, beauty, and desire as sources for Christian theology.;Theologians in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries have "rediscovered" the body, aesthetics, and desire as sources of theological knowledge. The emphasis on beauty, body, and desire is often pitted against the hyper-rational subject assumed in post-Enlightenment Protestant European and American theologies. This project returns to a particular moment in the history of Protestant Christian theology and its collusion with the creation of this modern, rational subject: the publically rehearsed theological debates regarding the series of 18th century colonial and European revivals known as the Great Awakening. A central point of contention in the debates between revivalists, of whom Edwards was the primary public champion, and detractors of the revivals was the unruly body of those seized with "the new birth." Under the throes of the spirit, people convulsed, wept, shouted fainted, leapt, and even levitated. For some, these bodily manifestations were signs of "a divine and supernatural light" infused in the soul, for others, dear proof of irrationality and dangerous enthusiasm.;Edwards own view of bodily knowledge was itself vexed. He labored to evoke these ecstatic bodily performances in his sermon events, defended his parishioners from charges of excess and mental instability, and crafted an intricate theological scaffolding to account for these affective and bodily realities in terms he hoped would both be faithful to orthodox Calvinism and convincing according to the logic of the new science he learned from Newton and Locke. At the same time, he was beholden to a skeptical view of the body learned from that same new science. This tension in Edwards' body theology is enlivened in conversation with performance theory, particularly alongside performance concepts of "scenario," "repertoire," and "kinesthetic imagination.".;I borrow the term kinesthetic imagination from performance and dance theory, where it describes a convergence of imagination and memory in bodily movement. I describe Edwards's revival corpus as a repertoire that creates scenarios that set in motion kinesthetic imagination to counter the rational, self-determining subject that was being created in the confluence of early Enlightenment philosophy and early global capitalism in the circum-Atlantic world. In other words, the body's ecstasy called forth in revival sermon events offers an alternative theological history, one that lives not in written doctrine so much as in bodily gesture and movement. Unruly as bodily gestures are, they escape the bounds of ecclesial control, appearing in various cultural locations, and creating theological meaning as they exert influence on the subjects that enact them. Kinesthetic imagination offers a way to understand this bodily knowledge not only in terms of individual experience, but also as a way of describing the intersection of theological meaning with broader culture as it is traced through bodily movement.;The first chapter frames the key theoretical terms of my project drawn from performance theory, situating the discussion in the ongoing theological conversation about the body's role as a theological source, and suggesting why Edwards and the 18th century revivals are a useful case study. I then turn to Edwards's context in particular, describing his location in the circum-Atlantic world as one marked by the exchange of goods and ideas in circulation from Europe, Africa, the Caribbean and the Americas that created the material conditions for modernity. Situating Edwards in the circum-Atlantic reframes his theological project as one deeply indebted to the material, social, and cultural forces of early global capitalism and the creation of a new modern subject forged in the challenge to traditional understandings of epistemology, authority, and authenticity. Within this frame, I examine his revival sermons in the third chapter, reading them as scripts in a repertoire that call forth two emotional registers: beauty and terror. Beauty and terror are twin sides of Edwards's concept of reality and together shape the sensibility he hoped to form in his parishioners, a sense of belonging to the cosmic whole. This sensibility was enacted in the bodily scenarios his preaching elicited and I devote my fourth chapter to an analysis of the body in revival writings and how those bodily movements foster a kinesthetic imagination. I conclude with an epilogue, exploring how this kinesthetic imagination carries theological meaning in the present.