Jonathan Edwards' Miscellanies
An Excellent Note-Taking System for Theological and Biblical Thoughts
Puritan Congregationalist pastor, revivalist and theologian, Edwards was one of the most influential thinkers of colonial America. (Pocket Dictionary of Church History)
Born in 1703, Jonathan Edwards is seen as America’s most important philosophical theologian. He only lived for 54 years, but in that time he served as a pastor and missionary, preached and published many influential sermons, played a critical role in the First Great Awakening, was invited to be the president of the College of New Jersey (later Princeton), and wrote 73 volumes of material according to the collection at Yale University. If you want to read more about Jonathan Edwards, I suggest you start with this article published by Crossway.
One of his greatest legacies was his Miscellanies note-taking system. Spending nearly thirteen hours per day reading, Jonathan Edwards needed a well organized system to keep track of everything he learned. These personal notebooks contained his thoughts on over 1,400 topics. Each entry was identified by a series of letters and/or numbers to enable Edwards to easily find notes he wanted to reference. The thought process behind many of his influential writings can be found in Jonathan Edwards’ Miscellanies notebooks.
If you want to learn more about Jonathan Edwards’ note-taking systems, check out this article written by Dr. Matthew Everhard or watch his video bellow for a more detailed explanation of how you can replicate Edwards’ Miscellanies.
Currently, I use a Moleskine Pro Notebook for my Miscellanies notebook.
The built-in page numbers and table of contents makes indexing my notes significantly easier.
The layout of each page gives me plenty of space for notes and a designated area for the index number, a title, the passage I’m referencing, the date I made the note, and cross-references.
I can then put the index number in my Bibles to indicate that I have a note on a specific passage or topic, regardless of how little space is on the page.
Starting next week, I will be posting some of the notes from my Miscellanies notebook. Next Thursday will be a post discussing Jesus’ command to not worry from Matthew 6:25-34.
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Soli Deo Gloria,
Caleb Friske