Parish ministry and theological education
Jewett was born in Nottingham, England, in 1830. He graduated from Hobart College in 1855 and the General Theological Seminary in 1856, entering ordained ministry soon afterwards. Missionary work at Boonville and Forestport in New York preceded his long rectorship at Christ Church in Dayton, Ohio. He married Sophia Seymour Miller in 1863.
In 1889 he became professor of pastoral theology and librarian at the General Theological Seminary. His publications also included Communion Wine and writing on the debate over biblical wine. Diabolology belongs to that broader career of arguing from Christian texts and defending their doctrinal implications.
A personal adversary rather than an abstraction
The Paddock lectureship was established to defend Christian doctrine against contemporary challenges. Jewett’s six lectures address moral probation, the nature of evil, the development of biblical teaching and Christ’s encounters with Satan. His preface opposes interpretations that treat demonic personality as personification or an accommodation to earlier belief.
The final lecture turns to the Lord’s Prayer. Jewett supports the rendering “the Evil One” in place of the abstract “evil”, drawing on Greek usage, early versions and Christian writers. A question of translation therefore becomes central to his theological case. His method makes the wording and transmission of Christian texts central to a defence of the doctrine.
