Scholars and laypersons alike regard Jonathan Edwards (1703-58) as North America's greatest theologian. The Theology of Jonathan Edwards is the most comprehensive survey of his theology yet produced and the first study to make full use of the recently-completed seventy-three-volume online edition of the Works of Jonathan Edwards. The book's forty-five chapters examine all major aspects of Edwards's thought and include in-depth discussions of the extensive secondary literature on Edwards as well as Edwards's own writings. Its opening chapters set out Edwards's historical and personal theological contexts. The next thirty chapters connect Edwards's theological loci in the temporally-ordered way in which he conceptualized the theological enterprise-beginning with the triune God in eternity with his angels to the history of redemption as an expression of God's inner reality ad extra, and then back to God in eschatological glory.The authors analyze such themes as aesthetics, metaphysics, typology, history of redemption, revival, and true virtue. They also take up such rarely-explored topics as Edwards's missiology, treatment of heaven and angels, sacramental thought, public theology, and views of non-Christian religions. Running throughout the volume are what the authors identify as five basic theological constituents: trinitarian communication, creaturely participation, necessitarian dispositionalism, divine priority, and harmonious constitutionalism. Later chapters trace his influence on and connections with later theologies and philosophies in America and Europe. The result is a multi-layered analysis that treats Edwards as a theologian for the twenty-first-century global Christian community, and a bridge between the Christian West and East, Protestantism and Catholicism, conservatism and liberalism, and charismatic and non-charismatic churches.

The Christ-centered exegesis of Jonathan Edwards Jonathan Edwards is remembered for his sermons and works of theology and philosophy--but he has been overlooked as an exegete. Gilsun Ryu's The Federal Theology of Jonathan Edwards explores how exegesis drove Edwards's focus on the headship of Christ as second Adam--and likewise formed a foundation for his broader theological reasoning and writing, especially on Christ and the covenants. Edwards's distinctive emphases on exegesis, redemptive history, and the harmony of Scripture distinguish him from his Reformed forebears. Ryu's study will help readers appreciate Edwards's contribution as an exegetically informed Reformed theologian.

This volume provides an interpretative key to Jonathan Edwards's theology developed from within his own doctrinal constructs. Strobel offers a dogmatic exposition of Edwards's theology by unveiling the trinitarian architecture of his thought. Building upon this analysis, Strobel applies his construct to reinterpret three key areas of redemption debated widely in the secondary literature: spiritual knowledge, regeneration, and religious affection. In order to achieve this purpose, Strobel's approach is theological rather than philosophical, employing Edwards's self-confession as a Reformed theologian to guide his analysis. In advancing a theological reading of Edwards, Strobel focuses on the systematic nature of Edward's theology, ordering it according to his doctrinal affirmations. This necessitates, as many Edwards scholars now affirm, a primary focus on Edwards's trinitarian theology, where the Trinity serves as the key ontological principle which orders the whole of his doctrinal construction. By grounding the interpretive key in Edwards's understanding of the Trinity, Strobel's idiosyncratic exposition of his doctrine of the Trinity serves to recast Edwards's theology in a new light.

This volume argues that the notion of “affections” discussed by Jonathan Edwards (and Christian theologians before him) means something very different from what contemporary English speakers now call “emotions.” and that Edwards's notions of affections came almost entirely from traditional Christian theology in general and the Reformed tradition in particular. Ryan J. Martin demonstrates that Christian theologians for centuries emphasized affection for God, associated affections with the will, and distinguished affections from passions; generally explaining affections and passions to be inclinations and aversions of the soul. This was Edwards's own view, and he held it throughout his entire ministry. Martin further argues that Edwards's view came not as a result of his reading of John Locke, or the pressures of the Great Awakening (as many Edwardsean scholars argue), but from his own biblical interpretation and theological education. By analysing patristic, medieval and post-medieval thought and the journey of Edwards's psychology, Martin shows how, on their own terms, pre-modern Christians historically defined and described human psychology.

Winner of the 2013 Christianity Today Book Award for Theology/Ethics Scholars and laypersons alike regard Jonathan Edwards (1703-58) as North America's greatest theologian. The Theology of Jonathan Edwards is the most comprehensive survey of his theology yet produced and the first study to make full use of the recently-completed seventy-three-volume online edition of the Works of Jonathan Edwards. The book's forty-five chapters examine all major aspects of Edwards's thought and include in-depth discussions of the extensive secondary literature on Edwards as well as Edwards's own writings. Its opening chapters set out Edwards's historical and personal theological contexts. The next thirty chapters connect Edwards's theological loci in the temporally-ordered way in which he conceptualized the theological enterprise-beginning with the triune God in eternity with his angels to the history of redemption as an expression of God's inner reality ad extra, and then back to God in eschatological glory. The authors analyze such themes as aesthetics, metaphysics, typology, history of redemption, revival, and true virtue. They also take up such rarely-explored topics as Edwards's missiology, treatment of heaven and angels, sacramental thought, public theology, and views of non-Christian religions. Running throughout the volume are what the authors identify as five basic theological constituents: trinitarian communication, creaturely participation, necessitarian dispositionalism, divine priority, and harmonious constitutionalism. Later chapters trace his influence on and connections with later theologies and philosophies in America and Europe. The result is a multi-layered analysis that treats Edwards as a theologian for the twenty-first-century global Christian community, and a bridge between the Christian West and East, Protestantism and Catholicism, conservatism and liberalism, and charismatic and non-charismatic churches.

As a theologian in the Reformed tradition, covenant theology was for Jonathan Edwards the internal scaffolding that gave shape to the biblical story of redemption. The establishment of the eternal rule of righteousness as the basis of the believer's communion with God and eternal happiness is a central theme beginning with the Covenant of Works, grounded in the eternal Covenant of Redemption, and culminating in the Covenant of Grace. It is the basis for the law-gospel distinction in Edwards and the early architects of federal theology. For the "God intoxicated" New England Puritan preacher, this was no dry academic exercise. Rather, it was a joyous and affectionate discovery and embrace of what God had ordained in eternity, what Christ accomplished in history on the cross, and what the Holy Spirit is doing and will complete in the church. This study grew out of current discussions in Reformed scholarship questioning aspects of traditional covenant theology. As a key transitional figure in the history of Reformed theology, Edwards's thinking is still relevant. The richness and depth of Edwards's vision of redemptive history provides a clear and comprehensive understanding of his Reformed soteriology and the role of evangelical obedience in justification.

This study positions itself in the transatlantic, early modern period between American Congregationalist Jonathan Edwards (1703- 1758) and English Baptist Andrew Fuller (1754-1815), and their attempts to express au fait understanding of reformed soteriologcial ideas in the age of reason.

This compilation of reader response to Jonathan Edwards, spanning 276 years, includes a reprint of two earlier works ? Jonathan Edwards: A Reference Guide (1981) and Jonathan Edwards: An Annotated Bibliography (1994) ? and the publication of a third, a gathering of commentary from 1994 to 2005. Nearly 140 essays have been added to the first and second works, while the last new gathering ? which includes a celebration of the tercentenary of Edwards??'s birth ? adds another 700 to the whole. The text preserves the pattern of arranging items alphabetically within a given year and of recording cross-references. Essays in a collection are annotated serially rather than alphabetically. Each of the three sections is self-contained with an introduction and annotated bibliography of its own. Adding to the immense value of this work to Edwards scholars are the chronology of Edwards??'s works, listed by date and by short and long title, which precedes the entire work, and the three comprehensive indexes ? of authors and titles, of subjects, and additions to the previous volumes.

The Bible was at the center of Jonathan Edwards' intellectual and ministerial life. As an eighteenth century theologian-pastor, the Scriptures were the focus of his work and the perspective through which he viewed his world. Edwards had a particular interest in the interpretation of the Apocalypse, devoting a notebook to the collection of observations and thoughts from his reading and reflection. This book examines Edwards' interpretation of Revelation 4-8 as seen in his working notebooks and theological treatises and sermons and then compares his views with some of his major contemporary biblical interpreters. Edwards employs a typological hermeneutical method, arguing that typology is the language God uses to communicate and this language can be learned both from explicit typology in Scripture as well as from the biblical author's implicit use of types. In the application of this typological hermeneutics, Edwards not only interprets all of Scripture Christologically, but also views the natural world and secular history as types of Christ.

Since the publication of Sang Hyun Lee's revolutionary commentary, The Philosophical Theology of Jonathan Edwards, scholars have considered the possibilities of understanding Jonathan Edwards's thought in terms of dispositional laws, forces, and habits. While some scholars reject the notion of a dispositional ontology in Edwards, others have taken the concept of disposition in his thought beyond the usage the Northampton minister ever indicated, especially with respect to soteriological considerations. The preacher of "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" is made to be an inclusivist, if not a crypto-universalist. Jonathan Edwards's Vision of Reality substantiates that Edwards, in an effort to combat deistic and materialistic Enlightenment paradigms, employs dispositions in his philosophy, but that his radical theocentrism and Calvinistic particularism established its boundaries within his apologetical reconsideration of spatiotemporal and metaphysical reality. Within his "spiritual vision" of reality, Edwards leaves no stone unturned: history and even the reprobate find inherent value and a positive functional role not only in God's program of self-glorification but as manifestations of divine being--the damned are "deformities" in God. The logic of Edwards's theocentric vision of reality pushes his ideas to the limits of acceptable Reformed orthodoxy, and sometimes beyond those limits.