Digital Logos Edition
Study Jonathan Edwards’ thought on issues in contemporary theology, including free will, the human condition, justification, and the relationship of the Old Testament to the New Testament. Known as America’s first—and perhaps greatest—theologian, this collection enables you to study Edwards’ writings, consider his place in the Reformed tradition and explore how Edwards understood the Calvinist doctrine of the covenant of grace.
Get the monumental Yale Edition of The Works of Jonathan Edwards.
Jonathan Edwards towered over his contemporaries—a man over six feet tall and a figure of theological stature—but the reasons for his power have been a matter of dispute. Edwards on the Will offers a persuasive explanation. In 1753, after seven years of personal trials, which included dismissal from his Northampton church, Edwards submitted a treatise, Freedom of the Will, to Boston publishers. Its impact on Puritan society was profound. He had refused to be trapped either by a new Arminian scheme that seemed to make God impotent or by a Hobbesian natural determinism that made morality an illusion. He both reasserted the primacy of God’s will and sought to reconcile freedom with necessity. In the process he shifted the focus from the community of duty to the freedom of the individual.
Thereafter, for a century or more, all discussion of free will and on the church as an enclave of the pure in an impure society had to begin with Edwards. His disciples, the “New Divinity” men—principally Samuel Hopkins of Great Barrington and Joseph Bellamy of Bethlehem, Connecticut—set out to defend his thought. Ezra Stiles, president of Yale, tried to keep his influence off the Yale Corporation, but Edwards’s ideas spread beyond New Haven and sparked the religious revivals of the next decades. In the end, old Calvinism returned to Yale in the form of Nathaniel William Taylor, the Boston Unitarians captured Harvard, and Edwards’s troublesome ghost was laid to rest. The debate on human freedom versus necessity continued, but theologians no longer controlled it. In Edwards on the Will, Guelzo presents with clarity and force the story of these fascinating maneuverings for the soul of New England and of the emerging nation.
Allen Guelzo writes with grace, charm, and even with about a weighty subject that others have found forbidding. His scholarship is broad and his expositions lucid.
—Daniel Walker Howe, professor emeritus of history, University of California at Los Angeles
Where earlier scholars have been largely preoccupied with Edwards’s ‘modernity’ or with measuring the social effect of Edwards in the context of the American Revolution, Allen Guelzo demonstrates his intellectual ‘legacy’ not only to the generation of the Revolution but also beyond. This work will stand as the definitive treatment of the legacy of Edwards’s classic treatise on Freedom of the Will.
—Harry Stout, Jonathan Edwards Professor of American Christianity, Yale University
With a precise, fresh, and lively literary style, Guelzo makes old controversies come alive for a twentieth-century reader. This is intellectual history at its best—learned, animated, and compelling. It is one of the finest studies of theology in America ever written.
—E. Brooks Holifield, Charles Howard Candler Professor of American Church History, Emory University
By tracing the development of one central point of Edwards’s doctrine, Guelzo allows us to see the unfolding of the entire history of the Edwardsean school, and, by implication, of American theology, in the period between 1750–1830.
—Philip F. Gura, professor of American literature and culture, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Allen C. Guelzo is the Henry R. Luce III Professor of the Civil War Era at Gettysburg College, where he serves as director of the Civil War Era Studies Program. He is a popular author and has authored or edited many books on American history, including Gettysburg: The Last Invasion, Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President, and The New England Theology: From Jonathan Edwards to Edwards Amasa Park.
Twentieth-century discussions of Jonathan Edwards’ covenant theology frequently named a tension in the purity of Edwards’ Calvinism. Was his insistent teaching on the covenant of grace suggestive of incipient Arminianism, or was Perry Miller correct in asserting that Edwards rejected the covenant, with its abridging of God’s freedom, by his categorical insistence on God’s absolute sovereignty in salvation?
Bogue explores the breadth of Edwards’ writing, including many unpublished manuscripts, and interacts with a broad spectrum of secondary works to demonstrate conclusively that Calvinism and the covenant of grace are entirely consistent and do not exclude one another. The covenant of grace is not a device of man acting autonomously; it is a provision of the eternal, sovereign, electing God. As set forth by Edwards, it is simply the way the sovereign God has committed himself to carry out what he has decreed from all eternity pertaining to the redemption of sinners.
No study of the significance of Jonathan Edwards’ theology is complete without the masterful treatment provided by Dr. Carl Bogue. He skillfully opens up Edwards’ contribution to the development of covenant theology.
—R.C. Sproul, chairman, Ligonier Ministries
As far as I am aware of literature on Edwards this is the best, comprehensive, scholarly representation of his theology in print in any language.
—John H. Gerstner, former professor of Church History, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary
This work remains the most sophisticated and nuanced treatment of Christian salvation in Jonathan Edwards’ preaching and writing. The author’s selection of material from the vast array available is both judicious and illuminating. The result is a reliable roadmap to guide us through Edwards’ intricate and passionate exposition of Reformed soteriology.
—Dr. Michael McClenahan, minister of Ahorey Prebyterian Church, Armagh, Ireland
Carl W. Bogue (b. 1839) was a student of John Gerstner and the founding pastor Faith Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Akron, Ohio. He has served as a guest lecturer at many seminaries, including Covenant Theological Seminary, Reformation International Theological Seminary, and Grove City College. He is the author of Hole in the Dike: Critical Aspects of Berkouwer’s Theology, The Genesis Covenants, and The Scriptural Law of Worship.
The book you now hold in your hands contains nearly everything the great American Puritan Jonathan Edwards ever wrote on the book of Romans. It is collated into a verse by verse Bible commentary. Pastors, theologians, historians, and Bible study leaders will find a treasure of biblical insight along with practical application, as one of the great theologians of the Christian church expounds the book that Martin Luther called the “most important piece in the New Testament.” Jonathan Edwards’ expository genius is clearly evident in both the depth of his biblical insight as well as his logic. Readers will be encouraged and edified as they delve deeply into the book of Romans with Jonathan Edwards by their side.
This is a unique work that gives substantive nuggets of thought from Edwards on the book of Romans. If you love Edwards and you love Romans, this book needs to be in your library.
—Brian Borgman, author, Feelings and Faith
Lovi and Westerhoff have provided all who study the book of Romans a real gift—a complete collection of Edwards’ work on this epistle. As Paul exposits the gospel, so Edwards exposits Paul.
—Tim M. Sigler, professor of Bible, Moody Bible Institute
David S. Lovi holds an MA from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.
Benjamin Westerhoff holds an MA from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.
The vast corpus of Jonathan Edwards includes sermons, treatises, dissertations, “Miscellanies,” “Diary” and “Resolves,” and his “Personal Narrative.” Underlying all his writing is his Calvinist God whose anger (justice) matched his love (glory). Equally important is the human condition, its darkness and its “regenerative” light, sin and salvation. For these reasons Simonson aptly calls Edwards a “theologian of the heart,” one not satisfied with only theological abstractions but also a necessary, heartfelt “sense” of them.
Penetrating to these levels where literary artists do their work, he shares company with the likes of Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Emily Dickinson and William Faulkner. Since the resurgence of interest starting in the 1950s, Edwards is now recognized as America’s foremost religious thinker.
Simonson emphasizes Edwards’ language—its imagery, metaphors, grand sweeps of cadences— along with Edwards’ intensity of both thought and feeling. Throughout, Simonson’s book provides an incisive and carefully documented introduction to Edwards’ magisterial range of mind and style.
(This book) is the best and most accessible introduction to Edwards’ thought that I know.
Simonson is a patient and trustworthy guide for those who would traverse at least some of the spiritual ground on which Edwards was the American pathfinder.
—Martin E. Marty
Harold P. Simonson is professor emeritus of English at the University of Washington. He is the author of The Closed Frontier: Studies in American Tragedy, Jonathan Edwards: Theologian of the Heart, and Radical Discontinuities: American Romanticism and Christian Consciousness. He holds a PhD from Northwestern University and a BPhil in divinity from the University of St. Andrews, Scotland.
This book is a historical-theological study of the Reformed doctrine of justification. After providing a brief history of the doctrine, the work focuses on analyzing the writings of John Calvin, Jonathan Edwards, and N.T. Wright to discern points of development, continuity, and discontinuity within the Reformed tradition itself. Drawing upon their works, this book argues for a “living” theological practice and identity for those who work to formulate Reformed Doctrine.
It is an alarming honor to be discussed alongside Calvin and Edwards. I cannot comment on Huggins’s discussion of those two, but I am grateful for his clear and careful exposition of my own thought on justification and its relevance to ongoing debates within different sections of the church, and in particular for his recognition that what mattered to the Reformers, and should matter to us, is fidelity to Scripture.
—N.T. Wright, professor of New Testament and Early Christianity, St. Andrews University
What Living Justification proves, in the best of the Reformed tradition, is that even the heart of its soteriology, namely the doctrine of justification by faith, is alive and well, and growing, and learning, and shifting. I heartily recommend this fair-minded and accurate comparison of what justification means to Calvin, Edwards, and N.T. Wright.
—Scot McKnight, professor of New Testament, Northern Seminary
Can the doctrine of justification once again unify rather than divide Christians? Is it a doctrine formed and reformed in specific contexts, and thus open to fresh insight and even correction? Is N.T. Wright a legitimate heir of the Reformation understanding of justification? Jonathan Huggins answers all of these questions in the affirmative, offering us a compelling, hopeful assessment of the past, the present, and the future of justification.
—Michael J. Gorman, Raymond E. Brown Professor of Biblical Studies and Theology, St. Mary's Seminary
Recent years have seen an explosion of interest in two thinkers and one doctrine: Jonathan Edwards, N.T. Wright, and justification. Jonathan Huggins’ timely analysis seeks to connect these three to the Reformed tradition and its chief progenitor, John Calvin. All students and scholars interested in justification in the Reformed tradition will profit from this work.
—Gerald R. McDermott, Jordan-Trexler Professor of Religion, Roanoke College
Jonathan R. Huggins is research associate in systematic theology and ecclesiology at Stellenbosch University. He is also chaplain at Berry College and a priest in the Anglican Church in North America.
New England colonial pastor and theologian Jonathan Edwards was well aware of the threat that Deist philosophy posed to the unity of the Bible as Christian Scriptures, yet remarkably, his own theology of the Bible has never before been examined.
In the context of his entire corpus this study pays particular attention to the detailed notes Edwards left for “The Harmony of the Old and New Testament,” a “great work” hitherto largely ignored by scholars. Following examination of his “Harmony” notes, a case study of salvation in the Old Testament challenges the current “dispositional” account of Edwards’ soteriology and argues instead that the colonial Reformed theologian held there to be one object of saving faith in Old and New Testaments, namely, Christ.
Jonathan Edwards’ biblical scholarship is finally getting a bit of the attention it deserves. In Nichols’ able hands, this exegesis and its significance for Christian thought today nearly leap off the page. Recommended to Edwards scholars and to Christian theologians teaching Scripture in the church.
—Douglas A. Sweeney, professor of church history and the history of Christian thought, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School
This is the first full-length study of Edwards’ virtually unknown but vitally important harmony project, revealing the depth and breadth of his biblicism, including his striking focus on prophecy, typology, and doctrine—an ambitious if unrealized goal here sensitively reconstructed and examined.
—Kenneth P. Minkema, executive editor and director, Jonathan Edwards Center, Yale University
In this well-written and thoroughly-researched book, Stephen Nichols invites us to look harder at how Edwards engaged with the Bible, and how he drew its disparate parts into an intellectual harmony that inspired and resourced his own work. This is necessary reading for students of Edwards’ theology.
—Stephen R. Holmes, senior lecturer in theology, University of St. Andrews
Stephen R.C. Nichols is an ordained minister in the Church of England and read history at Christ’s College, Cambridge
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Bryan Speer
4/3/2017