Abstract
Michael J. McClymond and Gerald R. McDermott,
The Theology of Jonathan Edwards
, Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2012; 784 pp.: 9780199791606, £40.00/US$65.00 (hbk)
This is a comprehensive survey of the works of Jonathan Edwards neatly summarizing his thinking on a variety of theological loci grouped under sections covering methodology, anthropology and ecclesiology. The authors are of course well known within Edwardsean scholarship, having published various monographs and papers in the field. The monograph under review is substantial both in content and length (784 pp.), and for this reviewer at least works best as an excellent cross-reference volume rather than as one good read.
The writers' explicit agenda is to present Edwards as not just a relevant theologian for today but one who is par excellent bar none, in effect ‘America's Augustine’. However, the writers' conclusion that Edwards ‘may be understood as a bridging figure within the fragmented world of twenty-first century Christianity’ (p. 721) whose ideas provide a prism through which all theological streams can be synthesized arguably is historically anachronistic: irresolvable conflict and tension can only result.
To take one example, many present-day followers of Calvin champion Edwards as one of their own, albeit noting Edwards's metaphysical bent. It is here that the difficulty lies. The reason why traditional protestant theologians following Calvin avoided ‘metaphysical subtleties’ (p. 705) was because they were cautious of venturing into places which God had not revealed: they intended to protect the unknowability of God's ways with the world. Calvin himself warned against trying to understand or inquire into providential activity. But that is precisely the direction Edwards followed. Edwards's precocious mind, impacted by Enlightenment-influenced rationality, attempted to trace God's providential purposes in history. His ‘Notebooks' are filled which such ‘meta-historic’ entries which he intended to use in his projected ‘great work called A History of the Work of Redemption … a body of divinity in an entire new method, being thrown into the form of a history’ (WJE 26.727), but never realized because of his untimely death. In many respects this form of enquiry is what marks off Evangelicalism from the eighteenth century onwards from the earlier Calvinism, and also puts it in constant disagreement with major secular ways of understanding the world and history today.
All of this is not to say that critical engagement with Edwards cannot be theologically productive but this must be tempered by the fact that Edwards has his cultural limitations (his imagery and language of children, e.g., is drastic but arguably reflects his cultural milieu) and theological idiosyncrasies (his panentheism – emanation, overflowing, diffusion or dispersal of divine substance – undermines the doctrine of ex nihilo and thus the dignity of the created act).
It remains to note a number of errata and omissions: in a letter Marsden quotes ‘has been’ not ‘as been’ (p. 39); it was Edwards's daughter Lucy who was his physician (p. 39); there is a missing word, ‘element’, after ‘aesthetic’ in the Elwood quote (p. 93); ‘[M]an's inwards … ’ (p. 358); larger font size in footnote 70 (p. 624); and the sentence beginning ‘For Schleiermacher … ’ needs rephrasing (p. 675).