Lucas God's Grand Design

The Theological Vision of Jonathan Edwards
1. Auflage 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4335-2445-5
Verlag: Crossway
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 224 Seiten

Jonathan Edwards was a preacher, pastor, revivalist, and theologian. This volume unpacks his magnificent theological vision, which starts with God's glory and ends with all creation returning to that glory.  Sean Michael Lucas has converted his years of teaching on Edwards into this valuable work, which places Edwards's vision in an accessible, two-part framework. Part one focuses on Edwards's understanding of redemption history-God's cosmic, grand work from eternity past to eternity future, where all things are united in Christ. Part two examines Edwards's perspective on 'redemption applied'-how that gracious, divine work unfolds in space and time to personally transform individuals, stirring their affections, illuminating their minds, and moving their wills to form new habits and practices. This overview of Edwards's theology will prove to be a thought-provoking, encouraging guide to contemporary believers at every stage of their spiritual journey. 

Sean Michael Lucas (PhD, Westminster Theological Seminary) is the senior minister at the First Presbyterian Church in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and associate professor of church history at Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi. He previously taught at Covenant Theological Seminary for five years, serving as the chief academic officer.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Lucas, Sean Michael

Leseproben

Introduction

During his lifetime, Jonathan Edwards was many things: pastor, preacher, revivalist, husband, father, author, controversialist. But if he was anything, he was a theologian of the Christian life.

Perhaps this was because, as historian George M. Marsden notes, “he was not a saint by nature. . . . His spiritual life was often an immense struggle. Despite his massive intellect and heroic disciplines, he was, like everyone else, a person with frailties and contradictions.” And yet, through his struggles and wrestling with God, Edwards produced a comprehensive theological vision in which he set forth an approach to the Christian life that started with God’s glory and ended with all creation returning that glory. It was a vision that remains quite simply magnificent.1

And yet, it is a theological vision that has never been adequately explored. Historians and theologians have long argued over whether there was a “center” to Edwards’s theology, whether there was an integration point into which all of Edwards’s thought fits. Some, like the brilliant Edwards scholar Perry Miller, sought to find a modern Edwards, one that presciently spoke to the needs of a coming age and was martyred in his own. Others, such as theologian John Gerstner, found a rationalist Edwards, one that provided theological rigor and rationalist ballast in his approach to his day and our own. Still others, such as historian Michael McClymond and biographer Phillip Gura, appealed to Edwards as the purveyor of religious experience, the ultimate apologetic for yesterday and today. One of the best books on Edwards’s theology, still in print, held that he centered his theology in the doctrine of faith. Yet another suggested that God’s glory was the beginning point.2

All of these attempts to explore Edwards’s theology have legitimacy, especially in a day when his thought often seems to be like a “great mirror” in which scholars and readers see their own concerns in his. And yet it is striking that Edwards spent the greatest amount of his time thinking about the Christian life, both for himself and then for his parishioners in his pastoral ministry.3

The Christian life certainly was a major preoccupation in his sermons, the regular work in which he engaged from 1726 until his death in 1758. Even a quick perusal of the six published volumes of sermons in The Works of Jonathan Edwards edition produced by Yale University Press provides this sense of Edwards’s focus. From his earliest sermon, “Christian Happiness,” in which he argued that godly people are happy no matter their outward circumstances, Edwards worked the themes of holiness and happiness, seeing and savoring, majesty and meekness, light and darkness—all as representative descriptors of the Christian life. He spoke of the “pleasantness of religion,” as well as the way to be “profitable hearers of God’s Word,” pictured “the true Christian’s life [as] a journey towards heaven,” delighted in the “excellency of Christ,” and urged his people to “renew our Covenant with God.” In a variety of ways and in a number of contexts, he sought to inculcate a deep and rich piety among his people.4

Edwards did so because it was the major preoccupation of his own life. He would later relate to his son-in-law, Aaron Burr, “I felt in me a burning desire to be in everything a complete Christian; and conformed to the blessed image of Christ: and that I might in all things, according to the pure, sweet, and blessed rules of the gospel.” He went on to observe, “It was my continual strife...