Biblical Theology: Past, Present, and Future (II)
Southwestern Journal of Theology
Volume 56, No. 1 – Fall 2013
Managing Editor: Terry L. Wilder
Edited by Don Schweitzer. New York: Peter Lang, 2010. 272 pages. Hardcover, $94.95.
This volume is an excellent resource for scholars and theological readers interested in Jonathan Edwards’s theology and philosophy. The book is a festschrift honoring Sang Hyun Lee who spent his career teaching systematic theology at Princeton Theological Seminary. Lee’s bold interpretation of Edwards’s philosophical theology, known as dispositional ontology, has become the starting point for scholars who seek to grasp the incredibly intricate world of Edwards’s doctrine of God. No one who examines Edwards’s philosophical theology can fail to appreciate Lee’s immense contribution to the field.
Jonathan Edwards as Contemporary seeks to demonstrate how Edwards’s eighteenth-century reflections can address theological problems in our twentyfirst-century world. “Though Edwards was a person of his time,” Don Schweitzer writes in the preface, “his thought provides significant resources for addressing theological and philosophical issues in the present” (ix). The book contains fifteen essays written by scholars who are well-known in the field. Half of the essays address aspects related to Edwards’s doctrine of God such as the Trinity (Paul Helm, Michael McClymond), divine infinity (Don Schweitzer), the Incarnation (SengKong Tan), and philosophical issues such as Edwards’s occasionalism (Stephen Daniel), dispositional ontology (Anri Morimoto), panentheism (Oliver Crisp), and philosophy of nature (Avihu Zakai). The remaining chapters treat a mixture of topics, including Edwards’s theology of justification (Douglas Sweeney), ecclesiology (Amy Plantinga Pauw), revelation (Gerald McDermott), homiletics (Wilson Kimnach), and a delightful study of Edwards’s relationship to Princeton (Stephen Crocco). Kenneth Minkema and Harry Stout provide an informative essay that reviews the secondary literature on Edwards in the last fifty years, and Robert Jenson rounds out the book with a personal reflection on “How I Stole from Jonathan Edwards.” The extensive footnotes in the essays are a goldmine that any Edwards researcher will treasure.
An overview of each essay cannot be given here so comments will be confined to a few highlights. One issue that has divided scholars over the years has been the degree to which Edwards is to be categorized as a modern, progressive theologian. Was Edwards consciously a traditional, Reformed thinker, or do his views foreshadow theological elements of a later era? Those familiar with Edwards’s writings realize how complex this question is, and some of the essays here weigh-in on this debate.
Michael McClymond’s essay “Hearing the Symphony: A Critique of Some Critics of Sang Lee’s and Amy Pauw’s Accounts of Jonathan Edwards’ View of God,” defends a progressive reading of Edwards’s trinitarianism and doctrine of God. In agreement with Pauw, he maintains that Edwards recast the doctrine of divine simplicity in a way that allows for a genuine intrapersonal community within the divine life. This recasting was integral to Edwards’s trinitarianism which resonates with recent theological movements such as social trinitarianism. “Speaking generally,” he writes, “the Lee-Pauw perspective sees Edwards’s God as dynamic, relational, expansive, and pluralistic” (68). Critics of this interpretation, he notes, make the “hermeneutical mistake” of reading too much Reformed orthodoxy into Edwards and thereby miss how forward-thinking he really was (71-72). While there is much to commend in his essay—such as his symphony metaphor, and the call to interpret Edwards’s theology holistically—this reviewer wonders whether a theological “presentism” has crept into his interpretation on these issues. In other words, by closely associating Edwards with today’s theological discussions, one risks missing how deeply situated he was in his own context and indebted he was to his own tradition.
On the surface, Oliver Crisp’s essay, “Jonathan Edwards’s Panentheism,” appears to be liable to the same problem of presentism, yet in the end avoids this pitfall. Panentheism has been a notoriously elastic term given to models of the Godworld relationship that lie somewhere between traditional theism and pantheism. Red flags go up among evangelicals whenever the term surfaces since it is usually associated with process and open theism. Recent work, however, has identified Christian versions of panentheism which, though not without problems, appear to be just another name for Christian Neoplatonism. Crisp’s essay includes a discussion of Edwards’s Neoplatonism, and his summary of Edwards’s “panentheism” contains points that are familiar to close readers of Edwards: Edwards’s God creates out of an overflow of his creative disposition, creation is an ideal world “being a series of ideal momentary world-stages in the divine mind, [that] is continuously created by God who is, in fact, the sole causal agent of all that comes to pass” (115). These points are a fairly accurate reflection of Edwards’s views. However, I am hesitant to label this nexus of ideas “panentheism” mainly because the term is so elastic and means so many different things to different people.
Douglas Sweeney’s contribution, “Jonathan Edwards and Justification: the Rest of the Story,” counters a recent trend that discerns “Catholic” themes in Edwards’s doctrine of justification. Edwards’s Catholic-sounding construal of the doctrine—his identification of faith with love, for instance—must be understood contextually. Personally, Edwards embraced the deep anti-Catholicism of Puritanism which viewed the Roman Catholic Church as antichrist. A robust sola-fideism shines through in his sermons. And his emphasis on acts of evangelical love and perseverance as necessary factors to final justification must be understood in the context of a backsliding culture which had just experienced an incredible season of awakening. Though Edwards’s ideas may provide resources for ecumenical dialogue between Catholics and Protestants, it is most certain that he never would have blessed such a project. He probably would have pointed out, as Sweeney does, that every point in his doctrine of justification which sounds “Catholic” to today’s ears finds precedent in Reformed tradition on justification. Edwards, in other words, was not saying anything innovative, ecumenical, or Catholic on the topic of justification; he was merely advancing his own Reformed interpretation of the doctrine.
My hope is that these snapshots provide a glimpse of the exciting world of Edwards scholarship. I recommend Jonathan Edwards as Contemporary to anyone who desires to keep up with the expanding universe of Edwards studies. The book is not without a few minor problems. Close readers will note misspellings throughout the work. The table of contents does not divide the essays in three parts (philosophy, theology, context) as specified on the back cover. And the steep price of the volume will prohibit a wide readership. But these minor issues should not detract interested Edwards readers from obtaining a copy.
