Christ and Culture Revisited
Southwestern Journal of Theology
Volume 64, No. 2 – Spring 2022
Editor: David S. Dockery
By Gilsun Ryu. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2021, xvi+352 pp., $29.99
In his book The Federal Theology of Jonathan Edwards, Gilsun Ryu has admirably tackled one of the more neglected areas of research in Edwards studies: Edwards’s federalism or covenant theology. Ryu does not just provide readers with a detailed account of Edwards’s federal schema— encompassing his theology of the covenants of redemption, works, and grace—he also situates this theology in the context of his reformed scholastic predecessors and thoroughly explores the ways Edwards exegetically supported his views. The result is a study that unites several current subdis- ciplines within Edwards’s studies: Edwards’s relationship with his reformed predecessors, studies on Edwards’s exegesis, and Edwards’s federalism. Ryu’s work is important because he suggests that the fundamental framework of Edwards’s approach to the Bible lies at the intersection of his understanding of the history of redemption and his federalism.
The book orbits around three concepts: Edwards’s reformed federalism, his understanding of the history of redemption, and his understanding of the unity of the Bible. Until recently, scholarship on Edwards’s doctrine of the covenants has emphasized his divergence from the reformed tradition. This older scholarship, Ryu observes, was misinformed primarily because the rich variety of approaches to covenant theology among Edwards’s predecessors was not fully appreciated. Federal theology among the reformed, Ryu notes, is not “a specific method or set of ideas,” but rather “a family of approaches” to understanding the Bible that rejected a Pelagian view of the relationship between the Old and New Testaments (p. 71), and broadly affirmed some version of the covenants of redemption, works, and grace. Looked at from this broad vantage point, the family semblance between the reformed tradition and Edwards’s covenantal scheme becomes immediately apparent, even if we find Edwards deviating from his reformed predecessors on a number of minor points. In arguing this, Ryu helpfully devotes a chapter to the federal theologies of four seventeenth-century reformed theologians—Johannes Cocceius, Herman Witsius, Petrus van Mastricht, and Francis Turretin—in an effort both to show the diversity of the federal system and Edwards’s relatively close association with it.
Ryu next explores Edwards’s doctrines of the covenants of redemption, works, and grace in chapters three to five, respectively. His burden in these chapters is to demonstrate that salvation history (or “the history of redemption”) was prominent in Edwards’s mind as he articulated these doctrines. For instance, Edwards’s doctrines of the immanent Trinity and the covenant of redemption were specifically forged with the history of redemption in mind: “the redemptive work of God,” Ryu concludes, “has its seminal form within the immanent Trinity” (p. 103). Noteworthy in these chapters is Ryu’s lengthy study of Edwards’s doctrine of the covenant of works (chapter four), a topic that has rarely been examined in the secondary literature.
In chapters six through eight, Ryu details the exegetical strategies Edwards employed in constructing his theology of the covenants. Here the author dives deep into Edwards’s hermeneutics. While Edwards began with the literal-historical meaning of the text, he was not adverse to drawing upon typology, the literal-prophetic sense of texts, and even allegory to illuminate Scripture’s meaning. Edwards could thus see multiple dimensions to a biblical figure like Moses: “Moses could be understood as a real figure, a type of the church under the Mosaic era, a type of the soul of the elect, and a type of Christ being humiliated” (p. 255). Governing these forays into the fuller sense of Scripture is Edwards’s commitment to the unity of Bible, a unity that is christologically-focused, is framed by the history of redemption, and is guided by covenant theology.
The book is well-written and thoroughly researched. My one critique is that it can at times be rather dense, no doubt the result of the fact that it originated as a doctoral dissertation. Yet careful reading will, however, yield great rewards in understanding Edwards, federal theology, and the Bible.
It is well-known that several months before his unexpected death, Edwards wrote of his intent to author two “great works” on the Bible: A History of the Work of Redemption, and The Harmony of the Old and New Testament. Scholars have since theorized what these writings might have contained. Ryu’s book is, in my estimation, the best study so far pointing to what these works might have looked like.
