The name Jonathan Edwards used to be famous and recognisable; he’s the New England late puritan revivalist pastor, now widely recognised as the greatest American theologian, and one of the most intellectually gifted philosophers in American history. It’s a pity most people who’ve heard of him tend to know him best, if at all, because of his famous sermon, ‘Sinners in the hands of an angry God’. Edwards’ theological writings can never be reduced to such caricature – his theological works are a huge mother lode of Australian (well, New England) gold nuggets. I can still remember reading his sermons on Charity and its Fruits, coming to the last sermon, ‘Heaven is a world of love’. I know of nothing, nothing, that gathers together such rhetorical and spiritual power in his descriptions of the love of God and the overwhelming mercy that suffuses the whole of reality.
Nowadays the name Jonathan Edwards isn’t as straightforward. Someone by the same name is a retired world-class, olympic gold-medal winning triple jumper, who until recently presented Songs of Praise. Put Jonathan Edwards into an Amazon search and you get a mixture of athletic autobiography and puritan theology, motivational self-help and no nonsense mercy and judgement.
And then the past couple of days I was down in Manchester meeting with British Baptist leaders and spent time with Jonathan Edwards (a third one) – Jonathan is General Secretary of the Baptist Union of Great Britain, a highly experienced pastor and a fine reflective church leader.
The puritan, the athlete, the Baptist…..’ The name Jonathan Edwards is to the fore for me again cos I’ve just started the Cambridge Companion to Jonathan Edwards, along with other recent studies of his life and thought. The essays here cover the full range of Edwardsian studies – an essay a day means it’ll take a fortnight to read. As you can see, the book cover does him no favours – probably seemed like a good idea to the graphic artist to use a modern ‘wooden stylised bust’ – doesn’t work as a book cover – just makes him look miserable, scary and…well….wooden!
I haven’t forgotted my promise to do a couple of posts on Edwards and Moltmann on the Trinity – after Pentecost I’ll get round to it.
First – on Sunday I’ll post some Pentecostal Haiku!
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