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Book Review: Edwards the Exegete: by Dr. Toby K. Easley, March 7, 2017 Douglas A. Sweeney, Edwards the Exegete: Biblical Interpretation and Anglo-Protestant Culture on the Edge of the Enlightenment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. ISBN: 978-0199793228, 408).  In his book, Edwards The Exegete, Doug Sweeney does not assume that everyone reading his book will have a historical grasp of the eighteenth-century context in which Edwards lived. Wisely, he gives a reminder that Edwards lived in a time and age much removed from our twenty-first century world. On the other hand, Sweeney does not hesitate to give his own twenty-first century historical perspective on several hot button issues. For a moment, he seems to lay aside his own reminder of Edwards’s far removed eighteenth-century world, and proceeds to fast forward Edwards into a twenty-first century cultural context, describing his “sin” in relation to slavery. Sweeney expresses a brief polemic without throwing the “baby out with the bathwater,” wisely realizing that erasing historical data is not the answer either. However, he leaves no doubt from his own perspective, that the eighteenth-century Jonathan Edwards had his own flaws and shortcomings like any man. Consequently, the reader is left with no uncertainty where Sweeney presently stands on past misdeeds to humanity, while also perceiving his progressive snippet regarding the authorship of the Biblical book of Hebrews. As Sweeney analyzes Edwards’s view of Scripture he claims, “he weighed the historicity of much of Sacred Scripture and held traditional opinions on the provenance of its books.” He also made very clear that Edwards believed in the veracity of Scripture and the Holy Spirit deliberately harmonized the truths of Scripture for our understanding. In other words, in Sweeney’s estimation, “He rarely worked as a splitter when it came to sacred Scripture, almost always as a joiner.” In the first chapter on the Canon, Sweeney summed it up quite accurately. “For Edwards…every single text of Scripture was to be read first and foremost in relation to the Canon.” Those who have read Edwards extensively over a span of years will more than likely agree with his conclusion on Edwards and the Canon. Transitioning to how Edwards saw the relationship between the Old and New Testaments, Sweeney acknowledges that Edwards wrote, preached, and did things with the Bible that only a person with his knowledge and scholarly ability could explain. Nevertheless, he also points out that few Old Testament scholars in our day have patience for what “Edwards did with Genesis 14 and the Levites.” On an important note however, he pointed out two very important items. First, the “Bible is the epistle of Christ that he has written to us.” Second, one of the beauties of the Bible is the spiritual harmony and how the Scriptures point to Jesus Christ “from every part of Sacred Scripture.” This central idea according to Sweeney goes back to the Protestant Reformers who also viewed Christ as the “scopus der zweek, or the bulls eye of the Bible, a belief that turned problematic only with the decline of Protestant orthodoxy.” The chapter on Edwards and the Canticles (Song of Solomon) is also very informative and interesting. Sweeney points out that Edwards was in agreement with many of his commentaries explaining that he “read Canticles as an emblem, or the spirit; of the love between the Lord and His elect.” Due to the sexual imagery in Song of Solomon, Sweeney points to a quote from Murray who wrote about Edwards’s willingness to dive into the sexually explicit expressions of the book. “Regarding Canticles – Murray said, ‘Despite the caricature of Edwards as an otherworldly recluse, his senses were attuned to both bodily and spiritual enjoyments.’” However, at the end of the day for Edwards, all of these relational human images were simply types of the antitype, which is Christ. In this writer’s opinion, the chapter on Edwards’s eschatology is at the top of the list among favorites. As with any academic work, there are a few places in Sweeney’s book the reader must trudge through. Nevertheless, the rewards of knowledge attained, is worth trudging beyond those points throughout the entire book. Edwards’s eschatological perspectives can be fascinating and at times seemingly contradictory. Once again the reader must make a mental note of the eighteenth-century context in which Edwards lived. News travelled at the pace of a horse and a ship. Furthermore, Israel as a nation was still dispersed among the nations and many were far removed from their homeland. The American Revolution was several decades in the future and visions of a unified protestant America brought on images of the peaceful Millennium. This explains why at times Edwards’s eschatology takes off in numerous directions, trying to find meaning in the events of his time. Sweeney also identifies the positive hope and reflection of Edwards’s words, “I think if we consider the circumstances of the settlement of New England, it must needs appear the most likely of all American colonies, to be the place whence this work shall principally take its rise.” Edwards did as Sweeney claims; think, “A golden age would come before the Lord returned.” However, he is also correct in saying that some of Edwards’s ideas seems to be like “pre-millennialists” and is difficult to “pigeon hole in late modern terms.” Sweeney however points to the genuineness of Edwards’s tenacity to mine Biblical truth, with a great span of the testimony of time behind him and much more remaining before him. Sweeney’s ultimate summation of Edwards’s eschatological framework is excellent. “Edwards did hold it together. His Bible absorbed the world, to borrow a phrase from George Lindbeck, Hans Frei, and their students. ‘The world of the text gave meaning to the world outside the text’ quoting Frances Young again. Secular knowledge really never was his basic frame of reference. The Bible and its teachings were, for him, the most basic.” Naturally, those who have read the many sermons of Jonathan Edwards, usually come to realize that many books could be written on Edwards’s exegetical approaches. Sweeney tackles several of the key areas of Edwards’s exegesis and competently explains to readers from primary sources, the reasons for his arguments and explanations. Sweeney’s purpose in the book is not to dive into the precise rhetorical methods of Edwards. Nevertheless, he does wrap up the material eloquently in the end where one may discover some of his most exhilarating sentences. “This simple Missionary herald was the real Jonathan Edwards, the heart of whose theology was biblical exegesis. Though a literary artist, meta-physical theologian, moral prophet, college teacher, nature lover, and civic leader, he was primarily a minister of the Word.”~TKE~
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 John Erskine was Scottish born seven years after the Colonial American Jonathan Edwards but their life spans would end up differing by more than twenty-seven and half years. However, the years of their lives that juxtapose from 1721 to 1758, eventually kindled a true kindred spirit through Edwards’s writings on the American spiritual awakening and Erskine’s generosity to send European books.
Erskine was born into a family that had financial means and many expected him to follow his father in a life’s vocation of jurisprudence. Nevertheless, he sensed the calling of God upon his life to enter the ministry and focus on the eternal realm. According to Jonathan Yeager, Erskine’s preaching differed from Edwards by simplifying “his sermons in the manner that the leading rhetorician George Campbell taught: to use only a few subordinate points to support one main argument…As opposed to many former Calvinist divines, Erskine did not ramble on in his discourses, using intricate and hard-to-follow metaphysical assumptions.” As the 1740’s passed and the early 1750’s brought many trials into Edwards’s life, Erskine served as a means of encouragement through the letters they exchanged. Edwards shared many of the details of his ejection from his Northampton pulpit and his concerns for the future of his entire family. All throughout these difficult years, Erskine remained a faithful friend, correspondent, and crucial supplier of books that would have otherwise been unavailable to Edwards. Yeager also accurately claimed, “Since the number of bookshops in America paled by comparison to Britain, Edwards benefited from a patron who resided near a publishing epicenter like Edinburgh.” Although Erskine and Edwards realized many of the intellectual ideas coming out of Europe were contrary to theirs, both men desired to read the conflicting doctrines. Erskine certainly had the intellectual capacity to think and speak against doctrinal error but Edwards could also wield the pen as an apologist and polemicist! Edwards was not only concerned about the doctrinal tremors at Harvard and Yale, he was becoming more aware of the doctrinal shift throughout Europe. After pastoring for almost two and a half decades in Northampton, he had reason for concern regarding the younger generation and the doctrinal movement within the Congregational Churches. On July 5, 1750, Edwards wrote a letter to Erskine and in sadness expressed, “I desire your fervent prayers for me and those who have heretofore been my people. I know not what will become of them. There seems to be the utmost danger that the younger generations will be carried away with Arminianism, as with a flood.” Bit-by-Bit, his prophetic words came true regarding the abandonment of Reformation Theology, and acceleration toward an Arminian majority in the two centuries following his death. Erskine on the other side of the Atlantic lived into the early nineteenth-century and continued to impact theological discussions. During his ministry as a younger man he had stood against the Arminian principles of Wesley, and warned the Scottish people against his Methodist soteriology. Erskine's influence within Scotland during the Eighteenth-century helped preserve the Calvinistic soteriology among Presbyterians and stifled the growth of Wesley’s Methodist groups inside Scotland. Although Erskine and Edwards lived on separate continents and ministered across the Atlantic Ocean from one another, they both had the foresight to discern the doctrinal changes of the Enlightenment and its far-reaching effects.~TKE~
At the turn of the Eighteenth-century there were changes in the air from Europe to New England. New books from across the Atlantic were already arriving at Harvard with new authors and an assortment of ideas. The eighteenth century would develop as a key time in the “Enlightenment” era, and also be known as a century of “Great Awakening.” Many exchanges regarding man’s ability to reason in relation to the Bible stimulated thought, research, and controversy. Yale College would also emerge in Connecticut among many clergymen who had studied at Harvard, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Even though Jonathan Edwards may have anticipated his academic journey following the same course as his father and grandfather at Harvard, his life would take a new turn. After graduating from Yale College with his Baccalaureate degree in 1720, and his Masters degree in 1723, Edwards would go on to serve under his grandfather at Northampton, and became the Senior Pastor when Stoddard died in 1729. As Edwards preached for the next eleven years, he was focused on the local church and a small awakening did occur in the mid-1730s. All through the years however, Edwards stayed informed about people and events at home and across the Atlantic. In 1740 he wrote to the itinerant preacher from England, George Whitefield, pleading with him to make his way west to Northampton, Massachusetts. Once the “Great Awakening” broke out in New England, Edwards also began a transatlantic exchange of letters with several individuals in Scotland. One of the leaders in Scotland was Rev. James Robe. Robe, Erskine, and other Scottish ministers had read Edwards’ writings documenting his accounts of spiritual awakening in America. What Edwards did not realize at the time, was that God would also move in a great way among the churches in Scotland. In a letter dated May 12, 1743, Edwards expressed to Robe, “Pleasant and joyful are the accounts which we have lately had from Scotland, concerning the kingdom of our God there, for which we and the world are specially indebted to you, who have honored your dear Lord, and refreshed and served his church, by the accounts you have published…Future generations will own themselves indebted to you for those accounts. I congratulate you, dear Sir, on the advantages God has put you under to favor the church of God with a narrative of his glorious works, by having made you the instrument of so much of them, and giving you such glorious success in your own congregation.” In closing his letter to Robe, he urged his friends in Scotland, “don’t forget New England; and don’t forget your affectionate and obliged brother and servant, and unworthy fellow-laborer, Jonathan Edwards.”~TKE~  On November 23, 1697 nearly six years before Jonathan Edwards was born in Colonial America, John Gill was born in Kettering, Northamptonshire, in the country of England. He mastered the Latin classics and studied Greek by the time he was eleven years of age. Later, at the age of twelve he heard pastor William Wallace preaching a sermon from the Old Testament, “And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou” (Genesis 3:9)? The sermon made an impact on the young lad and at the age of eighteen he made a public profession of faith.
Gill went on to serve as an assistant and in 1719 became the pastor of the Strict Baptist Church in Horsleydown, Southwark for over fifty years. In 1757 the congregation needed more space and moved to Carter Lane, St. Olave’s street, Southwark. This church had been pastored by Benjamin Keach (1640-1704), and would later become the New Park Street Chapel followed by the Metropolitan Tabernacle, with a pastor by the name of Charles H. Spurgeon. Much like Edwards, Gill also produced voluminous writings with his Body of Doctrinal and Practical Divinity, and Expositions on the Old and New Testaments. He wrote against infant baptism as being “A Part and Pillar of Popery,” and has also been accused of being a “Hyper-Calvinist.” However, credible Baptist historians such as Tom Nettles have argued against this accusation. Furthermore, Gill’s written evidence to uphold the Great Commission is documented in his New Testament Commentary series. He would end up living longer than Edwards by more than thirteen years and died on October 14, 1771. On July 7, 1752 Jonathan Edwards wrote a letter to his Scottish friend, Rev. John Erskine and mentions John Gill by name along with one of Gill’s sermons from 1750, “The Watchman’s Answer to the Question, What of the Night” (Isaiah 21:11-12), (Claghorn, 1998, Letters and Personal Writings, 16:489)? Years later on February 11, 1757 Edwards mentioned Gill again in a letter to the Rev. Thomas Foxcroft. This was not as friendly a notation as the first letter because Edwards exchanged some thoughts with Foxcroft regarding “Gill’s book against infant baptism.” Edwards also mentioned that “Mr. Clark” was “to write an answer; but how small a matter was that (Gill's Book), in comparison of the error now broached, and so boldly maintained, with an open challenge to the ministers of the country to maintain the contrary doctrine if they can” (Claghorn, 1998, 16:695)? Although Edwards acknowledged Gill’s opposing Baptist views on infant baptism, he does not vociferously appear to use strong polemics against Gill but rather skips to what he perceives as more important matters regarding those who deny “the divinity of our Savior.” Additionally, he expresses that he will “be glad that Mr. Bellamy’s late sermon, which I think is well done, to defend the great doctrine of justification by Christ’s righteousness (which has been especially impugned by Dr. [Jonathan] Mayhew) might be reprinted in Boston” (Claghorn, 1998 16:695). Could Edwards’s seeming dispassion communicate a loss of interest in the Congregational Church’s mode of baptism? Was he shrugging off Gill’s defense of immersion and moving on to his more passionate topics regarding the Divinity of Christ and Justification? He had certainly “rocked the boat” with New England Congregationalists during the early 1750’s regarding a valid profession of faith for Church membership. Consequently, following his Stockbridge ministry, Edwards would finally end up accepting the position of President at the Presbyterian College of New Jersey. Although Edwards obviously never became a Baptist, he always revealed deep passion for sound soteriology. He certainly must have wrestled with his views on baptism during the “Communion Controversy” and after his dismissal in Northampton. If Edwards had lived many years beyond 1758, would he have grappled more with the issue of baptism? It is a question that is intriguing but the answer will never be known. However, One certainty can be drawn from these two Transatlantic Contemporaries. John Gill and Jonathan Edwards were both redeemers of time in their service for the Kingdom of God. Their lives and voluminous works speak to that fact and both of them continue to be widely read even into the twenty-first century.~TKE~ "Christ, Above All Persons That Ever Did or Will Appear in the World,
Is the Most Eminent Counselor." Reflections on his Sermon From 1749: Isaiah 9:6 The prophet Isaiah through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit said, "For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and His name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace" (Isa. 9:6 ESV). What a marvelous description of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! Isaiah’s words not only resounded with Jonathan Edwards and the Eighteenth-century world but they still ring true today. Edwards said in his sermon from 1749, “He, (Christ) has the most eminent qualifications, and the greatest wisdom (Luke 11:49). He is infinite in understanding and perfectly knows our circumstances and us. He knows our nature and the state of our understanding.” Edwards understood that every generation needed Christ as Savior, Lord, and Counselor. He pointed out two important aspects of Christ’s counsel to us. First, he said as counselor, Christ reveals to us “the way of our duty, how to answer our Great End,” and ultimately how to “avoid moral Evil and obtain moral Good.” Second, He said Christ as counselor came to reveal to us “The way of our happiness.” Edwards preached that earthly counselors, who reject Christ and His Word, give counsel that is foolish. Men naturally need what he called “Counsel in many important affairs greatly concerning their welfare,” particularly things regarding “their eternal salvation.” Therefore, not only did Christ appear as our “Redeemer” from heaven, He “is now in a state of exceeding Glory and has received the Reward… and Counsels us from Heaven”… and “is the Counselor of Counselors and Prophets.” He went on to say, “The Counsels He has actually given are the most excellent that ever were delivered to mankind. The precepts of the Christian Religion are far the most Excellent and far exceeding the sayings of Philosophers and the Counsels of the wisest Politicians, most wise, perfect, and free from all error and practices directed to -- most amiable, most profitable_____The Bible that contains these Counsels is a summary of the most excellent wisdom, a Light shining in a dark world.” Since this is all true about Christ and His Word, Edwards continued, “Hence how greatly Persons are to blame who neglect their Bibles.” Edwards avidly read his own Bible and urged others to do the same. In final application he mentioned TEN aspects from Scripture that should be obeyed from the Words of Christ the great Counselor. 1. "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and His righteousness" (Matt. 6:33). 2. Christ mentioned, "counting the cost" (Luke 14:25-33. 3. "That we should renounce & comparatively hate other things for the sake" of the kingdom of God (Matthew 13:44). 4. We are to "renounce ourselves" (Matthew 6:24). 5. We are to "strive to enter in at the strait and narrow gate" (Luke 13:24). 6. We are to "improve the means of grace which God has appointed and "search the Scriptures" (John 5:39). 7. We are to understand the concept of "The mammon of unrighteousness." For the "Wonderful Counselor" said, "He who is faithful in a very little thing is unrighteous also in much" (Luke 16:9-10. 8. We are to "wait and watch for the coming of our Lord" (Luke 12:35). 9. We are to "pray and seek against all discouragements and opposition" (Luke 18:1-8). 10. We are not only to "receive the kingdom of God as a little child" (Mark 10:15). We are to hear the precepts of God, and then "act upon them" (Matthew 7:24).~TKE~ |
Dr. Toby EasleyBLOGS on various Christian, academic, business, historical, cultural, and hobby interests of the author.
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