There’s no end to the writing of books about Jonathan Edwards. Over the past two generations, scholars have rediscovered Edwards, culminating in the 26-volume Works of Jonathan Edwards published by Yale University Press (plus another 52 volumes available exclusively online). During the same period, Edwards reemerged as something of a patron saint among many evangelicals, especially those appreciative of the Reformed tradition or concerned with spiritual awakening.
George Marsden is a Reformed evangelical and distinguished historian who has spent a lifetime researching Jonathan Edwards. He’s widely considered Edwards’s leading scholarly biographer, having written two complementary biographies of “America’s theologian.”
Along with Kyle Strobel’s Formed for the Glory of God: Learning from the Spiritual Practices of Jonathan Edwards and Dane Ortlund’s Edwards on the Christian Life: Alive to the Beauty of God, Marsden’s book offers a well-researched yet thoroughly devotional reflection on Edwardsean spirituality that’s not only informative but might also prove transformative for readers.
In Marsden’s delightful book An Infinite Fountain of Light: Jonathan Edwards for the Twenty-First Century, he bridges the gap between scholarly reflection and edifying application. Marsden commends Edwards as a spiritual guide for contemporary evangelicals.
Situating Edwards
Marsden’s first two chapters offer an excellent primer on Edwards’s life and context. Drawing on his earlier biographies, Marsden reminds readers that Edwards was a man of his time, which overlapped with the turning point in intellectual history typically known as the Enlightenment.
Marsden commends Edwards as a spiritual guide for contemporary evangelicals.
Edwards hailed from a large family dominated by women, was a loyal British citizen for his entire life, lived on what was then considered the frontier, owned slaves, and wrote theology prior to the influence of historical-critical exegesis and Darwinian assumptions on biblical and theological studies. Marsden offers helpful reflections on how modern readers should understand Edwards in light of his historical context.
Although Edwards’s context was complicated, Marsden believes Edwards was a Christian thinker who offers enduring wisdom, rooted in the Augustinian theological tradition, that contemporary evangelicals should heed. To illustrate this point, Marsden contrasts Edwards with his contemporary Benjamin Franklin.
Whereas Franklin became the prototypical self-made man who valued individual rights and liberties, Edwards affirmed God’s absolute sovereignty and the need for his overcoming grace to rescue humans from our sin and its consequences. Franklin was a forerunner of today’s expressive individualism and mostly secular worldview, whereas Edwards models how one can respond faithfully to the idols of both his era and ours.
Edwards’s Vision of the Christian Life
Part of what Marsden finds captivating about Edwards is that he delighted in God’s beauty. Edwards believed this divine beauty was evidenced most profoundly in God’s being, which he communicates to us graciously through both creation and redemption. Edwards delighted in the created order and offered rich and constructive accounts of the doctrine of creation.
According to Marsden, “Rather than being most essentially the product of interacting material forces, [creation] is a personal expression of the exploding and overflowing love of the loving triune God” (48). God created because of his love, and he desires his human creatures to delight in that love.
For Edwards, this divine love was at the center of the universe and was evidenced in relationship and harmony, both of which can be found throughout the created order and are being redeemed through the saving work of Christ. God speaks through creation and saves through redemption, the latter of which allows the believers to fully appreciate God’s work in the former. Edwards believed regeneration was the moment when the Holy Spirit brought the light of God’s love to bear on the human heart.
This spiritual enlightenment results in the renewal of our affections. Drawing upon his Augustinian heritage, Edwards believed one mark of spiritual maturity is the right ordering of our loves so they increasingly point away from ourselves and are directed toward the triune God and our neighbors who are created in his divine image.
Edwards on the First Great Awakening
Edwards’s contemporary George Whitefield emerged as the key leader of the First Great Awakening (and an unlikely friend of Franklin). The evangelical movement that resulted from the Whitefieldian revivals proved a mixed bag. While evangelicals emphasized personal regeneration, heart religion, and the authority of Scripture, they could sometimes question traditional ecclesiastical authorities, become caught up in the gravitational pull of celebrity preachers, and identify unusual spiritual experiences with the work of the Holy Spirit.
Part of what Marsden finds captivating about Edwards is that he delighted in God’s beauty.
Edwards responded to the awakenings with some of his best-known writings, most notably A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections (1746). In this evangelical spiritual classic, Edwards distinguishes signs of authentic revival from false substitutes. Marden provides a brief exposition of Edwards’s positive signs of revival, offering application to contemporary evangelical faith and practice.
Marsden closes by reprinting Edwards’s famous sermon “A Divine and Supernature Light,” which expounds on regeneration from the perspective of Edwards’s vision of God’s beauty.
Edwardsean Spirituality for Everyday Believers
An Infinite Fountain of Light is a fine introduction to Edwards’s vision for the Christian life. The material is rich but largely accessible to believers who may be unfamiliar with his theological and philosophical thought.
The book makes a great companion to either of Marsden’s biographies of Edwards. It is the sort of book that only someone steeped in the study of a figure like Edwards could write. This book is the fruit of decades of patient labor and it is a true gift to its readers.
The Gospel Coalition