Resolved: When I think of any theological question to be resolved,
I will immediately do whatever I can to solve it,
… if circumstances don’t hinder.
—Jonathan Edwards, Resolutions, No. 11
In a recent article, Layne Hancock and S. Mark Hamilton have argued that much of the energy that has been put into research and writing on the New England pastor-theologian Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) has dissipated.1See Layne Hancock and S. Mark Hamilton, “Jonathan Edwards Studies is at a Dead End” The Ledger, London Lyceum (April 17, 2025), located at: https://thelondonlyceum.com/jonathan-edwards-studies-is-at-a-dead-end/ This is not because scholars have exhausted this seam of intellectual engagement and have moved to on to mine the work of other promising divines. No, Hancock and Hamilton maintain that the study of Edwards by those with a confessional interest in his theology has waned in large part because of the intellectual efforts that have been expended in understanding his thought in recent decades—especially among those with an interest in the more philosophical side of his thought. In other words, scholars of Edwards’s philosophy have contributed to the demise of interest in studying Edwards. Hence, they declare, Edwards Studies is at a dead end, or at least, is in very real danger of coming to a dead end.
Such titles make for good copy, and are sure to generate discussion. But is their assessment accurate? In this article I will respond to their essay. I will argue three things. First, their assessment of the current state of Edwards scholarship is wrong in a number of important respects. Second, the study of those with whom we disagree is of vital intellectual concern. Third, Edwards is a thinker from whom we can continue to learn today and tomorrow. He is, in short, one of the few truly great Protestant thinkers.
Assessing Edwards Studies
The modern scholarly interest in Jonathan Edwards can be dated to the publication of Harvard historian Perry Miller’s seminal study of the immediate post-World War II period.2Perry Miller, Jonathan Edwards (New York: William Sloane Associates, 1949). Also worthy of note in this connection is Ola Elizabeth Winslow’s Pulitzer Prize winning biography, Jonathan Edwards, 1703-1758: A Biography (New York: Macmillan, 1940), which also brought much greater attention to Edwards in the same period. Both works still repay careful study. Indeed, Miller’s work is indicative of the way in which Edwards has been studied ever since. We might say that his interest in Edwards is a microcosm of the cottage industry of scholarship that developed as a consequence of his pioneering work.
According to Miller, Edwards was a philosopher of the first rank. He was the only truly great thinker to emerge from the colonial period of early American history. Because he was a great thinker, his work is worthy of study. But because he lived and worked in the period of Puritan New England, his work was constrained by the theological form of Calvinism, which limited the way in which he was able to express his genius in important respects. For Miller, the real Edwards must be read by seeing through the letter of his published works to the philosophical genius that underpins it. They are, as he puts it, a kind of cipher that the careful reader must look past to understand the importance of his contribution. (Think of the way in which someone today might look past the Stoicism of Marcus Aurelius to perceive the genius of his Meditations.)
Miller’s interest not only generated a host of subsequent publications on Edwards from historians of ideas, philosophers, and theologians (among others). It also led directly to the publication of Yale University Press’s critical edition of Edwards’s works. That in itself has been a complex story, which cannot be told here. Suffice it to say that the publication of the Yale Edition of his works took a great deal more time than expected. Yet it yielded important developments in the publication of critical editions of his major works as well as some of his previously unpublished manuscripts. These included some of his early philosophical works and his monumental “Miscellanies” notebooks, in which Edwards recorded and arranged his ideas in minute detail over the course of his career. Ultimately, the Yale Works led to both the handsome letterpress edition of much of his written outputs, as well as the groundbreaking online platform that has transformed Edwards scholarship, and remains a significant achievement in online archival curation. It is no exaggeration to say that the online edition of the Works of Edwards, housed on Yale University’s website, has set the standard for such endeavours and has been imitated by others. Because of this resource, those interested in Edwards can now avail themselves of an enormous, fully searchable database of material on Edwards, including his outputs.3See http://edwards.yale.edu/ (last accessed April 19th 2025). It is this that has made so much recent work on Edwards manageable, and (I suspect) has also made it much easier to offer the sort of criticisms of Edwards that recent scholarship has generated. For once a scholar’s works are fully searchable in such a manner, the work of mining his literary remains becomes a great deal more attractive and straightforward.
Thus, Miller’s legacy in Edwards Studies was enormous. We are all indebted to his herculean endeavours. But in a sense, it was too successful—at least, from the perspective of Hancock and Hamilton. For not only did it lead to the current state of affairs where Edwards’s works are publicly available to all in a fully-searchable online critical edition. It also made the study of Edwards intellectually respectable. Historians of ideas needed to understand why this individual in a geographical and intellectual backwater far from the centres of European Enlightenment was able to do so much with so little. For not only was Edwards a thinker of the first rank, as subsequent work on Edwards established beyond a shadow of a doubt. He was an original. A Congregationalist pastor of theologically conservative sensibilities, yes. But also, a thinker who routinely spent 13 hours a day in his study. This was a habit he passed on to the divines that he mentored. These young men became the core of the New Divinity movement in the late eighteenth century, which developed into the first and to date most influential school of American Christian thought, namely, the New England Theology. This school, whose fountainhead Edwards most certainly was, endured for more than a century after his demise. In the process it stocked new American seminaries, colleges, and universities with divines who thought for themselves and yet shared a kind of common method in their work that was known as Edwardsianism.4For assessments of the New England Theology, see Douglas A. Sweeney and Allen C. Guelzo, eds. The New England Theology: From Jonathan Edwards to Edwards Amasa Park (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2006); and Oliver D. Crisp and Douglas Sweeney, eds. After Jonathan Edwards: The Courses of the New England Theology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). When it finally died out in the early decades of the twentieth century, it had quietly transformed the theological landscape of America. Yet, because it had no natural heirs after its last proponents passed away, its existence was routinely passed over or ignored by those students of American letters whose principal interest was in its theology.5For elaboration of this point, see Frank Hugh. Foster, A Genetic History of the New England Theology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1907). Old Princeton, Harvard, and Yale remained bastions of different streams of American religious thought. But because the New England theology had run its course, it was not the subject of great critical interest in the same way as, say, Princetonian theology was among those who bought Charles Hodge’s fiction that no new thought had been taught at Princeton Seminary during his long tenure there. The truth of the matter is precisely the opposite. Princetonian theology was as revisionist and constructive as New England Theology.6See, e.g., Thomas H. McCall, “A Hopeless Hodge-Podge of Theology? The Retrieval of ‘Classical Theism’ and the Curious Case of Charles Hodge” Journal of Reformed Theology 17. 3-4 (2023): 261-277. The (mildly) critical biography of Hodge is also of interest in this regard. See Paul C. Gutjahr, Charles Hodge: Guardian of American Orthodoxy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). But its successors were able to preserve its place in the psyche of sympathetic religious adherents, and thereby write the history as in the debate about the shape of American Reformed theology.
This brings us to the different Edwardses that Miller bequeathed to scholarship today. On the one hand, there has been a long tradition of reading and engaging with Edwards from among those with a confessional interest in his thought. These have often been pastors and educators for whom Edwards is a kind of saint. Just as Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox thinkers have revered past theologians by canonising them, so Protestants have reified some of their intellectual and theological leaders to a similar status, yet without the title. Among the Reformed theological community, Edwards holds such a place of honour. Indeed, among some in the Reformed theological community, Edwards is not merely a saint but a kind of Doctor of the Church. For not only was he a faithful pastor, and latterly a missionary and even (very briefly) a college president (of Princeton, no less!). He was also a canonical leader of the first Evangelical Awakening in the American colonies, who counted George Whitefield among his friends, and whose preaching was the instrument by means of which the revivals in New England began in the delivery of his (in)famous Enfield Sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” And, because he not only did these things but also wrote elaborate and complex theological treatises on the things he did, he became a poster child for religious experience—most famously in his Religious Affections (1746), and in religious biography in his Life of David Brainerd (1749). This latter work was literally one of the sparks that fanned the flames of the Missionary Movement in the eighteenth century. So, as what we might call a religious professional, his influence was enormous. American society today would look very different without Edwards. I do not think it is too much to suggest that without an Edwards, the shape and intellectual reach of subsequent conservative Protestant religious thought in the United States would be difficult to conceive.
Let us return to Miller once more. Alongside the popular Edwards of seminaries and churches since Miller’s work, there has been an intellectual interest in Edwards in what we might call the scholarly mainstream. After all, Miller was a Harvard historian. He made the study of Edwards respectable in the halls of Ivy League institutions. But he did so by problematising Edwards intellectual inheritance, something that has chafed his theological iconographers ever since. Thus, we are left with (at least) two Edwardses. There is the Edwards of the popular theological imagination. He is a champion of Reformed theology, a theological conservative who stood against the liberal encroachments of the early Enlightenment and used the very tools of atheistic philosophers against them, establishing the credentials of heartfelt religion in the process. He was a preacher. He was a revivalist. He was a missionary. He upheld the doctrines of grace and Protestant religion. These are the things that his hagiographers would rightly have us remember.
Then there is the intellectual Edwards of Miller and his epigone in the ivory towers. They have a much more complex relationship with their subject. For they do not necessarily see him as a saint to be imitated, or a religious leader to be held in rapturous admiration. They regard Edwards as a thinker of great importance. But they also see that, like every other great intellectual of the past—religious intellectuals included—he had feet of clay. He was shortsighted. He made significant mistakes. He advocated views that we no longer think good or helpful. And, when it comes to his thought, he held to ideas that are exotic and that may be rightly subjected to criticism.
Hancock and Hamilton write as aficionados of Edwards as well as Edwards scholars. Both have doctoral degrees from respected institutions and have written theses on Edwards’s theology. Both are invested in the Edwards of popular religion as well as the Edwards of scholarship. But they view the scholarly Edwards, or at least, the Edwards of some scholars (i.e., philosophical theologians and perhaps secular intellectual historians like Miller), as a kind of conceptual acid that has burned away aspects of the popular Edwards, damaging his legacy in the process. By critically engaging the more peculiar philosophical aspects of his thought at the expense of his pastoral and theological work, they have undermined interest in Edwards within the religious constituencies that fostered those who have often ended up studying and appreciating Edwards. We might call this line of criticism proffered by Hancock and Hamilton a worry about the exotic reduction of Edwards.7Though I would love to claim to have coined this term, I owe it to Christopher Woznicki from whose philosophical-theological work on Edwards I have learnt a lot in recent years.
Now, much of what I have said to this point is widely known among students of Edwards’s thought. So, why repeat it? Because one aspect of Hancock and Hamilton’s argument is that (some) Edwards scholarship is at a dead end precisely because philosophical theologians who have been at work on Edwards in the past few decades have put off those coming to the study of Edwards from the more popular-confessional perspective. In other words, the history of Edwards studies informs and contextualises the worries raised by Hancock and Hamilton’s essay. Without it, we might mistakenly think that they are right about the current state of Edwards studies. (They are not.) But taking it into consideration helps the reader to see their concerns against a much longer backstory that has its roots in the very resurgence of scholarly interest in Edwards since the late 1940s that is at issue. With this in mind and for the sake of heuristic classification, let us call the Edwardsian scholarship at which Hancock and Hamilton take aim, the Exotic Edwards and its practitioners, the Exotic Edwardsians. By contrast, the Edwards of popular piety and confessionalism we will refer to as the Pious Edwards and those who hail from this perspective the Edwardsian Pietists.
Engaging Dead Theologians
Having sketched the several trajectories in Edwards scholarship that feed into the criticisms of Hancock and Hamilton, I want to take a step back in this section to address what I take to be an underlying worry that motivates much of what they say against the Exotic Edwardians and those sympathetic to such views. As informed readers of this essay will already know, I have a stake in this debate as one of those whose work Hancock and Hamilton take aim at in their essay. I certainly count myself among the Exotic Edwardsians. But one of the things I want to suggest in this section is that there is no real need to have to choose between the different Edwards’s of various stands of scholarship and piety, and that their attempt to drive a wedge between the Exotic Edwards and the Pious Edwards is a symptom of the very problem they seek to address, rather than part of its solution. But more of that anon.
Hancock and Hamilton bemoan the way in which the Exotic Edwardsians have come to their conclusions about the intellectual legacy of Edwards himself. In the background is a kind of criticism that is hinted at but never really foregrounded, namely, that those with an interest in Edwards from the perspective of analytic theology do the Northampton Divine no favours in their assessment of him. There may even be a veiled criticism of analytic theology itself in what Hancock and Hamilton say. If that is right, it is a form of the objection, familiar to analytic theologians, that it is a method that is hopelessly ahistorical and disconnected from the important ways in which a historic thinker’s work is deeply informed and shaped by the milieu and tradition to which she or he belongs.
For instance, at one point Hancock and Hamilton write, “If this criticism seems too harsh, remember that the purpose of retrieval in analytic theology projects is to reappropriate past ideas for contemporary analytic conversations—not for the sake of getting intellectual history right.” (Emphasis added.) But that is a travesty of analytic theology. They even cite my own work on Edwards in this connection as evidence of this sort of view. But when I have said in the past that some of my work on Edwards “is not concerned with the historical detail of Edwards’ milieu,” I did not mean by that to throw caution and history to the wind, as any charitable reader of the work in question will see when they read those remarks in context. I meant to indicate that my focus of scholarly attention was on the coherence and shape of Edwards’s ideas. This is a venerable tradition in philosophical theology, which Scott MacDonald calls the task of ‘philosophical clarification’ rather than ‘philosophical justification.’8See Scott MacDonald, “What is Philosophical Theology?” in Kevin Timpe, Arguing About Religion (London: Routledge, 2009), 17-29. Further examples of this sort of method in recent times can be found in the two magisterial studies of the thought of John Calvin by my doktorvater, Paul Helm. See Helm, John Calvin’s Ideas (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), and idem, Calvin at the Centre (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). Such assertions by Hancock and Hamilton are, to say the very least, unworthy of them.
What is more, there is more than a little irony in this criticism, given that it is well-known in the broader analytic theological literature and has often been addressed by its practitioners both directly as well as indirectly in clear exemplars of analytic theology that give the lie to this objection. This is ironic because here we have two authors who want to criticise analytic theologians for not paying attention to history. But they themselves have not paid attention to the published responses of analytic theologians in recent history to this very objection. That is a pity. For had they done so, they would see that their objection is unfounded. For not only are there places where analytic theologians offer actual arguments for why analytic theology as a method does not necessarily undermine or contravene serious historical interests.9See, e.g., James Arcadi, Oliver D. Crisp and Jordan Wessling, The Nature and Promise of Analytic Theology. Brill Research Perspectives in Humanities and the Social Sciences (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2019); Thomas H. McCall, An Invitation to Analytic Christian Theology (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2015); Michael C. Rea, “Analytic Theology,” St Andrews Encyclopaedia of Theology. Edited by Brendan N. Wolfe et al., located at: https://www.saet.ac.uk/Christianity/AnalyticTheology (last accessed 19th April, 2025); Phil Weston, Introducing Analytic Theology (London: SCM Press, 2025); and William Wood, Analytic Theology and the Academic Study of Religion. Oxford Studies in Analytic Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023). There is also (as I have already intimated) an enormous body of published analytic theology that is clearly and indisputably historically engaged with patristic, medieval, Reformation, early modern, modern, and postmodern Christian theology.10See, e.g., the titles in the following book series (which are indicative of the wider literature): Oxford Studies in Analytic Theology; Routledge Studies in Analytic and Systematic Theology; Analysing Theology Series (Cascade Books), and, among academic journals: Journal of Analytic Theology; TheoLogica. Jordan Steffaniak pointed out to me that there is also a lot of work that is now being published that falls under the description of analytic theology even if it is not labelled as such.
In a sense, reiterating this point yet again is tiresome to both the author and his readers given that this is information that is well-known and publicly available online, but for the sake of the record let me make passing mention of some instances of the kind of historically serious analytic theology that I have in mind. Consider the work of Marilyn Adams on Anselm, Occam and a host of other medievals; James Arcadi on historical debates about the Eucharist; Joshua Cockayne on Kierkegaard and on ecclesiology; Richard Cross on Scotus and on medieval, Reformation, and early modern debates about eucharistic theology; Terence Cuneo on Orthodox liturgy; William Hasker on recent historical-theological work on Patristic accounts of the Trinity; Thomas McCall, on Arminius, Arminian theology, the Trinity, the doctrine of Sin, and many other areas of historical and systematic theology; Timothy Pawl on Aquinas and conciliar Christology; Eleonore Stump on Aquinas or Boethius; Andrew Torrance on Kierkegaard; Thomas Williams as the preeminent modern translator of Anselm and one of his most important recent interpreters; Nicholas Wolterstorff on Thomas Reid, John Locke, political theology, Barth, Moltmann, and a host of other recent theologians—the list could go on and on. I am deliberately giving highlights from a literature that, since 2009, has crossed denominational boundaries and engaged thinkers from a wide range of backgrounds many of whom have very serious interests in historical theology and in intellectual history. It would appear that Hancock and Hamilton need to do some homework before they make criticisms that have already been addressed in the relevant literature. For it is a matter of record that analytic theologians are seriously engaged with historical theology and intellectual history. There can be no doubt about this given the literature that exists.
What, then, of those who are among the Exotic Edwardsians including the present author? Have they made Edwards odious to a wider readership by traducing his work or at least seriously misjudging or mischaracterising his intellectual legacy?
As to the question of traducing Edwards, I know of no philosophical theologian that has engaged with Edwards in the last few decades who is not seriously attempting to understand his work and its implications. To suggest otherwise is itself to misrepresent the work of those who have spent hours pouring over his literary remains. Lacking any evidence for this accusation, I shall set it to one side.
Let me turn instead to the more substantive question of whether the Exotic Edwardians have misrepresented Edwards and contributed to a dropping off in interest among a wider readership of his work. Here is not the place to argue in detail about the minutiae of Edwards scholarship. There has been a lively debate about how to interpret Edwards in the last two decades, and clear lines of interpretation have been drawn.11For my own views on this matter, see Oliver D. Crisp and Kyle Strobel, Jonathan Edwards: An Introduction to his Thought (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2018). There are members of the so-called British School, who have argued there are important fault-lines in Edwards’s theology, all the while indicating their admiration for and (in many cases) sympathy towards core Edwardsian ideas. This includes the likes of Paul Helm, Stephen R. Holmes, Kyle Strobel, John Bombaro, Christina Larsen, Christopher Woznicki, and the present author. Then there are scholars who have taken the interpretation of the Korean-American divine Sang Hyun Lee, as their point of departure.12See Sang Hyun Lee, The Philosophical Theology of Jonathan Edwards (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000 [1988]), and Michael J. McClymond and Gerald R. McDermott, The Theology of Jonathan Edwards (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). These are sometimes referred to as the “American School” or those who adopt the “Lee-interpretation.” Now, as I have already said here is not the place to discuss such matters in detail. That is not my reason for sketching the two main schools of thought on Edwards at present. Rather, my intention is to demonstrate that serious intellectual engagement with Edwards is alive and well. For it is usually thought to be indicative of a lively secondary literature that schools of interpretation have grown up around a body of primary texts by a given author. That is exactly what has happened in Edwards studies in the last two decades as the secondary literature has matured with the completion of the publication of the Yale Edition of Edwards’s corpus. And that indicates that far from reaching a dead end, Edwards studies has begun to generate different perspectives on the Northampton Sage that develop different lines of his thought in interesting and provocative ways.
Now, here is the punchline: developing such lines of interpretation is what scholars do. Whatever one’s personal proclivities, scholars seek to argue for views on the basis of evidence. In the case of work on the thought of historical figures, one does the careful reading and thinking, and then offers an interpretation of the texts in question. This is clearly evidenced in the flourishing Edwards literature.
Recently, in reading an essay by the American philosopher Hud Hudson, I came across a reference to the great Irish playwright and satirist, Oscar Wilde.13Hud Hudson, “Harbison” forthcoming in Melancholy Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press). In a private letter, Wilde noted that a friend of his lacked what he called the “Oxford Temper.” By this he meant the ability to have critical distance from a given view, seeing its pros and cons, and being able to argue against that view even if one is sympathetic to it. That is a vital scholarly tool. It is on display in recent work on the thought of Edwards as is the case in scholarly work on any other historical figure whose thought merits serious engagement. Probing, critiquing, and rebutting the arguments offered by a given thinker are as much a part of the repertoire of the scholar as are attempts to defend, expand, or otherwise constructively engage their respective projects. Scholars are not in the business of writing hagiography (at least, not qua scholars!). That is why in the case of Edwards if one reads, say, the hagiography of Iain Murray,14Iain Murray, Jonathan Edwards: A New Biography (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1987). which is an excellent example of its genre, one will see there a soft-focus, admiring portrait of its subject. This is quite different from say, the warts-and-all critical biography of George Marsden, which has done so much to further scholarly interest in Edwards’s work since its publication in 2003, on the tercentenary of Edwards’s birth.15George Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Life (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003). At one point Marsden quips that for Edwards, ‘behind every silver lining there was a cloud.’ That is absolutely right, and captures something important about Edwards’s theological sensibility. But it is not something one would expect to find in Murray’s adoring portrait in which Edwards appears to be a living saint whose ejection from his pulpit when the revivals soured was entirely the fault of his unworthy congregation and nothing to do with Edwards’s unsocial, austere, aristocratic habits or his rather severe, caustic approach to those who did not meet his own exacting standards.
Thus, engaging Edwards seriously in a scholarly way requires something like the Oxford Temper, just as any other scholarly endeavour does. When we turn to consider the details of Edwards’s work, what we find is a vast range of material of very different sorts. This spans short notes, sermons, voluminous notebooks, and a number of major works that he saw through the press during his lifetime or that were readied for publication by him before his demise. These works shaped subsequent theology and philosophy in important ways. They, along with Edwards himself and his (then) unpublished notebooks, were the seed from which a century of Edwardsian thought fructified the emerging evangelicalism in the United States, and gave rise to the New England Theology. They were read far and wide and commented upon in the Old World and the New and have influenced a range of people from psychologist William James16See William James The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature, ed. and Intr. Matthew Bradley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012 [1902]). to Pentecostal theologians of the present.17See Amos Yong and Steven M. Studebaker, eds. Pentecostal Theology and Jonathan Edwards (London: T&T Clark, 2019).
But let us be clear: the concerns about the exotic nature of some of Edwards’s theological commitments were known early on. Charles Hodge is a famous critic of Edwards in the nineteenth century, as, with more moderation, was his counterpart in Union Theological Seminary in New York City, William G. T. Shedd. They worried about Edwards’s “realism.” This was his commitment to the idea that somehow all of humanity is one four-dimensional whole affected over time by the action of its progenitor, Adam. This was not a theory developed in secret or mentioned in a passing notebook entry. It was a cornerstone of his hamartiology in one of his last works, his treatise on Original Sin (1758). But, as recent debate in Reformed theology has demonstrated, it was hardly the only controversial claim Edwards sought to advance. He also famously defended theological compatibilism in the doctrine of free will in Freedom of the Will (1754). This is the idea that God’s determination of all that comes to pass is consistent with a particular way of thinking about human moral responsibility and freedom. Historians of doctrine have criticised Edwards’s views in this respect at least since the time of William Cunningham, who succeeded Thomas Chalmers as Principal of the Free Church College of Edinburgh in the mid-nineteenth century.18See William Cunningham, The Reformers and The Theology of The Reformation (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth Trust, 1967 [1862]). The recent debate about Edwards’s doctrine of free will carried on by the likes of Richard Muller, Paul Helm, Michael Preciado, and others, is a continuation of this up to the present time.19The debate has been carried on in various academic journals in the last decade, particularly the Journal of Reformed Theology. But see also Paul Helm, Reforming Free Will: A Conversation on the History of Reformed Views on Compatibilism (1500-1800) (Fearn, UK: Mentor, 2020); Richard Muller, Divine Will and Human Choice: Freedom, Contingency, and Necessity in Early Modern Reformed Thought (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2017); and Michael Patrick Preciado, A Reformed View of Freedom: The Compatibility of Guidance Control and Reformed Theology (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2019). Why is this? Because Edwards went straight to the most difficult and controverted issues of Christian theology and proposed substantive views that were both sophisticated and controversial. That is the mark of a superior intellect. And let us be clear: no substantive metaphysical or theological view is uncontroversial. Every substantive metaphysical or theological view is the subject of (often vigorous!) discussion and debate. That is the very stuff of academic dialectic. The fact that Edwards had controversial views as a major theologian is hardly news. So too did every other major theologian in history from the Apostle Paul to Kathryn Tanner. Often, such views are or entail exotic conclusions. There is nothing strange about that. It is a commonplace in philosophical and theological scholarship. Barth’s doctrine of election was controversial. So was Schleiermacher’s focus on our sense of absolute dependence upon God. The same could be said of Luther’s doctrine of the bondage of the will. Ditto, Zwingli on Providence or Calvin on the sense of the divine, or Aquinas’s baptising of Aristotelian metaphysics or Augustine’s Christianised Platonism or even Origen’s masterful synthesis of Hellenism and Christian thought. If careful analysis and responsible criticism of Edwards’s theology yields the view that his conclusion are theologically exotic that can hardly be a reason to neglect him. For exactly the same reasons motivate scholars to engage and criticise the works of other great divines as well.
But perhaps the worry is that a focus on Edwards’s exotic philosophy detracts from his more mundane theological commitments. If that is the case, it too trades on a fundamental misunderstanding of Edwards’s work. There is a large and expanding literature on other eighteenth century thinkers whose views were very exotic, some of whom had views similar to Edwards. Look, for example, at recent literature on the likes of Bishop George Berkeley, an immaterialist like Edwards, or on the religious sensibility (even, Calvinism!) of Thomas Hobbes despite his supposed materialism, or of Nicholas Malebranche’s occasionalism and modified Cartesianism, or Leibniz’s bizarre Monadology the content of which is closely studied by the new cosmopsychists and panpsychists. Or consider the changing fortunes of the great Aberdonian, Thomas Reid, once thought a poor Northern cousin to the urbane wit and philosophical acumen of David Hume, but in recent decades transformed into a major critic of the Way of Ideas incepted by Locke and pushed to its logical conclusions by Hume’s scepticism. The list could go on. The point is this: all these thinkers held to exotic or strange views—at least, exotic and strange to many people who encounter them today. That is the nature of philosophy and often of theology: it takes matters that seem utterly common sense and shows through argument that such things imply truly counterintuitive consequences. Beginning with the mundane, these thinkers end up with claims that can only be described as exotic. This is a preoccupation that persists in the works of metaphysicians and theologians of the present time. Many will dispute the conclusions of near mereological nihilism reached by the likes of Peter van Inwagen or Trenton Merricks among Christian philosophers. But few today in the secular academy would dispute the materialist assumptions with which they begin. And in theology: no one would dispute the need to give an account of central tenets of the Christian faith such as the Trinity, incarnation or atonement. But consult any undergraduate bibliography for a course on one of these topics, and you will quickly notice just how much dispute there is about how to understand these different doctrines. This is true even where there is historic confessional agreement on the core commitments of a doctrine, as is the case with both the Trinity and incarnation. It is even more the case with a doctrine like the atonement that has no such confessional shape in the catholic creeds. What is more, all theological treatments of these central loci of the faith imply exotic conclusions. How could they not when they are dealing with the most sublime and beautiful, as well as mysterious, things?
Engaging with thinkers of the past is a dangerous business. Not only do they often end up saying things we had not anticipated. That is unsettling enough. They also upset our preconceived ideas and make us think hard about our own intellectual assumptions and theological commitments. Edwards does this as much as any other great divine. Disagreeing with him is part of the task of the theologian: we work out our own thinking so often in dialogue and disagreement with those who have gone before us. And, as I have already indicated, those who have gone before us almost always have some view that is peculiar, strange, and, yes, even exotic. Edwards is not an outlier in this respect. It is precisely because he is such a creative and powerful thinker that he is able to take views that seem strange to us and provide compelling arguments in their favour.
So, is Edwards exotic in his thought? Absolutely. Does that distinguish him from other great thinkers? To the contrary: it is indicative of a great thinker that they make us think about things we previously regarded as settled matters in new and (often) startling ways. Is the claim that Edwards’s thought is exotic a kind of slur or a way of traducing him as a thinker? Absolutely not. It is a way of indicating that we are dealing with a first-rate intellect whose work is only a danger to those who closed minds resist the search after truth.
Edwards as Theologian
Finally, let me say a few words about Edwards as a theologian. Hancock and Hamilton seem to think that no-one wants to retrieve central aspects of Edwards’s thought that recent scholarship has labelled ‘exotic.’ For instance, his occasionalism, his doctrine of continuous creation, or his four-dimensionalist ‘realism’ when it comes to the question of transmitting original sin. Similar things could be said of Edwards’s immaterialism. For he thought that there are no material objects but only minds and their ideas, like Bishop Berkeley.
But the fact is, all of these views are seriously discussed in the contemporary literature. There are philosophers and theologians who defend versions of four-dimensionalism including using it to help explicate the doctrine of original sin. (See e.g., the work of Hud Hudson, Oliver Crisp, Michael Rea, Thomas McCall, Philip L. Quinn, Daniel Houck, Kevin Timpe, and Harvey Cawdron as recent examples of this.20See, e.g., Kevin Timpe’s helpful overview in “Sin in Christian Thought,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2021 Edition), Edward N. Zalta, ed., URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2021/entries/sin-christian/>.) There are serious engagements of occasionalism, including work by Christian philosophers like Jonathan Kvanvig, Hugh McCann, and Alvin Plantinga.21See Sukjae Lee, “Occasionalism,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2020 Edition), Edward N. Zalta, ed., URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2020/entries/occasionalism/>. There is careful discussion of the doctrine of creation from an externalist perspective by the likes of Eleonore Stump, Norman Kretzmann, Paul Helm, William Lane Craig, and Ryan Mullins.22See David Vander Laan, “Creation and Conservation,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2022 Edition), Edward N. Zalta, ed., URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2022/entries/creation-conservation/>. There is an enormous literature on the metaphysics of free will in which Edwards features as an exemplar of what is now often called ‘classical compatibilism.’23See, e.g. Kevin Timpe, Free Will: Sourcehood and its Alternatives. Second Edition (London: Bloomsbury, 2012), and idem, Free Will in Philosophical Theology. Bloomsbury Studies in Philosophy of Religion (London: Bloomsbury, 2013). On Edwards in particular, see Allen C. Guelzo, Edwards on the Will: A Century of American Theological Debate (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1989). We could go on to mention the continuing importance of his work on religious affections, which has inspired psychologists, philosophers, and divines from James to Plantinga, and are of vital interest in current debates about regeneration and transformation.24See Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000). Discussion of immaterialism is also something in which there is new interest not only from historians of philosophy and theology but also among those who identify themselves as idealists such as Robert Adams, Howard Robinson, Marc Hight, Sam Lebens, and others. (Interestingly, Hamilton has also contributed to this literature in his editing of the first of two recent collections of essays on idealism and Christian thought.25See Joshua R. Farris, S. Mark Hamilton, and James S. Spiegel, eds. Idealism and Christian Theology: Idealism and Christianity, Vol. 1 (London: T&T Clark, 2016), and Steve B. Cowan and James S. Spiegel, eds. Idealism and Christian Philosophy: Idealism and Christianity Vol 2 (London: Bloomsbury, 2016).) Similar things could be said of other aspects of Edwards’s thought, such as his panentheism (a view widely debated and endorsed in the current philosophical and theological literature).26See, e.g., John Culp, “Panentheism,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2023 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman, eds., URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2023/entries/panentheism/>. By most standards of which I am aware, all of these views fall under the description of ‘theologically exotic.’ Yet they are explored, defended, articulated, and constructively engaged today.27It might be objected that the issue turns on whether Edwards held such exotic views, not whether the views in question are exotic. Hancock and Hamilton may dispute whether aspects of Edwards’s theology are indeed exotic—and they have done so. Hamilton has cricitised my views in print before in this respect. (See S. Mark Hamilton, A Treatise on Jonathan Edwards, Continuous Creation, and Christology [Fort Worth, TX: JESociety Press, 2017].) But, as I indicate in the Foreword to that book, his interpretation is moot. There are certainly bona fide Edwards scholars who would take issue with the conclusions Hamilton reaches, among whom I would count myself. The fact is, the vast majority of those who have deeply engaged Edwards discover him to be a thinker with exotic views on a range of theological topics from the doctrine of the Trinity and creation to original sin, Christology, moral theology, and even eschatology.
Conclusion
So, is Edwards’s studies at a dead end? Intellectual fads come and go. People get excited about a thinker, then they often move on to other things (whether rightly or wrongly). I think people will continue to study Edwards. There are works on Edwards or those seriously concerned with reading and engaging his work that continue to roll off the presses to the present day. This does not seem likely to abate. Both Hancock and Hamilton have PhDs in theology on aspects of Edwards’s thought that were gained in the last decade. They join a large community of scholars interested in his work and its influence, as well as in probing and testing it as an interlocutor for constructive philosophy and theology today. It may be that there are fewer people doing this work than there were a couple of decades ago. One would have to produce the statistics to know for sure, e.g., by listing numbers of PhD theses on Edwards over that period or by going through the various publications on him that have appeared in the same period. (Yale historian Kenneth Minkema’s work in this regard has tended to say precisely the opposite, but I leave the reader to pursue such matters for themselves.28See, e.g., Kenneth Minkema, “Jonathan Edwards Studies in the Twentieth Century” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 47.4 (2003): 569-687, and George Marsden “Old, Rested, and Reformed: Reflections on The Recovery of Jonathan Edwards” Jonathan Edwards Studies 10.2 (2020): 120-28.) Whatever the truth of the matter, this much seems indisputable: whereas a great theologian like Karl Barth could write his Church Dogmatics with almost no reference to someone like Edwards in the first half of the twentieth century when Teutonic theology dominated the scene, today Edwards is a voice that is known and engaged by a large swathe of the theological community. This is true even if they are not Edwardsians. That is a huge change in a relatively short time—roughly, a generation. Did that change come about because the popular Edwards of piety somehow won over detractors? I doubt it, though popular movements like the ‘Young, Restless, and Reformed’ movement of the early 2000s did help for a time.29Collin Hanson, Young, Restless, Reformed: A Journalist’s Journey with the New Calvinists (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2008). One measurable change is this. Since 1949 and the work of Perry Miller, Edwards’s work has been critically engaged with by an increasingly large and diverse body of scholarship. In the course of this work many have come to see that Edwards possessed a rare mind and a razor-sharp philosophical sensibility. Does that mean we all agree with Edwards? Of course not. Agreement was never the aim. Learning from Edwards and developing lines of thought that he helped to shape and direct—that is another matter. All good scholarship that deals with the work of historical figures and their thought does that. I fully expect scholars of Jonathan Edwards to continue to do so in the years ahead. No doubt we will all have much to learn from their efforts, including, I presume, the ongoing work of Dr Hancock and Dr Hamilton. There is no dead end to Edwards scholarship, though there may be new areas of interest and ways in which his influence is being felt and disseminated in the larger theological culture. As this essay demonstrates, declarations to the contrary by some of Edwards’s erstwhile disciples seem, to say the least, rather premature.30I am grateful to Jesse Gentile, Steven Nemes, J. T. Turner, Jr., and especially to Christopher Woznicki, Jordan Steffaniak and Zak Tharp for helpful comments and corrections to an earlier draft of this essay.
