John H. Armstrong on the "Real Jonathan Edwards"

John H. Arm­strong com­ments on Jonathan Edwards and the schol­ar­ship of Ger­ald McDer­mott and Michael McClymond.

For many years I thought that I under­stood Edwards well enough, hav­ing lis­tened to second-​​hand opin­ions from var­i­ous preach­ers who quoted his work. I had read some of his ser­mons and sev­eral of his more well-​​known works, as well as in sundry mate­r­ial by read­ers of Edwards. (I also took a class on Edwards from the late John Ger­st­ner at Trin­ity Evan­gel­i­cal Divin­ity School in the late 1970s.) As time went by I re-​​read Edwards and began to pay atten­tion to other voices in the field with grow­ing inter­est and appre­ci­a­tion. One of the things that prompted this inter­est was a sur­pris­ing con­ver­sa­tion about Edwards that I had with a Reformed his­to­rian who did not like him at all and told me why. His oppo­si­tion to Edwards actu­ally made me real­ize that he was right about what he said and that his ques­tions should be dis­cussed more openly. It was then that I real­ized Jonathan Edwards was far more inter­est­ing, and far less like the per­son I had been intro­duced to by pop­u­lar read­ers and preach­ers, than I had imagined.

Even­tu­ally a new inter­est in Edwards was stirred directly by the work of sev­eral schol­ars who hap­pen to also be my friends: Dr. Ger­ald McDer­mott and Dr. Michael McClymond. McDer­mott teaches reli­gion at Roanoke Col­lege (VA) and McClymond teaches the­ol­ogy at St. Louis Uni­ver­sity (MO). These two men have done more to re-​​calibrate my view of Edwards, in a very pos­i­tive way, than any other writ­ers and thinkers. I think they grasp the nuance, orig­i­nal­ity and bril­liance of the man and his thought. I com­mend their work to all. [read more]