Peter J. Leithart

Holmes ( God of Grace and God of Glory: An Account of the Theology of Jonathan Edwards , x)) considers the Reformed tradition a “noble” tradition. But in his view it is not so in contemporary England where “the title ‘Reformed’ too often refers to a theology and church . . . . Continue Reading »

Pastor Troy Greene of Brooklyn, New York, explores the symbolism of ravens and doves at the Trinity House site. . . . . Continue Reading »

Out of controversy with Lutherans on Christology and Eucharist, Holmes notes ( God of Grace and God of Glory: An Account of the Theology of Jonathan Edwards ,136-7), grew a remarkable insight into Christology. English Reformed theologians like Sibbes, Owen, and Edward Irving argued that “the . . . . Continue Reading »

God’s end in creation is Himself, to glorify Himself. Does that make God selfish? No, Edwards says, and for two reasons (cf. Holmes, God of Grace and God of Glory: An Account of the Theology of Jonathan Edwards , 58-61). First is an overtly Trinitarian answer. Virtue is to love God, also for . . . . Continue Reading »

Jonathan Edwards was the first, Stephen Holmes claims (in an essay in Jonathan Edwards: Philosophical Theologian ), “on the American continent to have read Newton and Locke, and arguably amongst the first in the world to have appreciated the implications of what they had to say” (101). . . . . Continue Reading »

In a previous post on Edwards’s understanding of God’s purpose in creating, I should have made clearer that the views I was summarizing were those of Sang Hyun Lee ( The Philosophical Theology of Jonathan Edwards ) and not necessarily those of Jonathan Edwards. Lee’s views are . . . . Continue Reading »

Recent interpreters of Jonathan Edwards’s theology have suggested that he denies or qualifies various aspects of classical theism, particularly the simplicity of God, the notion that whatever is in God is God. Kyle Strobel ( Jonathan Edwards’s Theology: A Reinterpretation (T&T Clark . . . . Continue Reading »

Jonathan Edwards considered the wheels of Ezekiel’s vision of the chariot to be a type of the history of the world: “The whole universe is a machine which god hath made for his own use, to be his chariot for him to ride in; as is represented in Ezekiel’s vision. In this chariot . . . . Continue Reading »

Groves ( Texts and Traditions: Religion in Shakespeare 1592-1604 (Oxford English Monographs) , 15-6) notes that Protestants had an early and strong tradition of theater: “Foxe even classed the theatre with sermons and books as a didactic tool, writing that ‘plaiers, Printers, . . . . Continue Reading »

Critics have again become attuned to the religious overtones of Shakespeare’s plays, not so much in a new-critical sense of tracing allusions as in the new-historicist sense of seeing how Shakespeare’s plays are embedded in and interact with the contested religious world of Elizabethan . . . . Continue Reading »