God is a Communicative Being: Divine Communicativeness and Harmony in the Theology of Jonathan Edwards

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Over the past half century, there has been a proliferation of scholarship on the great American theologian Jonathan Edwards. However, the vast majority of this output confines itself to the details of his work. With some welcome exceptions, the forest has often been missed for the trees. In this ground breaking study William Schweitzer presents a new reading of Edwards: He starts with the question what is distinctive in Edwards’ theology? The answer comes in Edwards’ insight into Trinitarian life. God is eternally communicative of his knowledge, love, and joy among the Three Persons of the Trinity, and this divine communicativeness was for Edwards the explanation for why God created the universe. More specifically, however, Edwards believed that God’s communication carries with it the Trinitarian hallmark of harmony. This hallmark is not always east to discern, even for the regenerate. Edwards’ lifelong project-as demonstrated by the common purpose of all three unfinished Great Works-was to interpret the harmony found in and among the several media of revelation.

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