In the last sixty-five years Jonathan Edwards has been the subject of more than four thousand books, dissertations, and articles. A spate of recently published reference works and other edited volumes have sifted through this massive literature to examine the salient aspects of Edwards's life and thought, and in 2003 George Marsden wrote the most recent definitive biography of Edwards. Despite this remarkable output, there are no signs of a drop off; many more books and articles on Edwards are currently in the publishing pipeline. Perhaps, however, it's time to pause, take stock, synthesize the secondary sources, and bring some coherence out of Edwards's vast corpus which now runs to seventy-three volumes of text on the online edition of The Works of Jonathan Edwards. This is a tall order, but in what can only be described as a labor of love, Michael McClymond and Gerald McDermott have dared to tread where no scholars have gone before, namely, “to construe Edwards's theology as a whole” (4). To accomplish their task, they have written a big book composed of forty-five chapters in three parts about Edwards's big theological ideas and their enduring legacy. Part 1 introduces the reader to the historical, cultural, and social contexts of Edwards's theology; part 2, comprising the substance of the volume (five-hundred pages), covers topics in Edwards's theology; part 3 considers Edwards's disciples and his interpreters.

McClymond and McDermott face not only the daunting challenge of contending with the sheer bulk of Edwards's writings, but they are confronted with an additional problem: Edwards, like Augustine and Luther, was not a systematic theologian. Moreover, throughout his life Edwards worked on multiple topics at the same time, adding, subtracting, revising, and then beginning new projects. McClymond and McDermott thus must not only condense Edwards's theology but assemble his “open system” approach into a manageable and coherent whole. To point the reader in this direction, they propose “hearing” Edwards's theology as a symphony orchestra composed of five constituent parts or sections of instruments. Throughout the concert each section gets its due—“Trinitarian communication,” “creaturely participation,” “necessaritarian dispositionalism,” “theocentric voluntarism,” and “harmonious constitutionalism” (4-6)—but in order to appreciate the full beauty of Edwards's virtuoso performance, one needs to listen to all of the parts as they blend together, not just those sections of the orchestra one finds personally appealing. In prosaic terms, scholars have favored one part of Edwards's theology over others (for example, debating whether faith, aesthetics, divine glory, spiritual perception, or apologetics was at the center of his agenda), meanwhile failing to apprehend the totality and interrelatedness of his work.

What emerges repeatedly throughout the authors’ discussion of topics in Edwards's theology is a portrait of Edwards who “spent the better part of his career defending Calvinist positions, but creatively and not slavishly” (321). Edwards was a Calvinist with a twist, for his “theology showed an affinity for other, non-Calvinist schools of thought” (718). There is nothing particularly novel in this remark except that it applies to almost every facet of Edwards's theology. These “twists” result in a book of “yets”—qualifications and clarifications of Edwards's views (by himself or others) or scholarly interpretations and disputes over Edwards's views—by my count inserted over one-hundred and seventy-five times in various contexts. Thus the Puritans did not overly emphasize a view of God as “Being in general,” yet Edwards was preoccupied with this metaphysical perspective (110). In his apologetics, Edwards followed a traditional evidentialist approach, yet he anticipated the Romantics with his “appeal to an inner sensibility” (156). Edwards adhered to standard typological readings of the Bible, yet he “went further in his spiritual exegesis, in fact, much further than most others” (176). There were many chroniclers of universal history, including Boussuet's impressive Discourse of History (1681), yet what set Edwards's History of Redemption apart from others “was its strong infusion of eschatology” (225). Edwards's angelology “was traditional in its focus” on medieval themes, yet innovative in its construal of them (275). Earlier Puritan authors mapped stages in the conversion process, “Yet where theory conflicted with data, Edwards was ready to alter or abandon theory” (431). Edwards's God conformed to “what eighteenth-century moralists considered reasonable,” yet he also held views “that benevolists considered unreasonable” (545 [emphases added]). At almost every theological turn, Edwards challenged, revised, or expanded contemporary theological and philosophical views, all with a purpose of demonstrating the interrelatedness of God in all things.

Edwards's legacy is now indisputable. That he serves as a “bridging figure within the fragmented world of twenty-first century Christianity” (721) or “global theologian” (727) for contemporary Christianity waits to be seen. Throughout the book McClymond and McDermott detect “affinities” between Edwards's views and other Christian traditions, and in their concluding chapter they make these connections more explicit. Thus his spirituality and notion of salvation as “participation in God's being, love, knowledge, and happiness” (721) serves as a bridge to Orthodoxy; his teaching on “fitness” in respect to salvation serves as a bridge to Catholic notions of “merit” (722); the significance he assigned to religious experience serves as a bridge to liberal Protestantism; and his profound influence as a champion of religious revival serves as a bridge to the Pentecostal-Charismatic movement. But whether these salutary observations result in Edwards becoming a pivotal resource for ecumenical dialogue, as the authors express, may be far too optimistic.

Because of its vast scope, readers will take what they want from this volume. The authors observe that “it is only an introduction to Edward's theology” (16). That may be so, but the richness of contextualization, including discussion of the theological works engaged by Edwards as well as the authors’ inclusion of Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, and others as interlocutors with Edwards go well beyond a standard introduction. Theirs is an invitation to sample the profundity and versatility of America's greatest theologian—the sources from which he drew, the theologians from whom he diverged, and the creative theological solutions he proposed. There is never a “last word,” of course, but at certain points in time indispensable resources appear. The Theology of Jonathan Edwards is one of them.