The Essential Edwards Collection

Written by Owen Strachan and Douglas A. Sweeney Reviewed By Peter Beck

The last 100 years have seen a renewal of interest in the life and writings of Jonathan Edwards. What began as a trickle in the early twentieth century became a torrent in the twenty-fist. In the last decade, interest peaked as historians, theologians, and informed friends noted the 300th anniversary of Edwards’ birth. While slowing some since, interest in him has merely ebbed, not dried up.

With the introduction of Strachan and Sweeney’s five-volume The Essential Edwards Collection, readers will ask again, “Do we need another book (or five) about Jonathan Edwards?” The simple answer is “yes.” Edwards is too important to put back on the top shelf of history’s dusty libraries. These volumes are too useful to relegate to the scrapheap of superfluous books meant only to capitalize on the growing interest in Reformed theology. Strachan and Sweeney have made a notable contribution to an understandably large field of study.

Sold individually or as a set, The Essential Edwards Collection seeks to make Edwards more accessible to those inclined to deepen their relationship with God and their knowledge of church history. Each volume offers a differing insight into the great theologian’s heart and mind in a way that the uninitiated might plumb the depths of his thought without becoming adrift in the subtleties of his theology or the mire of his often difficult writing style. This set serves as point of entry for those not yet ready for the theological deep end but longing for the refreshing spiritual waters found in the life and piety of Edwards.

Jonathan Edwards: Lover of God, volume 1 of the set if it may be so labeled, mixes biographical narrative with autobiographical reflection to introduce the reader to Edwards’ life. Doing so, the authors also provide a glimpse of Edwards’s driving motivation, his “God-entranced worldview” as John Piper calls it in his introduction to the set, through a survey of his life story. While many wonderful Edwards biographies are now available, Strachan and Sweeney offer a readable, abbreviated overview of those events in his life that God used to shape him.

As the authors argue, “the Bible declares without interruption or apology that God is the starting and ending points of true religion” (p. 24). Edwards understood this vital reality, and Jonathan Edwards on Beauty explains this central truth. It is the beauty of God, his perfections in all their glory, that Edwards embraced and announced. This volume explores the way in which this divine beauty is revealed in the creation, Christ, the church, and life everlasting. All points to the Creator.

Volume 3 begins with a brief survey of the church’s understanding of the afterlife, from the Middle Ages to the present. Having set the stage with this brief lesson, Strachan and Sweeney bring the reader to the threshold of Edwards’s thoughts on the afterlife in Jonathan Edwards on Heaven and Hell. Tracing Edwards’ teachings on the reality of hell and the beauty of heaven, the authors lead the readers to consider, with Edwards, the impact these ever-present realities must have upon their daily lives.

Happiness, Edwards once said, is God’s purpose for man’s life. God desires man to be happy, to be satisfied eternally in God both now and in the future. Jonathan Edwards on the Good Life guides the novice through Edwards’ thoughts on God’s plan for man’s life, the life-destroying problem of sin, and the joys of living in a right relationship with God. That, Edwards believed and the authors want the reader to see, is the “good life.”

Jonathan Edwards on True Christianity builds upon the arguments of the preceding volume to suggest that, as Edwards encountered in his own life and ministry, not all who claim the name of Christ live as true Christians. Contrasting nominal Christianity with the effects of living faith, Edwards once argued that there are certain traits that point to the reality of a vital Christian experience. To that end, he called his original readers. To that end, Strachan and Sweeney call theirs.

Overall, Strachan and Sweeney have accomplished their task. They’ve written a readable introduction to the life of Jonathan Edwards and covered many of the salient points of his theology. The five volumes of The Essential Edwards Collection offer the reader the opportunity to drink from the vast Edwards well of practical piety without being overwhelmed by a flood of thought beyond their ability to swallow.

In spite of that glowing recommendation, the reader may notice one glaring fault. Every volume in the set offers an introduction by John Piper. The problem is that each book contains the same exact introductory chapter. At first blush, this would seem to be an editorial oversight or worse. This one criticism, however, on deeper reflection becomes the grounds for even greater appreciation for these five little books.

Ultimately, The Essential Edwards Collection is not the grouping of five disparate volumes, related in name only. Each of the five forms one part of a greater object. Individually they’re helpful but incomplete. Together they tell Edwards’s story. Together they bring Edwards’s theology to a head. Together they paint a portrait of a vital Christianity. Thus, they are best when consumed as a five-course meal, not in the piecemeal suggested by the individual availability.

In the end, Piper’s introduction serves to introduce the reader to Edwards’s—and Strachan and Sweeney’s—greater desire: a holistic Christian life that is biblically informed, theologically concerned, and God-saturated. Buy the set, not the individual books. That’s how Edwards would have wanted it.

The Essential Edwards Collection offers a needed introduction, a helpful introduction into the life and thought of America’s greatest theologian. This set, though, is more than that. It offers more than history. Together the books are greater than a theological primer. The five short volumes taken together are a wonderful, Edwardsian introduction to the essential Christian life.


Peter Beck

Peter Beck
Charleston Southern University
Charleston, South Carolina, USA

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