I have heard so many good comments about the book, “Jonathan Edwards – A New Biography” by Iain Murray, that I had my eye on purchasing it for a few months. The writer has written other well respected biographies, most notably a two volume set on D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, one of my favorite pastor/authors, even though he’s been dead for 25 years. So when I won the book in an online auction, I had to wait a few long days for the book to arrive! But it did and I didn’t even wait until I got into the house before tearing open the shipping packaging!
I am going to blog the book so that I have a record of what I get out of it. I have the tendency to read a good book really fast and get a lot out of it, but then forget some of the “Ah-HA!” moments of the book. Lastly, I also want to share with others what I get out of this book, and to see if the book is worth their time and money.
Introduction – On Understanding Edwards.
Murray begins by pointing out, “Whether or not a biographer of JE reveals his personal standpoint at the outset makes little difference, for inevitably it will soon be apparent.” Since the time of JE, biographers have had different views of him, from being America’s first philosopher and greatest thinker of the eighteenth century, to being a “tragic religious figure of a bygone era”, to being “a great Divine”.
These different views of Edwards are not due to the lack of source material. There are over 1100 sermons existing in their manuscript form. There are many books that Edwards published during his life. We have portions of a diary and about 200 letters from his hand as well.
Murray makes a great point when he says, “The modern writers, in general, have passed over in silence what was at the front of JE’s own thinking. First of all, he was a Christian and a teacher of the Christian Faith.” Later the he drives the point home, “ depending on where we stand in relation to Christ, we shall join ourselves to one side or the other in interpreting this man who was, first of all, a Christian.”
Murray then surveys biographies of Edwards, the first being in 1765, going through the 19th and early 20th centuries, and ending in 1962. This is an enlightening section.
He closes the introduction by relating a story of a gathering of Edwards descendants that occurred in 1870. One of them, S. Irenaeus Prime, was asked at the last moment to give a brief speech. He told them that “remembering Edwards was more than a mere bow to history, but the message he preached was for every age… ‘His theology has in it revivals and repentance, and salvation from hell, and this made it, and makes it, and will keep it divine theology until Christ is all in all. A student comes to Princeton and hears that same theology, visits the grave of Edwards and his fellow-laborers, and something of their fire kindles in their soul.’ We fail to understand Edwards aright until the record of his life begins to make the same impression upon us.”
After that, I had to put the book down and ponder, why am I reading this book, to learn more about Edwards, myself, or to have a fire kindled in my soul for the Almighty?
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