Erik,

The Christian Classics Ethereal Library has a two-volume 1870s or so edition of the complete works as well as a sampler of the sermons. Depending on the level of detail you're interested in, either of these would suffice. As to print, I must confess ignorance of availability.

First Things this month has a rather nice review of a book about Edwards that might lend some focus to the overall discussion.

shalom,

Steven

Steven,

Is there a particular collection of Edwards that you think is well put together?

Gee Erik,

Now I have to go back and see if what I asserted was true for the excerpt is indeed true for the whole thing. I wouldn't swear to it, but it seems to me that it is. However, memory erodes, and I am often left with just the lovely patina of the prose, a sparkling memory with a hollow center. However, even a close reading of "Sinners" gives only one, probably very "revivalist" and goal-oriented sermon--so even if I need to stand corrected, I will admit where I have erred, I still maintain the body of the work is solid.

I wouldn't wish it on anyone who didn't truly enjoy Edwards. But I must admit that I do love him and what he has to say--even in sinners. Don't know if I care for the ideas, but I think how wonderful it must have been to sit in a congregation and hear the words of a preacher who actually cared enough to tell me the truth (at least as he saw it).

shalom,

Steven

My understanding is that Calvin sought to correct this error of Luther's by his DOUBLE Predestination, which is the grim view of it all. Correct?

Also, Steven, I am going to read over the Edwards sermon in its entirety this weekend, with your words in mind. I will report back on this when I have done so.

one may assume that anyone who accepts the invitation was predestined to do so.

Of course! In the very early days of the Reformation, predestination was a very cheerful doctrine, with Luther, for instance, assuring you that if you wondered whether you were predestined -- say your prayers and know that you are! Whee-ee-ee-ee! (Not that it's completely vanished now.)

The Catholics who argued with him regarded as a fools' paradise.

Dear Erik,

One last, probably oversubtle point--the word "abhors" is not to be read to mean "hates" as we too commonly do today. It means looks upon with horror or loathing. And the person contaminated with sin is abhorrent, but not hateable in the eyes of God. I think that's where a lot of people go astray. One who has not rejected his sin through the proper channels carries it and is a loathsome as the sin, and yet still the object of Divine love.

Any way, that's how I read it, and "abhor" is the only mention of hatred. The rest is about anger. And if we take the analogy of the spider or the serpent to heart, I abhor spiders, finding them appalling, utterly alien, grotesque,and horrible, but I do not hate them. I do not go out of my way to crush and destroy them. And Edwards makes this point as well. It is the hand of God that preserves us, undeserving as we are, from the destruction that would be all-too-easy for Him to implement.

shalom,

Steven

Dear Erik,

Sorry, I was suddenly called away. Anyway, I wanted to continue and say that while Edward's phrasing may not be to our liking, it is strongly biblically substantiated. The point is that calling something "demonic" is strong poison, and I cannot agree on this. He does not preach hatred of a person, but wrath, and even the Catholic Mass for the Dead up until recently acknowledged a "Dies Irae." As to the charge against Milton, I am not a scholar but I tend to be more sympathetic to your claim.

I look at Edwards and see a tremendously powerful preacher who led one of the Great Awakenings of Christianity and whose call a great many people heeded to come to know Christ. They did not get to know Him as fully perhaps as their Catholic counterparts, but they came to know him by all accounts. Jesus advised us that "by their fruits you shall know them." If the fruits of preaching like Edwards was the conversion of sinners, then it does not hold that it is "demonic."

I think it is safe to say such preaching may not be to your liking. It may not be to modern tastes. But I will say again, it is the most dramatic piece of oratory and rhetoric in the repetoire, and hardly exemplary of the body of work. And, I believe it is an accurate picture of Calvinist doctrine of the time. It is substantiated by reading other great puritan divines and hardly seems as strictly predeterministic as we would think of Calvinism.

As I said in my column, I am not an expert on Calvinism, but I do know the sermon literature of the time--Richard Baxter, Stephen Charnock, John Flavel--and they do preach predeterminism and predestination, but not with the vehemence and incontrovertability commonly associated with Calvinist doctrine. Or so it seems to me.

Anway, thanks for reading the bit about Edwards. "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" is a favorite of mine for over-the-top hyperbolic discourse. But I must plead for poor Edwards, that it is not more demonic that the otherwise reputedly Saintly Savanarola encouraging Botticelli to burn much of his oeuvre. Such a loss could surely be chalked up to demonic forces, whereas the winning of souls, even if to less the fullness of Catholic truth, cannot be placed in the same class.

shalom,

Steven

Dear Erik,

Don't make me come up there with my two volume complete Edwards!

I think there is a fundamental misunderstanding about predestination in Calvinist thought. First, I think Calvin was wrong about the matter--but secondly, the question of predestination does not mean that a Catholic invitation need be hollow because one may assume that anyone who accepts the invitation was predestined to do so.

I do also carefully point out that nowhere in the excerpt is there any mention of God "hating" a sinner. Edwards remarks that God's wrath is directed at the sinner; this is arguably substantiated both by the Bible and the only translations available at the time: See the KJV of 2 Chron 19:2, 2 Chron 24:18, Psalm 78:31, Jeremiah 10:10, John 3: 36, Rom 1:18 and other assorted verses that talk about God waxing wroth at the sinner.

Must run, will comment when I return.

shalom,'

Steven