Description
Before its first publication in 1971, the three essays that comprise Jonathan Edwards’ Treatise on Grace had never appeared in a collection. This book presents these three rare pieces and his Essay on the Trinity along with brief introductory sketches to their context and their relevance to his more widely known work.
The concept of divine grace was a pivotal notion in the theology of Jonathan Edwards. He had inherited a ‘covenant’ theology from his Puritan forebears, which supposed that the Holy Spirit was the ‘agency of application’ through which the Father granted grace to the elect after the Son’s sacrifice. In these essays, Edwards attempts to modify this inherited doctrine. Instead of being the ‘agency of application’ utilised by the Father, Edwards suggests that the Holy Spirit is the gift given itself. The Treatise on Grace is a classic work of American theology from one of the country’s most important theologians.
About the Author
Jonathan Edwards was an eighteenth-century American Congregationalist theologian and is widely regarded as one of the country’s most important religious thinkers. He was born at the turn of the century in Connecticut and was educated at Yale. He played a crucial role in creating the First Great Awakening in Protestant Christianity, a revival of Evangelicalism that spread throughout Britain and its American colonies during the 1730s and 1740s.
Paul Helm is a Reformed British philosopher and theologian educated at Worcester College, Oxford. He has taught at Regent College, the University of Liverpool, Highland Theological College and King’s College London.
Contents
Editor’s Note
Introduction
i. Historical
ii. Theological
iii. Philosophical
Treatise on Grace
I. [Shewing] that Common and Saving Grace differ, not only in degree, but in nature and kind
II. Shewing wherein all Saving Grace does summarily consist
III. Shewing how a principle of Grace is from the Spirit of God
Observations Concerning the Trinity and the Covenant of Redemption
Appendix
An Essay on the Trinity
