It is important for every Christian to have a grasp of God honouring Biblical evangelism. The Lord Jesus has commanded His people to "go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature." In the opinion of many Jonathan Edwards is the greatest theologian that this nation has seen. John Gerstner has done a great service to the church of Christ in our generation by distilling for us the evangelistic theology of Mr.Edwards ,something which Edwards himself did not do. What type of preaching does God use in revivals? Edwards gives us his thoughts on the matter p.28 "The consideration of hell commonly is the first thing that rouses sleeping sinners. By this means their sins are set in order before them, and their conscience stares them in the face,and they begin to see their need of a priest and sacrifice" to which Gerstner adds these important words "most wicked men who have heard of hell have internal uneasiness(Prov.29:25).On the other hand a principal means of being lost is thinking there will be no punishment." Portions of this book highlight the importance of preaching on the doctrine of everlasting punishment.This is especially applicable to the spiritual climate in which we presently live as the doctrine of hell continues to be abandoned by some well known 'evangelicals'. If you need to have your thinking crystalized on Biblical evangelism then this book may be as helpful as any chistian book in print to accomplish that end.

This may sound strange, but I rank this little book as one of the two greatest paperback books that a man could own. (you'll have to guess the other)
Why the stupendous claim? Edwards was one of the greatest minds ever given to the Christian Church, and he had an amazing way of seeing life, through the lenses of Scripture, and understanding, like a photo-negative, what hell must be like. Hell, like the beauties of Heaven, is unable to be expressed in human language, and therefore, it can only be "seen" through the use of symbolic language. The horror of hell can not be uttered: if a man were to see hell, he could not live. Like Paul in the vision of Heaven, there are no faculties within natural man to express what he experienced. Edwards finds a way to help.

When you read Edwards on Heaven, you feel almost "other-worldly", ("how long have I been sitting here reading this??), and when you read Edwards on Hell, the holy dread that fills your mind and emotions is overwhelming, as well as life-changing. Dr. Gerstner goes for the Truth, which he unashamedly owns, and has a true gift of representing Edwards' sight to anyone who cares to see. Gerstner does not write with "one eye on impressing the scholar", but with a deep care for the reader, almost pleading with us: "Hear Edwards! If you hear him, you will hear Paul, and therefore, you will HEAR CHRIST!".

A lot of great lessons on God's relationship to Man. He has kept God central in his writtings and there is a lot of valuable theological ideas in this book that I think would benefit students of the Scriptures on such as the importance of the role of repentance in Salvation; how God manifests first of all man's sinfulness and guilt before he is shown mercy and grace. Thus making the gospel, turly good news! Highly Christ exalting material in this book. People don't write materials with this kind of caliber anymore- or so it seems.

The author clearly situates Edwards in his historical and intellectual context. He shows where Edwards comes from, what traditions he confronts, and the dialectic between his history and providentialism. Very intelligent, very readable. A superb history.

This is an excellent book on the life of Jonathan Edwards. Dr. Nichols did an incredible job of depicting his life and thought...reflecting on what it was to be one of the most influential theologians ever!

"Maggie's choice" takes place in a time when people held church services in barns, and the pators didn't even plan the sermon. Maggie Allerson is different from her friendsl Dancy and Susannah. Dancy has a lot of money and Susanah has a huge house and a lot of servants. Maggie has to do chores and have Latin lessons, and she's embarrassed about that. Maggie is always worried what Susanah will think of a girl like her and she always tries to please Susanah. On Christmas, Susanah gets her own slave girl and mistreats her. Melee (the servant girl) is so used to the warm climate of her old home in the West Indies that she becomes very sick. When Melee gets sick, Maggie realizes that Susanah is not nice and starts to stand up for her own beliefs. I liked this book because Maggie was so real it seeemed like I was sitting in the stagecoach on my way to Massachusetts. If you like books about history, this book is for you!

Jonathan Edwards was "difficult" only because he was so single minded in his calling to be a preacher. Sarah Edwards was "uncommon" because to support him in his calling she took over the running of their home, their farm and the raising of their ten happy healthy children. Their union was tender and loving through good times and very bad times (for some years this founder of the first American Revival preached to Indians who didn't even understand him). I highly, highly recommend this book to anyone interested in a well researched, very readable history of Colonial times, Early American faith, or a beautiful and inspiring marriage.

Young Indiana Jones is on a two-year lecture tour with his mother and father and they stop in Oxford to pick up his privit toture Miss Semore and they head to Egypt, the first country of the lecture tour. while there indy meets T.E. Larence or ned and uncovers a mummy and solvs a murder.

At the present time, Amazon.com is not listing that it's not just Edwards, but specifically, Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758), the same one that wrote "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God". Thus, he is strongly classically evangelical, believing in the doctrines of original sin, love for God... and subsequent Christian teachings such as love for enemy, love for neighbor.

The summary of the book for those versed in virtue ethics is that Jonathan Edwards comes out as an agape-virtue ethicist. He thinks of the highest virtue of love ("The General nature of true virtue is love", p.85), which he does not name as agape, but that he does describe as unconditional love towards God, and then proceeding from this virtue, the true virtue of love of neighbor.

It's a rather difficult read, and unlike a lot of sermons which have a flow in argument or repeat their points over and over, and wrap up with a conclusion, Edwards more makes multiple stabs at various points.

Virtue, to Edwards, is the beauty of the quality and exercises of the heart, or those actions which proceed from them (p.2), and true virtue most essentially consists in benevolence to being in general (p.3). Thus, virtue most essentially consists in love (that is to say, that true virtue should inspire acts of love, but acts of love may not be representative of true nature), and true beauty is also the individual's harmony to the universe. There is also a distinction between love of complacence (almost similar to 'eros'), which presupposes beauty, and love of benevolence (specifically looking at God's love, which is not limited to things we consider beautiful). Thus, God's love is uncondition, which is linked to His character, exemplifying true virtue. Also, true virtue is not related to love of gratitude or reciprocity.

Agape love is also explained here, as the 'highest good of the object of love,' 'the highest good of all over the good of one,' and 'opposition of evil'. A number of these are further expounded in chapter 1.

"True virtue must chiefly consist in love to God," Jonathan Edwards declares (p.14). And the secondary ground of love is moral excellency. Edwards also links that the love of God supremely is causal (and linked) with loving others, loving one's neighbor. But true goodness is tied into the purpose of glorifying God (p.25). And then morality must be God-focused and then subordinately benevolent (p. 26)

Chapter 3, Edwards talks about primary beauties, such as benevolence, and virtues (or beauties) of justice, wisdom, and secondary beauties such as regularity, order, symmetry, proportion, harmony, etc., as external beauty reflects true spiritual beauty.

It should be noted that Edwards has a few anachronistic terms, such as "self-love" -- which is not narcissism, but it is "love for our own happiness" (p.44) or "love to himself with respect to his private interest" (p.45). Self-love causes us to love those who either help us or promote our interests, and Edwards argues that this could develop a moral sense (of good/bad) (p. 51).

One of Edward's strongest assumptions is that of original sin, that man is not capable of true virtue (i.e., loving God, and thus others) because of original sin, and that anger is not a good illustrator of virtue due to this original sin (depravity of man). He also describes this "true negative moral goodness" (p.91) in all men which also mistake things for true virtue, as well as desire wickedness or do wickedness, or have moral insensibility, or stupidity of conscience. He goes on to say that "all sin has its source from selfishness, or self-love not subordinate to a regard to being in general" (p.92) -- primarily resulting in resentment from God.

Yet, genuine virtues restrain the advance of sin (namely pride and sensuality, p.96).

William Wainwright's book, Reason and the Heart, desperately needs to be given more attention by epistemologists. It focuses on the question, roughly speaking, "what is the relationship of our beliefs and passional nature?" Or more precisely, "what must be true of the world and our relation to it if our religious knowledge is genuine" (152). Consider the following "Oxford-Philosophers Case": both Richard Swinburne (a Christian philosopher) and J.L. Mackie (an atheist philosopher) are both *very* intelligent individuals. Both have looked at a great deal of the evidence regarding the existence or nonexistence of God. Why is it that both of these bright men end up taking drastically different positions?

Wainwright argues that one explanation of this is that one's heart is not suited to see the *force* of the arguments one way or the other. Typically, most philosophers have thought that our knowledge of God is either by reason alone, or knowing God is a "heart" knowledge (something contrasted to reason). Wainwright offers a third alternative - which I for one am in full agreement with. In explicating this third alternative - that "reason is capable of knowing God one the basis of evidence - but only when when's cognitive faculties are rightly disposed," - Wainwright considers the work of the Puritan philosophical theologian, Jonathan Edwards, Cardinal John Henry Newman (particularly from The Grammar of Assent), and William James. However, Wainwright's interpretation of James is unique in that most take a different interpretation.

Lastly, Wainwright considers three objections to this view (a passional theory of knowledge); they are subjectivism, the problem of (vicious) circularity, and cognitive-relativism. The third appears to be the most problematic; however, the are ways of dealing with the matter depending on one's underlying metaphysics.

Theists and nontheists alike should be concerned about passional-reason. If one does not have any account of why disputes appear on basic issues (i.e. determinism or indeterminism), then one's acceptance of a position may appear arbitrary to oneself and to others. One small problem is that it seems, to me at least, that Wainwright's arguments for his view are deeply theistic. It would be interesting to see someone like William Rowe write an indepth discussion about this (perhaps he has?). In any case, this is a fantastic book because it emphasizes the need for an account of when and what role passions *should* play in our reasoning. How such an account would go is only hinted at; but this book does a nice job pointing out that we need one.