Jonathan Edwards is now widely regarded as a theologian of the first rank, a thinker to be set alongside other great intellectual luminaries of the Christian faith. But, says Professor Sweeney, in our eagerness to learn more about aspects of his thought fitted for presentation in the secular academy, we have forgotten to pay sufficient attention to the way he used the Bible. In fact, we moderns are somewhat embarrassed by the fact that Edwards was such a lover of scripture, was so steeped in it, and claimed to have found in its pages the sources of so much of his more speculative thought (p. 7). Surely the Enlightenment was supposed to, well, enlighten dark minds still shackled to ancient texts such as these? Yet the Bible pervaded British life of the period (p. 25), including the British colonies in which the words of John Robinson had proven prophetic: ‘The Lord had more truth and light yet to break forth out of his holy Word’ (p. 4). And, as Sweeney contends, Edwards was part of the Christian Enlightenment (p. 25), a contributor to the republic of religious letters that recent historical scholarship has begun to address more effectively.

There have been previous attempts to study Edwards’ use of scripture, most notably Robert Brown, Stephen Stein and Stephen Nichols. However, Sweeney contends that ‘no-one has written much on Edwards’ exegesis per se’ (p. 11), including how he used and understood biblical doctrine in his work. Well then, how did Edwards use the Bible, and what does Sweeney's study contribute to our understanding of this aspect of Edwards as a religious thinker?

Edwards never wrote a systematic account of biblical hermeneutics, or even a commentary on a book of the Bible. Yet he was a close reader of scripture as his interleaved ‘Blank Bible’ demonstrates. (Edwards inherited this Bible that had blank pages interleaved throughout which provided space for his copious notes on particular texts.) Moreover, he had conceived of a great work of doctrine that would have been cast in the shape of biblical redemptive history, for which he had preached a preparatory sermon series called ‘The History of the Work of Redemption’. Indeed, his biblical knowledge was a source of some wonderment to his peers.

Sweeney has done the great service of poring over all Edwards’ work on scripture in order to help his modern readers understand how he used these texts. His documentation in the endnotes is meticulous. The result is a clear and compelling contribution to the literature that all future interpreters of Edwards will have to take into account. Sweeney shows that Edwards’ biblical interpretation can be divided into four sorts of exegesis: canonical, christological, redemptive-historical and pedagogical. His canonical exegesis was concerned with making clear how different passages and biblical books formed one coherent whole. His christological exegesis was an attempt to bring to light how much of Christ is ‘hidden’ in the Old Testament, and how it is that the church should function as the Bride of Christ. His redemptive-historical exegesis, showcased in The History of the Work of Redemption, sought to provide an overarching narrative in which the particular events of biblical chronology made sense of the panoply of God's plan of salvation. Finally, his pedagogical exegesis helped those Edwards pastored to see their place in redemptive history, giving them a framework for living out their faith.

This structure is very helpful to the reader of Edwards. But more important is Sweeney's claim that these exegetical motifs governed all the other aspects of his thought that are better known today – from his sermons to his most speculative thoughts about God and creation. That is surely right. And yet: Edwards was, as Sweeney concedes, a biblicist. He thought that one could simply read the biblical text without aids or confessional constraints and glean from its pages all that is needed for salvation. As he wrote in entry 535 in his ‘Miscellanies’ notebook, ‘It seems to me that God would have our whole dependence be upon the Scriptures, because the greater our dependence is on the Word of God, the more direct and immediate is our dependence on God himself.’ For many readers of Edwards this will resonate. Here is a biblical theologian indeed, in whom there is no guile! However, for others, this is precisely the problem with Edwards the exegete. Although Sweeney underlines the fact that his biblical exegesis is much more sophisticated and nuanced than some previous studies have indicated, Edwards’ confidence in apprehending the meaning of the text directly, without mediation, without tradition, and so as to be applicable directly to the life of the Christian, is indicative of the problems that beset popular evangelical exegesis to the present day – problems bequeathed to his intellectual progeny by Edwards himself.