Seldom does one come across a volume which offers a truly comprehensive account of a field of study. This book attempts just that. As George Marsden's monumental biography has become the benchmark for all subsequent biographical and historiographical work on Edwards, so this work will surely become an important fixture for scholars interested in orientating themselves towards the intricacies and expansiveness of Jonathan Edwards’ theological project. Both McClymond and McDermott are seasoned Edwards’ scholars. They bring a wealth of research expertise to their task. It shows through on almost every page. The work falls into three parts. These comprise a first section concerning the historical and contextual material one would expect when dealing with a theologian who lived in the eighteenth century. This is followed by the largest part of the book, devoted to topics in Edwards’ theology. Then, in a final section, the legacies of Edwards’ theology are traced and current interpretations of his thought are discussed.

McClymond and McDermott are convinced that Edwards has much to offer contemporary theology. Setting out the major themes of the volume in the first chapter, they describe his work as a sort of orchestra with different parts which represent key themes in his thought. These include the notion of trinitarian communication; creaturely participation; necessitarian dispositionalism; theocentric voluntarism; and harmonious constitutionalism. According to Edwards, God is essentially communicative since (as he puts it) ‘one alone cannot be excellent’. This essential communicativeness is transmitted to the creation in the emanation of Godself. The creature participates in this because God has set up the world so that the end or goal of creation is that human creatures be united to God through Christ in theosis. Necessitarian dispositionalism has to do with the claim that ‘the essence of all being – even that of God – [consists] in disposition or habit’ (p. 5). On this view, even God is a disposition, and human beings are characterised by their dispositions and habits in works like Religious Affections and even Original Sin and Freedom of the Will. Theocentric voluntarism has to do with the Edwardsian twist on the Reformed doctrine of divine sovereignty. God ‘continually recreates the world every second, and God himself is the reality sustaining all of creation’ (p. 6). One can even say that, for Edwards, creatures exist only in a shadowy sense in comparison to God, the one true substance. Finally, harmonious constitutionalism has to do with the nature of salvation. For Edwards, ‘salvation is less like a chain of beads [as per the traditional Reformed ordo salutis] than . . . a net in which each part of the net holds the rest in place’ (p. 6). His understanding of regeneration, including justification, is, the authors aver, more Thomist than Reformational in important respects.

There is much with which one can agree in this assessment, and these themes do represent important elements of Edwardsian theology. Nevertheless, the five orchestral sections the authors set out are indebted to a particular interpretation of Edwards’ work which stems from Sang Hyun Lee. This ‘Lee interpretation’ of Edwards has been called into question in a growing literature from a new generation of scholars (to which the present reviewer has contributed). According to Lee, Edwards thinks that God is essentially dispositional, moving from potentiality to actuality and moving all that is created from potential to actual in the act of creation which is the overflow of his essentially dispositional nature. The five orchestral sections follow this line of interpretation, which has significant implications for what they say about a number of key claims in Edwards’ thought. It is rather like having a textbook on St Thomas Aquinas written by two Wittgensteinian Thomists. There is much which might be illuminating and helpful in such a work. Yet for those unconvinced by hermeneutical claims made about St Thomas by the Wittgensteinians, there will also be important respects in which the book is open to question.

That said, the overwhelming conclusion one reaches on finishing this book is one of gratitude. Here at last is a monument which begins to do justice to the importance and influence of the Sage of Northampton, even if, like all such scholarly achievements, there are aspects of the whole which will be the subject of ongoing scholarly dispute. For that the authors are to be congratulated and thanked.