Description: In this insightful book, former pastor and missionary Peter Doyle presents Jonathan Edwards' theology in a comprehensive scope: in its cultural context, against its adversaries, and with all its practical and pastoral implications.
Brief description: As a pastor and missionary, Peter Reese Doyle has spent most of his adult life studying and teaching the writings of Christianity's great thinkers.Peter studied at Virginia (Episcopal) Theological Seminary in Virginia and at Seabury-Western Seminary in Illinois, receiving a Bachelor of Divinity degree in 1957.In 1963 Peter received a Masters of Divinity from the University of Basel, where at the suggestion of Professor Karl Barth he chose to study Jonathan Edwards' extensive writings on the work of God's Spirit in human lives.Peter and his wife, Sally Ann, served as Episcopal missionaries at Cuttington College and Divinity School in Liberia where he taught theology and she taught French.Peter later served as a pastor in Virginia, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Alabama and taught theology at several seminaries.Since retiring from the pastorate in 2006, Peter has continued his ministry of writing inspirational adventure stories for young readers (_The Daring Family Adventures_ series and The Drums of War series).
Review Quotes:
This book will be of interest to Edwards scholars. Among other things, it is proof that Karl Barth in his later years became aware of the intricacies of Edwards's theology. Not all contemporary Edwards scholars will agree with everything they see here. For example, some like me will say that beauty for Edwards was not "essentially" moral but far more, and that while holiness was not the sole condition for justification in Edwards's view, it was what he called "a secondary dependent and derivative worthiness." For all those interested in Edwards's writings on assurance, informed by scholarship before the 1980s, this work will be of help.
Gerald R. McDermott
Beeson Divinity School
Co-author of The Theology of Jonathan Edwards
Many thanks to Peter Doyle for seeing earlier than most that the doctrine of regeneration was the heart of Edwards' of ministry, pumping spiritual life blood through the rest of his body of work. And thanks to Peter's brother, Wright, and fellow Edwardsean, Brandon Cozart, for seeing this project through to publication. Their labor of love deserves a sympathetic audience.
Douglas A. Sweeney
Trinity Evangelical Divinity School
Author of Jonathan Edwards and the Ministry of the Word:
A Model of Faith and Thought