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Jonathan Edwards (1703–1758) is widely recognized as one of the greatest philosopher-theologians America has ever produced, and recent years have seen a remarkable increase in research on his writings. To date, however, there has been no single authoritative volume that introduces and interprets the key aspects of Edwards'thought as a whole. The Princeton Companion to Jonathan Edwards provides just such a concise and comprehensive work, one that will be invaluable to students and scholars of American religion and theology as well as of literature, philosophy, and history.Comprising twenty essays by leading scholars on Edwards, the book will inform and challenge readers on subjects ranging from Edwards'understanding of the Trinity, God and the world, Christ, and salvation, as well as of history, typology, the church, and mission to Native Americans. It also includes a chronology of Edwards'life and writings that incorporates current research. Those familiar with Edwards'writings will find in these essays succinct expositions as well as bold new interpretations, and others will find an accessible, authoritative, up-to-date orientation to his multifaceted thought.The essays are by Robert E. Brown, Allen C. Guezlo, Robert W. Jenson, Wilson H. Kimnach, Janice Knight, Sang Hyun Lee, Gerald R. McDermott, Kenneth P. Minkema, Mark Noll, Richard R. Niebuhr, Amy Plantinga Pauw, John E. Smith, Stephen J. Stein, Harry S. Stout, Douglas A. Sweeney, Peter J. Thuesen, and John F. Wilson.

Drawing on decades of teaching and reflection, Princeton theologian Sang Lee probes what it means for Asian Americans to live as the followers of Christ in the'liminal space'between Asia and America and at the periphery of American society. As one moves away from the societal center, either intentionally or by virtue of marginalization, one often finds oppression and dehumanization. Yet, Lee argues, one can also sometimes find liminality--a creative and edgy space with openness to the new, the emergence of community, and the ability to take a prophetic stance over against the status quo. For Lee, the liminal is key to the authentic calling and future of Asian Americans, other ethnic-racial groups and minorities, persons with mixed identities, and indeed all Christians.From this insight, Lee unfolds a systematic theology. Searching the Gospels, one discovers that God became incarnate as a liminal and marginalized Galilean. Jesus the Galilean in his life and ministry widened the meaning of liminal creativity and exercised that creativity in embodying the boundary-breaking love of the Father. On the cross, he entered the ultimate space of liminality in which sinful humanity can experience communion with Christ. United in loving communion with God in Christ, Asian American Christians and all other believers are transformed into a new existence in which they are emboldened to struggle for justice and reconciliation. Asian American Christians, like the Galilean followers of Jesus, have the particular vocation to exercise the creative potentials of their liminal predicament and thereby to participate in God's own project of repeating in time and space the beauty of God's inter-Trinitarian communion.

This book demonstrates the originality and coherence of Jonathan Edwards'philosophical theology using his dynamic reconception of reality as the interpretive key. The author argues that what underlies Edwards'writings is a radical shift from the traditional Western metaphysics of substance and form to a new conception of the world as a network of dispositions: active and abiding principles that possess reality apart from their manifestations in actions and events. Edwards'dispositional ontology enables him to restate the Augustinian-Calvinist tradition in theology in a strikingly modern philosophical framework. A prime example of Edwards'innovative reconstruction in philosophical theology is his conception of God as both eternal actuality and a disposition to repeat that actuality within God and also through creation. This view is a compelling alternative to the traditional Western doctrine of God as changeless actuality, on the one hand, and the recent process theologians'excessive stress on God's involvement in change, on the other. Edwards'achievement was that he saw dynamic movement as essential to God's own life without compromising the traditional Christian tenets of God's prior actuality and transcendence. The author of this volume also explicates the way in which Edwards'dynamic reconception of reality informs his theories of imagination, aesthetic perception, the knowledge of God, and the meaning of history. This expanded edition includes a new preface and a new appendix titled'Jonathan Edwards on Nature.'