Before he wrote his massive Rational Biblical Theology of Jonathan Edwards, Gerstner wrote this introduction to the theology of Edwards. There are eleven chapters on such topics as Reason and Revelation, The Trinity, Man and His Fall, Sin, The Atonement, Justification, Sanctification, and several others. If you are not ready to tackle the large three-volume set, this would be a great place to start. If you simply want an introduction and overview of Edwards' theology, this is exactly what you've been looking for.

This study is the first of its kind to examine critical biblical interpretation in early American history. Focusing on Jonathan Edwards's biblical writings, it suggests that Edwards's biblical interpretation is the key to understanding his broader engagement with critical methods and provides a unifying thread within his theological work. Very few students of American religious history are aware of the vast quantity of Edwards's biblical writings, let alone his engagement with critical historical thought. The rage of British society in the middle of the 17th century, particularly as it related to church-state issues, biblical criticism has been considered a late 19th-century phenomenon in American religious history. It was at that time that it emerged and rapidly grew as a technical discipline in American theological schools. However, as Robert E. Brown shows in this path-breaking study, far from being a 'modern' preoccupation, the relationship of the Bible to critical thought is almost as old as the American experience itself. Brown's study of Edwards's biblical writings shows him to have been one of the most thoroughly engaged thinkers regarding critical problems in the colonial period. The impact of this revolution in biblical interpretation can be traced to nearly every area of Edwards's intellectual career - epistemology, historiography, natural theology, typology, natural science, comparative religion, constructive theology, and public discourse. This engagement resulted in a subtle but distinct transformation of Edwards's understanding of the biblical narratives and their relation to the new scientific modes of inquiry, a transformation that anticipated similar developments in 19th-century American religious thought.

Scholars and laypersons alike regard Jonathan Edwards (1703-58) as North America's greatest theologian. The Theology of Jonathan Edwards is the most comprehensive survey of his theology yet produced and the first study to make full use of the recently-completed seventy-three-volume online edition of the Works of Jonathan Edwards. The book's forty-five chapters examine all major aspects of Edwards's thought and include in-depth discussions of the extensive secondary literature on Edwards as well as Edwards's own writings. Its opening chapters set out Edwards's historical and personal theological contexts. The next thirty chapters connect Edwards's theological loci in the temporally-ordered way in which he conceptualized the theological enterprise-beginning with the triune God in eternity with his angels to the history of redemption as an expression of God's inner reality ad extra, and then back to God in eschatological glory.The authors analyze such themes as aesthetics, metaphysics, typology, history of redemption, revival, and true virtue. They also take up such rarely-explored topics as Edwards's missiology, treatment of heaven and angels, sacramental thought, public theology, and views of non-Christian religions. Running throughout the volume are what the authors identify as five basic theological constituents: trinitarian communication, creaturely participation, necessitarian dispositionalism, divine priority, and harmonious constitutionalism. Later chapters trace his influence on and connections with later theologies and philosophies in America and Europe. The result is a multi-layered analysis that treats Edwards as a theologian for the twenty-first-century global Christian community, and a bridge between the Christian West and East, Protestantism and Catholicism, conservatism and liberalism, and charismatic and non-charismatic churches.

As a theologian in the Reformed tradition, covenant theology was for Jonathan Edwards the internal scaffolding that gave shape to the biblical story of redemption. The establishment of the eternal rule of righteousness as the basis of the believer's communion with God and eternal happiness is a central theme beginning with the Covenant of Works, grounded in the eternal Covenant of Redemption, and culminating in the Covenant of Grace. It is the basis for the law-gospel distinction in Edwards and the early architects of federal theology. For the "God intoxicated" New England Puritan preacher, this was no dry academic exercise. Rather, it was a joyous and affectionate discovery and embrace of what God had ordained in eternity, what Christ accomplished in history on the cross, and what the Holy Spirit is doing and will complete in the church. This study grew out of current discussions in Reformed scholarship questioning aspects of traditional covenant theology. As a key transitional figure in the history of Reformed theology, Edwards's thinking is still relevant. The richness and depth of Edwards's vision of redemptive history provides a clear and comprehensive understanding of his Reformed soteriology and the role of evangelical obedience in justification.