Communicating God’s Trinitarian Fullness: An Exposition of Jonathan Edwards’ End of Creation
Digital Logos Edition
Overview
A glimpse into Jonathan Edwards’ rapturous vision of God
God created the world for his glory alone. Most Christians would confess this claim, but struggle to explain it. How could God be all-sufficient in himself and yet gain anything from creating this cosmos? Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) provided a classic answer to this timeless question in his End for Which God Created the World, but most modern readers need a guide through this difficult text.
In this book, Joe Rigney points the way to an enriched understanding of Edwards’s classic and the sublime mysteries which it plumbs: that God has an end in creation; that God is eternally happy and self-sufficient in Himself; that God creates everything from nothing; and that God values things according to their value. Rigney’s work invites academics, pastors, and laypeople alike into conversation with one of the brightest lights of the Reformed tradition.
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- Points the way to an enriched understanding of Edwards’s classic.
- Invites academics, pastors, and laypeople alike into conversation.
- Provides a classic answer to this timeless question.
This is a book for heart and for head. It quenches our spiritual thirst by looking into the heart of the triune God. Carefully, Joe Rigney peels out Jonathan Edwards’ insights about the triune God. In doing so, he reveals God’s love for Himself that leads Him to communicate this inexhaustible fullness to his creatures. God’s glory does not compete with our happiness, but it makes us share in God’s own knowledge, love and joy. I like this book, this stuff, this depth, this logic, and this warmth.
– Prof. Dr. Willem van Vlastuin. Director Jonathan Edwards Center Benelux, Chair Theology and Spirituality of Reformed Protestantism, Free University of Amsterdam.
I love reading books that have clear goals. And Joe Rigney’s Communicating God’s Trinitarian Fullness does just that. It is in the first instance a commentary on Edwards’s End for which God created the world. But more than this, it is also a critique of competing interpretations of Edwards’s philosophical theology, providing a confident path through the debates. And it contains a concise contribution in its own right to Edwards’s doctrine of the Trinity, the basic bedrock for his eschatology. It isn’t a big book, but it does pack a punch beyond its weight.
– Rhys Bezzant. Ridley College, Melbourne
“Edwards’ End of Creation has for a long time both dazzled and puzzled readers: it contains such a breathtaking vision of God and the world he created, yet some of its statements appear to suggest that Edwards struggled to affirm a classical articulation of the Christian God. In this tightly reasoned and wonderfully compact book, Joe Rigney artfully compiles a superb set of arguments demonstrating Edwards’s fidelity to classical orthodoxy in End of Creation. It is an outstanding handbook that shines much light on Edwards’s classic!
– Dr. Robert Caldwell. Professor of Church History | Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary