Revelation
The chapter sketches out the theological and intellectual context of Jonathan Edwards’s doctrine of revelation. It notes first the broad characteristics of the doctrine in Edwards’s immediate heritage and then the peculiar challenges to it posed by the English deist thinkers of his day. The chapter argues that in the face of radical objections Edwards defended a recognizably Reformed version of the doctrine. The chapter then briefly considers his theology proper, noting that for Edwards God was essentially a communicative being and that his teleology was one aimed at God’s glorification through self-communication. While Edwards denied that the book of nature was salvific, his theology proper and teleology coupled with his metaphysical commitments to a form of idealism and to being as relational and communicative, meant that as regards the regenerate he was prepared to grant a far more expansive revelatory role for nature and history than was common to his heritage.