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Book Review
Canada and the United States
| Avihu Zakai. Jonathan Edwards's Philosophy of History: The Reenchantment of the World in the Age of Enlightenment. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 2003. Pp. xvii, 348. $49.95.
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| Avihu Zakai adds to the continuing superlative scholarship on Jonathan Edwards, turning our gaze away from recent works on the life of Edwards (George M. Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Life [2003]) and Edwards's view of the Bible (Robert E. Brown, Jonathan Edwards and the Bible [2002]) to focus on Edwards the philosopher of history. Zakai argues that to appreciate fully Edwards's writings, and particularly the "History of the Work of Redemption," one has to place them in the context of Edwards's response to the Enlightenment. Edwards was perhaps the first American to understand the lethal threat that the rational English Enlightenment posed to traditional Christian belief and more importantly, he was the first to offer a comprehensive intellectual response to this movement's dethronement of God. According to Zakai, the overarching goal of Edwards's theological agenda was the "reenthronement of God as the sole author and Lord of history" (p. 5). |
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