Jonathan Edwards's [i.E. Edwards'] Vision of Reality: the Relationship of God to the World Redemption History and the Reprobate: 172 (Princeton Theological Monograph Series)

Since the publication of Sang Hyun Lees revolutionary commentary The Philosophical Theology of Jonathan Edwards scholars have considered the possibilities of understanding Jonathan Edwardss thought in terms of dispositional laws forces and habits. While some scholars reject the notion of a dispositional ontology in Edwards others have taken the concept of disposition in his thought beyond the usage the Northampton minister ever indicated especially with respect to soteriological considerations. The preacher of Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God is made to be an inclusivist if not a crypto-universalist. Jonathan Edwardss Vision of Reality substantiates that Edwards in an effort to combat deistic and materialistic Enlightenment paradigms employs dispositions in his philosophy but that his radical theocentrism and Calvinistic particularism established its boundaries within his apologetical reconsideration of spatiotemporal and metaphysical reality. Within his spiritual vision of reality Edwards leaves no stone unturned: history and even the reprobate find inherent value and a positive functional role not only in Gods program of self-glorification but as manifestations of divine being--the damned are deformities in God. The logic of Edwardss theocentric vision of reality pushes his ideas to the limits of acceptable Reformed orthodoxy and sometimes beyond those limits.