New England Dogmatics

Jonathan Edwards' (1703-58) ideas are among the most significant to the development of Reformed Theology in America. However brief the life of his intellection tradition, Edwards' ideas and their reception remain an integral part of contemporary theological dialogue. Hitherto no work has appeared that sheds as much systematic light on the reception of Edwards' ideas than Maltby Gelston's (1766-1865) Systematic Collection of Questions and Answers in Divinity. As a ministerial aspirant under the tutelage of Jonathan Edwards the younger, Gelston received catechetical instruction through an exhaustive series of 313 questions, tailor made by early New England theologians. To this point, researches have mused over the significance of these questions and what they tell us about the development of the New England theological tradition. With the publication of this manuscript, researchers may now, for the first time, muse over the significance of Gelston's answers.Maltby Gelston is one of the most important New Divinity scholars about whom most have never heard--primarily because of his book of questions and answers in divinity written for Jonathan Edwards, Jr., his pastoral mentor. This material, published here for the very first time, opens a whole new window onto the world of the Edwardseans, reminding us of a time and place quite different from our own, where the details of Christian doctrine were matters of life and death or, in the words of Harriet Beecher Stowe, 'all was profoundly real and vital,--a foundation on which actual life was based with intensest earnestness.'--Douglas A. Sweeney, Trinity Evangelical Divinity SchoolRobert L. Boss is the Executive Director of JESociety.org.Joshua R. Farris is Assistant Professor of Theology and Director of The Academy at Houston Baptist University. He is also Henry Fellow at the Carl F.H. Henry Center, The Creation Project.S. Mark Hamilton is co-editor of and contributor to several academic works. He is a PhD candidate at the Free University of Amsterdam and a research associate at the JESociety.