The Trinitarian Vision of Jonathan Edwards and David Coffey By S ...

God. Moreover, the trinitarian integration of the doctrines of the Trinity, Christ, and grace suggests two things: first, a way of thinking about salvation that is primarily relational and transformational and second, a theological basis for an optimistic attitude that the grace of Christ can touch those people who participate in a non-Christian religion and have never heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ. With these purposes in mind, let me turn to discuss the way this foray in evangelical theology fits within the larger renaissance of trinitarian theology of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

That, at the end of modernity and the emergence of postmodernity, the Trinity should be front and center is ironic given that Friedrich Schleiermacher, the father of modern theology, treated the Trinity as a postscript to his theological project.¹ If the theological children of Schleiermacher marginalized the Trinity, their heirs have made it a centerpiece of theology. Indeed, in the last decades of the twentieth century and the first years of the twenty-first century, trinitarian theologies and spiritualities have proliferated. During this period, the Trinity has moved from being a doctrine with little relevance for the business of theology to one that functions axiomatically in the thought of many Christian theologians. This trend is appropriate because the God revealed in Scripture is a Trinity, and theology, insofar as it intends to speak of this God, must take the Trinity as foundational to its effort. The renewal of the Trinity in contemporary theological studies has also included the reassessment of the doctrine as it was described by past thinkers who shaped modern theological traditions.

This book participates in both the contemporary renaissance of trinitarian theology and the retrieval of the trinitarian theology of a historical figure. It does this by bringing the trinitarian theologies of the Reformed Puritan Jonathan Edwards and the Roman Catholic David Coffey into an ecumenical and constructive dialogue. Even though they represent vastly different Christian traditions and theological eras, the Trinity plays a vital role in both men’s theology and leads them to similar accounts of Spirit Christology and grace. Their common trinitarian theology and its integration with Christology and pneumatology provide the resources to