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Ethan,

Great idea! I do have a few suggestions. First, would be a good overall survey. Check out Worldly Saints, by Leland Ryken. This will give you a good overview of their times and ethos. Next, it would be good to have a nice reference manual as to who is who. Meet the Puritans is perfect for that. This will give you nice, short introductions to their biographies, including times, places, and major events. After that, you might want a larger work on their theology. A Puritan Theology is the best overview of what they believed. You can piecemeal this work by reading the chapters that interest you most, or go ahead and read it straight through.

Finally, I would suggest that you pick ONE puritan and really get to know him. Three good options would be 1. Thomas Watson (loveable, sweet, sincere, easy to understand, very quotable for sermons); He’s sort of the Spurgeon of the Puritans. 2. John Bunyan (his Pilgrim’s Progress and Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners are both “must read” in the Puritan genre), and of course…

Jonathan Edwards. Edwards is technically NOT a Puritan (too late, and wrong side of the ocean) but he exhibits the authentic Puritan vibe through and through, and so is commonly lumped in with his English predecessors. If you are interested in Edwards, I would have a lot more to say. Thankfully, everything Edwards wrote is FREE online at Edwards.yale.edu. I have created a beginner’s Edwards reading guide here.

Let me know how else I can help!

Yours in Christ,

Dr. Matthew Everhard D.MIN.

I want to remind frequenters of this blog that I have an entire series of videos on my YouTube channel that are related to the life, ministry, and theology of Jonathan Edwards. The playlist is growing all the time as I add new Edwards-related content to the channel. Check out my Jonathan Edwards playlist here.

My most recent video, posted this morning features a brief survey of his theology of joy or happiness. This is obviously derivative from my doctoral dissertation on Edwards and joy.

In this recent video, we will have a look at Jonathan Edwards’s theology of joy or happiness. Here we will consider (1) how Edwards saw joy in his doctrine of the Trinity, (2) as a change of affections wrought in conversion (3) as a happy consequence of the revivals, and more.

I am happy to announce today that I am relaunching my doctoral dissertation in a new, updated print paperback form. A Theology of Joy: Jonathan Edwards and Eternal Happiness in the Holy Trinity is now available again after a long hiatus of being out of print.

This work is my magnum opus on Edwards, which I wrote during my time at Reformed Theological Seminary (Orlando) studying under my supervisor Dr. Michael Allen. A Theology of Joy was almost immediately selected for publication with the JESociety after being defended for my doctoral degree.

This work is not overly complicated with academic or scholastic formatting. It has been completely reworked as an approachable book for those with moderate interest and background in Jonathan Edwards studies. One does not need to be an expert in Edwardsean theology to gain meaningfully from this book.

The chapters of the main book are as follows:

1. The Quest for Joy
2. Joy According to Scripture
3. Jonathan Edwards’s Theology of Joy
4. Comparative Theological Studies
5. A Survey of Edwards’s Important Writings
6. The Preaching of Jonathan Edwards
7. Joy Amidst the Revivals
8. Broadly Identifiable Themes in Edwards’s Theology of Joy
9. Several More Important Themes
10. Celebrating Joy Like Edwards: A Pastoral Model
11. Guarding the Pastor’s Heart
12. Conclusion

Much of this work was developed as I struggled with joy in my own life during times of stress from the work of the ministry. I found Edwards to be an especially helpful writer during my own times of duress. I found happiness almost everywhere in Edwards’s writings including his personal writings, theological treatises, sermons, and revival writings. If you are looking for joy, I can guarantee you that you will find much substantial and real happiness herein.

This new updated edition is an expanded print edition, and now contains nine short essays and articles as a part two in the back of the book. Several of these items were published elsewhere including Desiring God, Logos Academic, and Modern Reformation.

Part Two of the work, the included essays that expand the original edition include the following articles, also previously published elsewhere:

1. Three Years in the Mind of a Genius
2. Jonathan Edwards’s Blank Bible
3. The Organizational Genius of Jonathan Edwards
4. Jonathan Edwards’s Complex Views on Race
5. Jonathan Edwards: A Model of High Pastoral Productivity
6. Three Disciplines of a Happy Christian Leader
7. The Preaching of Jonathan Edwards
8. Edwards, Warfield, and Plato on the Immortality of the Soul
9. 300th Anniversary of Edwards’s “Resolutions”

I am thankful for the JESociety which originally published this book. But for several reasons which I will explain in a forthcoming YouTube video, I requested that it be removed from JESociety Press’s catalog so that I could relaunch this project under a new banner of INDY-REF (Independent Reformed Media). I am thankful that Dr. Rob Boss let this book go out of print so that I could relaunch it with more of my own creative input and direction for publishing.

This book is available on Amazon.com with this affiliate link: (click here).

Here is a video describing the release:

Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield were friends.

For the most part, they labored together on the same page as far as the First Great Awakening was concerned. Both were pro-revival. And both defended itinerant preaching and the veracity of the working of the Spirit during the awakening. Edwards even hosted Whitefield in his own home and invited him to preach in his church. As far as we know that meeting was splendid and Edwards wept the whole time Whitefield preached. As for Whitefield, he was moved by the love that Jonathan had for his own wife Sarah.

But that doesn’t mean that the two got along perfectly all the time. They did have a couple of disagreements as we might expect from a Congregationalist and an Anglican. When we read through WJE 16 in the personal letters of Edwards, we can see that there was in fact some difficulty that came between them on a couple of occasions.

These disagreements were minor and did not cause lasting fracture. The tension between Edwards and Whitefield was probably not as intense as Whitefield’s engagement with the Wesleys on predestination, for example. Nor was it as intense as Edward’s arguments with some of his polemic interlocutors. But the tension can be perceived in at least three events.

In this video, I will tell you the true story of how Edwards and Whitefield got sideways on a handful of occasions.