Editor’s Note: The “Blank Bible” was an interleaved Bible containing Edwards’ notes … each page of the Biblical Text was “interleaved” with a blank page for taking notes. It reflected years of study and thought on Edwards’ part. While it has become a fruitful field for study in its own right, it reminds us that we ourselves ought to be diligent students of the Biblical Text ourselves and continually mining it’s treasures.
By Dr. Phil Corr (c) 2007
John Gerstner is known and respected by many Evangelicals, especially those of the Reformed persuasion. So, it should come as no surprise that he has written a three volume work entitled The Rational Biblical Theology of Jonathan Edwards.
He wrote volume one in 1991. On page three he hopes that Yale University Press will complete its publication of Edwards’ works by 2003. After that occasion (which actually occurred in 2007, with the rest of Edwards’ unpublished works to be put online in digital form through the Yale Jonathan Edwards Project), Gerstner hoped that there would be many comprehensive surveys of Edwards’ theology.
Gerstner claims that his is “the first full-scale-theology of Edwards ever published.” Gerstner may well have drawn much inspiration and material from his work based on his unfinished efforts for Yale University Press.
Stephen J. Stein writes of Gerstner’s relationship with Yale University Press and the works of Jonathan Edwards in his critical introduction to the next to the last volume (24): The Blank Bible. Stein’s ambivalent views about Gerstner’s contributions and Gerstener’s “distortions” (from Stein’s perspective) merit a full quotation from pages 102 and 103, wherein Stein quotes from Gerstner’s Rational Bibliography and other works.
“One exception to the pattern of neglect and oversight of Edwards’ views on the Bible outside the circle of the Yale Edition and its editors was John H. Gerstner. He, however, was not really an exception to that rule because for many years Gerstner was under contract to edit three volumes of sermons as part of the Yale Edition. In 1974 he departed from the editorial project, but not before he had immersed himself in the manuscripts. Over the course of the 1970s and 1980s he published a series of essays dealing with Edwards and the Bible. Gerstner’s research on Edwards ultimately gave rise to a three-volume study published in the early 1990s that he described as ‘the first full-scale theology of Edwards ever published.’ He consciously chose to present his work in ‘the traditional orthodox theological form.’ Gerstner’s volumes, the product of four decades of ‘fascination’with Edwards’ ‘wisdom,’ left no ambiguity about his admiration for the man and his theology. He declared that on the basis of his accomplishments Edwards may have been ‘the greatest Christian since the apostolic age,’ an attitude that colors the entire exposition.
Gerstner devoted attention to a variety of issues related to Edwards’ views on the Bible, including the relationship between reason and revelation as well as the inspiration, canon, and interpretation of Scripture–all issues of theological concern also to Gerstner. Perhaps the most unusual element in the three volumes was a 234-page section in volume 1 entitled ‘A “Commentary” on Hebrews’ in which Gerstner collated and commented upon every citation he could find written by Edwards relating to the book of Hebrews. He arranged the excerpts canonically. There is both a creative and a distortive quality to this ‘reconstruction.’ Edwards never wrote a systematic commentary on Hebrews or any other book of the Bible.
His exegetical work was infinitely more occasional and happenstance. In his reconstruction, Gerstner cited extensively from the ‘Blank Bible’ on Hebrews. A close check of his transcriptions from the interleaved Bible, however, reveals that they are fill with numerous errors, making highly suspect the reliability of his citation of manuscripts throughout his volumes.”
While agreeing with Stein’s caution concerning numerous errors, I will say that I am very interested in the Book of Hebrews as well. Gerstner’s efforts–flawed though they may be–are similar in design to Inter Varsity Press’s series entitled The Ancient Christian Commentaries that will be followed by Commentaries from the Reformation (I am not sure of the title at this point) to begin in 2009.
What IVP and scholars do is to work from the works of Christian authors on CD ROM and other modern methods to cull and translate pertinent Bible passages. These are then placed in “canonical” order to provide a fascinating spectra of teachings and views on chapter and verse for each book of the Bible.
It is another reason why Edwards’ Blank Bible is such a gold mine and Stein is to be commended for his meticulous work–both in bringing accuracy to the text and providing the context for the work.
Returning to Gerstner, I conclude with these words: “Had Edwards become a professional philosopher he would occupy many pages in the history of philosophy. Had he become a professional biblical scholar it would be difficult to find his equal and impossible to find his superior. As it was he became a professional philosopher-theologian-evangelist and here he is sui
generis.”
Phil Corr’s work on the web can be seen at: haystack06.org and fccofcc.com
