Jonathan Edwards and John Piper

There is a lot of reading going on in our house these days. Daniel is in the midst of working on his thesis. He is writing on the relevance of Edwards' epistemology for postmodernism. For those of you who are thinking "what the crack?", epistemology is the study of the forms, sources and methods of knowledge and postmodernism is in part the rejection/skepticism of static, timeless, universal knowledge. Some of you may still be thinking "what the crack?" and that's ok. I spend about 75% of the time asking the same question.

Edwards is an interesting individual and comes from an even more interesting family. Here is a quote from Marsden's book, Jonathan Edwards: A Life, " Jonathan Edwards is sometimes criticized for having too dim a view of human nature, but it may be helpful to be reminded that his grandmother was an incorrigible profligate, his great-aunt committed infanticide, and his great-uncle was an axe murderer." Who would have ever thought one of America's finest philosophers and preachers would come from such a background.

This afternoon Daniel and I strolled around Barnes and Noble and Borders looking for Marsden's book and perusing the shelves. I came across a book by John Piper, The Purifying Power of Living by Faith in Future Grace. Being the Piper fans that we are, we decided to purchase Piper's book. Interestingly enough, the final chapter of Piper's book is entitled, The Debt I Owe to Jonathan Edwards.

Piper is well known for the premise of his writings, "God is most glorified in us, when we are most satisfied in Him. " I believe if Edwards were alive today he would shout out a hearty AMEN.

I have only read one of two introductions to Piper's book this afternoon, but it has already left me with some theological "cud" to chew on. Conversations around the Cooley household in the days to come could prove to be interesting with all this reading going on.