A recital of presence: christological use of scripture in a History of the Work of Redemption

This dissertation answers the question of how Jonathan Edwards uses Scripture in his 1739 discourse, A History of the Work of Redemption. Some studies have treated Edwards's exegesis of segments of the Bible, while others have proposed or argued theses as to how he perceived history. This study uniquely examines Edwards's usage of Scripture within a specific theological proposal---a historiographical argument for divine immanence.;I argue that in A History of the Work of Redemption, Scripture---used and interpreted Christologically by Edwards to construct a theology of Christ's progressive-redemptive presence---functions as the interpretive paradigm for the meaning of history. Specifically, the Christological narrative of Scripture provides a visible, united, and ordered structure that is essential for humans to understand the beauty, harmony, and Trinitarian nature of divine communication revealed in history.;An introductory chapter defends the need for this study. The second chapter provides context. It examines Edwards's hermeneutical tradition, and it surveys the Enlightenment sensibilities that he was challenging. The emergence of deism and mechanical philosophy had profound implications in the eighteenth century for the perception of reality. With the Creator progressively severed from creation, divinity lacked a proper participation in the world. Edwards counters that increasing heterodoxy with his notion of Christ's progressive-redemptive presence: a perichoretic reality which makes possible the indwelling of nature and the supernatural whereby the former participates in the latter through and in the mediatorship of Christ.;Following a chapter which defines presence, a textual analysis of the discourse (chapters 4-6) details the way Edwards uses Scripture to construct his recital of presence through the three major periods of history. He uses Scripture to argue that Christ is communicated through and in the types of pre-incarnational history, proleptically providing redemption. It is Christ who satisfies that pre-incarnational history during his first advent, specifically through and in the perichoresis of his person and through and in his recapitulative actions. In the final epoch, progressive-redemptive history, established in scriptural word and symbol, becomes the interpretive paradigm for the rest of history as Christ's life replicates itself in time.;A concluding chapter analyzes what these findings mean for Edwardsean scholarship. It also provides an image of Edwards's usage of Scripture: the icon meant for seeing God through Christ. As exemplified in the Ascension of Christ with his bride, this recital of presence is human-divine communion.