Continually Sharpening

A theological blog by Dr. Janelle Zeeb

Articles About Jonathan Edwards

Does God Really Want To Save Everyone?

If you have ever attended a Christian church, I hope that you would have heard things like:

  • "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16).
  • "God shows his love for us …
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Why I Wrote My Dissertation on Predestination

As part of my preparation for my dissertation defence in August 2021, I was asked to think about why my doctoral research matters to the church.

At first glance, I admit that my investigation into why the eighteenth-century Puritan theologian Jonathan Edwards believed that God predestines most people to hell …

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How Could Jesus Be Tempted?

In the Easter story, Jesus prays in the Garden of Gethsemane before he is about to be betrayed by Judas and arrested, brought to trial, and shortly thereafter, crucified.

All three synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke) record that when Jesus was in Gethsemane, he prayed,

Father, if you are willing …

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Open Theism and Bible Prophecy

I came across a book chapter titled "Open Theism in the Hands of an Angry Puritan: Jonathan Edwards on Divine Foreknowledge" by C. Samuel Storms.1 Storms tries to use Jonathan Edwards' arguments about God's foreknowledge to refute open theism.

Since I wrote my Master of Theological Studies thesis on …

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God Commands What He Is: Love

One sentence spoken by Jesus had always perplexed me: "You are my friends if you do what I command you" (John 15:14).

I always thought to myself, "What sort of person would demand that their friends obey them in order to be considered their friends? Who would say they …

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Why Did God Create the Universe?

For my PhD dissertation, I am studying the American pastor and theologian Jonathan Edwards, who lived in the 1700s.

To me, one of his most interesting writings is titled "Concerning The End for Which God Created the World," sometimes shortened to "End of Creation". It was one of the last …

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