More than 20 years ago George Marsden gave us the definitive biography Jonathan Edwards: A Life. The book released at a formative time for me, just as I was graduating college as a history major and headed to work at Christian History & Biography magazine. Almost every book I’ve written or edited since then has been inspired by Edwards and explicitly credits him. So I owe Marsden a great deal. You can see why I was excited about the publication of his new book, An Infinite Fountain of Light: Jonathan Edwards for the Twenty-First Century (IVP Academic).

Marsden, professor emeritus at the University of Notre Dame, says we need Edwards’s carefully balanced analysis as much today as any other time in nearly three centuries of what he calls “sometimes anarchical evangelicalism.” Edwards straddled the worlds of Puritan New England and the British Enlightenment. This combination produces theological richness with contemporary relevance. Marsden summarizes Edwards in ways that capture his unique insight. Marsden writes, “The primary purpose for which the mighty God has created this universe is so that creatures might live in the infinite pleasure of the joy of God’s love.” And, then, “The greatest beauty that we can perceive is God’s redemptive love in Christ.”

Marsden joined me on Gospelbound to discuss changes in Edwards studies, Benjamin Franklin, secular moral judgments, and Edwards’s greatest sermon, among other subjects. I wanted to know what it was like for Marsden to spend so much of his life reading and thinking about God with the help of Edwards. Listen to the end for his answer about how his spiritual life was changed by spending half a dozen years with Edwards.