Gerald McDermott teaches at Jerusalem Seminary and Reformed Episcopal Seminary (ACNA). Previously, he taught for 26 years at Roanoke College followed by 5 years at Beeson Divinity School.
The following interview revolves around McDermott’s latest book, A New History of Redemption: The Work of Jesus the Messiah Through the Millennia.
Moore: Since readers may be wondering what the title of this interview is alluding to, would you fill in the missing pieces of how this book finishes what Jonathan Edwards began?
McDermott: In the last decade of his life, Edwards was working on a massive summa that would tell the story of redemption by Jesus from Eden to the New Jerusalem. He wanted to include secular history and the rise and fall of world civilizations and religions. He is the foremost Christian theologian of God’s beauty, and was convinced that only the long story of redemption by the Jewish Messiah can effectively show that beauty. But he was cut down by a vaccine (!) at the peak of his intellectual power (age 54) before he could finish the book. In my hubris, I thought I might try to finish what he started.
Moore: You are well-known, among other things, as a scholar of Jonathan Edwards. Who or what led you to make Edwards a focused area of study?
McDermott: In my PhD program I was going to study civil religion in the antebellum period. When I started reading the primary sources, all the leading theologians then kept referring to the work of “President Edwards” (he was president of what is now Princeton University when he died). So I figured I would go back to Edwards for two or three weeks to get control of what he was all about, and then return to the early 19th century. But I got stuck, as it were. I was dazzled by Edwards’s combination of world-historical intellect and profound piety. That’s why this is my 8th book on or inspired by Edwards.
Moore: The material you cover in this book such as Jonathan Edwards, world religions, the central role of the Jews, and much more, are areas you have written whole books on. Even with all that familiarity, I imagine that there may have been some challenges in writing this book. If there were, would share a few of those?
McDermott: The enormity of the time range (the whole history of the world) was both exciting and daunting. Tracing the story of Israel from the call of Abraham to the intertestamental period through all its perturbations, trying to see the work of Messiah throughout, seemed near-impossible at first. The complexity of theology (such as in the Christological debates in the early centuries of the Church and the debates over justification and the sacraments among Protestants and Catholics during the Reformation) were challenging. And there were difficult problems along the way which I hoped to be able to capture with some degree of integrity, such as the history of Christian persecution of Jews and the problem of evil (as in the Holocaust). These are some of the reasons this book took ten years to think and then write.
Moore: A corollary of sorts to the previous question is whether there were any areas where you changed your thinking as a result of working on the research for this book?
McDermott: Yes, my views of eschatology changed some. I had long been a postmillennialist, following Edwards. But getting into the Bible on the issue and the massive theological debates on the subject, and then studying the greatest theologians on eschatology, changed my thinking in several respects. Readers can see the last chapters to discover some of these things. I was also more convinced than previously that the Fathers before Augustine had it right—that God the Father withdrew from direct contact with sinners after the Fall, and delegated all communication with sinful humans, both verbal and physical, to the Mediator, the Son of God. So it was the Son speaking in the burning bush and the Son who wrestled with Jacob and spoke with Moses face to face as with a friend. I also became more convinced that there is far more to the biblical story than simply justification, as some evangelicals and Lutherans have imagined. Edwards showed that forensic justification is only part of the bigger gift of justification, and that salvation is only part of the bigger story of redemption.
Moore: In some of your early chapters you do a terrific job of highlighting the grace of God. With all the evidence to the contrary, why do many Christians fail to see the grace of God in the Old Testament?
McDermott: Because they read the OT so little and there are so few sermons on the Old Testament. Think of it: the OT is 77% of the Protestant Bible and 80% of the Anglican and Catholic Bible. But what percentage of sermons are on the OT? And even when preachers go to the OT, they often miss the story of redemption there, that is woven in and out from Genesis to Malachi. We tend to forget that the OT was Jesus’ Bible, that He inspired it, and that it all speaks of Him. And that we will never understand Him or God’s beauty unless we read it with fresh eyes.
Moore: Though this is a substantial work of theology, your writing is clear and so the material is quite accessible. Who do you envision as your ideal reader?
McDermott: My imagined reader as I wrote was the theologically-curious car mechanic. I tested this before it was published by sending the manuscript to a friend who doesn’t typically like theology but is spiritually ravenous. When, several months later, he said he read the whole book and understood it all, I was thrilled.
Moore: I would love to know the non-theological works (literature, poetry, art, etc.) that have most impacted your life and thinking?
McDermott: My wife is an artist and has opened my eyes over almost five decades to the world of sculpture, architecture, and painting. But I have been most influenced by the greats of world literature—such as Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky—and recent Americans such as Flannery O’Connor, Steinbeck, and Hemingway. In the last five years I have been arrested by the novels of Michael O’Brien, whom I consider particularly resonant in this increasingly post-Christian age.
Moore: Even with all your decades of previous work that went into this book, it was still a major undertaking. Would you share a bit about your writing process? Do you mainly use physical books?
McDermott: Almost always. I hate reading books and articles on a screen.
Moore: Do you put marginalia and/or highlighting in the books you read?
McDermott: Always. My wife doesn’t like it, but you can go through my library of several thousand books and find most of them annotated.
Moore: Is the first draft done by hand or do you go right to the computer?
McDermott: Right to the computer, but always after a very long and detailed outline.
Moore: How much editing do you do?
McDermott: Quite a bit. Mostly for style, occasionally for content.
Moore: Anything else you care to add on your writing process is most welcome.
McDermott: This is my 25th book, and the summation of much of my thinking over the last forty years—on Edwards, historical theology, the world religions, liturgy and sacraments, typology, God’s beauty, and theology of Israel. Each book or major article starts with a burden. I feel pained by what I think needs to be said, and has not been said yet. That sounds too self-important, doesn’t it? But I compare it to being pregnant, at least as I have seen in my wife and daughters in law. It involves blood, sweat, and tears, and is something of a painful process until it emerges, in birth as it were. Joy and relief come only after it is done. It is always hard to get started. But once into the work, there is often joy as I feel carried along by the story and keep wanting to get back to the work.
Moore: What are a few things you hope readers gain by reading this book?
McDermott: In this day of anxiety and darkness, I hope readers get a sense that in the history of God’s people—Jewish and Christian—there have been plenty of periods of darkness and doubt. But always it has been seen—usually only later—that God’s sovereign hand was guiding throughout, and that in hindsight one can see His beauty in that long story of redemption. I also hope readers see the profound Jewishness of Jesus and the gospel and early Church, and the ways that liturgy and sacraments and worship have developed over the last four thousand years. I want readers to get a sense not only of the story of the Bible but also the story of the Church—so biblical theology and church history in one story of beauty and redemption.
