Jonathan Edwards [1740], Writings on the Trinity, Grace, and Faith (WJE Online Vol. 21) , Ed. Sang Hyun Lee [word count] [jec-wjeo21].
The Doctrine of the Trinity
The Christian Doctrine of the Trinity and Jonathan Edwards' Context
The Christian doctrine of God as the Trinity was originally formulated by the ancient church fathers as a confessional expression of faith, not as a speculative idea. The church fathers believed that the God they experienced in Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit is the same God as the God they knew as the Creator and the Lord of creation. This belief had to be articulated in a doctrinal formula so to make clear the distinctiveness of the identity of the Christian God in relation to various other conceptions of the deity. They had to find some way to affirm that God was one and three. The God of the biblical witness, in other words, is at once one and also distinctively three: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
The same point can be stated in terms of the distinction between the "economic Trinity" (the differentiated agency of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in God's redemptive activity in his relation to the world) and the "immanent Trinity" (the eternal distinctions of persons within the internal being of God). When Christians speak about God as eternally triune in God's immanent Trinity, they are affirming that God's activities of creating, saving, and sanctifying are not accidental but rather rooted in, and consistent with, the way God is eternally within his own life. So the church doctrine of God as immanently triune emerges out of the experience of God as economically one and three. In this way, when the ancient church fathers originally articulated the doctrine of the Trinity, the immanent Trinity and the economic Trinity were inseparably connected. The church fathers' experience of God as economically triune led them to confess God as immanently triune; the confession of God as immanently triune articulated the economic Trinity's eternal grounding.
The official formulation of the trinitarian doctrine began with the ecumenical council at Nicea (325), which affirmed the Athanasian view that Jesus Christ, whom believers experienced as their Savior, was God himself— that is, homoousios ("of the same substance") with the Father. The council at Constantinople (381) completed the formulation by asserting that the Holy Spirit as well as the Father and the Son were all of the same substance. God is, in other words, "one in substance, distinguished in three persons" (mia ousia, tres hypostases). Both the Greek Eastern and the Latin Western churches embraced these simultaneous affirmations of God's unity and God's threeness. However, in general, the Greek East -- 3 -- stressed the distinctions among the three more than the unity and tended to guard the unity with ideas of the Father as the fountainhead of the Deity and of the mutual indwelling (perichoresis) of the three persons. Meanwhile, the Latin West, most prominently exemplified by Augustine, tended to emphasize the divine unity.
With the formulas "of the same substance" and "one in substance, three in persons," the ancient church fathers were not so much concerned with spelling out the technical meanings of such philosophically loaded terms as "substance" and "persons" as they were with describing the fundamental nature of the God in whom they put their faith. The trinitarian creed functioned as a name that identified the particular God who was incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth. The goal of the two fourth-century ecumenical councils was simply to define the most distinctive characteristic of the God of the church's faith as contrasted to non-Christian ideas of the deity.
As the church moved on, however, the theological articulation of the doctrine of the immanent Trinity in particular became philosophically more elaborate and abstruse, with the result that the immanent Trinity's rootedness in the economic Trinity and in the living faith of Christians became largely invisible and ignored. Under the influence especially of Aristotelian conceptions of substance and God, the nature of the Christian God began to be portrayed by most theologians as self-contained, impassable (i.e. unaffected by the changes in history), and remote from what happens in the world. Such philosophizing about the Trinity received its fullest and most elegant expression in the writings of Augustine, Aquinas, and the medieval scholastics in the Western church, and in Gregory of Nyssa and others of the Eastern, with somewhat different emphases between them.
What is striking about Jonathan Edwards' writings on the Trinity is that there is none of this bifurcation between the doctrine of the Trinity and the Christian life of faith and practice. Everything Edwards wrote about the Trinity expresses the intertwining connectedness of the Trinity and the Christian's experience of God as the Creator, Savior, and Sanctifier, and thus between the immanent and the economic Trinity. Edwards was well-versed in the Western church's teachings on the Trinity through the writings of Reformed scholastics such as Francis Turretin and Peter van Mastricht and Puritan writers like William Ames. But Edwards was also acquainted with the Eastern tradition through the writings of the Cambridge Platonist Ralph Cudworth and, indirectly, Gregory of Nyssa himself.For a discussion of the background of JE's doctrine of the Trinity, see Amy Plantinga Pauw, "The Supreme Harmony of All: Jonathan Edwards and the Trinity," Yale University Ph.D. diss., 1990, pp. 23–75. -- 4 -- As we shall see, Edwards wished to— and did— stay faithfully within the orthodoxy of the councils of Nicea and Constantinople. But at the same time, remarkably, he closed the gap between trinitarian doctrine and the Christian life, thereby returning to the ancient church father's original desire to see the Trinity as connected with the living Christian faith. The Puritan emphasis on the practice of piety and Edwards' own involvement in the Great Awakening were surely among the important factors behind what has been called Edwards' "practical Trinitarianism."Ibid., p. 193.
What Edwards faced in his day, however, was not only the problematic way the Trinity had been elaborated in Christian theology itself. He also lived in the age of Enlightenment, when a general antagonism against mystery and anything that was not "reasonable" was leading many believing Christians to anti-trinitarianism. In what has come to be known as the Trinitarian Controversy of the 1690s in England, the traditional doctrine of the Trinity became a target for its metaphysical abstruseness. Socinians and Arians respected the biblical authority and the divine status of the Son and the Holy Spirit but relegated them to a lower ontological status than God the Father, thereby making Christ no more than a creature. Even the mild-spirited English divine Samuel Clarke declared that he could find no biblical support for the consubstantiality of the Son and the Spirit with God the Father, and that the trinitarian question was nonessential for Christian faith.Cf. Roland N. Stromberg, Religious Liberalism in Eighteenth-Century England (London, Oxford Univ. Press, 1954), pp. 1–55.
In New England, the Arminianism of Samuel Clarke had a special appeal for liberals. As Conrad Wright points out, Arminianism and anti-trinitarianism "temperamentally and historically… went together."Conrad Wright, The Beginnings of Unitarianism in America (Boston, Beacon Press, 1966), p. 200. In downplaying the role of the Holy Spirit and emphasizing the contribution of the human will in conversion, Arminianism was fundamentally anti-trinitarian. New England Arians, most notably Jonathan Mayhew, appealed to the Scripture in their rejection of the Nicene Creed, concluding, "my Bible saith not… that there is any other true God, besides [Jesus'] Father and our Father, his God and our God."Jonathan Mayhew, Sermons Upon the Following Subjects (Boston, 1755), p. 418n. Deists were also anti-trinitarian because of their general distaste for "absolute mysteries" -- 5 -- and for whatever was not harmonious with the "natural religion" of human "reason."
Many divines in England and New England attempted to defend the orthodoxy against all anti-trinitarian challenges. But, as William S. Babcock points out, the would-be defenders of the tradition and the anti-trinitarians ended up talking past each other, because there was a more fundamental challenge underlying anti-trinitarianism than either realized. The anti-trinitarians were, instead, changing the basic way of talking about the nature of reality itself. Babcock clearly shows, for example, how during the Trinitarian Controversy of the 1690s, the exchanges between the orthodox bishop Edward Stillingfleet and John Locke failed to address Locke's anti-trinitarian doubts.See William S. Babcock, "A Changing of the Christian God: The Doctrine of the Trinity in the Seventeenth Century," Interpretation XLV, no. 2 (April 1991), 133–146. The bishop of Worcester's arguments were couched in Aristotelian substance language, while Locke, on the basis of his empiricist epistemology, had given up making any sense out of the "real essence" of things and of substance itself— or, as Locke called it, the idea of "a supposed I know not what."John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. John W. Yolton (London, J. M. Dent and Sons, 1961), Bk. II, ch. xxiii, no. 8.
The nature of learned discourse was clearly shifting in the age of Enlightenment. Beginning in the seventeenth century, the old idea of substance— the technical language of the traditional Trinity doctrine— became problematic because of the Lockean empiricist dictum that one should not talk about what one cannot experience, and also because of the tendency of Newtonian science to see the nature of things as a network of relational laws and active forces rather than a system of individual and self-contained substances and forms. It was clear that if seventeenth— and eighteenth-century divines were to defend orthodoxy meaningfully, they would have to address this shift of language, which was occurring whether anyone wished it or not.
This basic challenge to the old way of thinking about the nature of things did not escape Jonathan Edwards. He attempted to renew the original spirit of the trinitarian doctrine without ignoring the urgent philosophical issues of the Enlightenment. One aspect of Edwards' greatness as a theologian was that he did not merely study or oppose certain philosophical ideas and issues of his day but constructively offered possible solutions to them in philosophical and theological terms. The problem that Locke raised about the idea of substance was a case in point; Edwards attempted to work out an alternative view of reality itself.
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Even a cursory reading of Edwards' writings on the Trinity highlights the fact that there is something radically original about his language. Among his paragraphs we find surprising, fascinating statements: "It is [God's] essence to incline to communicate himself"; God's being is "a disposition to communicate"; the Father's being is communicated to, and "repeated" in, the Son and the Holy Spirit as the result of the Father's exercise of his dispositional essence.See, for example, "Miscellanies," no. 107 [b], in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, 13, The "Miscellanies," a— 500, ed. Thomas A. Schafer (New Haven, Vale Univ. Press, 1994), 277–78; and "Discourse on the Trinity," below, p. 114. Following initial citation, all volumes in The Works of Jonathan Edwards are referred to as Works followed by the volume number. Edwards does occasionally use the terms "substance" and "substantial" in his discussion of the nature of God, but the meaning behind them has changed from seventeenth-century usage. As Wallace E. Anderson astutely noted, Edwards' "predecessors thought of substance as the owner of properties; while Edwards thought of substance as the doer of deeds.""Editor's Introduction," The Works of Jonathan Edwards, 6, Scientific and Philosophical Writings, ed. Wallace E. Anderson (New Haven, Yale Univ. Press, 1980), 67. For Edwards, the being of God as well as the essential nature of things in general was no longer articulated in terms of self-contained substances but rather in terms of dispositions, activities, and relations. Before we turn to the Trinity, it is necessary to outline Edwards' new way of understanding the nature of reality.
Edwards' New Conception of Reality
The Aristotelian and scholastic notion of substance referred to the abiding element behind "accidental" or changeable qualities (substratum) as well as to what makes a thing what it is (quiddity). In Edwards' day, the Lockean principle that true knowledge is based only on actual experience combined with the Newtonian vision of reality as essentially relational and dynamic made this notion of unobservable substance no longer tenable. Edwards replaces substance with the idea of "disposition," which he also calls "habit," "propensity," "law," "inclination," "tendency," and "temper."See The Works of Jonathan Edwards, 2, Religious Affections, ed. John E. Smith (New Haven, Yale Univ. Press, 1959), 206–07, 282–83; The Nature of True Virtue, in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, 8, Ethical Writings, ed. Paul Ramsey (New Haven, Yale Univ. Press, 1989), 539, 623; "The Mind," in Works, 6, pp. 384–85. For a further discussion of JE's "dispositional ontology," see Sang Hyun Lee, The Philosophical Theology of Jonathan Edwards (rev. ed., Princeton, Princeton Univ. Press, 2000).
What made this fundamental metaphysical reformulation possible for Edwards was his realist (as opposed to nominalist) conception of habits and dispositions. "In memory, in mental principles, habits, and inclinations, -- 7 -- there is something really abiding in the mind when there are no acts or exercises of them," he wrote.Works, 2, p. 385. A disposition or habit, in other words, has a mode of reality apart from its manifestations in actual events and actions. A disposition or habit, for Edwards, is more than mere custom or the usual way something happens; it is an abiding and ontologically real principle. Dispositions or habits also take on the character of laws for Edwards in that they actively and prescriptively govern the occurrences and characters of events or actions. "All habits," he asserted, are "a law that God has fixed, that such actions upon such occasions should be exerted.""Miscellanies," no. 241, in Works, 13, 358. When there is a habit or disposition, it functions like a prescriptive law that certain events will— not only may— occur whenever certain circumstances prevail. Habits and dispositions, in short, are ontologically real and causally active lawlike powers. Like substances, habits or dispositions function as the abiding element and also the character of an entity. In addition, they are dynamic powers. To define reality as essentially dispositional, then, is to see reality as intrinsically dynamic, tending to actions and events. Redefining Aristotelian metaphysics, Edwards declares in a remarkable sentence in one of his regulatory notebooks, "Subjects to Be Handled in the Treatise on the Mind," that "it is laws that constitute all permanent being in created things, both corporeal and spiritual." An entity is no longer a substance; rather, its being "consists in powers and habits."Works, 6, 391.
Edwards also says that being is proportion or beauty."The Mind," in Works, 6, 336. For an excellent discussion of the place of beauty in JE's thought, see Roland A. Delattre, Beauty and Sensibility in the Thought of Jonathan Edwards: An Essay in Aesthetics and Theological Ethics (New Haven, Yale Univ. Press, 1968). This aesthetic category refers to the content or character of dispositions and habits. Disposition and beauty are two ways of looking at the same reality. "Disposition" refers to the dynamic aspect of beauty, while "beauty" refers to the manner or direction of disposition. The nature of things, in other words, is disposed to be actively related in a beautiful way. True beauty is God's beauty. For anything to exist, it must be both disposed to and actually react in a fitting way to the true beauty of God.
One of the most important consequences of such a dispositional reconception of reality is that being is seen as inherently disposed to more activities and relationships. For Edwards, actual actions and relations have a greater degree of being than the dispositions that are disposed to those -- 8 -- actions and relations. The exercises of dispositions, in other words, will increase being by making it more actual and more real. Being is, therefore, essentially disposed to repetition and an increase of self-realization. This also means that being can be at the same time actual and self-realized, and disposed to further exercises and, thereby, to more being and beauty. This point, as we shall see below, has a crucial implication for Edwards' articulation of the Trinity.
Edwards uses his dispositional reconception of being in his understanding of the nature of the Divine Being. "It is [God's] essence to incline to communicate himself," he writes. This disposition to communicate is what "we must conceive of as being originally in God as a perfection of his nature." Edwards then resolves this communicative disposition into God's "disposition effectually to exert himself.""Miscellanies," no. 1218, in The Philosophy of Jonathan Edwards from His Private Notebooks, ed. Harvey G. Townsend (Eugene, Univ. of Oregon Press, 1955), p. 152; see also The Works of Jonathan Edwards, "The Miscellanies," 1153–1360, ed. Douglas A. Sweeney (New Haven, Yale Univ. Press, forthcoming). Stated another way, God's disposition to act as God is the essence of the Divine Being. And to exert God's own dispositional essence is to bring about an "increase" of the actuality of God's own being— that is, to communicate himself. God, who is fully actualized, also continues to be essentially disposed to further exercises and increases of his prior actuality, and to further self-communications.End of Creation, in Works, 8, 433. Since God, for Edwards, is also true beauty and a knowing and loving being, God's being is essentially the sovereign disposition to know and love the true beauty and to continue to know and love it.
We must note here two important implications of this reconception of the Divine Being. If God is essentially a disposition of beauty, God is, by implication, essentially relational. This is so because, in Edwards' view, beauty is a relation of "consent," a relation of proportion and harmony."The Mind," in Works, 6, 362; "Miscellanies," no. 117, in Works, 13, 248. Without plurality there cannot be relations. Thus the Divine Being is inherently plural and relational. As we shall see below, Edwards found this idea eminently useful in articulating what the Scriptures and tradition teach about God.
The second implication is that Edwards uses his dispositional conception of God to articulate the reason for God's creation of the world. As we have seen, God can be at once fully actual and continually tending to further actualizations. God is essentially a disposition, and dispositions are not exhausted by their exercises. Dispositions abide, and God is inexhaustibly -- 9 -- creative through self-communication. In Concerning the End for Which God Created the World, Edwards tells us that the same divine disposition that is fully exercised within God's internal actuality was disposed to be exercised also ad extra ("outside" of God) in the creation of the world.End of Creation, in Works, 8, 452. The world, therefore, is the never-ceasing process of God's exercise of his dispositional essence in time and space, an everlasting process of God's external self-communication and repetition. Edwards' concept of God as essentially disposition links God's inner-trinitarian with God's triune activity in the world— that is, the immanent and the economic Trinity. The exercise of the same divine dispositional essence constitutes both God's inner life and God's outer self-enlargement. This logic of dispositional ontology, Edwards also found, was useful in his delineation of what the Scripture and Christian life teach about the inseparable connection between God's internal life and God's redemptive activity in the world.
This brief discussion of Edwards' new concept of reality is not meant to imply that his doctrine of the Trinity is primarily based on his philosophical presuppositions. Edwards' first and last authority was God's revelation in the Scripture, with Christian experience also acting as an authority and source of theology to the extent that it is consistent with Scripture. In the middle of his discussion of some complex issues in "Discourse on the Trinity" (since 1903 known as "Essay on the Trinity" but here given Edwards' own intended title), Edwards makes the following confession: "I am far from asserting this as any explication of this mystery that unfolds and removes the mysteriousness and incomprehensibleness of it: for I am sensible that however, by what has been said, some difficulties are lessened, others that are new appear; and the number of those things that appear mysterious, wonderful and incomprehensible are increased by it. I offer it only as a further manifestation of what divine truth the Word of God exhibits to the view of our minds concerning this great mystery. I think the Word of God teaches us more things concerning it to be believed by us than have been generally taken [notice of]" (p. 139). Edwards' discussion of the Trinity is, as he describes it, "a further manifestation of what divine truth the Word of God exhibits."
Edwards' extensive attention to biblical passages in all of his writings on the Trinity shows that he was serious about Scripture as the norm and source of theology. But within the parameters of what Scripture teaches, he did not hesitate to engage in philosophical and theological reflection. In an early entry in the "Miscellanies," he boldly declares:
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There has been much cry of late against saying one word, particularly about the Trinity, but what the Scripture has said; judging it impossible but that if we did, we should err in a thing so much above us. But if they call that which necessarily results from the putting [together] of reason and Scripture, though it has not been said in Scripture in express words— I say, if they call this what is not said in Scripture, I am not afraid to say twenty things about the Trinity which the Scripture never said. There may be deductions of reason from what has been said of the most mysterious matters, besides what has been said, and safe and certain deductions too, as well as about the most obvious and easy matters."Miscellanies," no. 94, Works, 13, 256–57. In order to explicate what the Scripture already teaches, Edwards was not afraid to use even what "naked reason" can discover. "I think that it is within the reach of naked reason," he proposes, "to perceive certainly that there are three distinct in God, each of which is the same [God]."Ibid., 257.
The Real Distinctions within God
Edwards approaches the doctrine of the Trinity not only with the biblical mandate and reasons from Christian experience but also with his relational conception of being as beauty. For Edwards, "God is God, and distinguished from all other beings, and exalted above 'em, chiefly by his divine beauty."Works, 2, 298. The nature of God's being itself demands an internal relationality and plurality within God. At barely twenty years of age, Edwards wrote in his first entry in "The Mind," "One alone, without any reference to any more, cannot be excellent; for in such case there can be no manner of relation no way, and therefore, no such thing as consent. Indeed, what we call 'one' may be excellent, because of a consent of parts, or some consent of those in that being that are distinguished into a plurality some way or other. But in a being that is absolutely without any plurality there cannot be excellency, for there can be no such thing as consent or agreement.""The Mind," in Works, 6, 337. And in "Miscellanies," no. 117, written soon afterwards, he adds: "Therefore, if God be excellent, there must be a plurality in God; otherwise there can be no consent in him.""Miscellanies," no. 117, in Works, 13, 284. It is perhaps no coincidence that Edwards' first writing on the Trinity, "Miscellanies," no. 94, from early 1724, was composed only a few months after he reflected on the nature -- 11 -- of excellency in the first entry in "The Mind."For the dating of "Miscellanies," see "Editor's Introduction," Works, 13, 57, 91 ff. For a discussion of the dating of JE's earliest writings on the Trinity, see also the editor's notes on The Threefold Work of the Holy Spirit, in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, 14, Sermons and Discourses 1723–1729, ed. Kenneth P. Minkema (New Haven, Yale Univ. Press, 1997), 371–72. In his outline of the projected "Rational Account of the Main Doctrines of the Christian Religion Attempted," he listed excellency and the Trinity as topic headings in the same section, thereby showing his intention to treat them together.Works, 6, 396. The reconception of being as excellency had profound implications for the doctrine of the Trinity in Edwards' mind. Noting the significance of these implications, Wallace E. Anderson has commented that Edwards' "new concept of being, when applied to the divine perfections, stands in sharp contrast to the long tradition of philosophical theology into which he was born. God's goodness is not grounded in the absolute unity and simplicity of his being, but belongs to him only as he constitutes a plurality involving relations.""Editor's Introduction," Works, 6, 84.
Now we turn to Edwards' articulation of the plurality within the Divine Being. The plurality or distinctions demanded by the biblical witness, and by Edwards' own conception of being as excellency, is the plurality and the distinctiveness of the three: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Edwards believed that he could demonstrate the three real distinctions through rational reflection. His argument uses both the psychological and the social analogy combined with the logic of his own conception of being as disposition, with its expansive and self-communicative character. The psychological analogy, used by Augustine, Aquinas, and others, especially in the Western tradition, sees an image of the Trinity in the individual human being: the self, understanding, and will. The social analogy, favored more in the East, compares the Trinity to three individual human beings, for example, Mary, Martha, and Peter.For a discussion of JE's use of the social analogy, see Pauw, "The Supreme Harmony of All," pp. 47–56. Through Edwards' dispositional articulation of the Trinity, the two analogies merge into one.
Edwards' psychological analogy is based upon Locke's view of the human self as the mind, the mind's reflexive (or introspective) perception of the mind's own internal contents, and the mind's willing. So Edwards' initial formulation of the real distinctions within God is: "God, and the idea of God, and the love of God.""Miscellanies," no. 308, in Works, 13, 393.
However, Edwards was not satisfied simply to illustrate the divine Trinity -- 12 -- with analogies. He wanted to argue for the truth of God's being one and three. So he sought to show how God's idea of himself and God's love of his own idea were equally as divine as God himself. The first strategy Edwards uses to show the divinity of God's idea and God's love of himself is his assumption that the mind's "absolutely perfect idea of a thing is the very thing" all over again, and that "the perfect act of God must be a substantial act" and, likewise, God himself again."Miscellanies," no. 94, in Works, 13, 261, 258. For Edwards, the term "idea" referred to much more than an intellectual concept; he assumed that "all sorts of ideas of things are but repetitions of those very things again.""Miscellanies," no. 66, in Works, 13, 236. On this basis he concludes that "the Deity [is] truly and properly repeated by God's thus having an idea of himself; and that this idea of God is a substantial idea and has the very essence of God, is truly God, to all intents and purposes" (p. 114). Simply stated, the second person of the Trinity is "begotten" through God's idea of himself.
Edwards' next step is to posit that God has an "infinite delight" in his idea of himself."Miscellanies," no. 94, in Works, 13, 261. In this "infinite delight" of God, "the Deity becomes all act; the divine essence itself flows out and is as it were breathed forth in love and joy" (p. 121). This is so because "the pure and perfect act of God is God."Ibid., 260. The result is that "the Godhead therein stands forth in yet another manner of subsistence, and there proceeds the third person in the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, viz. the Deity in act" (p. 121).
But there are problems with this statement of the real distinctions within God. As compelling as it is, it nonetheless falls short of completion. The argument for the deity of the Father and the argument for the deity of the Son are not synthesized. As Robert W. Jenson has pointed out, the conception of act in regard to the Holy Spirit is also not fully developed.Robert W. Jenson, America's Theologian: A Recommendation of Jonathan Edwards (New York, Oxford Univ. Press, 1988), p. 97.
However, Edwards' argument for the real distinctions within the Trinity takes a more consistent form in his dispositional articulation of the Trinity, an argument that is more important to his theological perspective as a whole. In this more central argument, Edwards does not abandon the psychological analogy. The notion of the self with intellectual and volitional or affectional powers is used to articulate a fundamentally dispositional argument for the real distinctions within God. And, as we shall see, the psychological analogy evolves into a moderate form of the social -- 13 -- analogy within the framework of a dispositional conception of the Divine Being.Throughout her dissertation, Pauw discusses the various ways in which the psychological and social analogies both complement and conflict with each other in JE's writings. Pauw, "The Supreme Harmony of All."
As we saw earlier, Edwards held that "it is [God's] essence to incline to communicate himself." And this "disposition to communicate himself," he went on to say, is what "we must conceive of as being originally in God as a perfection of his nature.""Miscellanies," no. 107, in Works, 13, 277–78; End of Creation, in Works, 8, 433–34. As we also saw, the exercise of a disposition, for Edwards, is ontologically productive insofar as that to which a disposition is disposed becomes actual (and thus "more real") through the exercise of the disposition in action. The exercise of a disposition brings something from a state of virtual to one of actual reality. The exercise of the divine disposition, then, leads to God's self-repetition or self-communication. Using this logic of dispositional ontology, Edwards articulates the three persons of the same God as the primordial actualization of the Divine Being and the intellectual and affectional repetitions of that primordial actualization. Edwards explains divine self-repetition or self-communication as the result of the abiding nature of God's disposition to further exercises.
So the first person of the Trinity, the Father, is God's first actuality, which is the primordial first exercise of God's dispositional essence. As Edwards put it in "Discourse on the Trinity": "The Father is the Deity subsisting in the prime, unoriginated and most absolute manner, or the Deity in its direct existence" (p. 131). But God's dispositional essence, according to Edwards, is his beautiful or excellent disposition to know and love true beauty. The Father, consequently, must be the Deity's primal act of knowing and loving beauty. Edwards elaborates on this by saying that "that knowledge or understanding in God which we must conceive of as first, is his knowledge of everything possible. That love which must be this knowledge is what we must conceive of as belonging to the essence of the Godhead in its first subsistence" (p. 141). Here Edwards is speaking about the primal being of God, which really is beyond human articulation, and so words stumble. What is there for God to know and love in God's first act of being actual? Edwards' answer: "everything possible." And this knowledge cannot be distinguished from God's primal love. What is clear, however, is that God in his "first subsistence" is the first actuality of that to which the divine dispositional essence is disposed. God the Father is God's "direct existence." It is not that the Father is constituted by or is arrived -- 14 -- at as the result of his acts of knowing and loving; rather, the Father is the primal knowing and loving, "the Deity in its direct existence." In short, the Father is essentially the actuality of knowing and loving.
But how is the Father as actuality related to the divine disposition which is God's essence? Is the divine disposition in any way prior to its first exertion, namely, the Father as actuality? In "Miscellanies," no. 94, Edwards suggests an answer. Discussing the power of God, he writes that as power "is distinct from those and other things, 'tis only a relation of adequateness and sufficiency of the essence to everything. But if we distinguish it from relation, 'tis nothing else but the essence of God. And if we take it for that which is that by which God exerts himself, 'tis no other than the Father; for the perfect energy of God with respect to himself is the most perfect exertion of God, of which the creation of the world is but a shadow.""Miscellanies," no. 94, in Works, 13, 262. Power, for Edwards, is a disposition.Ibid., 259; and "Miscellanies," no. 194, in ibid., 335. So the disposition and energy of God is the Father. What Edwards is saying is that the Father as God in his "direct existence" is identical with God's dispositional essence; God the Father is at once the primordial divine actuality of true beauty and the divine disposition to exert himself. It is not that the Father as the divine actuality has the divine disposition, nor that the Father as a disposition achieves or arrives at actuality. In the Father, the divine actuality is the divine disposition, and the divine disposition the divine actuality. Actuality and disposition coincide. And if this is true for God the Father, it would also be true for God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. I shall refer back to this point when we discuss the second and third persons of the Trinity.
If Edwards is to affirm God's aseity, or self-existence— God's dependence on nothing other than himself for his existence— then demonstrating the coincidence of actuality and disposition in God as the Trinity is crucial. If the divine disposition were in any way prior to God's actuality, God would be dependent upon a principle other than his own actuality for his existence. Thomas Aquinas affirmed God's aseity by maintaining that God's essence is his existence.Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles (Garden City, N. Y., Doubleday, 1955), Bk. I, ch. 22, pp. 118–120. In other words, there was never anything, logically or temporally, "before" God's actuality. Edwards also says that God's essence is his existence. But he says more than that: for him, God's dispositional essence is existence. Thus, for God, disposition is existence.
Now to conceive of the Father as at once actuality and disposition is to -- 15 -- assert that the Father is essentially disposed to further exercises and thus to further actualities— that is, to the repetitions or self-communications of the Father's actuality. This repetition of the Father's eternal actuality occurs in two ways: in the Father's reflexively knowing himself and in his reflexively loving what he knows. Hence there is, Edwards writes, "a reflex act of knowledge, his viewing himself and knowing himself, and so knowing his own knowledge: and so the Son is begotten. There is such a thing in God as knowledge of knowledge, an idea of an idea, which can be nothing else than the idea or knowledge repeated" (pp. 141–42). Elsewhere he adds that "in the Son the deity, the whole deity and the glory of the Father, is as it were repeated or duplicated. Everything in the Father is repeated, or expressed again, and that fully.""Miscellanies," no. 1062, first published by Egbert C. Smyth in 1880 with the title "Observations Concerning the Scripture Oeconomy of the Trinity, and Covenant of Redemption," and reprinted in Treatise on Grace and Other Posthumously Published Writings by Jonathan Edwards, ed. Paul Helm (Cambridge, James Clark & Co., 1971), p. 77. Edwards' conception of the "begetting" of the Second Person as the intellectual exercise of the Father's disposition is clear in his statement that "the Father's begetting of the Son is a complete communication of all his happiness, and so an eternal, adequate, and infinite exercise of perfect goodness, that is completely equal to such an inclination in perfection.""Miscellanies," no. 104, in Works, 13, 272. The Son is "the divine nature and essence again," "the same God" as the Father (p. 116). Furthermore, just as in the Father, actuality and disposition coincide in the Son: "The Son is the adequate communication of the Father's goodness, is an express and complete image of him. But yet the Son also has an inclination to communicate himself, in an image of his person that may partake of his happiness: and this was the end of the creation, even the communication of the happiness of the Son of God."Ibid. Just as with the Father, so the Son is at once fully actual and also disposed to further exercises and thus to further repetition and self-communication of his actuality.
The Father repeats his actuality not only by reflexively knowing himself but also by loving what he knows, and the act of the Father's loving what he knows is a further exercise (this time, affectional) of the Father's dispositional essence. So Edwards writes in the "Miscellanies" that "the Father loveth the Son as a communication of himself, as begotten in pursuance of his eternal inclination to communicate himself."Ibid., p. 273. And he elaborates in "Discourse on the Trinity": "[T] he divine essence itself flows out and is as it were breathed forth in love and joy. So that the Godhead -- 16 -- therein stands forth in yet another manner of subsistence, and there proceeds the third person in the Trinity, the Holy Spirit, viz. the Deity in act" (p. 121).
As with the Father and the Son, actuality and disposition coincide in the Holy Spirit. "Now the sum of God's temper or disposition is love, for he is infinite love… This is the divine disposition or nature that we are made partakers of (2 Peter 1:4)" (p. 122). Thus, the Holy Spirit is the Deity repeated and self-communicated affectionally, and is at once the actuality of the divine love and the disposition to love. God as the triune being is both fully actual through the actuality of the three persons and continually disposed to repeat that full actuality through further exercises. Stated another way, God's actuality is the Father's eternal and infinitely full actuality, plus its complete repetition in the Son and the Holy Spirit. This simultaneously actual and dispositional being of the Trinity makes it possible to view God as both fully actual and also tending to further increases.JE's reconception of the Divine Being as at once fully actual ad intra and also essentially disposed to repeat ad extra his prior actuality, provides a creative alternative the contemporary discussions of God's being and becoming. While classical theism overemphasized God's immutability and self-sufficiency, thereby making it difficult to explain God's involvement with the world, the process has tended to endanger God's prior actuality and transcendence by seeing God as excessively involved in time and change. JE attempted to see God as at once fully actualized and at the same time essentially disposed to repeat his prior actuality through the creation of the world, and thereby introduced a dynamic element of becoming into God's own life ad extra without compromising God's eternal actuality. For recent discussions of being and becoming in God, see, for example, Keith Ward, Rational Theology and the Creativity of God (Oxford, Blackwell, 1982); Colin E. Gunton, Becoming and Being: The Doctrine of God in Charles Hartshorne and Karl Barth (Oxford, Oxford Univ. Press, 1978); Robert C. Neville, Creativity and God: A Challenge to Process Theology (New York, Seabury Press, 1980); Royce G. Gruenler, The Inexhaustible God: Biblical Faith and the Challenge of Process Theism (Grand Rapids, Mich., Baker Book House, 1983). For a discussion of Karl Barth's use of the idea of God's self-reiteration, an idea similar to JE's concept of God's self-repetition, see Eberhard Jungel, The Doctrine of the Trinity: God's Being Is in Becoming (Grand Rapids, Mich., Eerdmans, 1979).
What is the Holy Spirit's relation to the Father and the Son? Edwards at times sees the Holy Spirit as the result of the self-communicating activity of the Father alone. But he also follows Augustine in speaking about the Holy Spirit as the mutual love between the Father and Son. Since Edwards sees both the Father and the Son as divine dispositions as well as actuality, it would be natural to think of both the Father and the Son as capable of acting, that is, capable of loving each other. The Father and the Son's "love and joy is mutual, in mutually loving and delighting in each other" (p. 121). In this respect, the conception that the Holy Spirit is the mutual love between the Father and Son would be more consistent with -- 17 -- Edwards' dispositional articulation of the Trinity than his view of the Holy Spirit as simply the Father's delight in the Son.
Related to this issue of the Holy Spirit's relation to the Father and Son is Edwards' adherence to the tradition of the Western church in maintaining that the Holy Spirit proceeds both from the Father "and the Son (filioque)." By including the phrase "and the Son" in its creeds, the Western church wanted to stress that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Christ as well as the Spirit of the Father. The Eastern church, however, was afraid that the Western church's formulation introduced two sources of divinity into the Trinity and thereby reduced the importance of the Father as the origin of everything. Edwards at times does say that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father, but his affirmation of the filioque is more consistent with his overall perspective on the Trinity as three distinct and equal divine persons. Edwards' adherence to the filioque also fits with his Augustinian conception of the Holy Spirit as the bond of mutual love between the Father and the Son.
At times Edwards does not appear to be content simply to assert that the Holy Spirit proceeded from the Father and the Son. Again following Augustine, he distinguishes between the Father and the Son as the sources of the Holy Spirit. He explains:
Though all be firstly from the Father, yet all is nextly from the Son. As 'tis a peculiar honor that all should be firstly from the Father, so there is a peculiar honor in that 'tis immediately from the Son.
And even ad intra, though the Holy Ghost proceeds both from the Father and the Son, yet he proceeds from the Father mediately by the Son, viz. by the Father's beholding himself in the Son. But he proceeds from the Son immediately by himself by beholding the Father in himself. The beauty and excellency and loveliness of the divine nature, though from the Father first and originally, yet is by the Son and nextly from him…
Though the Spirit, the beauty, the loveliness and joy of the Deity, be from the Father originally and primarily, and from the Son as it were secondarily, yet the Son hath this honor that the Father hath not: that that Spirit is from the Son immediately by himself (p. 143).
These words echo Augustine: "There is good reason why in this Trinity we speak of the Son alone as Word of God, of the Holy Spirit alone as Gift of God, and of God the Father alone as the one of whom the Word is begotten and from whom the Holy Spirit principally proceeds. I add the word 'principally,' because we learn that the Holy Spirit proceeds also -- 18 -- from the Son. But this is again something given by the Father to the Son— not that he ever existed without it, for all that the Father gives to his only-begotten Word he gives in the act of begetting him. He is begotten in such a manner that the common gift proceeds from him as well, and the Holy Spirit is Spirit of both.""De Trinitate," in Augustine: Later Works, trans. by John Burnaby, Library of Christian Classics, vol. VIII (London, SCM Press, 1955), XV, 47, p. 176. Cf. Colin Gunton, "Augustine, the Trinity and the Theological Crisis of the West," Scottish Journal of Theology 43 (1992), pp. 33–58. It is obvious that both Augustine and Edwards wanted to regard the three persons of the Trinity as equally divine while acknowledging at the same time their distinctiveness. Both the Father and the Son are involved in the proceeding of the Holy Spirit, but in different ways.
For Augustine as for Edwards, the Father and the Son as fully divine persons do something in the immanent Trinity. The Father "begets" the Son, loves the Son, and lets the Holy Spirit "proceed" from them, and the "begotten" Son loves the Father and also participates in letting the Holy Spirit proceed from them. But what does the Holy Spirit do? Edwards' usual answer is that the Holy Spirit is the act of love itself, whether of the Father toward the Son or between the Father and the Son. This conception of the Third Person as the "bond" of love has been the typical teaching of the Western church and has been criticized as an abstraction and an impersonalization of the Third Person. Edwards, however, did not leave the matter here. Judging by the active role he allocated to the Holy Spirit in the trinitarian economy of salvation (discussed below), one would suspect that Edwards could easily conceive of the Holy Spirit as being an active agent within the Trinity, just as the other two persons are. In "Miscellanies," no. 370, where Edwards discusses the sun as an analogy of the Trinity, he attributes an active agency to the Holy Spirit. The Father is the "substance of the sun" while the "brightness and glory" of the sun images the Second Person of the Trinity. Edwards then says that "the Holy Ghost is as the heat and wonderful influence which acts upon the sun itself and, being diffusive, enlightens, warms, enlivens and comforts the world." According to the sun analogy, the Holy Spirit's active role of enlivening the world corresponds to its active role of having a "wonderful influence," which acts on God himself."Miscellanies," no. 370, in Works, 13, 441.
It is, however, in "On the Equality of the Persons of the Trinity," printed here for the first time, that Edwards makes a clear departure from the Western tradition and sets forth a remarkably original conception of the Holy Spirit within the Trinity. "In one respect," he writes, "the Father has -- 19 -- the superiority: he is the fountain of Deity, and he begets the beloved Son. In another respect the Son has the superiority, as he is the great and first object of divine love. The beloved has as it were the superiority over the lover, and reigns over him. In another respect the Holy Ghost, that is, divine love, has the superiority, as that is the principle that as it were reigns over the Godhead and governs his heart, and wholly influences both the Father and the Son in all they do" (p. 147). Here the Holy Spirit is no longer just the bond of love but an active agent. The Holy Spirit "reigns," "governs," and "influences" the other two persons of the Trinity. Edwards did not elaborate on this conception. But what he does say represents a profound advancement over the Western church's typically underdeveloped doctrine of the agency of the Holy Spirit in the intra-trinitarian life of God.
I began this section by mentioning Edwards' initial argument for the real distinctions within God using the psychological analogy. In western theology, reliance on the psychological analogy has led to a tendency to stress the divine unity rather than threeness. With his dispositional argument for the real distinctions, however, Edwards has transformed the psychological analogy into a perspective that clearly emphasizes the threeness of the trinitarian persons. His use of the psychological analogy ends up reinforcing the social analogy, or at least makes the two analogies compatible.Pauw makes a similar point in regard to the Cappadocian theologians in "The Supreme Harmony of All," p. 57. The picture of the Trinity as God, God's self-knowledge, and God's love has become, in Edwards' vision, God, God all over again as self-knowledge, and God all over again as self-love. The self's faculties and their functions in the psychological analogy are now the self and its two repetitions or self-communications. There clearly is now a "triplicity" within God."Miscellanies," no. 94, in Works, 13, 262. In using the term "triplicity" in reference to the threeness of the trinitarian persons, JE departs from Francis Turretin, who wrote: "'Trinity' however is the appropriate word, not 'triplicity,' which implies a multiplication of essence. God, therefore, is said to be triune (trinus), not triple because there are three persons, but only one numerical essence." Institutes of Elenctic Theology, trans, by George M. Giger (3 vols. Phillipsburg, N. J., P & R Pub., 1992), 1, Third Topic, Question XXIII, § ix, 255. JE does not accept the implication of "a multiplication of essence," nor does his main view agree with the numerical oneness of the divinity.
Edwards' concept of triplicity explains why he was not hesitant to use the language of the social analogy. He speaks about the Divine Virtue as consisting in "love to himself, or in the mutual love and friendship which subsists eternally and necessarily between the several persons in the Godhead."Nature of True Virtue, in Works, 8, 557. -- 20 -- Discussing the equality of the three persons of the Trinity, Edwards says that "they are every way equal in the society or family of the three" and that "they are all God; each has his peculiar honor in the society or family" (p. 135). So the Trinity is not to be compared just to the human self, with its internal differentiations, but also to the "society" and "family" of a plurality of beings. We recall that, according to Edwards, "one alone cannot be excellent," and that "if God is excellent, there must be a plurality in God.""Miscellanies," no. 117, in Works, 13, 284. Given Edwards' relational concept of being and of God as essentially beautiful or excellent, his use of the social analogy was inevitable.
There is yet another consequence of Edwards' dispositional articulation of the Trinity. He is no longer working with substance metaphysics, which draws a sharp distinction between the substance or substratum of a thing and its activities and accidental qualities. For Edwards, there is no substance lying behind God's self-repeating and self-communicating activities.Gunton discusses the problems that arise in Augustine's doctrine of the Trinity from his use of the concept of "substance" as something which "underlies the threeness of the persons." "Augustine, the Trinity and the Theological Crisis of the West," p. 45. Direct existence, reflexive knowing, and reflexive loving do not belong to the Divine Being but rather are, and constitute, the Divine Being. The disposition to those activities is the general law that governs their pattern. The divine disposition is an abiding reality apart from its exercises. But within God, the divine disposition and the divine existence and activities all coincide as the one Divine Being. Edwards did not conceive of the divine disposition as being in any way prior to existence and activities. God's being, therefore, does not have some dimension hidden behind God's actions and the disposition to those actions. As Stephen H. Daniel has put it, "[T]he three persons are thus not modes of being of a logically prior substance or substratum but are rather (as Barth notes) subsistences or modes of being… God is not a substance underlying the communication; he is the substance of communication."Stephen H. Daniel, "Postmodern Concepts of God and Edwards's Trinitarian Ontology," in Edwards in Our Time: Jonathan Edwards and the Shaping of American Religion, ed. Sang Hyun Lee and Allen C. Guelzo (Grand Rapids, Mich., Eerdmans, 1999), p. 55. The result is that the triune God's creative, revelatory, and redemptive activities are the way God is.
The Unity and Threeness of the Triune God
If Edwards' conception of the trinitarian persons as the repetitions of the Divine Being led him to stress the mutual fellowship among a plurality -- 21 -- of persons, and thus to a social analogy of the Trinity, how does he articulate the unity of the Divine Being? In the traditional Western trinitarian formula of "one substance and three persons," the notion of a single underlying substance was used to express the unity of the Trinity. For Edwards, there is no substance in the Divine Being. Discussing the sun as an image of the Trinity, he says that "substance of the sun" represents the Father, but in a parenthesis adds: "[B]y substance I don't mean in a philosophical sense, but the sun as to its internal constitution" (p. 138). Edwards' most frequently used term for the Divine Being is the "essence" of God. And the term divine "essence" (which he uses interchangeably with the terms "deity," God's "being," and God's "nature") refers to all that each of the three persons is. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in everything that each of them is (knowing, loving, and the self-repetitions thereof) and is disposed to, appears to be what Edwards means by the divine essence. In describing the Father as God in his "direct existence," for example, Edwards says that "that knowledge or understanding in God" and "that love which must be this knowledge is what we must conceive of as belonging to the essence of the Godhead in its first subsistence" (p. 141). And by the Father's knowing of himself, "the Godhead is really generated and repeated" and "has the very essence of God" (p. 114).
If this is the case, are there then three divine essences? Paul Helm has queried whether, by conceiving of the second person of the Trinity as God's self-repetition of his essence, "Edwards has proved too much— not the second person of a Trinity of persons but a second theos.""Introduction," Treatise on Grace and Other Posthumous Writings, p. 21. Is his view "implicitly tritheistic"? Of course, Edwards himself would vehemently deny such a suggestion. In "Miscellanies," no. 1105, he points out that the affirmation of one Jehovah in Deuteronomy 6:4 was to warn Israel "against imagining… that there was a plurality of essences or beings, among whom they were to divide their affections and respect.""Miscellanies," no. 1105, in The Works of President Edwards (4 vols. New York, 1851), 3, 535 (hereafter referred to as Worcester rev. ed.); see also The Works of Jonathan Edwards, 20, "The Miscellanies," 833–1152, ed. Amy Plantinga Pauw (New Haven, Yale Univ. Press, 2002), 487. Edwards tells us that we should never think of the three divine persons as "three distinct gods, friends to one another.""Miscellanies," no. 539, in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, 18, "The Miscellanies," 501–832, ed. Ava Chamberlain (New Haven, Yale Univ. Press, 2000), 84.
The traditional Western trinitarian formula was "one substance in three persons" (una substantia, tres personae). But since Boethius, the divine person had been defined as "the individual substance of a rational -- 22 -- nature" (naturae rationabilis individua substantia).Boethius: The Theological Tractates, The Consolation of Philosophy, trans. H. F. Stewart, E. K. Rand, and S. J. Tester, rev. ed., Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, Harvard Univ. Press), p. 85. For a discussion of this point, see Babcock, "A Changing of the Christian God," pp. 141–42. So the problem of explaining how one God could be three "persons" was formulated as a question of how in the divine substance there could be three individual substances. Edwards, however, was not working with substance language. For him, the problem was how God's being and its two perfect self-repetitions could be all one God. He insists that in the Son and the Holy Spirit the Father's essence is fully repeated and thus duplicated. What, then, does it mean to affirm that God's being is not three essences or deities but "the same essence" and thus one God?
The first answer we find in Edwards is that God's unity lies in the "simplicity" of God's being. Given Edwards' relational conception of being, his reference to the doctrine of simplicity, although it appears only a few times and always without elaboration, is rather surprising.See, for example, "Miscellanies," no. 135, in Works, 13, p. 295. For a discussion of this issue, see Pauw, "The Supreme Harmony of All," pp. 33–36. What is the "simplicity" doctrine? The main point against Arius in the decision of the ecumenical council at Nicea was the Son's co-divinity (homoousios, "of the same substance") with the Father and not specifically their unity. But in the history of the church, the council's decision functioned as a strong emphasis upon the unity as well as the equality of the divine persons. Under the influence of the Greek philosophical conception of perfection, the unity of the Divine Being eventually began to be seen as a divine "simplicity." According to this conception, God's perfection requires that he be without parts of any kind. The theological motivation in asserting the simplicity of God was to protect God's aseity, or self-existence. It was thought that if God had a nature or properties distinct from him, he could be thought of as being dependent upon something other than himself.See Pauw, "The Supreme Harmony of All," pp. 24–26.
Both the Eastern and Western churches affirmed divine simplicity, but the Western church expressed it in its extreme form. The generic understanding of God's unity— that it consists in the three distinct persons' being three particular instances of the one common, divine nature— was ruled out in the West. The Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 asserted that "each of the persons is that reality, namely, the divine substance, essence, or nature."The Church Teachers: Documents of the Church in English Translation, ed. John F. Clarkson et al. (St. Louis, B. Herder, 1955), p. 133. See Pauw, "The Supreme Harmony of All," pp. 26. The Son is of the same substance with the Father, in that they are identical with the divine essence. The Reformed scholastics and Puritan -- 23 -- divines continued this simplicity tradition; Wollebius even asserted that there is "nothing in [God], but what is God, what is himselfe."Johannes Wollebius, Compendium Theologiae Christianae (Amsterdam, 1703), I. i., quoted in Pauw, "The Supreme Harmony of All," p. 31. Francis Turretin, too, maintained that "the essence of God is perfectly simple and free from all composition." Turretin went as far as to assert that God is not just "specifically" (that is, generically or sortally) one but "numerically" single.Institutes of Elenctic Theology, 1, Topic Three, Question VII, § i, p. 191; and 1, Topic Three, Question XXV, § i, p. 265.
Edwards' references to simplicity are few, but they cannot be ignored. In Freedom of the Will he mentions, without elaboration, God's "perfect and absolute simplicity."The Works of Jonathan Edwards, 1, Freedom of the Will, ed. Paul Ramsey (New Haven, Yale Univ. Press, 1957), 376. In "Miscellanies," no. 135, he says that if human faculties were infinitely enlarged, we would have "the same simplicity, immutability, etc." of the Divine Being."Miscellanies," no. 135, in Works, 13, 295. An even stronger assertion of God's simplicity appears in Edwards' unpublished sermon on Hebrews 1:3, from April 1734, where he states that the Father "has no excellency but the Son has the same: not only specifically the same, or the same in kind, but numerically; the same individual glory, so that they have but one glory that is common to both."MS sermon on Hebrews 1:3 (April 1743). Edwards Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. Unless otherwise noted, all MSS referred to in this volume are in the Beinecke collection.
The idea of a numerical identity contains ambiguity. As Christopher Stead has pointed out, simplicity "could mean either 'excluding all differentiation' or 'comprehending all differentiation' or merely 'not composite,' 'not constructed out of parts.'"Christopher Stead, Divine Substance (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1977), pp. 93–94. A numerical identity of God, in the sense of an absolute absence of differentiation, would of course be totally inconsistent with Edwards' conception of God as triune and beautiful. Did Edwards then have in mind the second meaning, namely, "comprehending all differentiation"? He does not explicitly say. Amy Plantinga Pauw has observed that Edwards' references to God's numerical simplicity are eccentric, not integral to his overall perspective.Pauw, "The Supreme Harmony of All," p. 36. What can be safely said is only that, in invoking the language of numerical identity, Edwards shows a strong desire to emphasize the unity of the Divine Being.
The second way in which Edwards deals with the unity-threeness issue is by making a distinction between God's being as it refers to God's unity -- 24 -- and God's being as it refers to the three persons. Edwards often uses terminology well known in Western theology as well as among the Reformed scholastics: God is one in essence and three in "the manner of subsistence." In describing the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son, Edwards points out that "the Godhead therein stands forth in yet another manner of subsistence." He goes on to say, "The Holy Spirit is the Deity subsisting in act" (p. 131). God, in other words, is one in essence and three in the manner in which the same essence subsists. The result appears to be that the term "essence" is to be taken somewhat differently when it is used in reference to the unity of God, on the one hand, and when in reference to each of the three persons, on the other.
Edwards uses this approach sometimes with different terminologies. In "On the Equality of the Persons of the Trinity," he maintains that although none of the three persons of the Trinity has "a distinct essence" of its own, each does have "a distinct glory," "a relative glory, or glory of relation." Edwards then describes the relative glories of the three persons: the Father is the origin of the other two persons, the Son is the Father's "object," and the Holy Spirit is "the messenger of the other two persons." In the same manuscript, Edwards also makes a distinction between God's "being," or "the divine essence in itself considered," and God's "relative being" (pp. 147–48). Echoing the simplicity tradition of Western theology, Edwards insists that the divine essence is "undivided and independent" in spite of the equal divinity of the three persons. "'[T]is true the divine essence is undivided and independent… with respect to its being, but not with respect to its relative being; or, to speak more plainly, that the divine essence should be, and should be what it is, is not in any respect in any dependence or by derivation. But yet it may be by derivation. That it should be here or there, or that in some instances it should be where it is, or belonging to such persons, this don't in the least detract from the glory of the divine essence in itself considered" (pp. 147–48). Edwards does not elaborate on any of these distinctions, though his discussions indicate that he wanted to think more about them. However, the distinctions between the divine "essence," "being," or "glory… in itself considered," on the one hand, and the divine essence "in a manner of subsistence," God's "relative being," or God's "relative glory," on the other, seem to be somewhat at odds with Edwards' usual assertion that each of the three persons of the Trinity is "the same God," "the same divine essence." And in a typically Western theological fashion, Edwards affirms God's unity somewhat at the expense of God's threeness. The first two approaches Edwards takes in affirming the unity of the Divine -- 25 -- Being follow the theological tradition of the Latin West. The next three we shall note, however, are reminiscent of the Greek East. In the first of these Edwards deals with the unity of the Divine Being by seeing God's essence as the universal or common characteristic, of which the three persons are particular instances. Here Edwards' sources are most immediately the Cambridge Platonist Ralph Cudworth and, indirectly, Cappadocian fathers like Gregory of Nyssa.Ibid., pp. 41–43. There is no evidence that JE read the Cappadocian theologians, but there is a scholarly opinion that he shows "a very real, though mediated dependence," especially on Gregory of Nyssa. JE could have been acquainted with Gregory's thought through the Cambridge Platonists, especially Ralph Cudworth. See Patricia Wilson-Kastner, "God's Infinity and His Relation to Creation," Foundations 21 (Oct.–Dec. 1978), 310, 317; and Pauw, "The Supreme Harmony of All," p. 27. On the question of when in his life JE might have read Cudworth, see Thomas H. Johnson, "Jonathan Edwards' Background of Reading," Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts 28 (Dec. 1931), 197; Works, 6, 329; and Emily S. Watts, "Jonathan Edwards and the Cambridge Platonists," Univ. of Illinois Ph.D. diss, 1963. Cudworth maintained that the "essence or substance of the Godhead, which all the three persons or hypostases agree in, as each of them is God, was not one singular and individual but only one common and universal essence or substance."The Intellectual System of the Universe (London, 1678; rep. 1820), III, 144. Edwards does not announce anywhere that he agrees with Cudworth's generic or sortal use of the term "divine essence." In his sermon on Hebrews 1:3, Edwards is ambivalent. At one point he denies that the Son's essence is the same as the Father's "specifically" (that is, generically) or "in kind" and asserts a numerical identity. But then, in the same sermon, Edwards also states that the persons of the Trinity "partake of the same essence," and that the Father and the Son "have one glory that is common to both."MS sermon on Hebrews 1:3. Edwards seems to be tentative or undecided in his references to the sortal view of divine unity. But in his references to the generic view, though they are few in number, we see the influence of the Eastern tradition on Edwards' trinitarianism.
In the fourth approach Edwards takes to the divine unity, he follows Cudworth and the tendency of the East to see the first person of the Trinity as the unifying principle. In "Miscellanies," no. 143, after stating that the Son and the Holy Spirit both originate from the Father, Edwards writes: "Hence we see how and in what sense the Father is the fountain of the Godhead, and how naturally and properly God the Father is spoken of in Scripture as of the Deity without distinction, as being the only true God.""Miscellanies," no. 143, in Works, 13, 298–99. In "Discourse on the Trinity," Edwards explains that the Father's ontological primacy in the Trinity carries over to the Father's priority in -- 26 -- the order of acting. "Here we may see why," observes Edwards, "in the economy of the persons of the Trinity, the Father should sustain the dignity of the Deity… and should be God, not only by essence, but as it were by his economical office" (p. 135). As the "fountain of the Godhead," the Father is the ontological ground for both the second and third persons of the Trinity.
The fifth and the last approach we see in Edwards' treatment of divine unity is a much more deliberate perspective, which is more integrated than the others into his overall philosophical and theological framework. I refer to Edwards' conception of God's unity as consisting in the perichoresis, or the inter-dwelling, of the three persons of the Trinity. This approach to divine unity emerges in the context of Edwards' discussion of whether all three persons have their own faculties of understanding and will. Augustine had maintained that it was "absurd" to think that the Father is wise through the Son "as though the Father does not understand nor love for himself." Augustine's concern here was to defend the unity of God in the simplicity tradition, according to which if one of the persons depended upon another for wisdom or love, the identity between the divine essence and attributes would be compromised. For this reason, Augustine insisted that wisdom "is so retained in the nature of each one, as that he who has it, is that which he has, as being an unchangeable and simple substance."De Trinitate, XV, xvi, 28.
Departing from both Augustine and the Western doctrine of divine simplicity, Edwards explains the manner of the three persons' understanding and loving with an entirely different concept of the divine unity. He writes in "Discourse on the Trinity":
In order to clear up this matter, let it be considered, that the whole divine essence is supposed truly and properly to subsist in each of these three— viz. God, and his understanding, and love— and that there is such a wonderful union between them that they are after an ineffable and inconceivable manner one in another; so that one hath another, and they have communion in one another, and are as it were predicate one of another. As Christ said of himself and the Father, "I am in the Father, and the Father in me" [John 10:14], so may it be said concerning all the persons of the Trinity: the Father is in the Son, and the Son is in the Father; the Holy Ghost is in the Father, and the Father in the Holy Ghost; the Holy Ghost is in the Son, and the Son in the Holy Ghost. (P. 133.) -- 27 --
The implication of this for the three persons' understanding and loving is clear: "There is understanding and will in the Father, as the Son and the Holy Ghost are in him and proceed from [him]. There is understanding and will in the Son, as he is understanding and as the Holy Ghost is in him and proceeds from him. There is understanding and will in the Holy Ghost, as he is the divine will and as the Son is in him" (p. 134). Some years before Edwards made this observation, he had dealt with the issue of the understanding and love of the three persons in a different way. In "Miscellanies," no. 308, from the spring of 1728 (two years before he wrote the first several pages of "Discourse on the Trinity"), he had stated that "the Father understands, the Son understands, and the Holy Ghost understands, because every one is the same understanding divine essence; and not that each of them have a distinct understanding of their own.""Miscellanies," no. 308, in Works, 13, 392. For the dating of JE's MSS, see "Editor's Introduction," Table 2, in Works, 13, 91–109. Here Edwards was adopting the Western tradition's typical emphasis on the extreme unity of the divine essence, with the result of downplaying his own strong affirmation of the real distinctions within God. But in the middle of "Discourse on the Trinity," some years after "Miscellanies" no. 308, Edwards shifts to a strong perichoretic formulation of the divine unity and of the relation between the three persons and the divine understanding and loving.
In Edwards' perichoretic approach, we have a vision of God's unity that is profoundly different from the Western church's traditional tendency to see God's unity in the singularity of divine substance. For Edwards, God's unity consists in the "wonderful union" between the persons of the Trinity and "a communion in one another." The concept of God's unity here is one of mutuality, communion, and fellowship rather than a monadic and self-contained individuality. And this perspective is more in line with Edwards' conception of God, according to which there is no underlying substance behind the persons, and also according to which there is a clear emphasis upon the threeness of the Trinity as God and God's two self-repetitions.
The Equality and Economy among the Persons of the Trinity
Edwards strongly affirmed the equal divinity of each of the persons of the Trinity, but at the same time he talked about an order of being and of acting among them upon which God's activities are based. This ordering or economy of the trinitarian persons is discussed in "Miscellanies," no. -- 28 -- 1062, which was first published by E. C. Smyth in 1880 with the title "Observations Concerning the Scripture Oeconomy of the Trinity, and Covenant of Redemption." Edwards articulates the equality and ordering of the persons on five interconnected levels. The first and the most basic, as discussed earlier, is the ontological equality of the three persons. In the Son and the Holy Spirit, Edwards wrote, "the whole deity and glory of the Father… is repeated, or expressed again, and that fully: so that there is properly no inferiority.""Observations," in Treatise on Grace, ed. Helm, p. 77. The three persons are the same "in glory and excellency of nature."
The second level is the order of subsisting among the three persons, and is a matter of their origin and relation. The Father is "unbegotten," the Son "begotten" of the Father, and the Holy Spirit has "proceeded" from the Father and the Son. Thus, the unbegotten Father has a kind of "priority of subsistence"— though not ontological "superiority"— over the begotten Son and the Holy Spirit that has proceeded from them. The Son has "a kind of dependence" on the Father and the Holy Spirit, on both the Father and the Son. The Son's being "begotten" and the Holy Spirit's "proceeding" are eternal— that is, there was never a time when they were not begotten and proceeding. Further, the origin of the Son and the Holy Spirit is "no voluntary, but a necessary proceeding; and therefore infers no proper subjection of one to the will of another." The Son and the Holy Spirit, as fully divine, exist "by necessity" without being dependent on the voluntary will of any other being. In short, the priority of the Father over the Son and the Holy Spirit, and the priority of the Son over the Holy Spirit, is the "natural order of the eternal and necessary subsistence of the persons of the Trinity."Ibid., p. 78, 80.
The third level is an "order of their acting that is agreeable to the order of their subsisting." Edwards explains that "as the Father is first in the order of subsisting, so he should be first in the order of acting," and "as the other two persons are from the Father in their subsistence, and as to their subsistence naturally originated from him and are dependent on him; so… in all that they act they should originate from him, act from him and in a dependence on him." This order of acting is not "by necessity" but "by agreement." "[T]he persons of the Trinity all consent to this order… as they all naturally delight in what is in itself fit, suitable and beautiful."Ibid., pp. 78–79. This order of acting is suitable because it is based on the prior order of the persons' subsistence.
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The covenant of redemption is based on the first three prior levels of the trinitarian economy. So the fourth level of the trinitarian economy is the agreement that the Father and the Son primarily make in their plans to redeem the fallen creation. And it is in accordance with the three persons' prior order of acting that the manner of the covenant of redemption is established. As the head of the Trinity, the Father "begins that great transaction of the eternal covenant of redemption, is the first mover in it," and "proposes the matter unto [the Son]." And "the Son (though he acts on the proposal of the Father), yet acts as one wholly in his own right, as much as the Father, being not under subjection or prescription in his consenting to what is proposed to him, but acting as of himself." The Father initiates the covenant by determining "to allow a redemption, and for whom it shall be," and by proposing it to the Son.Ibid., pp. 84–85. But the Son voluntarily agrees with the Father's proposal. The equality of the three persons and the economic ordering are thereby both preserved.
The consequence of the covenant of redemption, which we may see as the fifth level in the trinitarian ordering, is "a new kind of subordination and mutual obligation between two of the persons, arising from this new establishment." The Son takes on a new kind of subjection to the Father, "far below that of his economical station"— namely, the Son's subjection of himself to humiliation and to the role of a servant. At the same time, the Father promises to the Son the office of the "head of authority and rule to the universe, as Lord and judge of all." This new role of the Son "does not belong to him in his economical character." Yet this new role of the Son's subjection and humiliation, resulting from the covenant of redemption, is still "not contrary to their economical order; but in several respects agreeable to it, though it be new in kind." That is, "if either the Father or the Son be brought into the subjection of a servant to the other, it is much more agreeable to the economy of the Trinity, that it should be the latter, who by that economy is already under the Father as his head."Ibid., pp. 85–86.
Edwards' treatment of the role of the Holy Spirit on the fourth level of the trinitarian economy is somewhat ambivalent. On the fifth level, which is the consequence of the covenant of redemption, Edwards tells us that the Holy Spirit is subjected to the Son and put at the Son's "disposal." But the establishment of the covenant of redemption itself is thought to be between the Father and the Son. Edwards merely describes the Holy Spirit as the "main thing purchased" through the work of redemption.Ibid., pp. 89–92.
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But Edwards quickly realized that the Holy Spirit's role in the whole affair appears rather diminished. Where is the equality of the trinitarian persons? Edwards asserts toward the end of the "Observations" that "it is true, that the Holy Spirit is infinitely concerned in the affair of our redemption, as well as the Father and the Son," and "that there was a consultation among the three persons about it, and so, that there was a joint agreement of all." Further, "[i]t is not only true, that the Holy Ghost is concerned in the work of redemption equally with the other persons; but that he is also concerned in the covenant of redemption, as well as they." After all this, Edwards still adds that the Holy Spirit's "concern in the covenant is not that of a party covenanting."Ibid., p. 93. Obviously, Edwards had not yet worked out in his mind the nature of the active role of the third person within the Trinity— something, as we saw earlier, he began formulating in "On the Equality of the Persons of the Trinity." In writing the "Observations," Edwards appears to have retained the notion of the Holy Spirit as the "bond between the Father and the Son."
So, on the level of being, the three persons of the Trinity are absolutely equal with one another; no subordination is implied. The order of subsistence among the persons entails a kind of superiority, or rather a priority of the Father over the other two persons, and this ordering inherent on the level of subsistence is the foundation of all of the orderings that exist in God's activities in relation to the world. Edwards is keen to emphasize here that what God does in relation to the world, and how he does it, are not accidental or contingent upon anything extrinsic to God but firmly rooted in God's own eternal being— that is, in God's life as an eternal respect and love among the three equally divine but distinct persons, and in the way they subsist eternally as distinct though equal divine persons.
Besides the ordering in the inner-trinitarian subsistence and God's activities ad extra, there is another sort of hierarchy that Edwards discusses in "Miscellanies," no. 1062: the priority of God's disposition to communicate himself through creation over the trinitarian persons' agreement on the covenant of redemption on behalf of the fallen creation. Just as the economical order among the trinitarian persons inherent in God's nature is prior to the covenant of redemption, "we must conceive of God's determination to glorify and communicate himself as prior to the method that his wisdom pitches upon as tending best to effect this." That is, "God's glorifying and communicating himself by the redemption of a certain -- 31 -- number of fallen inhabitants of this globe of earth, is a thing diverse from God's natural inclination to glorify and communicate himself in general, and superadded to it or subservient to it."Ibid., p. 79. For later sermons on the economy of the Trinity in the work of redemption, see MS sermons on 1 Corinthians 11:3 (Mar. 1746), Galatians 3:13–14 (Apr. 1746), and 1 John 4:14 (Apr. 1746, Edwards Collection, Trask Library, Andover-Newton Theological Seminary, Newton Centre, Mass.). What Edwards is asserting is that God's inherent disposition to communicate himself for the glorification of himself is logically prior to, and independent from, God's activities of redeeming fallen humanity. In other words, God's actions and plans of actions in relation to the world are always grounded in what God already is within God's own internal life, and ultimately in what God is in his own nature.
I shall return to this matter shortly. But the implication of the above discussion for my purpose here is that for Edwards, what God does in relation to the world is fundamentally grounded in and thus inextricably related to what God is within himself. It is the same divine disposition to communicate himself through the intra-trinitarian life that is exercised in the historical activities of the economic Trinity. The immanent Trinity and the economic Trinity are inseparably connected, and the logical and ontological link between them is God's dispositional essence, which is exerted in both.
The Immanent and the Economic Trinity
The continuity of the immanent and economic Trinity is a hallmark of Edwards' theology.Scholars who have studied JE's thought on the Trinity agree on this point. See Pauw, "The Supreme Harmony of All"; Jenson, America's Theologian, pp. 91–98; and Herbert W. Richardson, The Glory of God in the Theology of Jonathan Edwards: A Study in the Doctrine of the Trinity" Harvard University Ph.D. diss., 1962. For Edwards, God's inner life is not a puzzle subject to theologians' speculations but rather a living truth about God that emerges from the believers' heartfelt experiences of God's self-communication of himself in Jesus Christ and in all history and space. What believers have experienced from God's redemptive activities in their own lives is a reflection of the way God himself is in his own life ad intra. In this way, Edwards restores the Trinity doctrine's original connection with the lived faith of the Christian community.
We can encapsulate the meaning and implication of Edwards' understanding of the continuity of God's inner life and external activities in the following ways. The first point, briefly alluded to above, is that the inner-outer trinitarian continuity is based on God's inner and outer being and -- 32 -- life, and is all the exercise of the same dispositional essence of God. In an entry in the "Miscellanies," Edwards schematized his conception of the inner and outer aspects of God's same activity of self-communication in the following manner:
God is glorified within himself in these two ways.
1. By appearing, or being manifested, to himself in his own perfect idea, or, in his Son, who is the brightness of his glory.
2. By enjoying and delighting in himself, by flowing forth in infinite love and delight toward himself, or, in his Holy Spirit. So God glorifies himself towards the creatures also two ways.
1. By appearing to them, being manifested to their understandings.
2. In communicating himself to their hearts, and in their rejoicing and delighting in, and enjoying the manifestations which he makes of himself."Miscellanies," no. 448, in Works, 13, 495. Ed. italics and spacing.
"The same disposition that inclines [God] to delight in his glory," Edwards writes elsewhere, "causes [God] to delight in the exhibitions, expressions and communication of it."End of Creation, in Works, 8, 452. There is no metaphysical gap between God's own internal life and his external self-communication. What believers experience in Jesus Christ is God himself. In Edwards' thought, as in that of the fourth-century Eastern theologians, as Robert W. Jenson has put it, "the roles of Jesus and his Father and their Spirit in our history, and the roles of those three 'persons' in God's own reality, intersect with each other to make but one divine history."Jenson, America's Theologian, p. 93.
The second significance of Edwards' close connection of the immanent with the economic Trinity is a corollary of the first point: God's redemptive activity ad extra would be trinitarian in nature, just as God's internal life is trinitarian. This means that there is both unity and clear distinction among the three persons of the Trinity in their economic roles. As Edwards explains in "Miscellanies," no. 1062, the Father "determines that a redemption shall be admitted, and for whom." The Son in his mediatorial work undertakes "the great and difficult and self-abasing work of our redemption." The Holy Spirit, or the divine love, is "the main thing that [Christ] purchased" and is to be dispensed by Christ to the elect."Observations," in Treatise on Grace, ed. Helm, pp. 84–85, 89. In "Miscellanies," no. 402, Edwards refers to the Mediator as Jesus Christ, not only as the Son: "The great thing purchased by Jesus Christ for -- 33 -- us is communion with God, which is only in having the Spirit.""Miscellanies," no. 402, in Works, 13, 466. God's economic work is trinitarian, as is God's inner-trinitarian life.
Since Augustine the Western church has tended to stress the unity of the three persons of the Trinity rather than their distinctions. The distinctions among the three persons in their external relations were honored through what is known as the doctrine of appropriations, which stated that particular works were appropriated to particular persons of the Trinity: creation was the work of the Father, redemption the work of the Son, and sanctification the work of the Holy Spirit. This way of thinking, according to Jenson, had the effect of "shielding" God's intra-trinitarian proceedings from what God does in history. For Edwards, what God does in history is not just related appropriately to the intra-trinitarian life of God, but rather "reproduces" it in history.See Jenson, America's Theologian, pp. 94–95. Edwards is at considerable pains to maintain that the three persons of the Trinity have particular roles to play in redemption and that the ordering of those roles is grounded in, and repeats, the eternal order of subsistence within the Trinity. "It is not meet," explains Edwards, "that the Redeemer should be God the Father; because he, in the divine economy of the persons of the Trinity, was the person that holds the rights of the Godhead, and so was the person offended.""The Wisdom of God, Displayed in the Way of Salvation," in Worcester rev. ed., 4, 136. Likewise, "'tis not fit that [the Mediator] should be… the Spirit, for… in being mediator between the Father and the saints, [the Mediator] is mediator between Father and the Spirit.""Miscellanies," no. 614, in Works, 18, 146. Of course, Edwards also affirmed the unity of the three persons in their external activities. But their unity is no longer stated in terms of "indivisibility" but rather as a mutual agreement among the three. "[A]ll the persons of the Trinity do concur in all acts ad extra.""Miscellanies," no. 958, in Works, 20, 234. Edwards applied his trinitarianism in his conception of God's activities ad extra more rigorously than his predecessors in the Western church.
The third and final point we must highlight in regard to Edwards' strong emphasis upon the unity of the immanent and economic Trinity is the way God's inner-trinitarian life and his external activities confirm and also help articulate the truth and meaning of each other for humankind. Edwards frequently describes, and argues for the truth of, the Trinity ad intra on the basis of God's trinitarian manner of doing redemptive work in human history. For example: "[I]t appears that the Holy -- 34 -- Spirit is the pure act of God and energy of the Deity, by his office, which is to actuate and quicken all things, and to beget energy and vivacity in the creature.""Miscellanies," no. 94, Works, 13, 261. Similarly, the Holy Spirit "quickens and beautifies all things… Now whose office can it be so properly to actuate and enliven all things, as his who is the eternal and essential act and energy of God?" (p. 123). Edwards here characterizes the person of the Holy Spirit on the basis of what the Holy Spirit, according to believers' historical experience actually does. In the "Discourse on the Trinity," Edwards summarizes this point by stating that "what I have here supposed concerning the Trinity is exceeding analogous to the gospel scheme, and agreeable to the tenor of the whole New Testament" (p. 134). Edwards' doctrine of the Trinity, therefore, is no speculative exercise but emerges out of, and directly speaks to, the "gospel scheme"— that is, the reality and manner of God's redemptive activities in human history.
The Triune God and the Work of Creation and Redemption
Thus far our discussion has dealt primarily with the triune being of God ad intra, or the immanent Trinity and its connection with the economic Trinity. The writings included in this volume, other than "Discourse on the Trinity" and "On the Equality of the Persons of the Trinity," are on the topics of grace, faith, justification by faith, and sanctification. The selections from the "Controversies" notebook also relate to grace, justification, and true virtue. From our discussion of the immanent Trinity, we can see that Edwards' discussion of grace, justification, and sanctification would be an elaboration of the external and redemptive activities of the Trinity, or the economic Trinity, and the nature of the human participation in those activities.
An important consequence of Edwards' doctrine of the immanent Trinity for his treatment of God's redemptive activities is that the latter will be thoroughly trinitarian. Edwards sees God's activities ad extra as the external extensions or repetitions of God's inner-trinitarian life. Now this, for Edwards, means that the distinctions as well as the unity of the trinitarian persons will be stressed in the history of God's redemptive activities. God the Father "determines to allow a redemption"; the Son, the Mediator, undertakes "the great and difficult and self-abasing work of our redemption"; and the Holy Spirit is "the main thing that [Christ] purchases," that is, divine love for fallen humanity, which is the repetition of the mutual love between the Father and the Son within the Trinity. As we shall see below, Edwards aims to assign to the Holy Spirit a role in redemption -- 35 -- that is fully equal to the roles played by the other two persons of the Trinity.
In Edwards' view, the trinitarian persons' covenant to redeem fallen humanity is "superadded" and "subservient" to "God's natural inclination to glorify and communicate himself in general." Creation would be logically prior to the redemption of the fallen creation. What Edwards is saying then, is that both creation and redemption are exercises of God's disposition to communicate himself, and also that redemption serves the end of creation. Edwards makes exactly this point in an important statement at the beginning of The End for Which God Created the World: "[I]t may be further observed that the original ultimate end or ends of the creation of the world is alone that which induces God to give the occasion for consequential ends by the first creation of the world, and the original disposal of it. And the more original the end is, the more extensive and universal it is. That which God had primarily in view in creating, and the original ordination of the world, must be constantly kept in view, and have a governing influence in all God's works, or with respect to everything that he does towards his creatures."End of Creation, in Works, 8, 413. Aside from the word "alone" near the beginning of the quote, the italics are the editor's. It is axiomatic in Edwards' thought that "all God's works, or with respect to everything that he does towards his creatures," must be understood within the framework of God's end in creating the world.
In creating the world, God's aim can only have been the highest good, because God by nature is disposed to do only what is good and beautiful. But it is God himself who is "infinite and most worthy of regard." As Edwards puts it in his notes on "The Nature of True Virtue" in the "Controversies" notebook, God, "being infinitely the greatest and best of beings, comprehending within himself infinitely the most being and the most virtue… it becomes him, as an infinitely holy God, to make himself his supreme end" (p. 323). Therefore, in creating the world, as in doing all things, God's aim can only be himself. But then a problem arises: since God is already "self-existent from all eternity" and "absolutely perfect in himself, in possession of infinite and independent good," how can God himself be an aim yet to be achieved?Ibid., pp. 422, 433, 437, 445. Edwards' answer is that God's end in creation is "himself communicated.""Miscellanies," no 247, in Works, 13, 361. Through creation, God seeks to be "diffused, overflowing, and as it were enlarged; or in one word, existing ad extra." An "increase, repetition, or multiplication" in time and space of God's eternal prior actuality is what God aims at.End of Creation, in Works, 13, 527, 433.
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If God's end in creation is himself repeated ad extra, what moves him to seek such a goal? Edwards' answer lies in his conception of God as essentially an eternal disposition to know and love true beauty— or, in other words, the inclination to communicate himself. God, for Edwards, is essentially "a disposition effectually to exert himself, and to exert himself in order to an effect.""Miscellanies," no. 1218, in Philosophy of Jonathan Edwards, ed. Townsend, p. 152; see also "Miscellanies," 1153–1360. God is also "the infinitely beautiful and most excellent," and is a knowing and loving being. Thus, God is the eternal disposition to know and love true beauty.
One more element needs to be added to this summary definition. As we saw earlier, when a disposition is exercised through the acts of knowing or loving, there is an ontological increase, a movement from virtuality to actuality or from the real possibility to which a disposition is disposed (say, the real possibility or virtual reality of singing well) to the full actuality of that to which that disposition is disposed— for example, the full actuality of singing in the act of actually singing well. And for Edwards actuality is "bigger" than virtuality or real possibility."The Mind," in Works, 6, 45. The exercise of the divine disposition, then, would constitute an increase of the divine actuality. Thus God, as the eternal divine disposition, is the disposition to increase his own actuality. Edwards concludes, "[I]t is [God's] essence to incline to communicate himself.""Miscellanies," no. 107, in Works, 13, 277–78.
The first eternal actuality of God is the first and primal exercise of the divine disposition to know and love beauty, which is to say, God the Father. The Father's further exercise of divine disposition through his reflexive knowing constitutes the Son, who is the intellectual repetition or self-communication of the Father. Finally, the Father's and the Son's exercise of divine disposition through the mutual love between them is the affectional self-communication of the Father and the Son, or the Holy Spirit. Hence, God's actuality as the Father and the Father's intellectual and affectional repetitions of his own actuality (the Son and the Holy Spirit) make up the inner-trinitarian actuality and self-communication of God, which is "completely equal" to the eternal divine disposition. God ad intra, in other words, is God's primordial actuality plus an increase of that actuality. God ad intra is actual "to an infinite degree and in the most perfect manner possible.""Miscellanies," no. 104, in Works, 13, 272.
If God's actuality is the infinitely perfect exercise of divine disposition, why then was God moved to create the world? God is infinitely actual, but -- 37 -- God's essence remains as a disposition to communicate himself through more knowledge and love of beauty. As Edwards explains, God's infinite exercise of his disposition ad intra is indeed perfect and complete, but it is "not the same kind of exercise" as the exercise of God's perfection ad extra through creation; and, additionally, "God, who delights in the exercise of his perfection, delights in all kinds of its exercise.""Miscellanies," no. 553, in Works, 18, 97. Thus, "a disposition in God, as an original property of his nature, to an emanation"— that is, a repetition ad extra— "of his own infinite fullness, was what excited him to create the world."End of Creation, in Works, 8, 435.
God's ultimate aim in creation, then, is God himself communicated and repeated outside of himself. In order to achieve this end, according to Edwards, God created human beings who can repeat God's internal knowledge and love in their own knowing and loving, as well as the physical universe, which, with the help of human perception of it as the image of God's beauty, can shine forth God's glory in its own way. Edwards states, "God has made intelligent creatures capable of being concerned in these effects, as being the willing, active subjects, or means, and so they are capable of actively promoting God's glory.""Miscellanies," no. 1218, in Philosophy of Jonathan Edwards, ed. Townsend, p. 152; see also "Miscellanies," 1153–1360. "In the creature's knowing, esteeming, loving, rejoicing in, and praising God, the glory of God is both exhibited and acknowledged; his fullness is received and returned."End of Creation, in Works, 8, 531. The intelligent beings' knowing and loving of God cannot "add" anything to God's eternal perfection ad intra. But God does become "more" in the special sense that, through the creatures' knowing and loving him, God's internal fullness is repeated ad extra, and God's own eternal glory is thereby "enlarged."Ibid., 461, 527; "Miscellanies," no. 662, in Works, 18, 200.
For created beings to be able to fulfill their function of repeating God's glory in time and space, God must then communicate his own knowledge and love to them. Thus, God's ultimate end of repeating his fullness ad extra includes in it another goal: to communicate himself to the creatures, to seek their good and make them "happy." The good of the creature is also an "ultimate end," an end that is valuable "for its own sake." But for Edwards, one ultimate end can be more valuable than other ultimate ends. So, according to him, God's end of communicating himself ad extra is his "chief ultimate end" in creation, while the ultimate end of seeking -- 38 -- the good of the creature is "comprehended in" that chief ultimate end. This is why Edwards insists that "that which God had primarily in view in creating… must be constantly kept in view, and have a governing influence in all God's works, or with respect to everything that he does towards his creatures."End of Creation, in Works, 8, 405–08, 413. Creation and redemption are to be understood in the light of God's end of self-communication.
This brief consideration of God's end in creation brings out at least two principles that are important to Edwards' thinking. The first is the primacy of God in creation and redemption. God's act of creation itself, and all that happens in relation to creatures, is fundamentally the exercise of God's own dispositional essence; the end that governs all that happens is God's self-communication. The second principle is the importance of history and all dimensions of the created world. They are important events to God himself because it is precisely through earthly repetitions of God's internal beauty that God's end in creation is going to be achieved.
Restated in soteriological terms, these two principles mean, first, that the primacy of God will be affirmed in the redemption of fallen creation. The sovereignty of God's grace in redemption is rooted in the way Edwards conceives of God's work of creation. The soteriological meaning of the second principle is that, for Edwards, the redemption of fallen humanity is going to involve an actual change in the human being. God's goal of repeating his internal beauty will really be actualized in and through the redeemed persons' knowledge and love of God's beauty and of all things in relation to that beauty. Redemption is going to be God's work and, at the same time, a work in which the elect really participate. Can redemption be sola gratia if there is a real change in the elect? Conversely, if grace is redemptive, how can there not be a real change in the elect? To maintain both is required by Edwards' view of God's end in creation, and this is Edwards' main task, which he fulfills with a remarkable originality in his writings on grace, justification, and sanctification.
Jonathan Edwards [ 1740], Writings on the Trinity, Grace, and Faith (WJE Online Vol. 21) , Ed. Sang Hyun Lee [ word count] [ jec-wjeo21].
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