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TOPIC: Edwards, Jonathan - Rational Biblical Theology (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: Chapt 15 The Doctrine of God
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“What poor miserable creatures are we to talk of the infinite and gloriousness of the great and eternal and Jehovah.” *1*
The Natural Attributes
One important aspect of Edwards’ doctrine of God which we have already considered is his knowability. Here we simply assume Edwards’ position that God is clearly known by the things he had made and that he may be known salvifically in Holy Scripture. It is on the basis of the Bible especially, that Edwards erects his great doctrine of God.
There are different ways in which Edwards develops the doctrine of God. I will follow one of the most basic - the natural and moral attributes - in this presentation. Before doing so, however, let me present Jonathan Edwards’ overview of this pattern of theology:
For the better understanding of this matter, we may observe that God in the revelation that he has made of himself to the world by Jesus Christ, has taken care to give a proportionable manifestation of two kinds of excellencies or perfections of his nature, viz. those that especially tend to possess us with awe and reverence, and to search and humble us, and those that tend to win and draw and encourage us. By the one he appears as an infinitely great, pure, holy and heart-searching Judge; by the other, as a gentle and gracious Father and a loving Friend: by the one he is a pure, searching and burning flame; by the other a sweet, refreshing light. These two kinds of attributes are as it were admirably tempered together in the revelation of the Gospel: there is a proportionable manifestation of justice and mercy, holiness and grace, majesty and gentleness, authority and condescension. God hath thus ordered that his diverse excellencies, as he reveals himself in the face of Jesus Christ [2Co_4:6], should have a proportionable manifestation, herein providing for our necessities; he knew it to be of great consequence that our apprehensions of these diverse perfections of his nature should be duly proportioned one to another; a defect on the one hand, viz. having much of a discovery of his love and grace, without a proportionable discovery of his awful majesty and his holy and searching purity, would tend to spiritual pride, carnal confidence and presumption; and a defect on the other hand, viz. having much of a discovery of his holy majesty, without a proportionable discovery of his grace, tends to unbelief, a sinful fearfulness and spirit of bondage: and therefore herein chiefly consists that deficiency of experiences that I am now speaking of. The revelation God has made of himself in his Word, and the provision made for our spiritual welfare in the Gospel, is perfect; but yet the actual light and communications we have are not perfect, but many ways exceeding imperfect and maimed. And experience plainly shews that Christians may have high experiences in some respects, and yet their circumstances may be unhappy in this regard, that their experiences and discoveries are not more general. There is a great difference among Christians in this respect; some have much more general discoveries than others, who are upon many accounts the most amiable Christians. Christians may have experiences that are very high, and yet there may be very much of this deficiency and disproportion: their high experiences are truly from the Spirit of God, but sin comes in by the defect (as indeed all sin is originally from a defective, privatative cause); and in such a case high discoveries, at the same time that they are enjoyed, may be, and sometimes are the occasion, or causa sine qua non of sin; sin may come in at that back door, the gap that is left open, as spiritual pride often does. And many times the Spirit of God is quenched by this means, and God punishes the pride and presumption that rises, by bringing such darkness, and suffering such awful consequences and horrid temptations, as are enough to make one’s hair stand on end to hear them. Christians therefore should diligently observe their own hearts as to this matter, and should pray to God that he would give ’em experiences in which one thing may bear a proportion to another, that God may be honored and their souls edified thereby; and ministers should have an eye to this, in their private dealings with the souls of their people. *2*
This classification is analogous to the classification of man’s attributes, as Edwards points out in Religious Affections:
As there are two kinds of attributes in God, according to our way of conceiving of him, his moral attributes, which are summed up in his holiness, and his natural attributes, of strength, knowledge, etc. that constitute the greatness of God; so there is a two-fold image of God in man, his moral or spiritual image, which is his holiness . . . and God’s natural image, consisting in men’s reason and understanding, his natural ability, and dominion over the creatures, which is the image of God’s natural attributes. *3*
1. Eternality
“[W]e see it is necessary some being should eternally be.” *4* For Jonathan Edwards eternity belongs to the very definition of being. Since “nothing” can never exist, being must always be. It cannot begin to be. It cannot come from nothing. It cannot come from being without first being being. The one question that never arises ultimately is “to be or not to be.” “To be” is to be eternally. “Not to be” is not to be eternally.
Edwards defines God’s eternality in the language of classic orthodox theology: “[T]he eternity of God’s existence . . . is nothing else but his immediate, perfect and invariable possession of the whole of his unlimited life, together and at once; vitæ interminabilis, tota, simul et perfecta possessio.” *5* This timeless eternality is, notes Edwards, “so generally allowed, that I need not stand to demonstrate it.” *6* It would make no more sense to speak of God as existing forever in and through time, than it would to speak of God existing in and through all space: “’Tis as improper, to imagine that the immensity and omnipresence of God is distinguished by a series of miles and leagues, one beyond another; as that the infinite duration of God is distinguished by months and years, one after another.” *7*
Edwards tends to teach the eternality of God indirectly through man’s eternal life.” “What is meant by eternal life?” is the first question raised in the sermon on 1 John 2:25. *8* It consists in two things: constancy and endlessness, both of these qualities being dependent on the immutability and beginninglessness of God. “Eternal life” comes to man only by divine gift. That is the point which is emphasized more in the earlier sermon on 1Jn_3:15, “When a man is converted eternal life is begun.” *9* No other life but God’s, Edwards preached, “is eternal by the necessity of its own nature,” as is shown by his own conversion text, “Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God” (1Ti_1:17). God alone is immortal and his perfect eternal being admits of “no degrees,” by contrast with that bestowed on the regenerate. Edwards then traces this eternal life in man which has a beginning and “goes on growing,” receiving a great impetus at death and a greater one at the resurrection, until it receives its relative perfection in glory when it receives a “perfect freedom from sin” and from “uneasiness.” It is true eternal life - but only a shadow of the eternity of God.
Nevertheless, Edwards once again comes close to his perennial peril identifying man’s life and God. He writes that God communicates this “gift” of “eternal life” directly, not leaving it to “second causes.” If this is God’s life communicated directly and not by second causes, what could it be but His own divine life? The “endless” comes very close to the “eternal” and the derived to the independent.
While the sermon on 1Jn_2:25 is devoted to defining eternal life, the series on 2Co_4:18 teaches that things of the unseen world are eternal. *10* In these sermons Edwards argues that nature shows the immateriality of the soul and the truth of future rewards and punishments, but that nature’s deficiencies also reveal the necessity of revelation to show what eternal life is and how to obtain it. Even immortality itself is only plainly brought to light by the gospel, because it reveals the only eternal one, God, to us.
Today, in America, a man’s “worth” refers to his financial assets. But Edwards preached that “this life is so short and so inconsiderable that it is no matter who prospers here and who does not. The only thing worth considering is who it is who prospers in an eternal state.” *11* God commonly gives this worlds things to the wicked because God knows that they are worthless and despises them. *12* This sermon, as a whole, reads much less as an opiate for the righteous poor than as a stirring warning for the opulent wicked.
It may be that Edwards’ most poignant elucidation of eternality was not in his comparing and contrasting it with eternal life but with eternal death. Possibly nothing was more frightening than when Edwards stopped in a careful, solemn interpretation of the Bible to prove to doubters of Scripture that natural reason also shows that God, being eternal, would have to inflict eternal punishment on transgressors. But that is what he did, proving that “eternal life” in heaven and in hell both derived from the true eternality of God which had no more ending than beginning.
2. Infinity.
If eternality belongs to the very idea of being, it’s infinity is hardly less implicit. We not only see that being cannot be denied without contradiction but
’tis a more palpable contradiction still to say that there must be being somewhere, and not otherwhere; for the words “absolute nothing” and “where” contradict each other. And besides, it gives as great a shock to the mind to think of pure nothing in any one place, as it does to think of it in all. . . . *13*
The eternal being is infinite since nothing does not exist anywhere. Or, one may say that God is infinite because nothing exists beside Him, or nothing beside Him exists. There can only be one infinite because many infinites would be a contradiction. *14* Edwards agreed with Augustine that apart from God nothing exists: “Above whom, outside whom, and without whom, nothing exists.” *15*
Infinity is not a distinct good in God. Rather it expresses the degree of good. “God’s infinity is not so properly a distinct kind of good in God, but only expresses the degree of the good there is in him.” *16* But the same observation is true of other attributes also: “[s]o God’s eternity is not a distinct good; but is the duration of good. His immutability is still the same good, with a negation of change.” *17*
God is everywhere present. He sees and observes:
He is everywhere present with his all-seeing eye. . . . He is where every devil is; and every damned soul is, he is present by his knowledge and essence. . . . He knows as perfectly as those who feel in misery. And it is his wrath that is in them. . . . *18*
It is hardly necessary to observe that this note was not omitted in the sermon on Joseph’s temptation. *19*
“God is infinitely exalted in gloriousness and excellency above all created beings.” *20* However exalted, God must be known, for we cannot worship an unknown God. Unless we have tolerable opinions of Him, He is not Jehovah but something else. So He condescends to us as a father to a child, and we must learn with greatest awe. In this particular sermon seven excellencies are developed: duration, greatness, excellence, power, wisdom, holiness and goodness, and mercy. This revelation is freely and sovereignly bestowed. As always, Edwards is anxious to prevent any presumption on mercy by insisting that God will have mercy only on the truly penitent but justice on the impenitent. So, though God is infinitely exalted, He makes all His being comprehensible to the finite so far as finitum capax infinitum. In so doing, He “stoops from an infinite height.” *21*
3. Unity and the Problem of Pantheism
If being’s existing means eternal existence and eternal existence implies unlimited infinite existence, it also follows that from being’s being infinite it must be one. If there were more than one being, being would not be infinite but would be limited by other being and therefore be finite. So eternal, infinite being is one being. “To be infinite is to be all, and it would be a contradiction to suppose two alls.” *22* “[A]ll that is real,” Edwards wrote (possibly in his college days), “it is immediately in the first being.” *23*
His search for the definition of truth led him to the same conclusion:
[15]. Truth. After all that has been said and done, the only adequate definition of truth is the agreement of our ideas with existence. To explain what this existence is, is another thing. In abstract ideas, it is nothing but the ideas themselves; so their truth is their consistency with themselves. In things that are supposed to be without us, ’tis the determination, and fixed mode, of God’s exciting ideas in us. So that truth in these things is an agreement of our ideas with that series in God. ’Tis existence, and that is all we can say. ’Tis impossible that we should explain and resolve a perfectly abstract and mere idea of existence; only we always find this, by running of it up, that God and real existence are the same.
Corol. Hence we learn how properly it may be said that God is, and that there is none else, and how proper are these names of the Deity “Jehovah,” and “I Am That I Am.” *24*
It is sometimes thought that Jonathan Edwards turned from the metaphysics of his youth to theology. But he is saying the same things in his 1743 sermon-lecture on Rom_1:20, and he never turned from metaphysics. In fact, in his Freedom of the Will, written four years before his death, he insists that metaphysics alone can demonstrate the truths of theology:
’Tis by metaphysical arguments only we are able to prove, that the rational soul is not corporeal; that lead or sand can’t think; that thoughts are not square or round, or don’t weigh a pound. The arguments by which we prove the being of God, if handled closely and distinctly, so as to shew their clear and demonstrative evidence, must be metaphysically treated. ’Tis by metaphysics only, that we can demonstrate, that God is not limited to a place, or is not mutable; that he is not ignorant, or forgetful; that it is impossible for him to lie, or be unjust; and that there is one God only, and not hundreds or thousands. And indeed we have no strict demonstration of anything, excepting mathematical truths, but by metaphysics. We can have no proof, that is properly demonstrative, of any one proposition, relating to the being and nature of God, his creation of the world, the dependence of all things on him, the nature of bodies or spirits, the nature of our own souls, or any of the great truths of morality and natural religion, but what is metaphysical. *25*
Note again how Edwards writes in M 880: “God is the sum of all being and there is no being without His being. All things are in Him, and He in all.” *26*
In his latest work on this subject, A Dissertation Concerning the End for Which God Created the World, the doctrine is repeated more fully than ever. The theme is that God made the world by the diffusing or communicating of his own fullness and glory, and this is explained thus:
God may have a real and proper pleasure or happiness in seeing the happy state of the creature: yet this may not be different from his delight in himself; being a delight in his own infinite goodness; or the exercise of that glorious propensity of his nature to diffuse and communicate himself, and so gratifying this inclination of his own heart. . . . As the sun receives nothing from the jewel that receives its light, and shines only by a participation of its brightness. *27*
“The creatures are,” Edwards continues, “always present in his mind, and his joy in them is eternal, absolutely perfect, unchangeable, .” Edwards holds that “God [is] seeking himself in the creation of the world. . . .” *28* Divine being is, in effect, universal being, all-comprehending being.” Edwards concludes that “the creature must be viewed as in infinite strict union with himself [God]” and cites Paul’s statement in Eph_5:1-33, “He that loveth his wife loveth himself,” as analogous to God’s loving Himself in loving His creation. *29*
Speaking to those ethicists who were depreciating the love of God and magnifying the love of man, he insists that “in God, the love of himself, and the love of the public are not to be distinguished, as in man, because God’s being as it were comprehends all. His existence, being infinite, must be equivalent to universal existence.” *30* There is no selfishness in God: “It is impossible, because he comprehends all entity, and all excellence in his own essence. The first Being, the eternal and infinite Being, is in effect, Being in general; and comprehends universal existence. . . .” *31* Thus, “all that is good and worthy in the object, and the very being of the object, proceed[s] from the overflowing of his fulness.” *32* The only difference Edwards seems to see between being-in-general and beings is in degree and manner, not in substance. Difference results from greatness and nothing else. *33* Likewise, he says that the only difference between the divine and created minds is one of degree. With respect to virtue, he remarks that “all that men do in real religion is entirely their own act and yet every tittle is wrought by the Spirit of God.” *34*
So strong is Edwards’ emphasis on the unity and oneness of being that the question of pantheism is inevitable. He insists that there is only one being. All beings are produced by and from the universal being which is being-in-general. It constitutes its own object. In loving being it is but loving itself. Can a pantheist say more?
Nevertheless, Edwards does not explicitly say that all being is identical, that there is no difference whatever in entity. He avoids saying that the divine being and other beings are numerically the same. As Professor Fenn used to observe, Edwards tends to insert “as it were” when he seemed about to close the gap in beings. *35* The “as it were’s” and “in effect’s” are frequent.
Crabtree sees in Edwards “two utterly disparate elements,” the Vedantic and the Calvinistic. The first is “pure pantheism.” But over against this is the “Augustinian-Calvinistic concept of God as sovereign Creator, paramount will, transcendent as well as immanent. This is the idea which dominates the works on the will and original sin and most of the sermons.” *36* Crabtree finds it significant that these two conflicting ideas never appear in the same work. I will show later that they both appear in the End for Which God Created the World. Edwards seems never to have felt any inconsistency or even strain in the two lines of thought though everyone else does.
Edwards does confess “obscurity” as he concludes one discussion. “I confess . . . obscurity . . . arising unavoidably from the infinite sublimity of the subject, and the incomprehensibleness of those things that are divine. Hence revelation is the surest guide in these matters.” *37* Not only is “revelation not pantheistic, but Edwards, obviously, neither considered himself a pantheist nor was so considered by others. His whole theology is particularistic to the core. Men are not ultimately swallowed up in some divine All. Some are blessed in heaven with God forever, separated everlastingly from others who, being in hell, are alienated from and damned by God. Nor can we believe that Edwards would ever have thought it possible to use traditional language and thought forms if he were expressing pantheism.
We can understand Douglas Elwood maintaining Edwards’ panentheism. Edwards would not say God is all but God is in all, or rather all is in God. Finding his inspiration in Neoplatonism, Edwards related God intimately to his universe. Edwards avoided the deistic separation of God from the world and related God immanentistically as he directly comprehended his own creation without the use of “second causes.” *38* So Elwood sees a panentheistic anticipation of Hartshorne and our century. *39*
But Whittemore finds Elwood quite incorrect. ** For one thing, Neoplatonism was pantheistic, not panentheistic, and the same, he says, is true of the puritan Edwards. Whittemore thinks Elwood has restricted the options to three (theism, deism and panentheism) when, in fact, there are ten options (1) real worlds touching as tangents; (2) overlapping worlds; (3) identical worlds; or (4) where the first world is within the second, and (5) where the second world is within the first. These five patterns are duplicated with the second world being a mere shadow. The first of these latter options (the real world of God touching the shadow and unreal world only at a tangent) is Edwards’ view. He is a philosopher of the “sixth way.” Whittemore agrees with Vincent Tomas *41* that this was a medieval and not a modern type of thought.
Whittemore is not alone in the pantheistic interpretation of Edwards. Hornberger insists that Edwards’ attempt to avoid it is inconsistent with his own system. “From a theological standpoint, his suggestion that the creature is an emanation of the infinite and eternal deity is contradicted by his insistence on finite temporal bounds to that creation.” *42*
A. V. G. Allen, likewise, says that Edwards’ last four great works tend to the same doctrine; namely, nothing exists but God. *43* Woodbridge Riley also maintains a pantheistic interpretation. *44*
Some traditional Calvinistic theologians have seen Edwards veering strongly in the direction of pantheism without ever quite accusing him of that fatal departure from Christianity. Charles Hodge, for example, is particularly distressed with the “continuous creation” doctrine which Edwards indisputably taught. This theory, according to Hodge, destroys continuity, the existence of the external world, second causes, moral responsibility, and amounts to pantheism. *45* A. H. Strong is similarly distressed and traces Edwards’ “error” of continuous creation to his effort thereby to account for the origin of sin. *46*
On the other hand, there are those today who still maintain transcendent-immanent theism without embarrassment. Errol E. Harris, for example, apparently unaware of Edwards, is arguing essentially the same position at this point. *47* He distinguishes theism from deism as presenting an “infinite and transcendent God, supernatural only in the sense that he transcends all finite which comprise the natural world, including the endlessly finite, which is commonly called infinite.” Yet this does not preclude the “immanent and all inclusive as well as transcendent, for otherwise his infinitude cannot be maintained.” *48*
What shall we conclude about Jonathan Edwards and pantheism? It would appear that he was pantheistic by implication and panentheistic by intention. There can be no doubt that he never taught pantheism directly or ever intended to infer it. The whole spirit of the man was against it. A true pantheist strives for consciousness of his identity with the all and is deliriously, mystically happy when he believes he has experienced or sensed the identity. Although enjoying mystic communion with God, Edwards gloried in the opposite. God is in heaven, and he was on earth. God is sovereign, damning and saving whom he chooses to damn and save. It was that aspect of the divine on which his own conversion turned, marked by a “delightful conviction” of its truth and a desire to be “swallowed up” in this God forever - not a realization that he was and all men were united with God, but that he and all Christians might be in communion with him. The doctrine of eternal hell seems to be the ultimate evidence that the intention of Jonathan Edwards was not pantheistic but “panentheistic” at most, for in hell clearly the creatures being is still preserved by itself and yet is everlastingly, painfully aware of an existence other than the eternal unperturbed, serene bliss of God.
Even in A Dissertation Concerning the End for Which God Created the World, to which we referred above, this distinction between elect and non-elect mankind is clear. One may read the first section of this dissertation, which deals with the judgment of reason on God’s “end” in the creation of the world, without realizing, apart from one sentence, that “man” refers to the elect man. But in the second section, which deals with the teaching of Scripture on this theme, the point becomes very clear. For example, the caption: “Places Of Scripture From Whence It May Be Argued That Communication Of Good To The Creature Was One Thing Which God Had In View As An Ultimate End Of The Creation Of The World.” *49* Throughout this section it is clear that the dozens of texts cited refer to the church. In other words, by “creation” Edwards means the true church. For example:
That the government of the world, in all parts of it, is for the good of such as are to be the eternal subjects of God’s goodness is implied in what the Scripture teaches us of Christ being set at God’s right hand, made king of angels and men; set at the head of the universe, having all power given him in heaven and earth, to that end that he may promote their happiness; being made head over all things to the church and having the government of the whole creation for their good. *50*
Those writers, like Delattre and Elwood, who tend to overlook this assumption of Edwards, which he makes clear enough from time to time and in different ways, tend to mislead in a pantheistic direction whether they mean to do so or not. As said above, the ultimate separation of elect and non-elect in heaven and in hell is an absolute antithesis to pantheism. Nevertheless, though it may show that Edwards did not intend pantheism, it does not prove that he necessarily escapes the implications of his system.
This same Dissertation which in its first part presents Edwards apparently at his most pantheistic does include one sentence even there that may point in another direction. Here he is imagining a third person or judge “of infinitely exact justice and rectitude . . . whose office it was to determine how things shall be most properly ordered in the whole kingdom of existence, including being and subjects, God and his creatures.” This judge, says Edwards, would have to consider the system of being in general, comprehending the sum total of universal existence, both Creator and creature. Still, every part must be considered according to its importance or the measure it has of existence and excellence. To determine, then, what proportion of regard is to be allotted to the Creator and all his creatures taken together, both must be, as it were, put in the balance. “[T]he Supreme Being, with all in him that is great, considerable, and excellent, is to be estimated and compared with all that is to be found in the whole creation. . . .” *51* Although the universe would be as dust on the balance, still it seems to be something other than God over against whom it is weighed. Taken literally, this seems to suggest that being-in-general is more extensive than God who is nonetheless called infinite in contrast to the finitude of the creation. God would presumably be ultimate being, the source of all being and in all being, but not identical with all being. This would be tantamount to traditional Christian teaching. It is not inconceivable that Edwards could have meant this. Since he could casually speak of man and mean, not all men but only men as men were supposed to be, namely elect men, it is possible he could have spoken of God as all in the sense of all that is worthy of the name being (as in the statement above where he seems to equate God with excellent being). But in that same section, God, we remember, is called Being-in-general and in this present citation Edwards is, after all, just “imagining.”
We leave the problem unresolved. But it may be interesting to consider Edwards’ position with reference to the five arguments Charles Hodge mounts against pantheism: (1) Consciousness of free agency. Edwards also affirms free or responsible agency. (2) Knowledge of a difference between good and evil. Edwards also affirms this difference. (3) Pantheism makes religion impossible. Edwards’ philosophy makes religion possible and central. (4) Pantheism is worse than atheism. Edwards’ philosophy found no merit in sinners being “in God” pantheistically and is obviously hostile and antithetical to atheism. (5) No immortality in pantheism. Immortality is central in Edwards’ theology. *52*
But did Hodge consider Edwards pantheistic? It is difficult to say because Hodge does not clearly define the term. He admits that the etymological meaning is disowned by “pantheists” and concludes that it is “not easy to give a concise and satisfactory answer to the question, What is Pantheism?” *53* Then he discusses three principal forms “pantheism” has taken. It is noteworthy that he does not mention Edwards in this lengthy discussion. When Hodge discusses infinity he says that the term is not merely negative, but he does not say what it means positively. If he had said that it meant unlimited being, he might have felt Edwards’ problem more. When Hodge says that it means that God is cause or ground of all, Edwards would surely agree. Hodge does say, “The infinite . . . is not necessarily all,” and Edwards surely says that God is all. Yet he also says other things, as we have seen, that indicate he did not believe God is all in the sense of being identical with all being!
We would say, in conclusion, that Jonathan Edwards is probably traditional in his idea of God, but with characteristically greater sensitivity to the problems involved. He reads at points like Hartshorne, but his preaching is Hodges. We may say that he is a Calvin with a metaphysical mind.
4. Independence.
Edwards does not say too much about the attribute of independence directly. He scarcely needed to do so. The independence of being follows from its being eternal (there is nothing before it), from its being infinite (there is nothing beyond it), and from its being one (there is nothing besides it). What is there on which it could depend but itself? It must needs be non-dependent on anything else for, indeed, what else is there - at least, where else is there? *54*
In his Dissertation Concerning the End for Which God Created the World Edwards realized that he must be extremely careful not to infer any element of dependence on the creation in God’s bringing it into being. That is his negative answer to the question about God’s purpose in creating: it was not to satisfy some deficiency he suffered apart from the creatures. Throughout this work Edwards insists that it is not from lack but from abundance that God creates. It is not to meet a need of his own but from his outgoing love that he brings creatures to participate in his fullness. God creates not from dependence but in spite of independence. God was independent and self-moved when he created the world. “The exercises of his communicative disposition are absolutely from within himself. . . .” *55*
The notion that creation argued dependence in God, popular then and now with some philosophers, was overwhelmingly opposed. Just the opposite, said Edwards. The creation was God’s desire to share his over-abundance, to permit creatures to enter into his super-sufficiency. It was his over-flowing of goodness that occasioned the creation. This theme especially developed in the Dissertation was anticipated in an earlier sermon on Psa_65:9, showing that God by his bounty shows his sufficiency: “That God by the exercises of his own common bounty towards men shews that he has an all sufficiency for the supply of their wants.” *56* He also preached: “God infinitely loves himself, yet so is his love that it flows out also to the creature.” *57*
We note a problem here. According to Edwards, God does not need to create because he is deficient. Nevertheless, he must create because of some super-sufficiency in himself. So there is still need - need to communicate his superabundant goodness. A being can be needy because of too much as well as too little. There can be a need to communicate either to fill up or to empty. The need is real in any case. Edwards would probably answer that God has no need or possibility of emptying himself. The creation is an extension of himself, neither by addition or diminution. True, but then pantheism is threatening once again.
God’s sufficiency is humbling to the creature because he cannot be profitable to his Creator. Edwards reassures him. Man cannot add to the independent and all-sufficient, but he can be and is acceptable to Him. It is interesting that this point comes into the argumentation in Freedom of the Will. The Arminians were ill-advised, Edwards said, in thinking that because God could not be profited by the praise of men that He was therefore beyond virtue. On the contrary:
The Scripture everywhere represents God as the highest object of all these: there we read of the “soul’s magnifying the Lord” or “loving him with all the heart, with all the soul, with all the mind, and with all the strength”; admiring him, and his righteous acts, or greatly regarding them as marvellous and wonderful; honoring, glorifying, exalting, extolling, blessing, thanking, and praising him. . . . *58*
In July 8, 1731, Edwards preached “God Glorified in the Work of Redemption, by the Greatness of Man’s Dependence Upon Him, in the Whole of It.” When Perry Miller, Winslow and Whittemore (as well as many others), see in this famous sermon a blast at the prevailing covenant theology, they show something true and something false in their interpretations. Not only did Edwards not explicitly or implicitly indict the covenant in this sermon, but he taught the covenant doctrine explicitly elsewhere. *59* Therefore, these interpretations are egregiously in error on this covenantal point. But there is something true in interpretations recognizing an unqualified articulation on Edwards’ part of an absolutely independent God and an absolutely dependent man, even in, and especially in, the affair of redemption. God is no more independent in the creation of the world than He is in the recreation of the soul. *60*
5. Immutability
Divine immutability rests on solid foundations. A change in God would imply non-eternality. It is therefore impossible in the nature of the case. It is also impossible that God should ever be under temptation to change His mind because of any lack. Changing the mind would indicate some lack of pleasure or profit, which is inconceivable in God, Edwards argues, citing 1Sa_15:29 and Numbers 23:19. *61* This argument is spelled out in the Rom_1:20 lecture in the reverse direction. That is, there Edwards reasons not that God’s lacking some pleasure or profit is inconceivable, and therefore mutability is inconceivable; but that, mutability being inconceivable, God’s possible lack of any excellency is inconceivable.
Edwards himself never preached this doctrine more eloquently than in the sermon entitled “Jesus Christ the Same Yesterday, Today, and Forever.”
As Christ is one of the persons of the Trinity, he is God, and so hath the divine nature, or the Godhead dwelling in him, and all the divine attributes belong to him, of which immutability or unchangeableness is one. Christ in his human nature was not absolutely unchangeable, though his human nature, by reason of its union with the divine, was not liable to those changes to which it was liable, as a mere creature; as for instance, it was indestructible and imperishable. *62*
The most drastic possible change in God would be the decision to do evil. That, however, is impossible because “’Tis impossible that God should be under any temptation to do anything that is evil.” *63*
The grand conclusion is expressed in a sermon on Numbers 23:19. *64* There Edwards argues that it is meaningless to talk of God’s literally repenting, for “God is in himself but one single and pure act. . . .” citing Psa_10:4. Being but one, there cannot be another act. It is impossible to state immutability in a more fundamental and final form. Consequently, God never changes what He proposes to do (this is a word of everlasting doom for the impenitent and of perfect joy for the redeemed), or the rules by which he does them.
Reasons for God’s immutability and proofs of it are also given. The reasons are that God suffers from no ignorance or error and is immutable by nature. “If you say that he causes the change himself, I answer that that supposes that there is some change already before he came to desire to change his own nature.” *65* This was in answer to those who championed the changeability of God under terms of his own self-sovereignty. Edwards shows that such sovereignty would have undermined immutability to start with. The proofs he cites are the law of nature, the moral law and the fulfillment of prophecy. The use in the application is to refute the Arminian notion of conditional decrees. The possibility of God’s will being added to or changed implies ignorance of the contingent and implies capability of error, all of which are anathema even to the Arminians.
What is usually presented as an argument against the immutability of God is His creation. As we have seen when discussing independence, a need seems to be implied in deciding to make something. Edwards refuted this contention by saying that it was not insufficiency but sufficiency that moved God’s decision to create others to participate in his fullness. He also contended that creation does not imply mutability. Edwards, however, admits the problem in M 1340 and seems to feel that it is insoluble apart from revelation. But in the Dissertation he attempts a refutation in terms of reason as well as revelation, as we have seen above.
However difficult it may be to prove the immutability of God, the consolation in the doctrine makes the effort well worthwhile, for the saints may reflect that: “Whatever changes they are the subjects of, they have this to think of - that God’s love is unchangeable.” That is the bottom line.
Karl Barth accuses the orthodox of creating an immutable God, rather than worshiping God immutable. For Barth the repentance of God is not merely figurative. *66* Without the possibility of God’s defection, creation would not be distinct from God. *67* God opposes the opposition of the creature to Himself. His immutability is seen in that God can be and in fact is “the God even of sinful man; He is judge and deliverer, without altering His unalterable being.” *68* The immutability of God is seen in His salvation (rather than creation), and that in Jesus Christ. *69* It is the immutability of the freedom of God that we have to recognize and acknowledge in Jesus Christ. *70*
“Against the perfection in which God is constantly the what He is we have now to set the perfection in which He is able to do what He wills, the perfection of His omnipotence.” *71* A discussion of omnipotence follows. Barth rejects Quenstedts statement that God cannot do that which is a contradiction, saying “this introduces a general concept of what is possible which is independent of the concept of God, and must be stoutly resisted.” *72*
What Barth is saying is that God’s immutability consists in His mutability. He must stoutly resist the notion of Edwards and all the orthodox that immutability means that God cannot act against His own nature. That is too confining for God, in Barths opinion. God must be free to act as He will, regardless of His being. His being as He will is His acting as He will. It is His immutable nature to be mutable. It is His metaphysical immutability to be morally mutable, “judge and deliverer.”
The difference between Barth and the Arminians of Edwards’ day is profound. When a contradiction such as the above was shown to exist in Arminian thinking, eighteenth-century Arminians would admit that their case was lost. Not so with Barth. He confidently asserts and maintains what would embarrass the earlier anti-Calvinists, such as Quenstedt. Edwards would find this bifurcation between the metaphysical nature and moral nature of God absurd, and also the moral bifurcation in itself. When we consider his doctrine of the Atonement we will see that Edwards will not admit that God can be judge and deliverer by a mere act of divine freedom but only by satisfying His immutable holiness by an adequate sacrifice. *73*
6. Sovereignty
“From childhood,” wrote Andrew Macphail, “Edwards’ mind had been full of objections to the doctrine of God’s sovereignty, and it seemed horrible to him, as it has done to many maturer minds since, ‘that God could choose whom he would, leaving them eternally to perish and be tormented eternally in hell.’ At length he became happy in the acceptance of this strange dogma and spent his life in urging its acceptance on others.” *74*
To Macphail, and many other “maturer minds,” this doctrine of divine sovereignty does indeed seem “strange dogma.” So it did to Edwards, at first, and later it became and remained strange that he could ever have doubted it. He spent his life trying to persuade others that it was not at all strange that God should be absolutely sovereign and their eternal salvation depend on believing just that. A young woman once said when she heard this doctrine, “I was never so close to not being a Christian.” Her pastor replied, confronting her with the indispensability of faith in this truth (once seen as such), “You were never so close to being a Christian.” To be God implies three things: (1) the highest dignity and excellence and, (2) being all-sufficient, (3) to reign supreme. *75*
“The sovereignty of God is his absolute, independent right of disposing of all creatures according to his own pleasure.” *76* Edwards shows that no creature has such sovereignty; it belongs to God only. There is no question that the Calvinist Edwards places great stress on this theme, especially in his preaching. Still, Allen goes too far when he writes that the “stress of his conception is on God as will, rather than as idea or reason.” *77* And so did Edwards Junior, though in the opposite direction, when he wrote of his father’s view that “God is no more the efficient cause of his own volition than he is of his own existence.” *78*
We shall note later the voluntariness of all the divine attributes, at least the communicable ones, which suggests that volition is not quite the same as existence. Making a voluntarist out of Edwards overlooks the profound rationality of the divine nature according to which He wills. Edwards belongs to the school of Thomas and not of Scotus. When Samuel Clarke argued for free will in an absolutely necessary system and used God as an example, he failed to notice what was latter to be the basic pattern of Edwards’ thought. *79* Paul Ramsey made this same mistake more recently, supposing God to be free in Edwards thought, somewhat as man is free in Arminian thought, and that this was the fundamental reason Edwards argued so strenuously against the Arminian freedom of the will. According to Ramsey, Edwards wanted to reserve this unique freedom for God. *80* God, however, really is not “free” in that sense in Edwards. God does not and cannot act against His own rational nature. But He is free in choosing according to His rational judgment, though Isaac Watts and the Arminians could not see this as freedom either in God or man. *81*
Edwards conversion turned on the sovereignty doctrine, and his ministry proper began at this point. His first published sermon, which was also the first to be heard beyond his own parish, was a grand declaration of this theme: “God is glorified in the work of redemption in this, that there appears in it so absolute and universal a dependence of the redeemed on him.” As Thomas Prince and William Cooper noted in their preface to the publication, “Such doctrines as these . . . [God] has signally owned and prospered in the reformed world, and in our land especially in the days of our founding Fathers; and we hope they will never grow unfashionable among us.” According to Haroutunian and many others, divine sovereignty did grow quite unfashionable, especially in New England; but it was in spite of Jonathan Edwards and not because of him.
God’s sovereignty is intimately, inseparably and indispensably associated with His happiness:
If it will universally hold, that none can have absolutely perfect and complete happiness, at the same time that any thing is otherwise than he desires at that time it should be; so thus, if it be true, that he has not absolute, perfect, infinite, and all possible happiness now, who has not now all that he wills to have now; then God, if any thing is now otherwise than he wills to have it now, is not now absolutely, perfectly, and infinitely happy. If God is infinitely happy now, then every thing is now as God would have it be now; if every thing, then those things that are contrary to his commands. If so, it is not ridiculous to say, that things which are contrary to God’s commands, are yet in a sense agreeable to his will? Again, let it be considered, whether it be not certainly true, that every one that can with infinite ease have a thing done, and yet will not have it done, wills it not; that is, whether or no he that wills not to have a thing done, properly wills not to have a thing done. For example, let the thing be this, that Judas should be faithful to his Lord; whether it be not true, that if God could with infinite ease have it done as He would, but would not have it done as he could, if he would, it be not proper to say, that God would not have it be, that Judas should be faithful to his Lord. *82*
Sovereignty rests on omnipotence, the unchangeable power of God. *83* This power has no bounds. *84* The mere touch of God’s hands can distress man, *85* and certainly his determination determines all their lives. This view explains the perspective from which Edwards saw the fate of whole peoples as, for example, the American Indians, among whom he had his last ministry, and the African blacks.
The savages, who live in the remote parts of this continent, and are under the grossest heathenish darkness, as well as the inhabitants of Africa, are naturally in exactly similar circumstances towards God with us in this land. They are no more alienated or estranged from God in their natures than we; and God has no more to charge them with. And yet what a vast difference has God made between us and them!
What is the explanation? “In this he has exercised his sovereignty.” *86*
The expression of this sovereign power will be seen more clearly in the consideration of the decrees. Here we must notice that this sovereignty is always in expression. So Edwards preached “That God doth whatever he pleases.” *87* The points of this sermon on Dan_4:35 are forthright: (1) God is able, (2) He has the right, (3) His will could be determined by nothing outside Himself. Edwards shows this in the application of the doctrine to angels and men. The Arminian doctrine of election, being based on foresight of faith, is repugnant precisely because it “is contrary to the order in which the Scripture represents things” (which is precisely opposite, namely, that the foresight of faith rests on sovereign election). *88* “A God of infinite goodness and benevolence loves those that have no excellency to move or attract it: the love of men is consequent upon some loveliness in the object, but the love of God is antecedent to, and the cause of it.” *89*
Sovereignty makes the possibility of election or reprobation inevitable: “it implies that God can either bestow salvation on any of the children of men, or refuse it, without any prejudice to the glory of any of his attributes, except where he has been pleased to declare, that he will or will not bestow it.” *90* Edwards is very insistent on this point, perhaps because his own salvation had turned on it. He insists that even nature is dependent on this sovereignty. Thus, for example, mercy on Joseph preceded his need for it, which God also decreed. “This mercy . . . bestowed on Joseph did not properly depend on the approaching of the famine because the approaching of the famine itself was of God’s ordering and was dependent on him.” *91*
God’s sovereignty in salvation is not inconsistent with any of His attributes. *92* It is not inconsistent with His holiness because salvation includes no countenancing of sin, nor is damnation decreed except for those deserving it. It is not inconsistent with majesty because that is repaired in salvation and vindicated in damnation. Justice is satisfied in salvation, and the damned merit damnation. Truth is glorified because the sinner dies in Christ and is made alive in Him verily as promised, while the damned receive their due wages as threatened. Goodness shines in salvation and is shown to be a voluntary attribute in damnation. “God Glorified” followed a similar theme without the stress on sovereignty. *93*
As this theme had been crucial in Edwards own conversion, he never wearied of pressing it on other recalcitrant sinners:
You never yet would submit to God; never willingly comply, that God should have dominion over the world, and that he should govern it for his own glory, according to his own wisdom. You, a poor worm, a potsherd, a broken piece of an earthen vessel, have dared to find fault and quarrel with God. Isa_45:9. “Woe to him that strives with his Maker”. . . . you have said to Jehovah, What dost thou? *94*
As for a long time it had been Edwards’ own stumbling block, he finds it still the stumbling block on which thousands fall and perish. But we must get over this recalcitrancy. If we go on contending with God about His sovereignty, it will be our eternal ruin. “Tis absolutely necessary that we should submit to God as our absolute sovereign and sovereign over our souls, as one that may have mercy on whom he will have mercy and harden [whom he will].” Edwards insists that:
The absolute, universal, and unlimited sovereignty of God requires, that we should adore him with all possible humility and reverence. It is impossible that we should go to excess in lowliness and reverence of that Being who may dispose of us to all eternity, as he pleases. *95*
At the end of his sermon on divine sovereignty, Edwards pleads that the unregenerate sinner not despair though,
you are a great sinner, because you have persevered so long in sin, have backslidden, and resisted the Holy Ghost. Remember that, let your case be what it may, and you ever so great a sinner, if you have not committed the sin against the Holy Ghost, God can bestow mercy upon you without the least prejudice to the honour of his holiness, which you have offended, or to the honour of his majesty, which you have insulted, or of his justice, which you have made your enemy, or of his truth, or of any of his attributes. Let you be what sinner you may, God can, if he pleases, greatly glorify himself in your salvation. *96*
God’s sovereignty continues whether His creatures accept it or reject it. “You must be ruled by God. You can’t deliver yourself from the cords and bonds of his government. If you are willing and obedient, these bonds will be no other than silken cords of his love; but if otherwise, they will be iron chains.” *97* The sermon continues with a five-point development of the beauty of submission.
God must be sovereign because the alternative is impossible. “If the mercy of God were not free so that he could shew mercy on whom he would and withhold it from whom [he would], this would abate of the creatures’ obligation to God for his mercy. If God’s grace were not free, it would cease to be grace.” *98* Furthermore, since God will exact justice of some, no one can presume on His mercy. This is particularly pertinent to remember while the awakening is in progress; but some are quenching the Holy Spirit, and He will deal exactly with such.
This note of absolute divine sovereignty even in the matter of salvation, being as conspicuously absent in John Wesley as it is emphatically present in Jonathan Edwards, the cute observation of H. Richard Niebuhr is in order: “Wesleys essential Calvinism - if this belief (the sovereignty of God) be Calvinism - has recently been described by Professor Cell, though it may be that the great Methodists limitation lay at this point of his frequent unawareness of this predisposition of his gospel.” *99* Niebuhr is not the only one unaware of Wesleys “essential Calvinism” or essential sovereignty doctrine.
Can the God of Edwardsian sovereign determinism be moral is the Arminian question. The most thorough facing of this question by Edwards comes in his great attack on the Arminian citadel of “free-will.” So we will follow his polemic in the Freedom of the Will.
He begins: “God’s Moral Excellency Necessary, Yet Virtuous and Praiseworthy.” *100* In Part III, Section 1, Edwards observes that the Arminians grant that God is holy and necessarily so. This is prima facie evidence that necessity is not inconsistent with morality. If God is holy - necessarily so - necessity is perfectly compatible with perfect morality. But while granting the premise - that God is necessarily holy - Arminians do not admit that men can be necessarily holy. Edwards is constrained to face this inconsistency in the next paragraph. In fact, the argument backfires on the Arminians because their view of “free” virtue compels them to deny virtue in the deity. To which Edwards expostulates:
[T]he infinitely holy God, who always used to be esteemed by God’s people, not only virtuous, but a being in whom is all possible virtue, and every virtue in the most absolute purity and perfection, and in infinitely greater brightness and amiableness than in any creature; the most perfect pattern of virtue, and the fountain from whom all other’s virtue is but as beams from the sun; and who has been supposed to be, on the account of his virtue and holiness, infinitely more worthy to be esteemed, loved, honored, admired, commended, extolled and praised, than any creature; and he who is thus everywhere represented in Scripture; I say, this being, according to this notion of Dr. Whitby, and other Arminians, has no virtue at all; virtue, when ascribed to him, is but “an empty name”; and he is deserving of no commendation or praise; because he is under necessity, he can’t avoid being holy and good as he is; therefore no thanks to him for it. It seems, the holiness, justice, faithfulness, etc. of the most High, must not be accounted to be of the nature of that which is virtuous and praiseworthy. They will not deny, that these things in God are good; but then we must understand them, that they are no more virtuous, or of the nature of anything commendable, than the good that is in any other being that is not a moral agent; as the brightness of the sun, and the fertility of the earth are good, but not virtuous, because these properties are necessary to these bodies, and not the fruit of self-determining power. *101*
Edwards does not present the above as an argument so much as an exclamation. He will come to the argument against this view later. Here it is sufficient to set forth to the Arminians view that the most holy of beings is not holy at all. This paragraph is infinite understatement. Edwards senses that merely to state it is to refute it in the popular mind. The Arminians do this often enough - that is, state something that they think the people will instinctively judge to be right or wrong - that Edwards seems warranted in employing the same appeal to common judgment so long as he has correctly stated the Arminian position.
The biblical evidence that God is truly moral and truly praise-worthy is so overwhelming that citing it would be “endless.” Edwards lets the matter rest with the mere statement which he thinks no one would attempt to contradict.
If, continues Edwards, necessary holiness is no holiness, then God is not holy, though man is. He cannot communicate holiness which he does not possess and cannot choose virtue or avoid vice, any more than “a precious stone, which can’t avoid being hard and beautiful.” If this is so, (and the frank Arminians will admit that they think it is), then what respect is owing to God and why do the Arminians thank God? Especially, why do they use the goodness and virtue of God against the Calvinists whom they charge with denying the goodness and virtue of God? Edwards cannot help wondering what makes the Arminians tick - that they have such a notion of the non-virtue of God - and tries to explain where they went astray in the concluding paragraph of this section:
That virtue in God is not, in the most proper sense, rewardable, is not for want of merit in his moral perfections and actions, sufficient to deserve rewards from his creatures; but because he is infinitely above all capacity of receiving any reward or benefit from the creature;: he is already infinitely and unchangeably happy, and we can’t be profitable unto him. But still he is worthy of our supreme benevolence for his virtue; and would be worthy of our beneficience, which is the fruit and expression of benevolence, if our goodness could extend to him. If God deserves to be thanked and praised for his goodness, he would for the same reason, deserve that we should also requite his kindness, if that were possible. “What shall I render to the Lord for all his benefits?” [Psa_116:12] is the natural language of thankfulness: and so far as in us lies, it is our duty to recompense God’s goodness, and render again according to benefits received. And that we might have opportunity for so natural an expression of our gratitude to God, as beneficence, notwithstanding his being infinitely above our reach; he has appointed others to be his receivers, and to stand in his stead, as the objects of our beneficence; such are especially our indigent brethren. *102*
We note here this recurring feature in Edwards argumentation with erroriststhat is, trying to locate the source of their demonstrated error. In this he is following the theologian whom he considered the best polemicist, Francis Turretin, who customarily at the end of a given topic in which some heresy has been refuted adds his fontes solutionum, in which he tries to locate what caused the heretic to err. Here, Edwards is finding that