The Holy Spirit as the Bond of Union in the Theology of Jonathan Edwards

By Robert W. Caldwell III

Ever since international attention was turned to his Northampton ministry in the late 1730s, Jonathan Edwards (1703–58) has remained a prominent fixture in the psyche of American Christianity. Until recently, most American high school students were exposed to his classic revival sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Cod,” which represents a quintessential example of a fiery Puritan sermon in colonial American literature. Today, many American evangelicals know him for his great discernment in the realm of religious psychology where he distinguished true and holy “religious affections” from false religious enthusiasm and emotionalism.

It may come as a surprise, however, that his life-long fascination with the nature of religious experience was part of a wider theological vision he pursued throughout his life, a vision anchored in the bedrock of a trinitarian theology which prominently featured the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Edwards was convinced that pneumatology, or the study of the Holy Spirit, was considerably neglected in the theology of his day. Because the Spirit is equally God within the Trinity, consubstantial with the Father and the Son, he ought to receive equal attention in theological discourse, as well as equal honor by individual Christians in their devotional lives. Edwards’ strategy to remedy this situation was to amplify the theme of the Holy Spirit as the bond of union in his theology. He conceived of the Holy Spirit as the personal divine love of the Godhead, a love which binds the Father and Son together in a union of infinite affection. This affection, Edwards goes on to point out, can be communicated to the hearts of created beings in such a way that they too can be united to God.

In this study we will examine Edwards’ understanding of the Holy Spirit as the bond of union in his theology, noting particularly how he envisioned the Spirit as the bond of union not only of the Trinity, but also of the Christian’s union with Christ. Along the way we will observe how deeply both his trinitarianism and pneumatology shaped his theology.

Trinity: The Spirit as the Bond of Union in the Godhead

To begin our study, we must first survey Jonathan Edwards’ understanding of the Trinity. Edwards’ trinitarianism follows a line of reasoning that is similar to Augustine, who saw analogies between the psychological makeup of human beings (mind, understanding, will/affection), and the three persons of the Trinity. For Edwards, the Trinity consists in God, his infinite self-reflection or idea of himself, and the infinite love he has for himself. In “Miscellanies” entry Number 405, he writes that

[The Trinity] may be thus expressed: the Son is the Deity generated by God’s understanding, or having an idea of himself; the Holy Ghost is the divine essence flowing out, or breathed forth, in infinite love and delight. Or, which is the same, the Son is God’s idea of himself, and the Spirit is God’s love to and delight in himself. [1]

Edwards does not embrace this model of the Trinity because it was Augustine’s; he embraces it primarily because he thinks that it is biblical. He notes that Jesus Christ, as the incarnate second person of the Trinity, is depicted in Scripture as the Logos of God (John 1:1), the “wisdom” of God (1 Corinthians 1:24; Proverbs 8:22ff), and the “image” of God, scriptural language which is congruent with the concept that the second person of the Trinity is God’s understanding or idea of himself. Because Edwards believes that there is a great deal of continuity between the way the triune God reveals himself in creation and redemption (i.e., the “economic” Trinity) and the way he is eternally within himself (i.e., the “immanent” Trinity), he is able to affirm, based upon these biblical grounds, that God the Son is truly the personal and consubstantial Logos, image, or understanding of the Godhead. “The second person of the Trinity,” he writes, “[is] the only begotten and dearly beloved Son of God; He is the eternal, necessary, perfect, substantial and personal idea which God hath of himself.” [2]

God not only knows himself infinitely, he loves the knowledge of himself as well. This love Edwards describes as a “most pure act,” and an “infinitely holy and sacred energy” which is mutually “breathed forth” between Father and Son. [3] Edwards argues that this “sacred energy” in its infinite perfection stands forth within the Godhead as the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit. Biblically, he defends this idea with a multitude of arguments. He derives ontological conclusions from his reading of 1 John 4:8 (“God is love”): “the Divine nature and essence does subsist in love.” [4] Furthermore, the Spirit’s activities in creation and redemption, as well as the scriptural metaphors of the Spirit, are “very consonant” with the fact that he is the loving and infinite “sacred energy” of the Godhead. The Spirit quickens all things, moving over the face of the waters at creation and garnishing the heavens (Genesis 1; Job 26:13); he sanctifies created spirits, “that is, He gives them Divine love” (1 John 4:12–13); he comforts and delights the souls of God’s people, filling them with spiritual joy (Romans 14:17); and lastly Scripture likens him to water, fire, breath, wind, wine, a spring, and a river, all of which testify to the Spirit’s inner-trinitarian being as the “pure act,” of the Godhead. [5] From these arguments Edwards is able to summarize his understanding of the inner-trinitarian community as follows:

The Scripture therefore leads us to this conclusion, though it be infinitely above us to conceive how it should be, that yet as the Son of God is the personal word, idea, or wisdom of God, begotten by God, being an infinitely perfect, substantial image or idea of himself, ... so the Holy Spirit does in some ineffable and inconceivable manner proceed, and is breathed forth from the Father and the Son, by the Divine essence being wholly poured and flowing out in that infinitely intense, holy, and pure love and delight that continually and unchangeably breathes forth from the Father and the Son. [6]

Several observations on the Holy Spirit are appropriate at this point. First, Edwards identifies the Holy Spirit as the mutual love of the Father and the Son, as we observe in the previous quote: the Spirit is the “pure love and delight that continually and unchangeably breathes forth from the Father and the Son.” Because of this, he can say that the Spirit is the bond of union of the Godhead: “the holiness of God consist[s] in His love, especially in the perfect and intimate union and love there is between the Father and the Son. But the Spirit that proceeds from the Father and the Son is the bond of this union.” [7] As the bond of this inner-trinitarian union, he unites the Father and the Son in an infinite fellowship and communion. [8]

Second, Edwards’ presentation of the Holy Spirit as the divine love of the Godhead underscores the “hiddenness” of the Spirit in the immanent Trinity. Love by nature highlights the object of its gaze, and does not call attention to itself. In the Trinity, the Spirit “highlights” God the Father’s beloved, the divine Son, as well as the Son’s beloved, the Father. He is the mediator of their communion, the bond of their love, and the sacred energy of their union. While he is fully a person in the trinitarian community, Edwards’s emphasizes the fact that the Spirit is more the personal communion of the Father and the Son, rather than a person in communion with the Father and the Son (though he would affirm this). Scripture, Edwards observes, leads us to these conclusions: “though we often read in Scripture of the Father loving the Son, and the Son loving the Father, yet we never once read either of the Father or the Son loving the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit loving either of them.” [9] Why? The reason is because the Spirit is the divine love of Father and Son.

Do not these statements imply that the Spirit is more an “it” rather than a “he?” In other words, does his understanding of the Trinity run the risk of depersonalizing the Spirit by identifying him as the divine love? Edwards would resolutely answer, no. The fact that the personal Spirit is, to Edwards, the divine love and bond of union of the Trinity is a truth to be held with a profound sense of mystery. It is hard for our minds to conceive how love could be a person. Yet just because we cannot fully comprehend this truth does not mean that it cannot be true in the context of God’s infinite and unsearchable essence. Infinite love may very well “stand forth” as a personal subsistence between the Father and the Son. Edwards never loses sight of the fact the Holy Spirit is the third person of the Trinity. As we shall see in the following sections, his identification of the Holy Spirit with divine love allows him to possess a highly versatile pneumatology. The same divine love, who is the Spirit and who unites the Father and the Son in a bond of love, is communicated to the hearts of the saints, whereby they are caught up in the fellowship of the trinitarian communion.

Creation, Redemption and the Spirit’s Economic Work

According to Edwards, when God created the universe and began the process of glorifying himself through the redemption of the elect, he did not disregard the shape of his inner-trinitarian glory. Rather, God had in mind to bring glory to himself in creation and redemption in a way that would reflect his inner-trinitarian life. To be more specific: as God eternally glorifies himself within the Trinity (or ad intra) by eternally generating the perfect personal image of himself in the Son, and by infinitely loving his own knowledge of himself through the spiration of the Spirit, so too does he glorify himself in time and space externally (or ad extra) by communicating his own wisdom and knowledge of himself through the presentation of his beloved Son, Jesus Christ, and by communicating his own joy and love in the bestowing of the Holy Spirit on his people. The entire plan of creation and redemption, from the widest possible angle, is actually a created reflection of God’s infinite inner-trinitarian glory.

Edwards develops this theology in numerous places. In “Miscellanies” Number 1062, he argues that when God planned to glorify himself through a process of creation and redemption, the persons of the Godhead agreed to manifest their glory in way that reflects the beautiful order of their inner-trinitarian relationships. “[T]here is a natural decency or fitness in that order and economy that is established [within the Trinity],” writes Edwards,

‘Tis fit that the order of the acting of the persons of the Trinity [ad extra] should be agreeable to the order of their subsisting: that as the Father is first in the order of subsisting, so he should be first in the order of acting; that as the other two persons are from the Father in their subsistence, and as to their subsistence naturally originated from him and dependent on him, so that, in all that they act, they should originate from him, act from him and in a dependence on him; that as the Father, with respect to the subsistence, is the fountain of the Deity, wholly and entirely so, so he should be the fountain in all the acts of the Deity. This is fit and decent in itself. [10]

The same arguments are applied to the Son and the Spirit. As the Son and Spirit are second and third within the order of the immanent Trinity, so too will their work in the history of redemption reflect this order.

Similar arguments are also found in his reflections on God’s purpose in creating the world. In short, God’s end in creation is to glorify himself through a communication of his inner fullness to sentient creatures. In his magisterial Dissertation on the End for Which God Created the World, Edwards observes that the content of this divine communication is two-fold, consisting in the communication of God’s understanding and will. [11] If we examine these statements from the vantage point of his trinitarianism, then we immediately see the trinitarian foundation to God’s self-communication: God glorifies himself through sending his Son to reveal and redeem his saints (i.e., communicating his understanding), and filling them with his Spirit (i.e., communicating his will). Edwards does not explicitly link this two-fold communication with the second and third persons of the Trinity in End of Creation, yet he does do this elsewhere, in “Miscellanies” Number 1084. There, Edwards comments on the closing verse of Jesus’ high priestly prayer: “I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them” (John 17:26). Edwards observes that:

In this last verse these two ways of God’s flowing forth and being communicated, that are the end of all things, are expressed, viz, manifesting God’s name and communicating his love or, in other words, Christ’s being in the creature in the name, idea or knowledge of God being in them, and the Holy Spirit’s being in them in the love of God’s being in them. [12]

Subsequently, this two-fold “flowing forth” of God is merely a created reflection of his internal generation of the Son and spiration of the Holy Spirit:

This twofold way of the Deity’s flowing forth ad extra answers to the twofold way of the Deity’s proceeding ad intra, in the proceeding and generation of the the Son and the proceeding and breathing forth of the Holy Spirit; and indeed is only a kind of second proceeding of the same persons, their going forth ad extra, as before they proceeded ad intra. [13]

With these statements, the trinitarian shape of God’s purpose in creating the world becomes clear: God creates and redeems that he may be gloriously known to the creature through Christ, yet loved by them in the Spirit. Consequently, Christ “objectifies” Cod to the saints, manifesting the knowledge of God to their understandings; whereas the Spirit “subjectifies” God to them, communicating divine love to their hearts.

The upshot of this discussion is that the same pneumatological characteristics we observed earlier with regard to the Spirit’s inner-trinitarian life will be discerned in the Spirit’s economic redemptive operations. As the divine love, the Spirit’s ways will be “hidden” in the work of redemption, for love does not draw attention to itself, but to the beloved. The Spirit, in his work in human hearts, will thus draw attention to the Father’s beloved, Christ, as well as to Christ’s beloved, the Father. The saints’ devotional lives will thus reflect this emphasis. While it is right and fitting to address the Holy Spirit personally at times in our prayers, our songs, and our corporate worship (because he is a person), the predominant “way” of the Spirit in Christians’ devotional lives is to point us to glorify the Father through Christ in the Spirit.

Another parallel we discern between the Spirit’s immanent trinitarian activity and his external work in redemption is that the Spirit is also the bond of union both ad intra and ad extra. As his work in the Trinity is to unite the Father and the Son in an infinite and eternal fellowship of divine love, so he similarly works in redemption to unite the hearts of the saints to Christ.

[T]he Spirit that proceeds from the Father and the Son is the bond of this union [of love], as it is of all holy union between the Father and the Son, and between God and the creature, and between the creatures among themselves....Therefore this Spirit of love is the “bond of perfectness” (Colossians 3:14) throughout the whole blessed society or family in heaven and earth, consisting of the Father, the Head of the family, and the Son, and all His saints that are the disciples, seed, and spouse of the Son. [14]

Theologians today are very uncomfortable with making strong connections between the Holy Spirit and divine love in the way that Edwards does, primarily because they say it tends to depersonalize the Spirit, reducing him to a mere affection, and divesting him of his divine personhood. Edwards never felt this had to be the case. To his mind the fact that the Spirit is the personal divine love of the Godhead is a great mystery of theology, something to be recognized in humility, not a theological problem to be solved or eradicated. He writes that it is “ineffable,” and “utterly inexplicable and inconceivable” that the “flowing forth” of the divine affection should stand forth as a separate personal subsistence within the Trinity, and “that this is that person that is poured forth in the hearts of angels and saints.” [15] Because he firmly holds that the personal Holy Spirit is the divine love, he does not feel that his theology depersonalizes the Spirit in any way.

As a matter of fact, Edwards thought that he was doing a great honor to the Holy Spirit by theologically associating him with divine love.

If it be said that more glory belongs to the Father and the Son because they manifested a more wonderful love, the Father in giving his Son infinitely dear to him, the Son in laying down his life; yet let it be considered, that the Holy Ghost is that wonderful love. Just so much as the two first persons glorify themselves, by showing the astonishing greatness of their love and grace, just so much they glorify that love and grace, who is the Holy Ghost. [16]

Far from being the agent who merely applies the work of Christ to the elect, the Spirit is the sum of all the good that believers commune in, all the grace that believers benefit from, and all the love that they enjoy in God. Edwards here is consciously trying to distinguish himself from what he views is a weakness in traditional theology. “What used to be supposed about the Holy Ghost,” he writes, “meerly [sic] to apply to us or immediately to give or hand to us the blessing purchased, after it was purchased” is “but a little thing” compared to the work that God the Father and Son did toward securing the redemption of humankind. “But according to this [i.e., Edwards’ understanding of Holy Spirit] there is an equality. To be the love of God to the world is as much as for the Father and the Son to do so much from love to the world, and to be the thing purchased was so much as the price.” [17] The agenda he presents here is bold and clear: the restoration of the full equality, honor, and dignity of the Holy Spirit among the members of the Trinity.

The Holy Spirit as the Bond of Union in Edwards’s Theology of Redemption

Throughout his life, Edwards identified the Spirit as the bond of various unions throughout his theology. For instance, the Spirit is the bond of the hypostatic union, uniting Christ’s human and divine natures. The Spirit also unites Christians together in a bond of love, enabling them to serve one another in sacrificial giving. Space hinders us from treating all of these topics in their fullness. For the remainder of our study we will analyze Edwards’ theology of salvation by addressing how he envisioned the Spirit as the bond of the Christian’s union with Christ. According to Edwards, the Spirit unites us to Christ by (1) filling us with grace, (2) gifting us with faith, and (3) illuminating our souls by drawing our attention to the wonderful excellencies of Christ. We will examine each of these separately.

First, we see Edwards’ emphasis on the Holy Spirit as the bond of union in his understanding of the nature of grace. Edwards does not consider grace to be something which is poured into the soul, as if grace is part of the created order. Grace, for Edwards, is none other than the indwelling of the third person of the Trinity, united to the soul’s faculties as a principle of divine love.

So that that holy, Divine principle, which we have observed does radically and essentially consist in Divine Love, is no other than a communication and participation of that same infinite Divine Love, which is God, and in which the Godhead is eternally breathed forth; and subsists in the Third Person in the blessed Trinity. So that true saving grace is no other than that very love of God—that is God, in One of the Persons of the Trinity, uniting Himself to the soul of a creature, as a vital principle, dwelling there and exerting Himself by the faculties of the soul of man, in His own proper nature after the manner of a principle of nature. [18]

Edwards affirms that in regeneration there is a mysterious union between the Spirit and the saint’s soul. This union is so close that he confesses that it is virtually impossible to distinguish the saint’s own holy affections and love from the Spirit’s own holy affections and love which he prompts in the saint. “And indeed,” Edwards writes in a 1737 sermon, “the new nature in a saint can scarce itself be distinguished from the communication or participation he has of the Spirit of God, or that Spirit dwelling in him united to him, acting as a vital principle in his soul.” [19] This vital principle (which is the Holy Spirit) now exerts itself (himself!) at the deepest levels of a saint’s volition. What he infinitely desires (the glory of God), the saint now desires in finite, yet increasing, degrees. What he infinitely loves (the Father and the Son), the saint now loves in finite, yet increasing, degrees. Edwards is clear that this union in no way compromises the boundaries between Creator and creature. [20] Yet at the same time he wishes to affirm that the love with which we love God is not to be too sharply distinguished from the divine love who is the Spirit of God himself communicated to our souls. [21]

Second, we see the Spirit’s work as the bond of the Christian’s union with Christ in Edwards’ studies on faith. The Spirit gifts the saint with faith, enabling her to embrace Christ lovingly as a glorious Savior. Edwards closely associates faith and love in his theology: “love is the essence of faith,” he writes in a “Miscellanies” entry on justification (Number 820); “yea, [it] is the very life and soul of it, and the most essential thing in it.” Faith and divine love are thus virtually identical in his thought. Yet he does point out one vital feature that distinguishes the two: faith is the expression of divine love in the soul of a fallen human being in need of redemption. It is well known that for Edwards all true virtue essentially consists in divine love, or the immediate presence of the Spirit united to the faculties of both saints and angels. Yet divine love united to the faculties of an elect angel is expressed much differently than in the faculties of the human being, primarily because the human is a sinner in need of redemption.

Though true virtue be essentially the same in mankind before and after the Fall, the same in all intelligent creatures, both men and angels, yet the leading exercise of true virtue may differ according to the different nature, state and circumstances of the creature. [22]

As divine love shines through the prism of a fallen human being, it will show forth characteristics that do not appear in the love of elect angels: a deep awareness of one’s own sin and the need for a Savior, a wonder of the display of Christ in the gospel as he presents himself to the sinner as their completely sufficient Savior and friend, a humble disposition not to trust in one’s own righteousness but in Christ’s, and a loving embrace of him as one’s own all in all. Edwards identifies this loving act as faith. It is the “leading exercise of true virtue” in the heart of a sinful human being, and through it an individual is united to Christ: “Faith,” he writes, “is the proper active union of the soul with Christ as our Savior, as revealed to us in the gospel.” [23] Through saving faith in Christ, the saint is merely united to Christ in a bond of union that is patterned after the Spirit’s inner-trinitarian activity.

Third, we see the Spirit’s work as the bond of union in the way the Spirit opens the minds of the saints, giving them a spiritual sight of both God and Christ. According to Edwards, when the Spirit of God indwells the saint, he opens their spiritual eyes to the excellencies of God and Christ, primarily as these excellencies are viewed in the progress of redemption. Edwards writes that this “spiritual and divine light” which is let into the soul is a “true sense of the divine and superlative excellency of the things of religion; a real sense of the excellency of God, and Jesus Christ, and of the work of redemption, and the ways and works of God revealed in the gospel.” [24] From a subjective point of view, “seeing” God entails the following: the mind surveys the great complexity of revealed religion in the Scriptures—God’s holiness, justice, and mercy, Christ’s person and work, the fitness of faith as a means to salvation, the progress of salvation history as revealed in Scripture-and glimpses such a divine harmony among these various objects that the soul is overwhelmed by the beauty it sees, resulting in a divine love for God and Christ. To be sure, the Christian does not “see” God with bodily eyes; neither is this sight a “vision” of Christ in some sort of apparition. Rather the saint “senses” a divine affection for the excellency and glory of God through a contemplation of the gospel and all the wonderful works of redemption. This “sense of the heart” is in essence the Spirit’s divine love communicated to the soul, a love that has Christ as its object. In all this the Spirit is not drawing attention to himself but rather to the glory of Christ and the excellency of God by being the love and affection that fills the saints’ hearts.

This theme of spiritual sight and its pneumatological origins becomes even more pronounced in Edwards’s discussion of the perfect spiritual sight that Christians shall have of God in heaven, a sight which is known as the beatific vision. “There shall be [in heaven] a view of God in his being, and in his power, and wisdom, and holiness, and goodness, and love, and all-sufficiency, that shall be attended with intuitive certainty.... They shall behold the infinite excellency and glory of God.” [25] The glorified saints do not see these divine attributes, nor do they see God with physical eyes. Rather through their contemplation of Christ, his person, his love, his conversation, and his work of redemption which he has orchestrated on earth, the saints perceive, with ever increasing amazement and wonder, the manifold glories of God. Such a sight reveals God to them, and is of such excellency and divine beauty that they are drawn further and further outside of themselves in love.

This very manifestation that God will make of himself that will cause the beatific vision, will be an act of love in God.... When they see God so glorious, and at the same time see how greatly this God loves them, what delight will it not cause in the soul! Love desires union. They shall therefore see this glorious God united to them, and see themselves united to him. They shall see that he is their Father, and that they are his children, They shall see God gloriously present to them; God with them; and God in them; and they in God. [26]

As we might expect, Edwards identifies the Holy Spirit as the agent of the beatific vision. “As it is by the Holy Spirit that a spiritual sight of God is given in this world, so it is the same Holy Spirit by whom the beatific vision is given of God in heaven.” [27]

Throughout Edwards’ theology of salvation, the Spirit takes center stage as the agent of grace, faith, and spiritual sight. We have demonstrated that the “way” of the Spirit in the hearts of the redeemed is very much like the way he is in the immanent Trinity. To experience holy affections, stirred by the Spirit of God, is to participate in God’s very own divine trinitarian life by communing with the Father and Son in the Holy Spirit. As mentioned earlier, while there are times in our spiritual lives where we may directly and personally address the Spirit in our prayers and worship, the general drift of Edwards’ theology leads to the conclusion that Christians generally are to shape our spiritual lives around the communion of God the Father and his Son in the love who is the Spirit. For Edwards this was precisely the way that Christians honor the Holy Spirit as the third person of the Trinity. As mysterious as it may seem to the human mind, Edwards understood the Holy Spirit to be the personal love of the Godhead who is the bond of union of the Father and the Son. He never lost sight of the fact that the Spirit is a person, even though he identified him with the divine love. Thus, in the grand scale of things, redemption is primarily about two things: knowledge of God, and love for God. Yet mysteriously this is a trinitarian formula: we know God the Father only through union and communion with his Son, Jesus Christ, a communion which all takes place in the fellowship who is the personal Holy Spirit.

Christ has brought it to pass, that those that the Father has given him should be brought into the household of God, that he and his Father and they should be as it were one society, one family; that his people should be in a sort admitted into that society of the three persons in the Godhead. In this family or household, God [is] the Father, Jesus Christ is his own natural and eternally begotten Son. The saints, they also are children in the family; the church is the daughter of God, being the spouse of his Son. They all have communion in the same spirit, the Holy Ghost. [28]

Author

Robert Caldwell has just recently finished his Ph.D. in Historical Theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School of Trinity International University, Deerfield, Illinois, and is currently looking for a teaching position. He and his wife, Lisa, live in Highland Park, Illinois.

Notes

1. Jonathan Edwards, “Miscellanies” Number 405, in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume 13, The “Miscellanies” a-500. Edited by Thomas A. Schafer (New Haven: Yale university Press, 1994), 468. Yale edition will be cited as Works.
2. Jonathan Edwards, “An Essay on the Trinity,” in Treatise on Grace and Other Posthumously Published Writings. Edited by Paul Helm (Cambridge: James Clarke, 1971), 103.
3. Edwards, “Essay on the Trinity,” 108.
4. Edwards, “Essay on the Trinity,” 108.
5. See his extended arguments on the Spirit as the “sacred energy” in “Essay on the Trinity,” 108–18.
6. Jonathan Edwards, “Treatise on Grace,” in Treatise on Grace and Other Posthumously Published Writings. Edited by Paul Helm (Cambridge: James Clarke, 1971), 62–63.
7. Edwards, “Treatise on Grace,” 64.
8. Edwards thus follows a “western” understanding of the procession of the Holy Spirit: the Holy Spirit is breathed forth from both the Father “and the Son” (filioque).
9. Edwards, “Treatise on Grace,” 63.
10. Jonathan Edwards, “Miscellanies” Number 1062, in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume 20, The “Miscellanies” 833–1152. Edited by Amy Plantinga Pauw (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 431.
11. Jonathan Edwards, Dissertation I. Concerning the End for Which Cod Created the World, in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume 8, Ethical Writings. Edited by Paul Ramsey (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 528. Hereafter I will refer to this work as End of Creation.
12. Edwards, “Miscellanies” Number 1084, in Works, 20:467, emphasis mine.
13. Edwards, “Miscellanies” Number 1082, in Works, 20:466. See also “Miscellanies” Number 448 (Works, 13:495) for a similar observation.
14. Edwards, “Treatise on Grace,” 64.
15. Edwards, “Treatise on Grace,” 63.
16. Edwards, “Miscellanies” Number 402, in Works, 13:467.
17. Edwards, “Essay on the Trinity,” 125–26.
18. Edwards, “Treatise on Grace,” 72.
19. Jonathan Edwards, “Striving After Perfection,” in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume 19, Sermons and Discourses, 1734–1738. Edited by M. X. Lesser (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 693.
20. In an often quoted passage from the Religious Affections, he wrote that the saints are not “made partakers of the essence of God, and so are ‘Godded’ with God, and ‘Christed’ with Christ, according to the abominable and blasphemous language and notions of some heretics.” See Jonathan Edwards, A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume 2. Edited by John E. Smith (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959), 203.
21. Jonathan Edwards, “Miscellanies” Number 820, in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume 18, The “Miscellanies,” 501–832. Edited by Ava Chamberlain (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 531.
22. Edwards, “Miscellanies” Number 1156, courtesy of the Beinecke Library, Yale University.
23. Edwards, “Concerning Faith,” §54, in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume 2, rev. Edward Hickman. (London: F. Westley and A. H. Davis, Stationer’s Court, 1834. Reprint, Carlisle, Pennsylvania: Banner of Truth, 1990), 585.
24. Edwards, “A Divine and Supernatural Light,” in The Works of Jonathan Edwards, Volume 17, Sermons and Discourses, 1730–1733. Edited by Mark Valeri (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 413.
25. Jonathan Edwards, “Sermon VIII” (on Romans 2:10), in Works of President Edwards, in 10 volumes. Edited by Sereno E. Dwight (New York:1829), Volume 8: 266–67. Hereafter this edition will be cited as Works (Dwight).
26. Edwards, “Sermon VIII” (on Romans 2.10), in Works (Dwight), 8:267.
27. Edwards, “Sermon VIII” (on Romans 2.10), in Works (Dwight), 8:268.
28. Edwards, “Miscellanies” Number 571, in Works, 18:110.