Jonathan Edward’s Vision Of Salvation

By John J. Bombaro

[John J. Bombaro is the Resident Director of the John Newton International Center for Christian Studies in Carlisle, Pa.]

None but those that do live under the calls of the Gospel shall be saved.. . .That is God’s way and his only way of bringing men to salvation, viz., the Gospel. 

—Jonathan Edwards, MS sermon on Matt 22:14

I. Introduction

Jonathan Edwards’s worldview consists of a vision of God in which the Deity accomplishes His purposes through a metaphysic of finality. Human beings are the central means by which God’s purposes come to fruition. Whether the saintly Paul, reprobate Judas, or the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth, all human beings are valuable in themselves by virtue of their ontic composition and, especially, their functional role within God’s bilateral redemption scheme.

Is Edwards a misanthropist? No, he recognizes the dreadfulness of the doctrine of hell and laments that “‘tis a common thing for persons to go to hell.’’ Yet, in unison, he perceives and appreciates the revealed truth and even the beauty of double particular election. So, in the ‘‘Sole Consideration, that God is God,” Edwards resigns “All Objections to His Sovereignty,’’ and in light of its arbitrary “excellence,” he lovingly ascribes absolute sovereignty to God.[1]

Do men go to hell and suffer eternal torments? Not only does Edwards answer “yes”; he also says that it is necessarily so. But he no more than any of his predestinarian predecessors had any knowledge of who—while in their natural state—were elect and who were reprobate. However, a few things were certain to him by way of special revelation: (1) no soul since Adam’s lapse was, is, or will be, created with a holy disposition that unites them to God, save for the God-man Jesus Christ; (2) this same Jesus accomplished redemption through an atoning sacrifice of Himself; (3) the sum total of Christ’s redemptive purchase was the Holy Spirit; and (4) God applies the reconciling and regenerative benefits of Christ’s redemptive “purchase” (i.e., the Spirit) through divinely appointed gospel “means and ordinances.”

In the last point we find that Edwards thoroughly subscribes to the Reformation theology of theatrum salutis (forum of salvation),[2] a theory which purports that the dissemination of the gospel word creates a “forum” in which God communicates Christ’s saving benefits by the Spirit through faith. Salvation or, synonymously, conversion, for Edwards, is a black or white issue: one is either savingly united to Christ the Redeemer or one is not. Although with his Reformed predecessors he says that God possesses the liberty to convert a soul without ordinary, gospel-conveying means,[3] yet salvation always contains the same objective elements of (a) regeneration—conversion through the “ingeneration” of a holy disposition, (b) humiliation, (c) faith, (d) repentance, (e) trust, (f) adoption, and (g) justification.

Nonetheless, the ordinary, regular, ordained, and only means of salvation lie in heralding the gospel of Jesus Christ. Edwards repeatedly would assert a seemingly restrictivist position by insisting that special revelatory concepts of sola gratia, sola fide, and solus Christus are absolutely necessary (and sufficient) for salvation. Nothing else can issue forth saving grace. Hence Edwards’s evangelistic zeal and pastoral concerns. Without saving grace men are “doomed.” His responsibility as a called and ordained ambassador of Jesus Christ was to proclaim the good news within the construct of “the whole counsel of God,” that is, His revealed law and decrees.

By this account, Edwards seems no more adrift from Reformation orthodoxy in his evangelistic theology than Martin Luther with his fides ex auditu thesis, or William Perkins in his Arte of Prophesying, or the Westminster divines for that matter.[4] If salvation is about Christ, and Christ is the Word, and, as Luther put it, the nature of the word is to be heard,[5] then salvation is always logocentric, always a faith response to the living Word of God. Edwards, it would appear, could not agree more.

Yet recent revisionist accounts of Edwards’s thought argue otherwise. Anri Morimoto, in particular, reinterprets Edwards’s evangelistic concerns in light of his philosophy of dispositions and asserts that Stoddard’s successor was not concerned with salvation from damnation per se, but with justification, something totally different. According to Morimoto, initial salvation occurred at the cross: this work of Christ is universal in scope and application—all reap the saving benefit of an infused gracious disposition. The bare (i.e., unexercised) possession of it constitutes regeneration and, therefore, salvation. For Morimoto, Edwards’s soteriology is primarily about ontological transformation; justification is a secondary issue.

So, in addition to this kind of universalism, Edwards also evinces a more prominent inclusivistic position, particularly when he publicly presses for a justified community. In Morimoto’s reading, Edwards’s evangelistic preaching was not about salvation from imminent damnation, but intended to “trigger” the gracious disposition to an exercise of faith, thereby “converting” the individual and allowing them the benefit of affectionally enjoying Christ’s saving work. According to Morimoto, when an individual exercises their inherent gracious disposition in faith, God “rewards” them with a second salvation.[6] Since all are, for all intents and purposes, accounted believers because of the faith virtually contained within the disposition (hence, its lawlike tendency), only those who exercise it attain this sort of “higher Christian life.” Regeneration and conversion are utterly distinct phases or levels of salvation. The disposition, Morimoto maintains, is not unlike Edwardsean dispositions in causality: in a prescribed connection, a lawlike disposition yields its manifestation. In this case, the gracious disposition yields faith amidst divinely ordained “means and ordinances.” Hence, the full title of Morimoto’s book: Jonathan Edwards and the Catholic Vision of Salvation. “Means and ordinances” have an ex opere operato effect upon the disposition that Christ has made inherent in all. Still, not all religions have these “means and ordinances,” and so it is in this sense that Edwards cannot be called a thoroughgoing Universalist.

Gerald R. McDermott advances Morimoto’s revision as he considers Edwards’s extensive interest in non-Christian religions. While convincingly arguing that deism, not Arminianism, was Christianity’s most formidable opponent in Edwards’s eyes, McDermott suggests that Edwards was preparing before his death a sophisticated theological response to Enlightenment religion that hinged on the relationship between reason and revelation. McDermott demonstrates, for example, that Edwards perpetuated the prisca theologia, a tradition dating back to the early church fathers that looked for elements of “true religion” in non-Christian systems of thought, such as Greek philosophy and Chinese I-Ching. He explains that Edwards’s principal purpose in employing the prisca theologia was to show against the deists, “that nearly all humans have received revelation, and therefore all knowledge of true religion among the heathen is from revelation rather than the light of natural reason.”[7] The upshot means that philosophical and theological reasoning about ethics and religion becomes the product of prior revelation and may be expanded by natural revelation. Taking his lead from Morimoto, McDermott argues that, in light of Edwards’s dispositional philosophy, the combination of the powers of reasoning in the “heathen” and the plethora of natural revelation available to them allows for the possibility of those unreached by the gospel—the “five-sixths of the world” who not so much have heard of Christianity—to worship and even be “justified,” that is, converted, by the Christian God of special revelation, without having to trust explicitly in Jesus Christ for salvation.[8] Just as the disposition yields justifying faith in connection with Christian “means and ordinances” in Morimoto’s “Catholic Vision of Salvation,” so too, according to McDermott, God has provided the “heathen” with non-Christian “means and ordinances” to educe an exercise of “faith” for their justification. Edwards is not an inclusivist regarding “second salvation,” but a hyper-inclusivist.

Why then Edwards’s concern with justification? Answer: Eschatology. An expanded, that is, worldwide, community of justified believers hastens the establishment of Christ’s kingdom on earth and, consequently, His parousia and bodily reign. Edwards, therefore, is eschatology/apocalypse driven in his evangelism, not soteriology driven.

My conclusions differ decidedly from those of Morimoto and McDermott. The unconverted/unjustified glorify God on a metaphysical and aesthetic level, never in terms of “true religion,” unless, of course, one calls bearing the punitive attributes of God “religious worship.” To be sure, there is a sense in which the unconverted fulfill a doxological role in their associations with secondary beauties, but this is categorically different from the “true religion” and “virtue” of primary beauty. There are three main reasons for this. First, Edwards, in no uncertain terms, resolutely denies that non-Christians have gracious dispositions and therefore epistemological access to truly moral and spiritual dimensions of reality. In a word, no gracious disposition means no regeneration, no salvation, no spiritual data, and no justification. Second, his soteriology does not permit a hard and fast distinction between regeneration and conversion; indeed, he often uses the terms interchangeably. Third, Edwards does not divorce regenerating grace from the divinely ordained means of special revelation—the word of God. There may be extraordinary cases, but on the whole Edwards remains skeptical and restrictivistic. To him, unregenerates cannot access regenerating grace in natural revelation because the oral tradition of the prisca theologia (a) was never intended to redeem, that is, it was not an “ends” but a “means”; (b) was superseded by special revelation in a covenantal context; and (c) was contextualized within the history of redemption as being merely preparatory for that which does facilitate regenerative salvation—the gospel means of Christ.

Which is to say, Morimoto and McDermott misinterpret Edwards’s philosophy of dispositions and, consequently, his soteriology, evangelistic engagement with unbelievers, and vision of the history of the work of redemption. In this article, I will concentrate on providing a critical assessment of Anri Morimoto’s recent monograph on these subjects, focusing particular attention on Morimoto’s interpretation of Edwardsean dispositions. Offering a response to Morimoto destabilizes the work of McDermott and thereby facilitates a corrective re-evaluation of how Edwards’s conception of the natural-man and reprobate manifests itself in particular aspects of his theology, as well as his practical ministerial vision.

II. The Fiction of “Jonathan Edwards and the Catholic Vision of Salvation”

While Morimoto’s thesis may be an inspired offshoot of Sang Hyun Lee’s highly influential work on Edwards and dispositions,[9] his motivation for casting Edwards as an inclusivist does not stem from Lee, but from an expressed aversion to the restrictivistic soteriological doctrines of confessional Calvinism and sympathetic collaboration with inclusivist if not universalist theologies of John Sanders, Clark Pinnock, and Hans Küng.[10] Consequently, when Morimoto says, “The implication of [Edwards’s] dispositional view is not limited to the Christian community.. .. Edwards’s soteriology envisions a new and radical paradigm for understanding the salvation of people who are called ‘non-Christian,’”[11] the Northampton minister usually described as a “Calvinist metaphysician”[12] comes off sounding as progressive as John Hick.

By extending the implication of Edwards’s dispositional views “a little further,” Morimoto believes we may with Edwards reconsider the destiny of those who stand outside the visible circle of Christian faith: “In Edwards’s view of faith, the division between Christians and non-Christians is not simply a division between those who have faith and those who do not. Rather, the difference lies in whether or not the disposition into faith has been actualized.”[13] Which is to say, the mere possession of a disposition that embodies the tendency to exercise faith and not the actual exercise of faith itself provides common ground in which all may share “salvation.” In order to ascertain the viability of this proposal Morimoto evaluates three presumably decisive questions: “Is this change of disposition really the work of the Holy Spirit? Does the Spirit work in any way other than infusing and indwelling in human nature? Can the new disposition remain dormant and unexercised?”[14]

Concerning the first question, Morimoto rightly affirms on Edwards’s behalf that, indeed, the change of disposition is the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit. Likewise, the Spirit does work upon man other than through infusion and indwelling by assisting what man possesses as inherent principles. Lastly, Morimoto states that the new disposition can remain dormant and unexercised for not only extended periods, but also the whole life of an individual.

Having satisfied his criteria for plausibility, Morimoto articulates the significance of his answers in terms of soteriology. Christ’s redemptive work achieves a universal restoration of a gracious disposition in every newly created soul. That is, all persons either sometime during their prenatal development or shortly after their birth are savingly infused (regenerated) with what amounts to “created grace.” “Uncreated grace” (the Spirit) may assist in the exercising of the disposition, which, in turn, would result in “Christian conversion” and a “reward” of justification. The condition of the Spirit’s presence (particularly during revivals) and certain external “means and ordinances” trigger a faith response and, as Morimoto describes it, “God Crowns His Own Gift” of regeneration with conversion and justification. But then again, if all these conditions are not present during a person’s lifetime the disposition remains dormant. This lapse of time translates into the difference between regeneration and conversion. Thus:

[O]ne must conclude that non-Christians can be saved on the same grounds. They may not as yet manifest their saving disposition into a faith that is specifically Christian, but they might as well be given the disposition and counted as saved because of that disposition. They may even remain non-Christian for their whole lifetime, and still be saved.. .. The point is whether they have the saving disposition, not whether they exercise it or not.[15]

1. From Infants to Infidels

While Morimoto acknowledges that Edwards usually did not make fastidious distinctions between such terms as calling, regeneration, and conversion, but rather they all mean the same reality of grace infused at one instance, yet he asserts that, for Edwards, the case with infants was different: “he had to admit that ‘regeneration’ is a better word than ‘conversion.’”[16] Which is to say, infants are, by an ostensibly universal infusion of grace, regenerated but not converted. For the subject, the difference between them lies in the “sensibleness” of grace; for God, the difference lies between initial salvation and secondary justification, between regeneration and conversion: the one is universal and instantaneous, the other occasional and gradual.

According to Morimoto, once Edwards made this distinction with infants the next step was to consider unconverted infidels. He appeals to “Miscellanies”[17] No. 393 as evidence: “a person according to the gospel may be in a state of salvation,” writes Edwards, “before a distinct and express act of faith.” On Edwards’s behalf, Morimoto concludes that no act of the disposition whatsoever, “neither faith nor humiliation, is necessary at all for one to be in the state of salvation,” and cites Edwards to this effect from “Miscellanies” No. 27b: “The disposition is all that can be said to be absolutely necessary.”[18] Morimoto believes that Edwards, so impressed with the magnitude of Christ’s redemptive work, could not conceive that the gracious disposition was procured for only a small fraction of the world’s population. Thus, once Edwards began to affirm that infants who did not “sensibly” exercise the gracious disposition are saved (because their habit possessed its own mode of reality—a virtual exercise of faith—even before it exercised itself in faith or in other virtuous habits), he could not but affirm that many infants mature never exercising their converting dispositions but remained “saved” just the same. The principle held true for Edwards not just in the New World, but the whole world.

But in both “Miscellanies” entries (Nos. 27b and 393), as well as No. 849, Morimoto completely neglects the context in which Edwards makes these and similar statements, and thereby misconstrues their intended meaning. The discussions in “Miscellanies” Nos. 27b, 393, and 849, which produce the above quotes, entail the appearance of “a principle of faith” to the agent by its exercises, or, as Edwards writes, “a discovery of the mercy of God in Christ, whereby [a person] becomes justified in his own conscience, and acquires a sense of his own justification.”[19] Regeneration and conversion are simultaneous and instantaneous; consciousness of its effect is not necessarily so. The “Miscellanies” Morimoto cites categorically refer to the subjective apprehension of gracious exercises, not the objective exercises attendant with regeneration. Since “the graces are all the same in principle,” humiliation, faith, and trust all occur simultaneously at the moment of infusion.[20] The agent, however, may only “see” them one at a time and consciously have corresponding affections on an occasion that may not always coincide with the time of infusion. An infant, of course, cannot properly discern its “sinful, doleful condition” so as to express affectional humiliation, repentance, and faith. Though humiliation, repentance, and faith are absolutely necessary for salvation, according to Edwards, yet the conscious and affectional exercising of them is not. Strictly speaking, as to the agent, “The disposition is all that can be said to be absolutely necessary.” However, when the infant matures, he/she may have a subsequent exercise of the gracious disposition, which, again, as to the agent, may be considered a conversion.[21]

Edwards is not saying anything substantially different from what his Puritan forebears said in their examinations of “cases of conscience”—protracted attempts to assure beleaguered parishioners of their justified status with special reference to the application of Christian ethics to specific cases.[22] The objective reality of Christ’s work and covenant held true even when “distinguishing marks” lay dormant. Quite simply, “Miscellanies” Nos. 27b, 393, and 849 are not about the order of saving activities, much less “God Crowning His Own Gift.” To be sure, Edwards expresses a certain measure of anxiousness, not over particularity, but about how God gets His glory through the communication of Christ’s salvific attributes (“Miscellanies” 849).

Moreover, Edwards is not optimistic and inclusivistic about infant salvation, but rather pessimistic and particularistic. “Miscellanies” No. 816 (c.1740) bears out his skepticism.[23] There he writes: “The following reasons seem to render it probable that FEW ARE CONVERTED IN INFANCY,” and delineates items which emerge from and terminate in his teleological worldview. He states that humiliation, repentance, and faith are necessary for salvation because such responses are “fitting” to the Creator/creature relationship, especially in light of man’s sinfulness and total dependence. In these divinely mediated responses God receives due honor and glory—the “ends” of creation. But in the hypothesis of infant salvation the principal purposes of creation seem to go unfulfilled. God infuses “the new creation [i.e., disposition]” into an agent “to be in him a vital principle,” not to remain unexercised or dormant (which, incidentally, would contradict Edwards’s teaching on ontic-mental dispositions; q.v., §1.c). In other words, regeneration or conversion is purposeful; there is an idealist metaphysic of finality that controls the redemption narrative.[24] To Edwards infant salvation does not make obvious the telic purpose of their regeneration/conversion; it is out of step with God’s program of self-glorification in replication. Therefore, it is probable that “FEW ARE CONVERTED IN INFANCY.”

Thus, Edwards remained unsure of the grounds of infant salvation and skeptical that more than a few covenant children might be saved from hell.[25] Morimoto, however, does not seem at all conscious of Edwards’s all-pervading theocentrism and, consequently, interprets his position on infant salvation as non-teleological.

Therefore, to make further application to “infidels” only moves oneself another step away from Edwards’s thinking.

2. Lombard, Aquinas, and Edwards: Uncreated and Created Grace

“Grace in the heart,” Edwards writes, “is no other than the Spirit of God dwelling in the heart and becoming there a principle of life and action.”[26] Morimoto reads a statement like this and associates Edwards’s idea of grace in the soul as the direct presence of the Holy Ghost with Peter Lombard’s pneumatology, which identifies both the infused gift (donum) and the giver (donator) with gratia increata (uncreated grace) or the Spirit Himself.[27]

However, according to Morimoto, Edwards was not only strongly inclined toward the Lombardian motif, he also fully embraced the Thomistic habitual principle of gratia creata (created grace). Aquinas believed that without an intermediary habit for the Spirit to work through, the mind would function in a way contrary to the nature of a voluntary act. As Morimoto explains: “In order for the will to be itself. .. ‘there should be in us some habitual form superadded to the natural power, inclining that power to the act of charity.’”[28] Thus, if we are to understand Edwards “correctly,” we must view his notion of internal principle as “a close correlative of Thomas’s notion of the ‘intermediary habit,’” though without rejecting the Lombardian motif. The Spirit never “becomes created grace,” but He does “issue in” the formation of a new habit through which He operates. Consequently, Morimoto maintains:

[W]hile virtue is a product of God’s supernatural and immediate work of infusion, it is nonetheless a virtue of one’s own. It is so because the infused gift is really in-fused, namely, let into the depths of human nature and fused with it, establishing there an intrinsic principle of action. The grace infused from outside does not eradicate or supplant human freedom.[29]

In other words, the virtue that issues from the supernaturally implanted disposition is our virtue, a created virtue or grace. Edwards, therefore, may be seen to depart from Calvin (who concurs with Lombard and rejects Thomas on this point) and prove himself more of a Tridentine theologian than a Reformation theologian with regards to the doctrine of regeneration. Or so it would seem, for these claims may be disproved on at least four points.

First, Morimoto’s argument rests, in part, on an argument from silence: “Edwards may not have been aware of this controversy [i.e., the Reformation/counter-Reformation debate about the nature of the operation of grace in humanity] at all. He does not use the terms ‘created grace’ and ‘uncreated grace’ characteristic to the controversy.”[30] So Morimoto takes the liberty to fill in the blanks. But he need not do so. Edwards has plenty to say about the nature of the operation of grace in humanity without having to open the Canons and Decrees of the Council of Trent. For instance, Edwards manifests, if not his knowledge of the debate, at least his understanding of the principal distinctions and use of nomenclature:

Yet the grace of God in men’s hearts can hardly be called created. ‘Tis God’s own beauty and excellency that is uncreated and eternal, which is not properly made but communicated. It is as we said before the Spirit of Christ itself; it is God himself. Therefore, they that are full of grace are full of Christ; [that is] they are full of God.[31]

Clearly, for Edwards, the habit is and remains the Spirit, not something created. Likewise, the acts of the Spirit are not gratia creata but the very fruit of the Spirit, gratia increata: “The saints as saints act only by the Spirit in all their transactions wherein they act by a mediator; i.e., in all their transactions with God, they act by the Spirit, or rather it is the Spirit of God that acts in them.. .. The Holy Spirit dwelling in them is their principle of life and action.”[32] Thus, neither the origin nor function of the principle indicates that anything new is created in man in terms of a spontaneously generated disposition through which the Spirit works.

Second, the same applies to holy virtues and actions: they are manifestations of the Spirit, just as the above quote indicates. For Edwards, there is no distinction: the Spirit is a personal disposition of holiness given immediately by God and grace can only be grace if God is the only and immediate source, medium, and result of grace: “There is no gift or benefit that is so much of himself, of his nature, that is so much a communication of the Deity as grace is.. .. ‘Tis therefore fit that when it is bestowed, it should be so much the more immediately given, from himself and by himself.”[33] Or consider the following excerpt from God Glorified in Man’s Dependence (1731):

The several ways wherein the dependence of one being may be upon another for its good, and wherein the redeemed of Jesus Christ depend on God for all their good are these, viz., That they have their good of him, and that they have all through him, and that they have all in him: That he is the cause and original whence all their good comes, therein it is of him; and that he is the medium by which it is obtained and conveyed, therein they have it through him; and that he is the good itself given and conveyed, therein it is in him.[34]

So, while it remains true that the virtues of the Spirit are a gift, yet they are not separable from the divine nature. In short, the “principle of life and action,” which Morimoto believes to be in some sense created, is simply another way for Edwards to talk about the manner of the Spirit’s indwelling and operation; that is, to talk about uncreated grace.

Third, Morimoto misses the point that the occasional advances in sanctification, or sporadic manifestations of “the fruit of the Spirit,” are not due to Edwards’s causal theory of dispositions, but the weakly-arbitrary operation of the indwelling Spirit. Which is to say, the progressive state of sanctification (Calvin’s “secondary sanctification”) is no less dependent upon the full and immediate operation and will of God than in regeneration. Though Edwards links the disposition of holiness to “means of grace,” yet the arrangement perpetually remains non-causal. The blessings of salvation in this life, viz., sanctifying graces, depend “wholly and entirely on God’s immediate and arbitrary bestowment.”[35] “Means” merely provide a “proper and fit” opportunity for the exercise of grace, but they in no way trigger an exercise. Nothing does, for there are no “laws” which govern the operation of the Spirit, other than a covenantal agreement between the members of the Godhead concerning the advancement of Christ’s kingdom—the vehicle by which God moves toward His consummate goal. Hence:

The Word and ordinances and works of God are means of grace, as they give opportunity for the proper and fit exercise of grace, and are in a sort of means of that exercise; though not in the same manner as things are the means of the exercise of natural principles, because not only the principle of grace, but every exercise of it, is the immediate effect of the sovereign acting of the Spirit of God. Indeed, in natural things, means of effects, in metaphysical strictness, are not proper causes of the effects, but only occasions. God produces all effects; but yet he ties natural events to the operation of such means, or causes them to be consequent on such means according to fixed, determinate and unchangeable rules, which are called the laws of nature.. .. But means of grace are not means of the exercises of grace in such a manner, for the actings of the Spirit in the heart are more arbitrary and are not tied to such and such means by such laws or rules, as shall particularly and precisely determine in a stated method every particular exercise and the degree of it.[36]

The upshot of this important quote is fourfold: (a) though means are “necessary” for both regeneration and progressive sanctification, yet they are not sufficient; (b) Morimoto’s notion that, “The act of faith must naturally and necessarily arise out of the disposition on specific occasions,” that is, “When certain conditions are met, the disposition as an active and purposive tendency.. . come[s] into exertion,” proves false;[37] (c) Edwards’s explanation of the Spirit infused into the hearts of men “only after this general law, viz., that it shall remain there and produce acts after the manner of an abiding, natural, vital, principle of action,” simply underscores his emphasis on resemblance not exact equivalence;[38] and (d ) Morimoto’s thesis that conversion and justification are consequent upon a latter encounter with means, in which a previously infused, regenerative, but dormant disposition becomes active, is rendered foundationless: there are no laws, rules, constant conjunctions, occasionalistic connections, or any other causal relation between the exercising of the disposition of holiness and means that “trigger” faith, save for the weakly-arbitrary operation of the Spirit.[39] “Means” have more of an aesthetic and mediatorial function: “they give opportunity for the proper and fit exercise of grace.”

Fourth and lastly, Edwards says in no uncertain terms that the disposition is not in-fused in the same sense that Morimoto indicates. Rather, the disposition of holiness and all the gifts and virtues associated with it could leave man’s heart at any time just as the Spirit left Adam, because they are not essential to human nature. The Spirit stays, however, because of a covenantal agreement: the believer belongs to Christ and Christ has “purchased” the Spirit for them—forever.[40] Man does not become intrinsically holy. Instead, he is always a sinner, but also a justified sinner, that is, a saint, because of Christ’s imputed righteousness, his being divinely constituted in Christ, and his ontological union with Christ that communicates all of His “excellencies.”[41] Hence, Edwards maintains that even in heaven it is theoretically possible for God to withdraw this gracious disposition, since the redeemed are not and never become “gods,” unition and participation notwithstanding.[42] In sum, the disposition of which Edwards speaks simply is not the same as that of Aquinas.

Edwards shows his familiarity with the Scholastic and Tridentine division between “created” and “uncreated” grace and expressly distances himself from the former type. Morimoto therefore errs in his appraisal of Edwardsean dispositions and doctrine of regeneration. Edwards is neither a prototypical Karl Rahner, grounding justification in the disposition of the human person and further attempting to urge the notion that created grace demands, as its proper correlative, uncreated grace, nor is he a forerunner to Paul Tillich or Sir Francis Younghusband, who both succumb to the logic of universalism.[43] Morimoto arrives at his conclusions because he asks the wrong questions about dispositions and the nature of regenerating grace. His second question should not be, “Does the Spirit work in any other way than infusing and indwelling in human nature?”, but rather, “Does the Spirit work in any other way within the regenerate to produce spiritual manifestations?” For he takes a principle that Edwards reserves for the Spirit’s influence upon natural-men, namely, assisting their natural, inherent principles, and unacceptably applies it to those indwelt by the Spirit, thereby creating an intermediary element between the Spirit and His virtuous expressions.

As a result of his misappropriation of dispositions, Morimoto’s third question, “Can a new disposition remain dormant and unexercised?” suggests a Thomistic soteriology of ontological transformation and subsequent conversion and justification which Edwards hardly would have countenanced, let alone acknowledged as his own.

3. “As soon as ever divine grace enters, the man is willing”

In order to separate the instantaneousness of justification from regeneration, Morimoto proposes: (a) that the infused disposition (Holy Spirit) can remain dormant subsequent to ingeneration; (b) that conversion (and resulting justification) “takes a long and gradual process before it is fully realized”;[44] and (c) that faith becomes an inherent quality in man consequent upon the infused disposition.

We have already dealt with (c) by showing that any fruit of the disposition is the very fruit of the Spirit Himself, or the virtues of Christ communicated through the regenerate’s participatory union by the Holy Spirit. According to Edwards, the communion of saints with Christ consists, at the very least, in receiving of His fullness and partaking of His grace: “And in partaking of that Spirit which God gives not by measure unto him, partaking of Christ’s holiness and grace, his nature, inclinations, tendencies, affection, love, desires, must be a part of communion with him.”[45] If no communion, then none of these graces issue; for they are not merely of Christ, but are through Him and to Him, and are Him. In Edwards, whatever Christ assumes into union to Himself must be by the Holy Spirit that acts as the principle of union.[46]

What of (a) and (b) then? First (a). While it holds true that, for Edwards, some dispositions D, particularly those that relate to phenomenological occurrences, can remain inactive for nearly the whole duration of D, yet he proposes an entirely different set of rules for mental dispositions to accommodate their arbitrariness.

According to Edwards, an agent cannot be said to possess a given ontological disposition D, where D may be counted as constitutive of an agent’s ontic structure either by necessity or participatory union, unless D is exercised. That is, such dispositions must manifest at least an initiatory exercise or else it is “of no manner of use”; that is, they are not constitutive of that agent’s ontic structure without consciousness of it as the agent’s own “ideal-existence.” Which is to say, an onticmental disposition without an initiatory exercise must be classified not as one with a virtual mode of reality, but as non-existent. Consequently, in Edwards, there is a difference between constitutive ontological dispositions that define human being and nature as such and dispositional properties exemplifying personal propensities, characteristics, and traits. One could be dispositionally courageous without ever having the opportunity to express it, but one could not possess an ontic disposition of holy consent to God without an initiatory exercise of it.

In the network of phenomenological occurrences, dispositions without perceivable or actual applications may be assumed, but within mental structures they cannot, for their express mode of reality constitutes the “ideal-existence” of the agent who possesses them. It is the difference between actually being a certain category of human being and not. In Edwards’s soteriology, real dispositional unition is crucial for justification, for “What is real in the union between Christ and his people, is the foundation of what is legal.”[47] By equating the two distinct kinds of dispositions within Edwards’s philosophical-theology, Morimoto builds his thesis not upon dormant dispositions but defunct dispositions.

In “Miscellanies” No. 241, titled “REGENERATION,” Edwards writes: “It may be in the new birth as it is in the first birth.” While he notes that the vivification of a prenatal infant “is exceedingly gradual,” he quickly points out, “Yet there is a certain moment that an immortal spirit begins to exist in it by God’s appointment.” Recalling Edwards’s point about infant regeneration and the gradual, subjective apprehension of converting graces, he continues by saying, “there is doubtless a remarkable and very sensible change made at once when the soul is newborn. .. yet the sensible change is very gradual.” Here we have neither an equivocation nor a separation between regeneration and conversion. Instead, Edwards means that at the moment of regeneration the “sensible” elements necessarily bound up in conversion (viz., humiliation, repentance, and faith) are exercised in a “reflex act” of the Holy Spirit, and that, subsequently or gradually, the agent becomes sensible to the “great change made in the soul.” A “habit of grace” is, then, “always begun with an act of grace that shall imply faith in it, because a habit can be of no manner of use till there is occasion to exert it.. .. [Therefore] the first new thing that there can be in the creature must be some actual alteration.”[48] In the new birth the infusion of the new disposition is “always with an act of grace,” that is, an exercise of faith, though a period of inactivity may follow this necessary initial act, depending on the sanctifying purposes and activities of God.

In Edwards’s soteriology the faith producing act of the Holy Spirit in regeneration brings together (a) and (b), so that conversion is instantaneous and occurs instantaneously with infusion. Such ideas are often repeated in his sermons and “Miscellanies.” For instance in “Miscellanies” No. 673, Edwards teaches that “conversion is a work that is done at once, and not gradually” by the Spirit. In the same entry he underscores the instantaneousness of conversion as he equates it with effectual calling and regeneration: “There is something immediately put into their hearts at that call that is new, that there was nothing of before.. . .And that the work of conversion is wrought at once, is further evident by its being compared to a work of creation.” Later he alludes to the Spirit’s faith producing act, as he plainly articulates his particularist position:

[C]onversion [is] an immediate and instantaneous work. .. by which we must understand that [natural-men] have none of that kind of grace, or disposition.. . .Natural men, or those that are not savingly converted, have no degree of that principle from whence all gracious actings flow, viz., the Spirit of God, or of Christ. .. because having of the Spirit is given as a sure sign of being in Christ.. . .Hereby ‘tis evident that they have none of that holy principle that the godly have; and if they have nothing of the Spirit, they have nothing of those things that are the fruits of the Spirit.[49]

The substance of this “Miscellanies” is further expanded in Edwards’s magisterial treatise on the nature and substance of “true religion,” A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections (Boston, 1746), particularly the “Seventh Sign”:

Another thing, wherein gracious affections are distinguished from others, is, that they are attended with a change of nature. 

All gracious affections do arise from a spiritual understanding, in which the soul has the excellency and glory of divine things discovered to it, as was shown before. But all spiritual discoveries are transforming; and not only make an alteration of the present exercise, sensation and frame of the soul; but such power and efficacy have they, that they make an alteration in the very nature of the soul: “But we all, with open face, beholding as in a glass, the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image, from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord” (II Cor. 3:18). Such power as this is properly divine power, and is peculiar to the Spirit of the Lord: other power may make a great alteration in men’s present frames and feelings; but ‘tis the power of the Creator only that can change the nature, or give a new nature. And no discoveries or illuminations, but those that are divine and supernatural, will have this supernatural effect.[50]

Edwards’s whole point, whether in the formulative “Miscellanies” or the polemical Religious Affections, is to safeguard the doctrine of soli Deo gloria by insisting on an absolutely monergistic, irresistible, and supernatural conversion within a sinful subject. For Edwards, the Spirit’s faith producing act within a noncooperative subject alleviates the aesthetic/relational tension that there should be the mutual act of each party (Christ/sinner) for a union. In his own words, there must be “consent on the part of both, each should receive the other, and actively join themselves to each other.”[51] Since “‘tis an utter impossibility that ever man should do what is necessary in order to salvation, nor do the least towards it,” the Spirit Himself “takes up” the faculties of man and irresistibly implants consenting faith.[52] As he says elsewhere, faith “receives and accepts the gift, or is the person’s active uniting with the gift, with its qualities and relations, viz., as a free gift, the gift of God, the fruit of his power, etc.”[53] Or, in other words, to say that regeneration has occurred is to say that there is a union, and if a union, then consent or love must be mutually expressed.[54]Contrary to Morimoto’s design, “The Spirit,” Edwards says, “[does] not do His work to the halves.”[55]

By postponing the converting disposition’s exercise of faith, Morimoto runs counter to the most fundamental element of Edwards’s doctrine of regeneration, namely, “‘Tis not only principles, but especially acts, that are the condition of salvation, for acts are the end of principles, and principles are in vain without ‘em.”[56] Stoddard’s successor had a number of ways of expressing it; Morimoto seems to have missed them all. Consider the following examples from the “Miscellanies”:

637. The Jews put circumcision instead of regeneration, instead of that faith that is wrought in regeneration, or instead of that righteousness of Christ that faith has or that is virtually in faith. 

665. The very first effect of saving grace that touches the will is to abolish its resistance and incline the will.. .. As soon as ever divine grace enters, the man is willing. 

675. The Spirit of God. .. ingenerated the human nature of Christ; which is a work to which conversion is compared, which is an ingenerating Christ into the heart, as that was an ingenerating Christ in the womb [of Mary]. 

772. The Holy Spirit brings God to dwell with their souls on earth in their conversion.[57]

Thus it is certain in Edwards’s soteriology that a sinner undergoes regeneration, unition, conversion, and therefore justification on the first and necessary act of faith wrought by the Spirit at the point of infusion. (Again, the whole “Seventh Sign” in Religious Affections is devoted to conversion as regeneration.)[58] On this point, the difference between Edwards and his tradition cannot be more than marginal. Calvinism was inclined to portray converting grace through faith as irresistible, with the result that conversion became a virtually spontaneous turning of the one who was elected-called-regenerated to receive grace. The teaching in Northampton was the same as in Westminster, or Geneva for that matter.

Edwards’s problems with infant salvation are always teleological. That God may regenerate an infant soul with all the affectional elements concomitant with converting graces is no difficulty at all: it is all the work of the Spirit of Christ. But how God gets His glory perceived and acknowledged (replicated) through infants Edwards finds perplexing. Hence his willingness to discuss conversion as both an event and a process—just as his Reformed theological mentors had taught for generations.[59]

4. What Is Real, the Basis of What Is Legal

When it comes to the doctrine of justification, Edwards allows no room for synergism or neonomianism. He even disapproves of calling faith “the instrument wherewith we receive justification” for fear of making it man’s contribution to salvation.[60] Not that he repudiates Calvin’s definition of faith, it is just that he, like other Reformed theologians, thought it wise to neutralize the suggestion of causality in faith’s instrumentality.

Morimoto, however, while arguing that Edwards retains a “Protestant character” to his doctrine of justification, makes the author of the anti-Arminian lectures Justification by Faith Alone (1738)[61] not only Arminian but semi-Pelagian in his treatment of conversion and justification. In a section labeled “Human Goodness Prior to Justification,” Morimoto argues that in Edwards’s soteriology unconverted persons possess “inherent goodness” which “becomes ‘acceptable’ and ‘rewardable’ only after justification.”[62] His point is that unconverted persons may be regenerate and yet have no union with Christ. For Morimoto, it is by the inherent gracious disposition men now possess, that they put their “rewardable” faith in Christ and “play their own part in this mutual act of ‘unition.’”[63] In brief, the regenerate soul that encounters certain disposition-activating means exercises faith, the result of which establishes a union, a Spirit-assisted conversion, and the pronouncement of justification. For this reason Morimoto says with Thomas Schafer, “there is nothing that keeps Edwards from becoming a Roman Catholic except for his rejection of the concept of merit.”[64]

“Miscellanies” No. 364 or, alternatively, No. 568, factors largely in Morimoto’s anomalous account. The key passage he employs is one that many commentators have thought compromising to Edwards’s confessional position. The passage, repeated verbatim in both entries, is as follows:

What is real in the union between Christ and his people, is the foundation of what is legal; that is, it is something that is really in them and between them, uniting [them], that is the ground of the suitableness of their being accounted as one by the Judge.[65]

Morimoto starts off well by identifying “what is real” or what it is that constitutes the “fitness” or “suitableness” of the union between “Christ and his people” as consent. No compromise here. But there he stops in his analysis and turns the discussion to the active role human beings provide in mutual consent for their justification: “[Edwards] defines faith as that which constitutes a union with Christ, providing the faithful with an ontological foundation for ‘their being accounted as one [with Christ] by the judge.’”[66]

Noticeably absent from Morimoto’s account, however, is any mention of the Holy Spirit or whether the framework from which Edwards speaks is a temporal or eternal recognition of ontological unition. As a matter of fact, in his thirty-page chapter on “Justification: God’s Crowning of His Own Gift,” the only reference to the Holy Spirit belongs to a quote from W. G. T. Shedd on secondary sanctification, and not a single sentence is provided to substantiate Morimoto’s claim that the union God recognizes as justifying occurs within time. To exclude the Spirit and the eternal context in this matter could not deviate further from Edwards’s thinking. For him, the ontological basis for forensic imputation, that is, the transaction of Christ’s faith and righteousness to the believer, fundamentally concerns the Spirit in an eternal arrangement. Indeed, in Edwards’s soteriology, if the topic is faith, love, or consent, especially mutual consent, then these ideas must be understood in terms of the Spirit; and the forensic arrangement for justification must be understood against the background of its eternal context, namely, the eternal “confederation,” the pactum salutis.[67]

What is real in the union between Christ and his people, which is the foundation of what is legal qua imputation and justification? Answer: mutual consent—or love, the “greatest” and “highest excellency,” which, when between two spirits, is the Holy Spirit.[68] Thus, it is “suitable” that God should account that which He constitutes to be “united” to His triune Self, through the Spirit, just as if it were the Son; or, which is to say the same thing, to reckon that “Christ’s satisfaction and righteousness should be theirs, because Christ and they are so united that they may be well looked upon as one.”[69] One could emphasize the “as one,” for in his forensic thinking the ontological union that provides “the foundation” of justification does not take place in the temporal sphere—that is, there is no infusion of grace—logically prior to a declaration of righteous. Instead, in the eternal confederation, God’s constituting the union with Christ and His Church provides the basis for an antecedent declaration of righteous, which, in turn, provides the efficient cause of the temporal union via regeneration. For this reason Edwards says that, in a certain sense, even the unregenerate elect have a legal right to Christ’s benefits as a wife is entitled to that which belongs to her husband; for the Spirit Himself, who, in God’s constituting a union between the sinner and the Son, is the “unition”—the Spirit belongs to them legally because He does really. God, as it were, regards the Spirit “purchased” by the Son as the mutual consent or actual unition between the sinner and the Son, and therefore imputes righteousness to the sinner on account of what Son has procured for them—the Spirit:[70] for when the Son “purchased” the Spirit for His bride, He also “purchased faith and conversion” for them in the Spirit.[71] In Edwards, then, the ordo salutis may be discussed in terms of eternal arrangement and constitution, as well as the logical ordering of temporal applications—this, too, was in keeping with his Reformed tradition.[72]

What, then, is the faith that unites man to Christ in the actual moment of salvation? Answer: A communication or manifestation of the Spirit of Christ.

Understood in a way conscious of the contexts within which Edwards considers the legal and ontological dimensions of salvation, faith no more becomes a synergistic exercise than infusion, though, to be sure, the faculties of man are “taken up” in temporal “unition.” Discussions about “the ground of suitableness” (Edwards’s aesthetic substitute for “condition”) and “acts of faith” in justification, therefore, immediately pertain to the Person of the Spirit, not “Human Goodness Prior to Justification.”

4.a. Virtual Faith/Real Savior

In numerous places Edwards explains that there is a twofold fitness to the human state, one moral the other natural. An agent is morally fit for a state, when by his “excellency or odiousness his excellency or odiousness commends him to it.” The aesthetic arbiter “suitable” coordinates an agent’s excellency with a “good state” or, conversely, odiousness with an “ill state.” Once again, the theme of Spirit “haves” and “have-nots” is repeated.[73] He accepts the former as belonging to the believer but rejects the latter. This is because a “moral suitableness” always includes a “natural,” but the natural “by no means necessarily includes a moral.”[74] Union with Christ establishes a “natural suitableness,” that is, it fulfills the “condition,” so that justification need not flow out of a “moral suitableness.” Which is to say, human acts never have by nature a virtue or merit that God respects. Herein lies the difference between the Calvinist and the Arminian, between Jonathan Edwards and, say, Charles Finney.

Where “moral fitness” serves the basis of justification for Arminians, “natural fitness” is for Edwards. The means to justification by “natural fitness” is faith: that is, faith alone; faith as consent; faith as the “condition” between the believer and Christ; faith as the Spirit of Christ.

“Natural fitness” also is the vehicle of imputation—another doctrine rejected by the Arminians as “legal fiction.” How could Christ’s righteousness, in the moment of justification, be transferred to an agent by nature unworthy to receive it? “Natural fitness” places the orthodox response on more sure grounds than the traditional forensic explanation. As Ava Chamberlain explains, “The concept of natural fitness emphasizes that imputation is preceded by a preexisting union with Christ.. .. Because the union with Christ, which occurs by faith, creates the ontological foundation necessary for imputation, it is fitting that the faithful are justified.”[75] Thus Edwards says, “God sees it fit that they only that are one with Christ by their own act, should be looked upon as one in law.”[76]

By virtue of the believer’s union with Christ by the Spirit (in faith/consent)—something real in the eternal sphere and realized in temporality—he/she becomes the possessor of all the righteousness, holiness, faith, and love of Christ.[77] Justification by faith/union with Christ is immediate, perfect, and inalienable—as long as the union holds, which, according to God’s eternal covenantal purposes and promises, it will forever. To be sure, what is real in the union is the basis of what is legal.

But how does the union hold in a temporal context when there is no express consent? That is, if the believer ceases to believe at any point in time, what would be the ground of his/her justification? As John H. Gerstner asks, “Would it not be better to say that he will be justified if he continues as he now is?”[78]

Keenly aware of these questions—especially in light of their relevance to the Connecticut Valley revival and its aftermath, when many, even in his own Northampton congregation, “cooled” in their religious affections and exercises—Edwards sought for a way to articulate the importance of a faith that perseveres, even when parishioners did not. But this created a dilemma for him: a persevering faith, according to his reading of the Scriptures, is not dormant but active. His tradition reconciled Luther’s difficulty with The Epistle of James by asserting that St. James and St. Paul were in complete agreement: faith alone justifies, but it is an active faith. Not only is “True Grace Distinguished from the Experience of Devils” in terms of “true” religious affections but also accompanying performance.[79] Hence, Edwards reasoned that, if conversion brings a “very great change to the soul,” then along with persevering faith there ought to be persevering Christian practice in the religious life. In other words, a persevering faith leaves “distinguishing marks.” As his critical analysis of the awakenings and so-called “communion controversy” make certain, Edwards found mere “profession” highly suspect. Whether in a four-year-old child like Phoebe Bartlett or a seasoned ecclesiastic like Solomon Stoddard, conversion really alters a person. So the tension was this: on the one hand, Edwards reasoned that hypocrites have no claim to either congregational privileges or eternal life; on the other hand, he was fully conscious of the frailty of the human condition and that justification in no way depends on the individual but on Christ. Faith, then, if it is the faith Christ grants, must overcome; it must endure. But how, since the evidence of its presence in the believer, as the Great Awakening proved, wildly fluxes and quickly wanes?

The difficulty of striking a balance is remarkable: antinomianism, neonomianism, nominalism, and legalism are all to be avoided, while at the same time there is the reality of simul iustus et peccator to contend with. Edwards finds an innovative solution by proposing a theological doctrine that did not rest upon an evaluation of one’s own “works,” but Christ’s: he (i ) grounds initial justification in the conditional “first act of faith”; and (ii ) also makes the status of “justified” conditional upon perseverance; but then (iii ) declares that Christ has actually persevered in faith and practice for the believer.

For though a sinner is justified on his first act of faith, yet even then, in that act of justification, God has respect to perseverance, as being virtually in that first act; and ‘tis looked upon as if it were a property of the faith, and the sinner is justified by that, as though it already were, because by divine establishment it shall follow.[80]

According to Edwards, the first act of faith gives a “title” to salvation, because it does, virtually at least, “trust in God and Christ for perseverance among other benefits, and gives a title to this benefit with others, and so virtually contains perseverance.”[81] Interestingly, this is nothing more than what nineteen-year-old Jonathan Edwards wrote in “Miscellanies” No. y:

Christ has already acted on the part of those that believe, and those merits are sure and certain that he has purchased. So that although Adam could fall, [it] is no argument that we may. For what Adam was to be made happy for was not yet performed; but ours is, and that fully.[82]

Salvation is, therefore, in itself sure and certain after the first faith-act of consent, not because justification’s futurition is certain in itself, for, as Edwards writes, “that is as certain in itself by the divine decree,” but because the faith-act establishes a congruity between salvation and the subject. Ava Chamberlain describes the implications of Edwards’s reconditioning the doctrine of justification:

By insisting that the “sinner is justified on his first act of faith,” Edwards avoids the Arminian view “that the act of justification should be suspended, till the sinner had persevered in faith.” But he elevates the status of perseverance by asserting that faith “virtually contains” perseverance, which “God has respect to” and looks “upon as if it were a property of faith, by which the sinner is then justified” ([“Miscellanies”] No. 729). This concept of “virtual perseverance” clearly exposes the limits of the orthodox doctrine of justification.[83]

Actual perseverance on the part of the believer does not justify, indeed, it is impossible for those who are simul peccator. But because Christ “has actually persevered through the greatest imaginable trials,” and the believer stands in “actual unition of the soul with Christ,” then “we shall stand and persevere in him” for He “persevered not only for himself, but for us.”[84] Thus, when Edwards speaks of “virtual” faith or righteousness or perseverance, he does not mean dormant, but complete in Christ, complete in our union with Him by the Holy Spirit:

which things, due to the “fittingness” of God’s ordering of redemption, as well as His plan for self-glorification, outwardly manifest themselves via the “new spiritual sense.” The Holy Spirit, as that new spiritual sense or disposition of love to God, is given by Christ not just to regenerate, but to rule and reign. Consequently, we find that time and again Edwards both comforts his auditors with words of assurance, “Christ has accomplished all,” and warns that “Persons ought not to rest ignorant and unresolved about their own state, whether they be real Christians or no.”[85] “Justified” is not only the real legal status of absolved and righteous, but the reality of a vital union with Christ through a Divine Person (the Holy Spirit) who is “pure act.”[86]

III. Conclusion

Without question, Edwards’s soteriology is a complex labyrinth fraught with a variety of theological innovations, of which we have here considered only a few. But these innovations, as well as his whole theory of salvation, clearly show affinity with Geneva and Westminster’s emphasis on “union with Christ,” rather than the emphases characteristic of Rome and Trent. So while Morimoto may be right to say that Edwards espouses a Lombardian soteriology of ontological transformation, yet he wrongly superimposes a Thomist and Tridentine template onto it, the result of which leaves much of Edwards’s telic-theocentrism neglected and his philosophy of dispositions misappropriated.

In Edwards, neither a prior infusion of grace or holiness is the basis of justification, nor, as John Henry Newman taught, is the declaration itself renewing/creative. Rather, the divinely constituted union—that which is real in God’s estimation—is the foundation of what is legal.

Within New England Theology, it was not Jonathan Edwards but Samuel Hopkins’s “New Divinity” that separated conversion and regeneration. Hopkins, unlike Edwards, carefully distinguished in salvation between “regeneration,” which he saw as totally the work of the Spirit, and “conversion,” the active, volitional exercise of the human will which leads to holiness. Thus, within the “New Divinity” system, one could be chosen by God and still play the major role in one’s conversion.[87] In contrast to the impression one gets from Morimoto, this was a departure from Edwards’s theology not an expression of it.

Notes

1. A 1735 sermon title in TheWorks of Jonathan Edwards (ed. Edward Hickman; 2 vols.; London: 1834; repr., Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1974), 2:107 (hereafter, Banner-Works); Personal Narrative in Letters and Personal Writings, Volume 16 (ed. George S. Claghorn), The Works of Jonathan Edwards (20 vols.; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 16:792. Hereafter, Yale-Works.
2. See for instance, MS sermons on Psalm 89:15 (1742) (1756); Proverbs 8:34 (n.d.); 8:34–36 (1752); Canticles 4:8 (1736/7); Isaiah 27:13 (1741); Ezekiel 3:27 (1730/1);Matthew 10:14–15 (1755); 22:14 (1732); John 10:27 (1754) (The Jonathan Edwards Collection, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University); “Profitable Hearers of the Word,” Yale-Works, 14:246–77; “A Divine and Supernatural Light,” Yale-Works, 17:408–26; and Some Thoughts Concerning the Present Revival of Religion in Yale-Works, 4:484–88.
3. E.g., The Second Helvetic Confession (1566) states: “We know. .. that God can illuminate whom and when He will, even without the eternal ministry, for that is His power” (ch. 1).
4. Title of Ernst Bizer’s study of Luther’s doctrine of justification: Fides ex Auditu: Eine Untersuchung über die Entwicklung der Gerechtigkeit Gottes durch Martin Luther (Neukirchen: Moers, 1958); William Perkins, Arte of Prophesying in The Workes of that Famous and Worthy Minister of Christ in the Vniversitie of Cambridge, M. William Perkins. .. (3 vols.; London, 1612, 1613, 1631), 2:643–73 (hereafter, Perkins-Workes); Westminster Confession of Faith VIII, X, XIV.
5. Luther, D. Martin Luthers Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe (WA) (58 vols.; Weimar: Bohlau, 1833-), 4:9: “Natura verbi est audiri.”
6. Morimoto, Jonathan Edwards and the Catholic Vision of Salvation (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995), 100. Hereafter, Catholic Vision.
7. McDermott, Jonathan Edwards Confronts the Gods: Christian Theology, Enlightenment Religion, and Non-Christian Faiths (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 94. Hereafter, Confronts the Gods.
8. McDermott, Confronts the Gods, 3, 12–13. Cf. Morimoto, Catholic Vision, 78–101.
9. Sang Hyun Lee, The Philosophical Theology of Jonathan Edwards: The Idea of Habit and Edwards’ Dynamic Vision of Reality (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988; rev. ed. 2000).
10. Morimoto, Catholic Vision, 2, 64–69.
11. Ibid., 2.
12. Quote from David Bebbington, “Remembered Around the World: The International Scope of Edwards’ Legacy” (Unpublished paper delivered at the conference on “Jonathan Edwards in Historical Memory,” University of Miami, March 2000).
13. Morimoto, Catholic Vision, 3.
14. Ibid., 25.
15. Ibid., 66.
16. Ibid., 31.
17. “Miscellanies” references in the footnotes shall be followed directly by the entry number, e.g., “Miscellanies” 393.
18. Morimoto, Catholic Vision, 32; Jonathan Edwards ( JE), Yale-Works, 13:213.
19. “Miscellanies” 393, Yale-Works, 13:458. Emphasis added.
20. “Miscellanies” 393, Yale-Works, 13:457.
21. “Miscellanies” 393, Yale-Works, 13:456–57.
22. See, e.g., Perkins, “A Dialogue of the State of a Christian,” in A Treatise Tending unto a Declaration, whether a Man Be in the Estate of Damnation, or in the Estate of Grace, Perkins-Workes, 1:353–414; William Ames, De conscientia et eius iure vel casibus (1631); Richard Sibbes, The Bruised Reed (London, 1630); Thomas Brookes, Precious Remedies against Satan’s Devices (London, 1652).
23. See MS “Book of Controversies,” esp. §13, but also §§4–8, 106, 11a, and 15 (The JE Collection, Beinecke Library).
24. “Miscellanies” 702, Yale-Works, 18:97.
25. “Miscellanies” n, Yale-Works, 13:169–70; “Miscellanies” 713, Yale-Works, 18:343–44; “Miscellanies” 771, Yale-Works, 18:419; “Miscellanies” 772, Yale-Works, 18:419–22; “Miscellanies” 816, Yale-Works, 18:526; and Yale-Works, 3:410. According to JE, infants that came under “gracious influences” were likely to be the offspring of a believing parent or parents, who would have the word in and about them (“Miscellanies” 849 [Thomas A. Schafer’s transcriptions, The JE Collection, Beinecke Library]; MS sermon on Acts 11:12–13 (1750/1) [The JE Collection, Beinecke Library]). Which is to say, in this “extraordinary” case he remains logocentric. Nonetheless, JE’s skepticism did not diminish in the 1750s but grew! In his Humble Inquiry (1749), Farewell Sermon (1750), and Misrepresentations Corrected (1752), two themes ring clear: that many New England parishioners (including those of his former Northampton Church) were deceived in thinking themselves saved—baptism notwithstanding; and, as David D. Hall explains it, “condemning as insincere the practice, crucial to the being of popular religion, of allowing parents readily to secure baptism for their children.. . .What else did the townspeople [of New England] regard as a ‘known and established principle’ that Edwards now condemned as hypocrisy? Nothing less than the central motif of popular religion, the expectation of lay men and women that their children would benefit from the sacrament of baptism” (“Editor’s Introduction,” Yale-Works, 12:59).
26. MS “Blank Bible” note on Gal. 5:17 (The JE Collection, Beinecke Library).
27. Morimoto, Catholic Vision, 43. Cf. Magistri Petri Lombardi, Sententiae In IV Libris Distinctae (Rome: Grottaferrata, 1971), 1:2.142.
28. Morimoto, Catholic Vision, 42. Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologia, 2-2.23.2.
29. Ibid., 45.
30. Ibid., 43.
31. MS sermon on 2 Corinthians 3:18(a) (1728) (The JE Collection, Beinecke Library). JE preached this sermon under Stoddard’s tenure. If JE came to Northampton without knowing the controversy and/or relevant concepts (which is doubtful), he soon found instruction under his grandfather’s tutelage.
32. “Miscellanies” 614, Yale-Works, 18:146. Emphasis added.
33. “Miscellanies” 537, Yale-Works, 18:83. Cf. “A Divine and Supernatural Light,” Yale-Works, 17:422; “Miscellanies” 107, Yale-Works, 13:277–78; “Miscellanies” 220, Yale-Works, 13:345; “Miscellanies” 341, Yale-Works, 13:415.
34. Banner-Works, 2:3–7.
35. MS sermon on 1 Peter 1:3 (1732) (The JE Collection, Beinecke Library).
36. “Miscellanies” 629, Yale-Works, 18:157. Emphasis mine. Cf. “Miscellanies” 481: “SPIRIT’S OPERATION. In grace not only consists the highest perfection and excellency, but the happiness of the creature: and therefore, although other things are bestowed upon men by ordinary providence, that is, according to the fixed laws of the succession of events from preceding events or preceding human voluntary acts; yet this has God reserved to be bestowed by himself, according to his arbitrary will and pleasure, without any stated connection, according to fixed laws, with previous voluntary acts of men, or events in the series of natural things” (Yale-Works, 13:523); and Yale-Works, 2:259–60. See also Norman Fiering, Jonathan Edwards’ Moral Thought in Its British Context (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981), 123. Hereafter, Moral Thought.
37. Catholic Vision, 32, 62. Although JE, like Malebranche, maintained that general laws governed the grace of universal providence, yet both insisted that saving graces were particular providences.
38. “Miscellanies” 629, Yale-Works, 18:157. Emphasis mine. In “Miscellanies” 709 and other entries, JE repeatedly stresses the point that the Spirit simply “acts as a principle” in the redeemed (334–35).
39. “Miscellanies” 689, Yale-Works, 18:253. Cf. Fiering, Moral Thought, 93–103.
40. “Miscellanies” 402: “The sum of all that Christ purchased is the Holy Ghost” (Yale-Works, 13:466). See Stephen R. Holmes, God of Grace and God of Glory: An Account of the Theology of Jonathan Edwards (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000), 142–47.
41. “Christ, the Light of the World” (c.1721), Yale-Works, 10:543; “Miscellanies” 571, Yale-Works, 18:111.
42. “Miscellanies” 957 (Thomas A. Schafer’s transcriptions, The JE Collection, Beinecke Library); MS sermon on Colossians 1:12 (1756) (The JE Collection, Beinecke Library).
43. See Rahner, Theological Investigations (23 vols.; London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1961–92), 1:319–46. Here I refer to the well-known words of Tillich that particular religions are only provisional and inevitably must discard their particularity: “In the depths of every living religion there is a point at which the religion itself loses its importance, and that to which it points breaks through its particularity to a vision of spiritual freedom and to a vision of the spiritual presence in other expressions of the ultimate meaning of man’s existence” (Christianity and the Encounter with World Religions [New York: Columbia University Press, 1965], 97). See also George Seaver, Francis Younghusband, Explorer and Mystic (London: Murray, 1952).
44. Morimoto, Catholic Vision, 32.
45. “Miscellanies” 683, Yale-Works, 18:247.
46. “Miscellanies” 709, Yale-Works, 18:335.
47. “Miscellanies” 364, Yale-Works, 18:105.
48. Yale-Works, 13:357–58. All italics mine. See also “First Sign” in Religious Affections, Yale-Works 2:197–239.
49. Yale-Works, 18:230, 231, 232, 233.
50. Yale-Works, 2:340.
51. “Miscellanies” 568, Yale-Works, 18:105.
52. “Miscellanies” 71, Yale-Works, 13:238.
53. “Miscellanies” 632, Yale-Works, 18:159.
54. See The Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God (Boston, 1741) in Yale-Works, 4:255–59; Some Thoughts Concerning the Present Revival of Religion (Boston, 1742), Part I in Yale-Works, 4:293–347; and Religious Affections, Yale-Works, 2:240–53.
55. “Miscellanies” 600, Yale-Works, 18:200.
56. “Miscellanies” 800, Yale-Works, 18:500. Emphasis mine.
57. Yale-Works, 18:167, 211, 236, 422. All italics mine.
58. Yale-Works, 2:340–44. See also the “First Sign,” 197–239.
59. E.g., Perkins, Armilla Aurea (Cambridge, 1590), reproduced in Perkins-Workes as “A Golden Chaine,” 1:9–116; Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology (ed. J. T. Dennison; trans. G. M. Giger; 3 vols.; Phillipsburg: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1992–97), 2:15–17, 501–724.
60. “Justification by Faith Alone” (1734), Banner-Works, 1:624.
61. In 1734 JE preached a two-unit lecture on justification (Romans 4:5) that was published in 1738 as Justification by Faith Alone. The published version was significantly revised and expanded from the original lectures. Prompted by the famous “Robert Breck Controversy” and William Rand’s (minister at Sunderland) reportedly aberrant doctrine of justification, JE endeavors to oppose “the Arminian scheme of justification by our own virtue” (Banner-Works, 1:621).
62. Morimoto, Catholic Vision, 93.
63. Ibid., 92.
64. Ibid., 130. See Thomas A. Schafer, “Jonathan Edwards and Justification by Faith,” CH 20 (1951): 61.
65. Yale-Works, 18:105.
66. Morimoto, Catholic Vision, 85–86.
67. “Sermon One,” Yale-Works, 9:117, 119; MS Sermon on 1 Peter 1:19 (1738/9, 1753, 1756) (The JE Collection, Beinecke Library), 3.
68. “The Mind” Nos. 1 and 45, Yale-Works, 6:336–38, 362–66.
69. “Miscellanies” 568, Yale-Works, 18:105.
70. “Miscellanies” 755, Yale-Works, 18:403–04. See also “Miscellanies” 507, Yale-Works, 18:53; “Miscellanies” 568, Yale-Works, 18:105; “Miscellanies” 627, Yale-Works, 18:155–56; and “Miscellanies” 712, Yale-Works, 18:341.
71. “Miscellanies” 1159 (Thomas A. Schafer’s transcriptions, The JE Collection, Beinecke Library). Also, in the “Table to the Miscellanies,” JE lists under the heading “Christ” a subsection denominated “Purchased Faith and Conversion” (Yale-Works, 13:127).
72. Advancing Calvin’s work, Reformed soteriology sought to take for its point of origin the eternal union established in the pactum salutis between the Son and those whom the Father has given Him, in virtue of which there is an eternal imputation of the righteousness of Christ to those who are covenantally His. Though the notion of an eternal imputation was hotly debated amongst Calvinist theologians and ministers from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries, in the main, Reformed theologians of the period (while focusing on the more scriptural-based idea of the application of redemption accomplished by Jesus Christ to the elect) would move from the sphere of the eternal pactum (covenant of redemption) to the temporal realm and continue the ordo with justification, regeneration or “effectual” calling, and thus accentuate the fact that, from its incipiency to fruition, the application of Christ’s redemptive benefits was a sovereign work of God. See Sinclair B. Ferguson, “Ordo Salutis,” New Dictionary of Theology (ed. Sinclair B. Ferguson and David F. Wright; Leicester: InterVarsity Press, 1988); and Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics (ed. and trans. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1956–77), IV/2.
73. JE articulates essentially the same principles in volitional terms within Freedom of the Will.
74. “Miscellanies” 712, Yale-Works, 18:341.
75. “Editor’s Introduction,” Yale-Works, 18:17.
76. “Miscellanies” 568, Yale-Works, 18:105. Cf. “Miscellanies” 709, Yale-Works, 18:333–35.
77. Banner-Works, 1:627. Cf. “Miscellanies” 1250 and 1354 (The JE Collection, Beinecke Library).
78. Gerstner, The Rational Biblical Theology of Jonathan Edwards (3 vols.; Powhatan, Virginia: Berea Publications, 1991–93), 3:202.
79. (1752), Banner-Works, 2:41.
80. “Miscellanies” 729, Yale-Works, 18:354.
81. “Miscellanies” 729, Yale-Works, 18:355.
82. Yale-Works, 13:176.
83. Chamberlain, “Editor’s Introduction,” Yale-Works, 18:38.
84. “Miscellanies” 695, Yale-Works, 18:276–81.
85. MS sermon on 2 Corinthians 13:5 (173[5?]) (The JE Collection, Beinecke Library).
86. Edwards, “An Essay on the Trinity,” in Treatise on Grace and other Posthumously Published Writings (ed. Paul Helm; Cambridge and London: James Clarke & Co., 1971), 108.
87. Hopkins’s blend of Calvinism with revivalism became known as “Hopkinsianism,” his chief contribution to the “New Divinity.” See his lecture on John 1:13, “Regeneration and Conversion.”